Delivery of UN aid to the enclaved will resume next week

Presidential Commissioner Photis Photiou told CNA that the dispatch of UN aid to the enclaved living in the Turkish-held north will begin again next week.

Turkish Cypriot authorities recently revoked a decision which imposed "duties" on humanitarian aid delivered from the government-controlled areas of the Republic to Greek Cypriots and Maronites in the north of the island.

Photiou said that "we have been informed by UNFICYP (the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus) that the occupation regime will allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to the enclaved in Karpasia and the Maronite villages."

He added that: "State services are ready for this".

Last October Turkish Cypriot authorities imposed "duties on humanitarian aid sent to the enclaved.

The Cyprus government made clear that it would not, under any circumstances, pay any such taxes.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third.

At the end of the second phase of the Turkish invasion late in August 1974, about 20,000 Greek and Maronite Cypriots inhabiting villages in the Karpas Peninsula and west of Kyrenia remained behind the ceasefire line.

Today, only around 430 persons remain behind the Green Line of whom 328 are Greek Cypriot and the rest Maronite Cypriots.

These people are known as the “enclaved.”

Since 1974, the enclaved have endured conditions of hardship and oppression because of their ethnicity, language and religion.