Sanctions imposed against governments in general seldom achieve their idealistic goal, rather they inevitably lead to the isolation of an entire community, preventing citizens from enjoying their human rights and building for their future. Whether imposed on a supranational level or by one community against the ‘other,’ collective, punitive or reactionary sanctions are contrary to the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in Cyprus they are hindering work towards regaining trust and eventually national unity. However, those claiming victimhood of sanctions and consequent isolation must ensure that they too are not imposing their own collective sanctions on others.

While it is a common sentiment among the Turkish Cypriot community in Northern Cyprus that their inability to establish direct flights and trade with the rest of the world is largely due to sanctions imposed by Greek lobbying, from a Greek Cypriot point of view this lobbying is the only weapon available to dispossessed people to protest against sanctions preventing them from returning to their homes by a powerful neighbour. Equally, Greek and Maronite Cypriots enclaved in North Cyprus since 1974 also complain they too are victims of sanctions imposed by the ‘TRNC state,’ amounting to isolation within isolation, thus depriving them of their basic human rights.

There is no doubt isolation caused by imposed international sanctions is making one Cypriot community; the Turkish-speakers feel as if they are second-class citizens, regardless of whether or not they endorse the ‘TRNC’ and separatism. Feelings are worsened and trust shattered when 65% of Turkish Cypriots endorsed reunification in the 2003 Annan plan referenda, only to see their political will ignored and isolated continue. There is no doubt too that Turkish Cypriot sportsmen, intellectuals, artists, academics and others who are barred from participating in international events are being wrongly discriminated against, and barred from fulfilling their personal potential.

With the 1996 European Court of Justice ruling that effectively barred trade to the ‘TRNC’ and recent refusal of the UK Department of Transport for direct flights to Ercan, those suffering the consequences are not politicians with a separatist agenda but citizens. It is a disgrace to see sanctions originally imposed against the separatist politics of Denktash, destroy the lives of people who happen to have been brought up in Northern Cyprus today. Also it is even more sickening when a Cypriot President Papadopoulos remains insensitive to this isolation. No community deserves this kind of humuliating collective punishment.

Certain ‘human rights groups’ within our community will argue that we should be fighting for “Turkish Cypriot human rights” alone as if somehow our human rights are separated from those of others or more important. But this is a narrow-minded approach to human rights, as it ignores our own short-comings  that originally led to the isolation of the breakaway TRNC. It is these short-comings that have kept the cycle of emnity moving and that challenges the universality of human rights. If we employ such an ethnocentric approach, human rights can only ever be secured by the politically mightiest- lessons we have learnt from the past should warn us against this.

To emphasize my point on the need to view humans rights as a universal right, I invite you to look at sanctions we Turkish Cypriots impose on others. Sanctions that lead to isolation are not an issue confined to the Turkish Cypriots alone, nor do they always lead to isolation, but still cause an equal amount of suffering for the victim of that isolation, i.e. dispossessed Greek and Maronite Cypriots sanctioned against living in their homes now living in Southern Cyprus.

Until recently, Greek Cypriots and Maronites living in Northern Cyprus since 1974 needed police permission to leave their homes just to fetch groceries, with many left dependent on UN aid forcing many to leave. More than a hundred thousand Greek Cypriots living in the Republic are still sanctioned from living in their homes. It is wrong to look at isolation without also paying attention to the enclaved and those forbidden to return.

Even now in the 21st century, very little has changed in Northern Cyprus. There are effectively unofficial sanctions imposed by the TRNC authority against Greek and Maronite Cypriots enclaved in the North. Despite the fact that there is now a Greek school in Karpaz / Karpasia, Maronites are still being continually punished by a refusal of the authorities to open them a single school or allow them to return to three of their closed off villages. Even if you use the argument that war changed the territories of Greek and Turkish Cypriots indefinitely, an argument that is flawed and has no international legal basis, Cypriot Maronites still reside in the North, and were never even involved in the inter-communal conflict of the 1960s and 70s; they were in fact neutral.

Clearly faced with double standards, the need to end isolation and safeguard human rights requires a certain versatility of one’s understanding of human rights. As a multi-cultural island with communities like Maronites, Latins, Armenians, Roma Gypsies to name but a few, Cyprus is not a mere Greco-Turkish affair and cannot afford to view human rights in such an ethnocentric way. The view that each community of Cyprus is clumsily glued together with their own territory and government is no panacea, because as Cypriots we are all destined to coexist on this small island.

A short-term policy of “I want my human rights but to hell with the human rights of others,” is a dangerous game and will not safeguard the human rights of one’s individual community in the long run, as such rights will only be determined by whichever community happens to be in power. Unless we all fight for the universality of human rights, our own rights will be subject to punitive and reactionary sanctions by those in power with nobody left to speak out against the violation of our rights.

Regrettably with both Greek and Turkish Cypriots each arguing for their own specific human rights at the expense of the universality of human rights, and waiting for the other side to defend their own human rights, there is little hope for groups like the Maronites. The fact that Greek and Turkish Cypriots can only see human rights through their own eyes for their own communities is a worrying sign that Cypriots can casually tolerate each others injustice at will and are prepared to easily brush aside each others human rights when it suits them.©