Humanitarian aid packages were delivered to migrant workers living on 10 different sites near Morphou, the north’s Refugee Rights Association (MHD) announced on Tuesday.
The MHD described the aid recipients as “victims of human trafficking”, with 100 people living on one of the sites having reportedly filed reports to the Turkish Cypriot police that they had been trafficked just over a month ago.
The packages included drinking water, food, and personal hygiene products, and were provided through various projects which had been financed by the European Union.
The MHD described the finding of the camps by journalists in August as a “human trafficking scandal” and added that it had a “great impact on society” and has “revealed the ongoing human tragedy in the north of Cyprus”.
“Reports prepared by lawyers and observers from the Human Rights Platform [IHP] determined that these workers were working under conditions which were not in accordance with their basic human rights, and that they were being housed in inappropriate conditions,” they said.
They also said a “needs analysis” study had been carried out, which found that the people living on the sites required “urgent humanitarian aid and legal support”.
“These inhumane conditions go against international human rights treaties and the European Union,” they said, adding that they will continue their work against what they described as “fundamental human rights violations”.
The IHP had said in August that while 100 people had filed complaints of being trafficked to the Turkish Cypriot police, another 600 had requested help from them but were “hesitant to go to the police due to safety concerns”.
They called on the north’s authorities to take the “necessary steps … to immediately ensure the safety of victims of human trafficking and ensure their access to justice in a healthy manner.”
They also said it was “unacceptable” to “send victims back to the camps” after they have filed reports, as “it will lead to them once again being made victims”.
The story regarding the workers’ living conditions had broken in the last week of August, with journalist Pinar Barut saying of the workers’ living conditions that “the scene we encountered in Morphou horrified us. The workers we spoke to said they have been living in these conditions for months.”
“They are all trying to survive in a slave camp, filthy, unemployed, penniless, with no water, electricity, hygiene, toilets, or bathrooms. No one has visited them for months,” she added.
One of the workers told Ozgur Gazete, “I came two months and 10 days ago, and I only worked for a month. We buy rice and chicken with our own money and eat here.”
Another said the consultants were two men who identified themselves as “Mustafa” and “Cihangir”. He said he had paid the pair €8,000 for the opportunity to come to Cyprus to work, and that in total the pair may have made as much as €13 million by importing workers from Bangladesh.
He said he had been paid 24,000TL (€632) for his first month’s work, before being paid just 7,000TL (€184) for his second month, and not being paid since. The north’s minimum wage was at the time 33,926TL (€893) per month, and has since risen to 40,436TL (€1,060).
