Livestock farmers ended their protest outside the Presidential Palace in Nicosia on Friday after President Nikos Christodoulides promised them a meeting on Tuesday, capping a day of standoffs with police over their demand for an immediate halt to animal culls at foot-and-mouth disease-infected units.
President Christodoulides told the farmers that decisions would be taken on Tuesday, and they said they would attend that meeting to raise the culls and compensation. The President did not meet them in person. Government Spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis, Deputy Minister to the President Irene Piki and Presidential Press Office director Viktoras Papadopoulos conveyed his positions instead. After talks with the head of the President’s guard, Andreas Pettemerides, two farmer representatives were allowed up the hill to speak with Piki.
The president of Voice of the Livestock Farmers, Neofytos Neofytou, said afterwards that they had raised the culls, compensation, halloumi, lost income and taxes. “We did not see the President,” he said, adding that the one thing they had secured was his promise to take part in Tuesday’s meeting. All the issues concerning them would be on the table then, he said, stressing that the talks would not be like previous ones.
The day had begun very differently. The farmers reached the palace only after an hours-long standoff at the GSP Stadium, where police refused to let them bring 16 trucks to the protest site. The group first decided to stay put, then set off at around 1:00pm once police agreed to allow three trucks through, arriving in large numbers around 1:40pm.
Tension ran high outside the GSP during the delay. Neofytou told television reporters that police were doing what had been rumoured the day before. “They let us gather and now they are coming to break up the demonstration,” he said. He said the farmers had come to protest peacefully only for police to turn up with shields. “They came fully armed for an attack, as if they had criminals in front of them,” he said, adding that the move had been ordered by the Justice Minister, apparently in coordination with the President. He claimed the trucks were merely a pretext for the state to shut the protest down.
The organisation’s vice-president, Christodoulos Christodoulou, addressed the authorities directly. “Come to our farms,” he said. “Pick up a weapon, helmet and gear and come to our farms.”
Neofytou said some had tried to break up the day’s protest. “For us, coming to fight was not the point,” he said. “We wanted to come to claim what is rightfully ours.”
Police said they fully understood the farmers’ concerns and respected their right to protest peacefully, while stressing their own duty to safeguard public safety and keep the road network running. They said they had been in contact with the organisers since the previous day, and that arrangements had been agreed allowing three pickup trucks and a number of passenger cars to the site.
The protest, organised by Voice of the Livestock Farmers, centres on demands for an immediate end to culling at infected units, with demonstrators expressing strong dissatisfaction at the way the authorities have handled the crisis.
The outbreak has spread to around 120 livestock units across the island since it was first detected in February, with approximately 71,000 animals culled across multiple districts. Under EU rules, if even one animal in a unit tests positive the entire herd must be slaughtered — a policy Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou has said is non-negotiable under EU law.
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