More than 20 Turkish soldiers and ‘police’ attacked two Greek Cypriot farmers and attempted to arrest them whilst they cultivated their field in the buffer zone near Mammari on Monday, according to one of the victims.
Gavriil Gerolemos, a young farmer, told Alpha Cyprus that Turkish forces threw stones at him and his father and tried to grab them by the throat whilst they worked on their field, located around 300 metres from a Turkish military post.
“They were throwing stones at us, trying to grab us by the neck and arrest us,” he said.
The incident began when a Turkish soldier tried to approach the farmers’ private double-cab vehicle parked next to the field and remove the keys from the ignition, Gerolemos said.
The two farmers tried to stop him, prompting the arrival of more soldiers and ‘police’ who surrounded the area.
A ‘police officer’ tried to climb onto the tractor driven by Gerolemos’s father to arrest him, he said.
“A ‘police officer’ tried to climb on the tractor to arrest my father. When he accelerated to get away from the spot, he fell off the tractor. They were shouting at us in Turkish and English ‘stay’, ‘arrested’ and things like that,” Gerolemos said.
The episode occurred within the buffer zone, he said, adding that UN peacekeepers who arrived at the scene limited themselves to watching and recording the incident.
“The situation was very dangerous; they were armed, and there were two of us and 20 of them. What else can you do except leave?” he said.
Christodoulos Christodoulou, a farmer from Deneia, called the incident particularly serious, noting that the Turkish soldiers and police were armed.
“It was the worst incident we’ve seen in the last five to six years,” he said.
“We have families and babies, and we can’t have the Turks climbing on tractors every so often, breaking them. It’s unacceptable; we don’t know what to do,” Christodoulou said.
The incident caused serious damage to the Greek Cypriot farmers’ tractor, which has not yet been calculated.
The Foreign Ministry has been informed about the incident.