54 ARRESTED AS 3,000 WOMEN PROTEST DIVISION OF CYPRUS

March 20, 1989 – (Reuters’ article in The Toronto Star) About 3,000 Greek-Cypriot women stormed past troops into North Cyprus yesterday to protest the division of the island. Some were dragged kicking and screaming into Turkish-Cypriot custody.

The women, accompanied by supporters from the United States, Western Europe and Australia, breached the Green Line that divides the island between the Greek south and the Turkish north at two places and remained in the north for several hours before returning to the south.

At least four reporters were among the 54 arrested. They were released late last night.

"Please stop," a lone Turkish-Cypriot guard pleaded as the first phalanx of women, waving white flags and banners reading "We Come in Peace" swarmed past him near the village of Lymbia southeast of Nicosia.

About 2,000 women crossed the U.N. buffer zone at Lymbia after evading helicopter-borne U.N. peacekeepers who said they would try to keep them out.

Canada has several hundred peacekeeping troops on Cyprus. A spokesman for the military police at defence department headquarters in Ottawa said yesterday he had no information on the situation in Cyprus.

The handful of unarmed Turkish-Cypriot soldiers who met the women were powerless to halt them, but reinforcements quickly arrived and arrested several of the protesters.

Witnesses said women were dragged away kicking and screaming. Some had their hair pulled, received bruises or were cut by barbed wire, but no serious injuries were reported.

Another 22 people who crossed the Green Line farther to the east at Akhna were arrested, witnesses said. They said a total of 1,000 women crossed to the village, which lies just north of a military base under British control.

Akhna is one of the villages abandoned by Greek Cypriots after a 1974 invasion by Turkish troops, sparked by a brief coup in Nicosia engineered by the colonels then running Greece.

Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, whose breakaway Turkish Republic of North Cyprus is recognized only by Turkey, said anyone crossing the U.N. buffer zone would be arrested.

Scores of Turkish-Cypriot women rushed to Lymbia and Akhna to stage counter-demonstrations. Policewomen intervened to stop scuffles that broke out between the two sides.

The Greek women, organized by a committee called Women Walk Home, ended both protests after about three hours. Many were among 200,000 Greek Cypriots who left their homes in the north after the Turkish invasion.