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“We judge you”, “we’re in your facet”, “you are a victim of a inaccurate system”.
These safe been fair appropriate about a of many banners, placards and posters waved by a crowd of females’s rights activists, who stood and chanted messages of team spirit for a British teenager in Paralimni, Cyprus.
The 19-365 days-passe, who used to be stumbled on guilty of mendacity about being raped in Ayia Napa by a team of young Israelis, hid her face with a scarf and used to be visibly shaking as she stood for a 2d in front of the team, earlier than getting into court docket.
By her facet used to be her mother, alongside with a British documentary maker, who has accompanied the family at each of the court docket hearings.
There has been global criticism with regards to the fairness of the trial, and the controversial case has united females’s rights groups and activists from both Cyprus and Israel.
Noa Borstein, a journalist and activist from Israel, tells me that she travelled “with 60 females on two planes and two buses from Tel Aviv” to be right here.
“There might be one thing fishy right here”, she says. “This narrative is simply too acquainted for any one of us. We hear it loads and know what it be pick to be viewed to be ‘unheard of’ with our tales.”
I requested her about files protection of the case in Israel – and the 12 Israeli youths who safe been released for gratis.
“For me, when we stumble on the mainstream media, we hear a patriarchal fable, not believing females.
“Israeli papers blame the ladies. And there’s a huge society debate – even in my safe family – you might maybe stumble on the males standing beside the boys, nonetheless the females assume that there’s extra right here than they recount it is, it be not a lie.”
Authorities ‘not mature to questions’
The criticism from some Cypriot protesters right here isn’t only appropriate the alleged flaws on this case, nonetheless of the island’s total judicial system.
Amongst the activists is Zelia Gregoriou, an affiliate professor in gender overview at the college of Cyprus.
“Folks should always not have confidence the government. Governments might seemingly smooth consistently be in query and the government in Cyprus is rarely always mature to that.
“They’re not mature to being questioned on fable of they undertake a in actual fact patriarchal, pastoral capability to politics – ‘all of us know most productive, we safe it for you, don’t bother us, don’t query us’.
“I agree with that is the 2d for the country, we safe come together to enhance the which implies of citizenship.”
Argentoula Ioannou is amongst the most vocal of protesters, shouting “I’m with you” and “we judge you”. She’s phase of the newly-formed Community Against Violence Against Females, that helped organise the protests.
She says: “The choice is a outcomes of the total system of deficiencies and shocking handling by police, who led in the conviction. They haven’t safe, they haven’t believed, and they let the Israelis leave the country without doing their job neatly.”
Police officials safe denied claims that they acted improperly on this case, as nicely as claims made by the teenager’s family that they “bullied” her into recanting her commentary.
There safe been also supportive voices in the gang for the police and judiciary.
Skevi Koukouma, a Cypriot MP for the shut by town of Famagusta, says she grew to develop into up to defend her country’s fair system, which she stated used to be facing “huge reputational wretchedness, in step with the thought of this case in one other country”.