Campaigners are fighting back after racists and fascists in Cyprus launched pogroms against migrants in the village of Chloraka in Paphos district. These attacks followed a series of events that started with the authorities cutting off the water and electricity supply to an area where immigrants and refugees live. 

When temperatures soar to over 40 degrees Celsius such a move is designed to provoke. 

In response, there was a peaceful march by mainly Syrian refugees which the state met with violence. Police also drove out refugees from empty housing they had occupied.

The mass media and right wing politicians orchestrated a campaign of slurs and lies about refugees. 

A few days later neo-Nazis, members of the National People’s Front (Elam), organised a demonstration in an area populated by migrants that resulted in broken doors and windows of homes and shops.  

The Cypriot anti-racist organisation KISA said the “well-organised and coordinated attack” grew from “the fertile ground created by the state migration and asylum policies, which are based on systemic racism and discrimination. 

It accused the police of having “tolerated and apathetically at first watched the violent attacks and other offences,” until they eventually made “three arrests, two of which were of Syrian refugees according to media reports, targeting once again the victims of the attacks.”

The failure of the left to oppose these attacks with anything more than words encouraged the Neo-nazis to organise another demonstration in Limassol, Cyprus’s second biggest city. Around 200 to 300 thugs marched in the centre of town, beating up anyone who they thought looked foreign and again smashing shops that belonged to immigrants. 

The police response to these assaults was again negligible with a number of officers simply behaving as spectators. 

Anti-fascists from four small groups called a demonstration in Limmasol on Saturday to oppose these attacks. It saw 1,500 people take to the streets, a sizeable number by Cypriot standards.

The Communist Party (Akel), left trade unionists and other political organisations have called another anti-racist demonstration for Monday.

Many anti-fascists commented on the failure to coordinate a joint action but stated they would be attending both.

It’s urgent to see action against the racists and fascists—and the state racism that fuels them.