The Kyrenia tragedy and the tragedy of the inhuman: You are not defending Cyprus. You are shrinking it.

Opinion accidentCyprus problemoccupied north The Kyrenia tragedy and the tragedy of the inhuman: You are not defending Cyprus. You are shrinking it. Navagio Kerineia Relevant News The Kyrenia tragedy and the tragedy of the inhuman: You are not defending Cyprus. You are shrinking it. 1 September 2026 Cyprus-US relations at “highest level” ever, Presidency says 1 September 2026 Cyprus to impose emergency sailing ban after Cape Greco tragedy 1 September 2026 Giorgos Kallinikou 1 September 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber SCENE ONE: Outside Kyrenia harbour, Ayten Bicer has been waiting for hours for word of her two children, who were aboard the doomed catamaran and remain missing. She’s in pieces, sobbing, begging anyone for news. Beside her, her husband finally breaks. He steps in front of the ambulances, trying to stop them, desperate for any scrap of information about 12-year-old Saliha Miray and six-year-old Mehmet Asaf. He breaks down too. SCENE TWO: Underneath the news stories about the shipwreck in the north, filth is piling up by the ton. “Drown, you Turkish scum.” “To hell with the lot of them.” “Death to anyone who’s set foot illegally in occupied Cyprus.” It gets worse. A small sample of comments from subhumans, the kind that turn your stomach on sight. This is where every excuse runs out. No political position justifies this kind of savagery. No occupation, no invasion, no occupying army, no flag, no border, no national dispute can turn a mother’s agony into something to gloat over. There’s no “national interest” that gives anyone licence to celebrate while other people are drowning. A mother is waiting to hear whether her children are alive. A father is standing outside a harbour, begging for information. Children have been plunged into a sea of terror through no fault of their own. And yet, instead of falling silent in the face of this tragedy, some people feel the urge to type “die” and “drown.” That’s not patriotism. It’s not resistance. It’s not “a response to the occupier.” It’s just squalid. There’s nothing wrong with hating the occupation. Nothing wrong with condemning Turkey. Nothing wrong with demanding the liberation and reunification of the homeland. Every reason to be furious about what happened in 1974 and what’s still happening in Cyprus 52 years on. But when someone is drowning, you don’t ask which flag they carry. You save them. When a mother is waiting for her child, you don’t ask what language she speaks. You put your arms around her. When lives are being lost, you don’t check someone’s nationality before deciding whether they deserve your grief. That’s the bare minimum humanity demands. Twelve-year-old Saliha Miray is not the occupation. Six-year-old Mehmet Asaf is not Turkey. These people are not patriots. They’re not more Cypriot for it. Not more Greek. Not more part of the resistance. They’re simply inhuman: people who, faced with the pain of others, chose to let hatred do the talking. And when hatred reaches the point of wishing death on children, that’s not a political opinion. That’s moral bankruptcy. Here’s what we owe it to ourselves to tell whoever wrote those comments: you are not making us stronger. You are not more patriotic for it. You are not honouring our dead. You are not defending Cyprus. You are shrinking it. The Cyprus we want cannot be a place where someone else’s pain becomes an excuse to celebrate. The Cyprus we want has to be better than this. Sadly, amid this unspeakable tragedy, there was something else that should have people furious. The Republic of Cyprus, through the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Larnaca, declared itself ready to help with the search and rescue operation. The occupation regime turned it down. There’s no reasonable excuse for that either. How, when human lives are at stake, can politics be placed above saving them? Displays of power, ego, refusal to recognise the Republic of Cyprus, and political games cannot matter more than a human life. The sea does not recognise occupation lines. Death does not recognise borders. A mother waiting for her child doesn’t care about flags. She just wants to see that child come home. That should have been the only thing that mattered to any of us today. In a Cyprus that still carries its wounds, it’s tragic that we even have to spell out the obvious: pain has no nationality. Whoever celebrates a drowning hasn’t defeated the occupier. They’ve simply defeated the humanity inside themselves. Anyone who’s sunk low enough to abuse people staring death in the face should take a long look in the mirror, and feel ashamed for forgetting how to be human. Wretched as they are. Even that might be beyond them. 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