Dozens of bystanders in Nicosia witnessed a police officer using
excessive force against Sylvain Somé, from the
Ivory Coast. They took
photos, videos and complained to the local anti-racism NGO ‘Kisa’ as an
officer broke his leg. From his hospital bed, the victim described it as
a “racist attack".
In mid-afternoon on Wednesday November 27th,
three police officers stopped an Ivorian on a busy road in the Greek
Cypriot capital’s historic centre to ask for his identity documents.
They checked his documents in their electronic system, and found he
resides in Cyprus lawfully. Klitos Papastylianou, who works at Kisa,
told FRANCE 24 “racial profiling in Cyprus is illegal, but the police do
it all the time. We get at least one complaint about it a week.”
The
video below was published by Kisa, complete with Greek subtitles where
the audio is poor. The video shows two officers and one African witness
the officer breaking Sylvain Somé’s leg. Around one minute into the
footage, an officer exclaims: “you broke his leg”, while the other
shouts at his colleague “stop, are you an A*#S?”.
Sylvain Somé has lived in Cyprus for seven years. He is married to a Cypriot woman.
I
asked the police officers: “why have you stopped me like this?” One
officer replied, the one who later broke my leg: “this is Cyprus! If you
don’t like it, you can go back to your country, where you can teach the
police how to behave.” I told him he hadn’t answered my question, and
that I knew he had a job to do but that I had a right to speak freely. I
didn’t want to end up handcuffed and taken to the police station, I
just wanted to ask a question. The officer warned if I kept talking he’d
arrest me, I replied saying I hadn’t done anything to be arrested for.
That’s
when he threw me to the ground, and broke my leg. And then he started
saying he would take me to the hospital in his car, and he was trying to
handcuff me. I wasn’t going to get in his car with a broken leg, I
wanted to wait for an ambulance! I didn’t trust him, he might have taken
me to a detention centre and done worse things to me. I waited for an
ambulance, which took me to Nicosia General Hospital.
I was
stopped like a criminal. Imagine if I’d been with my daughter, who’s
only a little girl. The police here are racist. It’s by no means the
first time I’ve been stopped in the street: it’s happened to me dozens
of times. The police here stop Africans, try to find something wrong,
and then fine us. That’s what they do.
When FRANCE 24 spoke to
Sylvain Somé two days after the incident, he was in hospital waiting to
hear if he would need an operation.
According to Kisa, the local
police department initially refused to accept Sylvain Somé’s complaint
against the police officer who broke his leg. After Kisa intervened, the
department agreed to receive the complaint but Sylvain Somé has still
been charged with resisting arrest. It is not yet clear whether the
officer will be investigated. France 24 has contacted the local and
national police to obtain a reaction to the case. We will publish their
response if and when we receive one.
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