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.
Scroll down for the video
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 asshole?”.
“The police here stop Africans, try to find something wrong, and then fine us”
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.
