Limbo in a blue tent: African asylum-seekers stuck on Cyprus

By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS
Associated Press

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Enjei Grace and fellow Cameroonian Daniel Ejube have been stuck for nearly five months in limbo, in the United Nations-patrolled buffer zone separating Cyprus’ breakaway north from the internationally recognized south. They don’t want to go back to the north, and the south won’t let them in for fear of encouraging more asylum-seekers to enter the European Union territory that way. So they stay in a small blue tent, from which every day they see people freely moving between north and south all the time, across an authorized crossing — one of nine linking the island’s Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. The U.N. refugee agency says Grace and Ejube should be allowed to apply for asylum in the south.