We were asked to redact to protect the identity of the club
Prost Amerika has learned about an attempt by a European Union member state to sabotage and prevent the ConIFA Football World Cup from taking place. In a letter sent to more than one football club, the Cypriot Deputy High Commissioner in London Solon Savva asked the tournament venues to deny use of their stadia to ConIFA regardless of which sides were playing there. All th evenues are non league clubs in the London area.
In the copy of the letter leaked to us, Mr Savva asks venues to withdraw permission to use their stadia from the tournament for any matches because of the presence of a team representing Northern Cyprus.
Although the Northern Cyprus team is scheduled to play all three of its matches at Enfield Town’s Queen Elizabeth II Stadium, the letter was sent to at least two other clubs that we know of, neither of whom are due to host Northern Cyprus. It seems on the face of it an attempt to deny the competition any venues whatsoever.
In the letter, Savva appeals to one of the venues to withdraw from hosting ANY games at the tournament and makes a fall back request to reconsider in the case of the ‘possible’ presence of a Northern Cypriot team at the venue.
“I would like to kindly request that club name redacted to urgently reconsider its decision to allow the use of the stadium for the so-called ConIFA’s Paddy Power World Football Cup 2018 and possibly for matches of the so-called “Northern Cyprus” football team,” Commissioner Savva asks.
We were asked to redact the identity of the club whose letter we have to protect them and their staff from potential harassment. Our letter is dated April and such a late withdrawal of venues would almost certainly have led to the postponement of the tournament.
Northern Cyprus is far from the only politically contentious side in the Cup, but no other government appears to have made an official attempt, however crass, to sabotage the games.
The territory was created and is composed of the area occupied by Turkish troops after their illegal invasion of the island in 1974.
HISTORIC AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Cyprus has been divided since the Turkish invasion of 1974
The island of Cyprus is composed mainly of two ethnic groups, Turks and Greeks
It has been divided since 1974 when the Turkish Army invaded ostensibly to protect the Turkish population there from increasing violence on the island.The invasion began on 20 July 1974, following the Cypriot coup d’état five days previously. The aim of the coup, inspired by the Greek military government in Athens, was to annex Cyprus and make it part of Greece, a move wholly unacceptable to its ethnic Turkish population.
After a second Turkish invasion in August, a ceasefire line became the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus, commonly referred to as the Green Line. Thereafter mass expulsions in both directions resulted in the ethnic Turks heading into the Northern Zone and ethnic Greeks heading out of it towards the south.
Naturally both sides played up the incidents where they are victims, but the Commission of Human Rights found human rights abuses being committed against Greek civilians by the Turkish occupying forces in two separate reports of 1976 and 1983:
Having found violations of a number of Articles of the Convention, the Commission notes that the acts violating the Convention were exclusively directed against members of one of two communities in Cyprus, namely the Greek Cypriot community. It concludes by eleven votes to three that Turkey has thus failed to secure the rights and freedoms set forth in these Articles without discrimination on the grounds of ethnic origin, race, religion as required by Article 14 of the Convention.
After the initial coup, the Greek military dictatorship in Athens fell and Greece embarked on its journey back to democracy and eventual membership of the European Union. Public opinion which had condemned the Greek government initially began to soften on the coup and unite against the Turkish occupation.
Turkey by then was occupying roughly 37% of the island and in 1983, the Republic of Northern Cyprus was unilaterally declared, attempting to formalise the island’s political division.
However, the world diplomatic community did not recognise the creation of a state borne out of an illegal invasion and currently only Turkey recognises the breakaway Republic. The United Nations, the EU and the rest of the world does not. Indeed Turkey’s illegal occupation of half the island was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to its ambition to join the European Union until the attacks on press freedom by President Recip Erdogan made Turkey’s membership a complete non starter.
BIZARRE ATTACK ON CONIFA
In his lengthy letter, the Deputy High Commissioner points out the illegality of the Turkish military occupation of the area, and the varying UN motions that condemn it. But bizarrely, he also attacks ConIFA itself:
“Irrespective of what CONIFA likes to call itself, this is an association that provides an umbrella network for illegal secessionist entities purportedly to play football. Regrettably, under the guise of football, some of the CONIFA members use the association and its tournaments as a means to further their political agendas and goals.”
It’s an argument not dissimilar to accusing FIFA of backing Scottish or Welsh Independence merely because those teams are allowed to enter a team. His attempt to close down the tournament may well backfire. None of the competing teams are recognisable states, otherwise they would be members of FIFA. Additionally teams like Cascadia have been careful to insist that their presence should not be read as a political statement.
The Deputy High Commissioner attacked ConIFA too
Even more embarrassingly for the Cypriots, despite being the victim of 33 years of terrorist violence by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Sri Lankan government appears to have made no such attempt to sabotage the competition despite the presence of a Tamil Eelam side.
We wrote to both the Cypriot and Sri Lankan diplomatic missions in London. Despite being on the end of a vicious terror campaign by the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankans appear to have made no attempt to prevent the Tamils playing.
Acting Deputy High Commissioner Sugeeshwara Gunaratna wrote to us in an email:
“I wish to bring to your attention that a territory entitled ‘Tamil Eelam’ does not exist, nor has it existed in Sri Lanka either de facto or de jure.
“It may be noted that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a terrorist organisation proscribed in a number of countries including Sri Lanka, India, USA, Europe and Canada carried out a violent campaign in Sri Lanka in order to create a country by this name. However, their violent campaign of death and destruction was brought to an end in May 2009.”
Despite wishing to clearly point out the violent acts done by the Tigers in pursuit of a separate Tamil State, Mr Gunaratna made no reference to their football team and he does not appear to have made any attempt to prevent the Tamil Eelam side, who are in Cascadia’s group. from playing. The Cypriots however went much further.
Cyprus is a member of the European Union and the Commonwealth and its attempt to threaten a football tournament over political disagreements will perhaps be better understood by dictatorial states (ironically like Turkey) than the free and democratic nations it sits beside in those organisations.
Even more surprisingly, Mr Savva’s letter to the clubs makes a quite bewildering attack on the ConIFA organisation itself, calling it “an umbrella network for illegal secessionist entities”
ConIFA itself is not getting involved and seems to dispute the Deputy Commissioner’s attempt to portray it as a political organisation:
“CONIFA is politically neutral. We simply wish to provide a platform for everyone to play football,” they told us via email.
The tournament is for teams representing ‘nations, de-facto nations, regions, minority peoples and sports isolated territories’ which are not recognised by FIFA. Every continent bar South America is represented.
The following countries are playing in the finals:
Barawa, Abkhazia, Panjab, Padania, Northern Cyprus, Székely Land (ethnic Hungarians in Romania), United Koreans in Japan, Isle of Man, Felvidek (Upper Hungary), Tamil Eelam, Western Armenia, Kiribati, Tibet, Matabeleland, Kabylia (Northern Ageria) and Cascadia.
Prost Amerika will have full coverage of the tournament. Follow us on Twittter.
