Iranian dissident caught between rock and hard place in Cyprus limbo

An Iranian dissident who fled his country fearing arrest has fallen afoul of politics and COVID-19 restrictions in ethnically-split Cyprus

Since mid-September, Omid Tootian has been living in a small tent in Cyprus’s buffer zone, a United Nations-controlled slice of territory carved out after a war split Cyprus in 1974.

Tootian has pitched his tent in the overgrown garden of a home abandoned during the war. Shutters with peeling paint hang off hinges on windows still stacked with sandbags. A building next door housing peace groups has the only visible sign of activity in the area.The area is named after the Ledra Palace, a hotel on the other side of the road where a British contingent of United Nations peacekeepers stays.

But despite having tested negative for COVID-19, Tootian says, he was still turned back four to five times. He says he will not return to the Turkish Cypriot side because he fears he will be deported to Turkey, and from there, back to Iran.

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