The logic of ethnic cleansing in the political language of the (Cyprus) Minister of the Interior

In his article in a supplement by O Phileleftheros newspaper (27 December 2020), the Minister of the Interior speaks of the “refugee world”, meaning exclusively Greek Cypriot Refugees. Indeed, the use of the phrase “refugee world” to refer exclusively to Greek Cypriots is not uncommon. Nonetheless, its use in political language is neither neutral not innocent. What does it mean for the “refugee world” to stand exclusively for Greek Cypriot displaced persons? It means that all other people who are refugees and are already living in our country, some of them working here too, within the domain of the Ministry of the Interior, are excluded from the “world”. It is a serious matter when the one who applies this Logic is the Minister of the Interior, the political head of the Asylum Service, which grants refugee status, and the political head of the interministerial committee for the integration of migrants and refugees. And he does so in a text by which he announces a policy.

The enthymeme of this hardly innocent linguistic slip is that, from the Ministerial perspective, non-Greek Cypriot refugees fall outside the world – they don’t exist in this world. For the political subject who defines the refugee policy of the State, these people fall within the under-world, being sub-human. (One could claim that they are not necessarily categorised as under-world, as sub-human, but as belonging to the “outer-world” – but this is far from true as these people are already within the territory of Cyprus, within the world of Cyprus. Therefore, they are already here. In this regard, they remain under the threshold of the ethicopolitical radar, the sensitivity of which aims “higher” to what counts as measurable world.)

This very use of terms constitutes a vivid example of institutional racism. And even worse. Following the line of thought of philosopher Hannah Arendt: where the notion of the “world” is used selectively so as to appertain to no more than certain people and to exclude others that are equally here, the Logic of Genocide has already been put to use, in a prototypical form. The exception of people is founded on a logic of ethnic cleansing which has already been activated on the level of (linguistic) symbolisms. It is the logic that chooses who counts as part of the “world” and who doesn’t. And it functions on the level of the imaginary too, expressing the desire for what is symbolised to finally materialise into a reality.

Whether the Minister of the Interior uses here the notion of the “refugee world” to denote a subgroup of “Cypriot citizens”, which is the topic of his article, is of no importance. The headline of the article is “The pandemic crisis dictates policies for the support of the citizen”, and the subheading reads “Aiming toward building a better and more resilientsociety”. In the name of an imperative need to support the citizens (but, beware, not those who are “non-citizens”), and in the name of a more “resilient society”, the Minister quickly and effectively proceeds with a conceptual cleansing – heentrenches the concepts so that they concern only Greek Cypriot people, and except foreigners. Foreigners are excepted from the process of building a “resilient society”. They either find no space in “society”, as it is symbolically entrenched by the Minister, or they don’t belong to a “better” or “resilient” society. The connotations that arise from the use of such vocabulary are terrifying.

One could object: “But what does the symbolic use of language have to do with ethnic cleansing/genocide? The circumstances and the outcome are completely different”. I’m not claiming here that the logic of the text amounts to a genocide. What I suggest is that this particular logic is one of ethnic cleansing, and it is the very logic which equips and/or is connected with genocidal practices. Genocidal tendencies inhere in the Minister’s language.

Thus, “Refugee world” refers exclusively to Greek Cypriot displaced persons. Other refugees are excepted from this world. Are we perhaps caught by words that were regrettably and inadvertently articulated? No, because both the cotext and the context show us that the exception of foreign refugees from the world is not arbitrary, but part of a concatenation – a systematic exclusion corresponding to policies already in place. If one pays attention to the political context, one will identify practices of ethnic cleansing. The symbolic entrenchment, therefore, is accompanied by a physical one. The refugeeism of asylum seekers is systematically doubted by the Minister himself. Asylum seekers are already being put “in their place” in the “Pournara” concentration camp. That is, outside of the world, in the outskirts of Nicosia and in the middle of nowhere. And a decree has been issued for the exclusion of asylum seekers from Chloraka (a village in Paphos district), invoking “the danger of demographic change”.

Let’s not forget, the Minister’s article pertains to political measures. It contains the language, the logic in other words, that a Minister adopts so as to substantiate the announcement of policies with regard to the refugee issue, which falls within his jurisdiction. The logic he uses to substantiateentrenchment is the logic of ethnic cleansing.

[Article translated from Greek].