Asylum seekers in Cyprus threaten to jump in UK base standoff

Eight asylum seekers remained barricaded on a roof at a British base in Cyprus for a second day Thursday, threatening to jump unless they got British passports.

The seven Iraqis and one Iranian scaled onto a 14-metre fire service training tower in the western sovereign base of Episkopi on Wednesday. They were thought to have water and food supplies for several days.

“They do not have any right to a British passport,” Reuters quoted a spokesman for the British military bases said.

Authorities would not force the men down, the spokesman said. “It would endanger them and us,” he said.

The asylum seekers, all wearing thick coats and hats, had unfurled a large banner hanging over the tower which read “We demand the British Passport”. They had slipped into British sovereign territory on the island between 2001 and 2003 through the loosely patrolled border with the Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus.

Britain‘s border and immigration service had assessed their applications which were recently rejected, the Reuters report added.

Other asylum seekers mostly from Iraq and Syria, washed ashore when their boat sank off the southern coastal base of Akrotiri several years ago, also remain stateless and recently held a protest also demanding UK citizenship.