Residents of Akrotiri are mobilising against British Bases plans to install 32 additional antennas in the area, pointing to what they describe as elevated cancer rates in the community and vowing to take the fight as far as the European Court of Human Rights.
The British Bases intend to compulsorily acquire approximately 4,896,000 square feet of community land for the project. Residents say the area is already overburdened by existing installations, which they believe are linked to rising cancer cases locally. Epidemiological studies and a private Environmental Impact Assessment are expected to determine whether any such link exists.
The community sits within an environmentally protected zone, and both the Merra Akrotiri Management Committee and Kourion Municipality have launched separate legal challenges to block the works.
Kourion Mayor Pantelis Georgiou, who chairs the Merra Akrotiri Committee, told Phileleftheros that lawyer Simos Angelides has been appointed to examine all legal options on behalf of the committee, including the possibility of securing an injunction to suspend the process. Georgiou acknowledged that obtaining such an order would be difficult but said the committee was determined to pursue court action to establish how far the case could go.
The municipality has separately engaged lawyer Achilleas Demetriades with the aim of bringing the matter before the ECHR, and the process of securing a full legal opinion is already under way. Meetings have been requested with the President, the Foreign Ministry, and other relevant ministries, with a further meeting planned with the Law Office once the legal opinion is in hand.
Georgiou said the issue was both a legal and a political one. “The matter now concerns the protection of the rights of residents living in the Bases areas,” he said, “with the goal of securing a better everyday life and quality of life for them.”
