Statement on the postponement of the Barça Academy camp in Northern Cyprus
Freedom and Fairness for Northern Cyprus has responded to the removal of FC Barcelona’s Lefkoşa football camp from the club’s official website.
The camp was scheduled for 7–11 and 16–20 September at Near East University, open to players aged six to eighteen, run by licensed Spanish coaches. All details – dates, venue and programme – have now been removed from FC Barcelona’s official website and from its event map. This followed representations by the Greek Cypriot football federation, which consulted UEFA before approaching the Spanish Football Federation to have the camp stopped.
The far-right Greek Cypriot party ELAM has publicly claimed credit for the outcome, stating that its target has been achieved and commending the Greek Cypriot government for the speed of its response. ELAM has since identified its next objective: the removal of Turkish Cypriot universities from the QS World University Rankings, where they appear under the designation “North Cyprus.”
A spokesperson for Freedom and Fairness for Northern Cyprus said:
“A children’s football camp has been stopped. Not a state occasion, not a political event – a coaching programme for six to eighteen year olds on a university pitch. To achieve this, a national football federation was moved to consult UEFA, and a foreign federation was lobbied to intervene. That is the scale of effort now directed at preventing Turkish Cypriot children from taking part in ordinary sporting activity.
“The Greek Cypriot side speaks regularly of confidence-building measures and of a shared future on this island. Those words cannot survive contact with this conduct. The United Nations Secretary-General has identified confidence-building measures as a priority, and his Personal Envoy has described them as indispensable to convening an enlarged meeting. It is difficult to conceive of a measure less conducive to confidence than the coordinated obstruction of children’s sport.
“This is not an isolated act. In recent weeks alone, an international music festival at Girne Castle was cancelled following direct lobbying of the Serbian President; foreign embassies were telephoned and urged to boycott a briefing by the Undersecretary to the TRNC Presidency; and steps have been taken against a further festival and against the listing of Turkish Cypriot universities in international rankings. The pattern is deliberate and it is accelerating.
“The children affected were not born when the Annan Plan was put to referendum. They were not born in 1974. They did not create the divisions of this island, and they should not be made to carry the cost of them. Sport is one of the few areas in which the two sides of Cyprus might build something together. It is being used instead as another instrument of isolation.
“We urge FC Barcelona to reconsider, and to proceed with a programme that carries no political character whatsoever. We also invite those in South Nicosia, Brussels and London who speak of reconciliation to consider what is actually being defended here, and at whose expense.”