Cyprus Green party leader likens Swiss hotel to concentration camp

The leader of the Green party of Cyprus has come under fire for a photographic exhibition in the capital Nicosia in which the Swiss hotel Bürgenstock, hosting the peace negotiations between northern and southern Cyprus last year, is likened to the Dachau concentration camp where tens of thousands of Jews and political prisoners were killed in World War II. The exhibition is entitled “The Dachau of Politicians”. Invitations to the opening show a photo of the hotel where the talks were held surrounded by a roll of barbed wire. The exhibition, is being organized by George Perdikis, the leader of the Green party in the Greek Republic of Cyprus. The Greens have been strongly opposed to compromise deal with Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus. A spokeswoman at the Israeli embassy in Nicosia described the comparison with Dachau as being “in bad taste and a little insensitive”. But Perdikis hit back at the criticism, calling the exhibition “a symbolic representation of the authorities in Bürgenstock, who tried to manipulate politicians. I wasn’t allowed to leave the hotel complex without permission and no journalists were allowed in. I was pushed and locked inside the hotel by United Nations staff, in an effort to stop me talking to the press.”