Justice for Shoaib Khan – Justice for All
Joint Statement – Press release (06.05.2025)
On January 6th, 24-year-old Shoaib Khan was murdered by the Cyprus police at the Bufferzone (“soft” internal border) in the village of Potamia. He was shot in his back and killed while sitting behind the co-driver, in the car that was to take him to Nicosia. His body was found 2 hours later by a citizen at an empty plot in Akropolis, Nicosia and falsely classified by a first autopsy as natural death. During the post-mortem examination four days later a bullet from a police gun was found in his body. According to the findings of the forensic expert he was shot in the heart and died on spot.
The entire handling of the case by the Cypriot authorities suggests an attempt at a cover-up: the initial assessment of natural death, the contradictory police statements that followed the discovery of the police bullet in his body, the withholding of information that ensued, the fact that the police officers involved were never suspended despite their conflicting and contradictory statements, and that to this day no independent investigation into the responsibilities of the police officers has been conducted.
Shoaib came to Cyprus from Pakistan hoping to earn a living that would support his large family of 11, including his five sisters. Coming from a poor background, he left home in search of economic stability and a better future. Due to the lack of legal status Shoaib worked in the informal sector. He worked in hotels in Ayia Napa for 2 years as well as on construction sites and in kitchens, doing whatever was necessary to send money back home. Without stable work, he searched every day, often finding only precarious, temporary day labor. Shoaib crossed between north and south in order to be able to work and to occasionally visit his loved ones. As he was denied legal status he was forced to cross informally, risking arrest and his life, just as he was on the day he was murdered.
We refuse to measure Shoaib’s worth by his legal status or his labor. His life mattered and his murder matters. We mourn for him, for the weight he carried, and for all those crushed by the violence of borders. We demand justice from the state that took his life and then tried to bury the truth.
Migration is natural. No one is illegal.
The murder of Shoaib Khan is not an isolated incident — it is the result of the normalization of violence against migrants and Cyprus’ deliberate and murderous migration policies. In recent years we have seen mass imprisonment of migrants in Pournara and prisons, push-backs at sea, racist pogroms in Chloraka and Limassol, entrapment of asylum seekers in the buffer zone. The state’s “left-to-die” policy at sea that we clearly saw in the Shipwreck of the 17th of May, has since 2018 claimed at least 45 lives, with 186 people missing. The recent killing of Shoaib Khan, along with last year’s death of Anisur Rahman, show that these murders extend into the state. The killings, along with restrictive visa policies, reveal that death and disappearance, whether through direct action or inaction, are not accidental but embedded within Cyprus’s border enforcement system.
Justice for Shoaib Khan, for Anisur Rahman, for the victims of the shipwreck of the 17th of May, Muhammad Al-Khasawneh and all others who have been killed or disappeared as a result of violent Cypriot and EU border policies.
Shoaib Khan’s brother has traveled to Cyprus to retrieve his body and seek justice. However, instead of support, he faces bureaucratic roadblocks and intransparency by the authorities.
We demand:
1. An official inquest into the death of Shoaib Khan.
2. An independent investigation into the liability of the police officers involved in the murder of Shoaib Khan
3. The coverage of the costs for the repatriation of Shoaib Khan’s body and for the travel and related costs incurred by his brother.
4. Full access for the family to the findings of the police investigation, including all expert reports.
Organisations signing:
– Justice for Shoaib Khan Initiative
– Border Violence Monitoring Network
– Collective Aid
– afoa.cy
– KISA
