Reporters sans Frontieres has condemned continued press freedom violations in the north of the country. Over the past few years physical or emotional terror, more than 31 bombings, 10 arsons and four shootings have been directed at political personalities and newspaper staff. One journalist has been murdered and several have been subjected to death threats. The Annan peace plan, named after the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, was rejected by the Greek Cypriots but overwhelmingly supported by the Turkish Cypriots in the face of militant nationalists.
This is the backdrop to journalism in the North of Cyprus and demonstrates the deep divisions between, and within, the Greek and Turkish communities. The whole island population of less than one million supports an extraordinary number of newspapers. There are nine daily newspapers (eight in Greek and one in English) published in the South and another eight papers in Turkish published in the north. For most of these papers the readership is strictly defined along ethnic or geographic lines.
It is into this minefield that the Cambridge Foundation for Peace stepped in with the aim of promoting co-operation and understanding between the two communities. On an island that must have more daily publications per square mile than any other country in the world, the Foundation's remarkable idea was to launch yet another. CyprusMediaNet was born - a site set up with the simple aim of building bridges between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
Dr Dimitris Apostolidis, project director and program associate for the Cambridge Foundation for Peace, explains: "The project sought to contribute to a sustainable peace on Cyprus by encouraging the development of an informed, active, dynamic civil society that can access, evaluate, and respond to a pluralized print media. As the Annan plan was developed and Cyprus was on final approach to EU accession, it became imperative that Cypriots, both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots alike, had a clear understanding of the developments."
He told dotJournalism that, while all Cypriots could follow the debate within their own communities "there was no mechanism that would allow each community to follow the interpretation of events by the other as reflected in their respective media. There was a real gap in following the fears, concerns, aspirations and desires of the other."
With backing from US Aid and the United Nations Development Programme, the Cambridge Foundation for Peace - an independent, non-profit charity for peacebuilding in Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean - CyprusMediaNet. The site gives users daily access to around 30 articles from both the Turkish Cypriot and the Greek Cypriot press and each one is translated into English, Turkish and Greek.
According to Dr Apostolidis, only the internet made the project possible. He says: "In the 30 years that have elapsed since the events of 1974, the number of bi-lingual (Greek-Turkish) citizens is virtually non-existent. With circumstances on the island before the launch of CyprusMediaNet, that is the inability of either community to cross the Green Line, the development of a printed bi-lingual newspaper that would cover daily events was not an option."
Not only would a printed publication be difficult to distribute, he says, it would also represent a target for those opposed to reunification. Using the internet placed the process "away from the reach of those that might have been opposed to it".
Although none of the papers are paid for the material reproduced on the CMN site, all of them were consulted when it was launched. Only one objected to CMN giving its readers access to the original material. Even so, a few months after the launch, it changed its mind. Now TV, radio and other print media use CMN as a source of reliably translated news.
CFP has a track-record in using the internet to pursue its peacebuilding objectives. In Kosovo it launched an independent newspaper for the Serb minority in Kosovo. As part of this project it launched the website glasjuga.com.
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