Cyprus Basketball Federation, alongside with FIBA Europe and Cyprus Foreign Affairs Ministry have moved against www.eurobasket.com in response to the website hosting articles which refer to a “Northern Turkish Republic of Cyprus” basketball league under Cyprus category.
The full statement issued by Cyprus Basketball Federation:
During the last weekend website www.eurobasket.com has been hosting article which refer to “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Basketball League” which takes place in the occupied part of Cyprus.
The website even mention Mark Storm to have the best statistics of the aforementioned “League”.
As soon as those article were brought to our attention we made official complaints to Cyprus Sports Organisation, Cyprus Foreign Ministry and FIBA Europe and the owners of the website in quesiton. (The website is a private profit enterprise).
More specifically the Cyprus Basketball Federation except the letters to the aforementioned parties has come in contact with FIBA Europe President Mr. George Vasilakopoulos and Director of competitions, Mr. Iliev expressing the extreme frustration of Cyprus basketball family.
The two men responded that they will do everything in their powers to establish order, respecting the fair play and the friendly relationship with the Cyprus Basketball Federation.
It is worth to notice that after we came in contact with the ownership of www.eurobasket.com instead of complying they repsonded with a hostile threat that they will introduce a seperate “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” category is the Cyprus Basketball Federation doesn’t approve to host “TRNC League” under Cyprus category.
Cyprus Basketball Federation will take any means necessary to stop this, including legal actions.
Even one of the website’s reporters, Chris Mammides responded to the website’s move and accused the ownership of censorship, while leaving hints as for the motive of the articles in question. Here is his full statement:
“It seems that some authors in the eurobasket do not know any history at all, and not only that, but their way of dealing with things censorship– goes back quite some decades as they have deleted my previous post and that is why I am obliged to write the truth as stated in my deleted article once more. THERE IS NO NORTH CYPRUS LEAGUE. THERE IS NO SUCH COUNTRY AS NORTH CYPRUS or TRNC. THERE IS ONLY ONE LEAGUE AND THAT IS THE OFFICIAL LEAGUE OF THE REPUBLIC OF CYPRUS!! Whoever refers to the specific league is either ignorant or far and away from reality So in a few words, the overall issue with the Other league does not exist! The authors that write these articles obviously have some kind of personal interest and they are not doing it for the sake of basketball as they claim!! Thats for sure!”.
This is not the first time www.eurobasket.com is in the spotlight. There have been complaints by its subcription services users of unauthorised money withdrawal from their accounts while the website has been caught red-handed stealing TalkBasket.net articles without authorisation (although we do encourage the reproduction of our articles as long as a link to TB is provided). When we decided not to go public on this and instead settle this between us (TB and eurobaslet.com reporter who copied our article) we received the same hostile response instead of an apology, only to discover that their reporter had rephrased the article in question minutes later.
