BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4101469.stm
.....Human rights groups say Greece has one of the worst records in the European Union for racism against ethnic minorities.....
....Earlier this year, Albanian immigrants across the country came under attack for daring to come out onto the streets to celebrate the Albanian football team's victory over Greece in a World Cup qualifying match.
One man was stabbed to death and many others were injured ....
Eurolang:
http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?optio ... =1&lang=en
National minority rights: France and Greece worse than Russia
Brussel - Bruxelles, Friday, 16 February 2007 by Davyth Hicks
A new book on national minorities in Europe ranks both France and Greece as having worse national minority rights than Russia.
The book, written by Christoph Pan and Beate Sibylle Pfeil, was launched on Wednesday (14th February) at the joint Sud Tirol, Trentino, and Tyrol office in Brussels. The authors compiled the ranking by comparing the performance of European states in their implementation of national minority rights, based on data drawn from the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM).
Human Rights Watch
http://hrw.org/english/docs/1999/01/08/greece790.htm
Greece has enacted a number of discriminatory measures to force ethnic Turks to migrate to Turkey or to disrupt community life and weaken its cultural basis. The most egregious example was Article 19 of the Citizenship Law, which, until it was abolished in 1998, allowed the state to strip approximately 60,000 non-ethnic Greeks of their citizenship between 1955 and 1998. Human Rights Watch welcomed abolition of the law last year, but noted that it did not apply retroactively, so tens of thousands of ethnic Turks remain wrongfully deprived of their Greek citizenship.
A 1990 law granted the state wide-ranging powers in appointing the mufti, the Turkish community's religious leader who also serves as an Islamic judge in civil matters. In defiance of the law, the Turkish community has continued to elect its religious leaders, who have been prosecuted and imprisoned by Greek authorities. In addition, the repair of mosques is sometimes blocked by state authorities, and those involved in the repair are prosecuted.
Human rights violations in the education field affect the largest number of individuals and have done the most to foster economic underdevelopment among the Turkish minority. Turkish children attend schools that are overcrowded and poorly funded compared to those attended by ethnic Greeks. And the two Turkish-language high schools in Western Thrace can provide only a fraction of the needed places, resulting in a disproportionate drop-out rate.
In addition, Human Rights Watch has received credible complaints from members of the ethnic Turkish minority, alleging police surveillance, discrimination in public employment, and restrictions on freedom of expression. Representatives of Human Rights Watch and the Greek Helsinki Monitor were trailed by police operatives in Thrace whileconducting research for the report.
Greek Helsinki Monitor & Minority Rights Group - Greece
Press Release 13/7/1998
The cooperating organizations Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group - Greece point out that the unanimous conviction of Greece by the European Court of Human Rights, on 10/7/1998, is the tenth conviction of the country for violation of the rights of minorities which live in it. Greece was convicted for the violation of the freedom of association (Article 11 of the relevant European Convention), because the Greek courts did not allow in 1990 the establishment of the "Home of Macedonian Civilization" (as translated in English by the European Court).
Amnesty International
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/EN ... of=ENG-GRC
Greece: Human rights violated on the margins of society
Foreigners shot on the border, asylum-seekers detained in metal containers, Roma forcibly evicted from their homes in Athens -- these are some of the examples of consistent pattern of human rights violations, Amnesty International reveals in a report today.
The report, Out of the spotlight: The rights of foreigners and minorities are still a grey area, highlights the failure of the Greek authorities to combat discrimination.
"People living on the margins of society -- asylum-seekers, migrants, Roma and members of other minorities -- are the most likely victims of discrimination in all its forms.Most often, their tormentors are representatives of the state," Olga Demetriou, Amnesty International's researcher on Greece, said.
Amnesty International's report focuses specifically on the failure of the state to comply with international human rights law and standards regarding access to the asylum process, the detention of migrants and protection from discrimination and ill-treatment.
Greece is like this although they are an EU member, meaning that they receive all the political and financial benefits that go along with it in a region where their only concern is Turkey in terms of military threat. Not to mention they remain to be the second poorest EU15 country after Portugal.
