[ALBSA-Info] Racism in Greece

[aalibali at law.harvard.edu]

GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR (GHM)
MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP - GREECE (MRG - G)
Address: P.O. Box 60820, 15304 Glyka Nera 
Telephone: (+30-1) 347.22.59. Fax: (+30-1) 601.87.60.
e-mail: office at greekhelsinki.gr website: http://www.greekhelsinki.gr
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PRESS RELEASE

21/3/2001

TOPIC: MINISTER OF PUBLIC ORDER'S CYNICAL DESCRIPTION 
OF STATE RACIST RESPONSE TO INCREASING RACISM 


Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group-Greece on the occasion of 
today's International Day Against Racism release in Greece too the text of a 
cynical statement by Minister of Public Order Mihalis Chrysohoidis to the NGO 
Human Rights Watch (HRW) that describes vividly the vengeful and evidently 
racist character of the (anyway illegal according also to the Greek Ombudsman) 
collective expulsions of (mainly Albanian) immigrants, as a form of 
governmental response to increasing racism in Greece. The relevant excerpt, 
with HRW's comment -to which we fully subscribe-, follows: 

"When Human Rights Watch interviewed the Greek Minister of Public Order in 
November 2000, he admitted to us that sweeps have occurred and that Albanians 
have been collectively expelled from Greece without the benefit of procedural 
safeguards. The Minister claimed at that time that due to increasing racist and 
xenophobic violence by Greeks against Albanian migrants, the Greek government 
had to take matters into its own hands. We were dismayed that the government's 
response to racist and xenophobic violence took the form of discriminatory 
sweeps, denial of process, and collective expulsion of Albanian migrants."

Our NGOs note that this statement was included in HRW's report to the U.N. 
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD - available in the 
web page http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/organizations/hrw_cerd.doc), 
that was reviewing Greece's compliance during its current 58th session in 
Geneva (on 16 and 19 March 2001). The Greek diplomatic delegation (that 
included a representative of the Ministry of Public Order) did not refute that 
statement, during the hours-long presentations, with which it presented -
embellished- the situation in Greece and responded -often misleadingly- to a 
large number of critical questions by CERD experts. 



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GHM Board: Panayote Dimitras, Orestis Georgiadis, Dimitrina Petrova, Alan 
Phillips, Gregory Vallianatos. 
MRG-G Executive Committee: Mehmet Dukkanci, Nafsika Papanikolatos. 
International Advisory Committee: Savvas Agouridis, Teuta Arifi, Ivo Banac, 
Vladimir Bilandzic, Marcel Courthiade, Loring Danforth, Fernand de Varennes, 
Eran Fraenkel, Victor-Yves Ghebali, Henri Giordan, Krassimir Kanev, Will 
Kymlicka, Remzi Lani, Theodore S. Orlin, Magda Opalski, Dimitrina Petrova, Alan 
Phillips, Aaron Rhodes, Vladimir Solonari, Patrick Thornberry, Stefan Troebst, 
Boris Tsilevich, Tibor Varady, Marc Weller. 
Affiliation to International Organizations: Consortium of Minority Resources 
(COMIR), Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), European Roma Rights 
Center (ERRC), International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), 
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), Minority Rights Group 
International (MRGI), South East Europe Media Organization (SEEMO).