[ALBSA-Info] Tolerating Intolerance in Greece

[Agron Alibali]

GHM: Greece: Tolerating Intolerance (Statement to the OSCE)

available at: http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/english/organizations/ghm/ghm_osceB_19_09_01.doc

GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR (GHM)
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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Statement to the 2001 OSCE Implementation Meeting
Working Session on "Tolerance and Non-Discrimination"

19 September 2001

Greece: Tolerating Intolerance

Speaking yesterday before this forum, the Greek delegation stated that this is a forum to review the implementation of human rights standards only of totalitarian or at most authoritarian states. Therefore, discussing problems in Greece, like the demolition of a house of a Rom -to cite the example mentioned with contempt by the Greek delegation that spoke in fact of … Sinti (sic)- is inappropriate. We would like to ask the moderator and the delegations of the participating states that have been the object of criticism in this forum over the years, including such well-known … "authoritarian" countries like the USA and France, whether they agree with that description of this meeting. If not, perhaps they should remind Greece that all countries, including long-standing democracies, should welcome criticism and respond with arguments if not with specific answers to specific allegations made by NGOs or other participating states.

The Greek delegation's arrogant approach reflects, unfortunately, the views of competent Alternate Foreign Minister Elisabeth Papazoi, in charge of Greece's answers to related criticism in/by intergovernmental organizations. After the release of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) Second Report on Greece, in June 2000, which included a categorical and impertinent rejection of ECRI's criticism, Ms Papazoi stated "that there are only isolated instances of racism in Greece and the Greek society is not possessed by an inclination to xenophobia." A few months later she added that "Greece has nothing to fear in the area of human rights protection; evidence of that is that in our country no major human rights violations are observed or denounced." 

Luckily for Greece, the government includes a few sound voices as well. Minister of Justice Mihalis Stathopoulos, a non-politician with a NGO background, commenting exactly on Ms. Papazoi's reactions to the ECRI report, said "all those who boast for the absence of racism in Greece are people who are not used to criticism and self-criticism." More recently, he added that "only nationalists can claim that our country does not face the problems [of racism and oppression of minorities] that are plaguing every other country today. Societies are made up of human beings, not angels. And Greece is no exception to that rule. At some point we must rid ourselves of this Hellenocentric attitude that, in the end, is detrimental to our nation's interests." 

Professor Stathopoulos is the Minister who initiated in May 2000 the suppression of the reference to religion on identity cards. The move triggered reactions by the Orthodox Church and many sectors of the Greek public that were not only verbally violent but often outright racist and especially anti-Semitic. Many condemned the verbal violence but hardly any the racist overtones. Also, at the height of debate on whether Albanian pupils can bear the Greek flag in national day parades, Minister for Macedonia and Thrace George Paschalidis said that: "We are a country which is afraid." "We have cities which are afraid… A country afraid of foreigners, of others, has a bleak future. We have to overcome claustrophobic syndromes… Our civilization does not allow us to be a country that needs foreign workers until sunset, then calls on the police to expel them, only to ask them back the next morning. There is also the fear of the different." 

In 2000, two surveys -carried out by the EU and a Greek state institution- confirmed the gravity of the problem of xenophobia in Greece. The EU's spring 2000 Eurobarometer survey showed that 38% of Greeks are disturbed by the presence of foreigners ("citizens with other nationalities") in Greece. The EU average was 15% and the second highest percentage of xenophobia was among the Danes (24%). Even more revealingly the same survey showed that, while 64% of EU citizens consider it a good thing for any society to be made up of people from different races, religions, and cultures, only 36% shared that view in Greece (the second lowest percentage was 52% for Austrians), with 52% of Greeks disagreeing with it (vs. 26% for EU citizens as a whole and 35% for the second highest percentage for Belgians). Moreover, a spring 1999 survey, carried out by the state National Center for Social Research (EKKE), showed that, on a composite index, 47%-54% of junior high and senior high school pupils, their parents and their teachers are xenophobic. 

It is obvious that Greece faces serious intolerance, which is met with prevailing tolerance. The most characteristic case was the complete and uninhibited pogrom against 150 Albanians in the village of Loutra, Lesbos, last August. Its Greek residents, enraged by the attitude of some Albanians who had a violent argument with a bar owner and some Greek patrons, asked all Albanian residents of the village to leave it within a week. Although the ultimatum became widely known, no one -not even the prosecutor- intervened to protect the Albanians who ended up leaving a village where many had been leaving for a few years. No legal action was taken against the perpetrators even after the fact, while their activity was regrettably condoned a week later by the President of the Republic. 

That was not an "isolated incident:" -the government's and the Greek delegation to the OSCE's favorite phrase. Over this and previous years, Albanians and even more Roma, were threatened with or actually the victims of pogroms, because of being allegedly collectively prone to crime, or a threat to public health, without anyone ever been punished for such racist acts. GHM feels sorry for such events, as it feels sorry that the Greek Foreign Ministry scorns related criticism in front of international institutions like these OSCE meetings, making it a tacit accomplice to such hideous acts.


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