This is in response to the statement made earlier by the NGO Greek Helsinki Monitor.

Mr. Chairman,

I would like to bring to the attention of participants the following situation: You will have certainly seen the publication put out by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights titled Report to the OSCE Implementation Meeting on Human Dimension Issues. When I opened it a few minutes ago to see what it contains about Greece under the item we are discussing today, I saw a note, on page 61: “See a separate report submitted to this meeting by the International Federation for Human Rights (IHF), Greek “Helsinki Monitor (GHM) and Minority Rights Group – Greece”. The same note is to be found in every chapter of the report in the entry for Greece.

Now, here is the report about Greece, Report to the OSCE Implementation Meeting on Human Dimension Issues: Greece. Sixty-two (62) pages. One-hundred-twenty-three (123) pages for the rest of the OSCE countries put together, and 62 pages for Greece. Note also that no other OSCE country has the distinct “honor” of having a separate report dedicated to it, in this or in any other meeting before this.

Mr. Chairman,

I would like, with your permission, to ask the International Helsinki Federation: is this how they see the ratio of “misconduct” by Greece to the “misconduct” by all other OSCE countries put together?

Limiting myself to the item on today’s agenda, “Torture, inhuman treatment or punishment”, I would like to ask participants: Think of the country or countries you believe are the worst offenders in this. I don’t want to name any countries. Maybe you can pick the country whose name was heard most often, by your own counting, in the debate we have just had in this room on torture and inhuman treatment. Compare the number of pages devoted to the country of your choice – so to speak – in the Helsinki Federation report, under “torture etc”, with the number of pages devoted to the same subject in the separate report on Greece, that is, a country whose name was mentioned in the debate here only once, by the Greek NGO that prepared the report in question. And ask yourselves whether this is in line with what you, as well informed individuals, thought or knew to be the case about this. And draw your conclusions.

Having compared the number of pages, please take some time to read the contents of the respective reports, and compare the seriousness of the allegations contained in them. And remember, what you read, in minute detail, in the report on Greece, is practically all there is to report: its authors had no space limitation and faced no editorial constraints. Cases of police misconduct and overcrowding in prisons – phenomena which no country is immune to, and which are of course no less deplorable in Greece than elsewhere – are given some two fine-printed pages in the report on Greece (direct quotations from the Greek Ombudsman report). The Helsinki Federation report’s entry about the country whose name was mentioned most often today, by my own counting, devotes two pages to the whole subject of “torture and ill-treatment” in that country, and includes phrases such as “in the first half of 2000, there were a 21-percent increase in the number of torture cases reported to it by comparison with the same period in 1999”. I would ask participants to draw their own conclusions from that too.

In an effort to draw my own conclusions, I wonder whether the situation we are faced with really reflects the judgment of the International Helsinki Federation. If that is the case, I regret to say, I question their judgment. If again the relative sizes of the two reports are used as means to serve some purposes, I wonder what those purposes can be. I certainly believe that the purpose of promoting human rights is not served by such means.

Another possible explanation for this state of things might be simply that the Greek branch of the Federation is more conscientious and more productive than their colleagues in other countries where Helsinki Monitor Groups are established. My instinctive reaction to that thought is to feel proud of my compatriots, a feeling not unlike that felt by the whole population of Greece at the fact that Greek athletes won an unexpectedly high number of medals at the recent Olympics.

But, seriously, Mr. Chairman, the International Helsinki Federation should recognize the value of proportion, if not in the activities of its national committees, at least in their publications. Over-zealotry by one national committee can create disproportionate – that is, false -- impressions and therefore can be as detrimental to the overall credibility of the Federation as laziness or slackness by others.

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