OCTOBER 1998 ACTIVITY REPORT OF THE GHM ROMA OFFICE

October 11/18: GHM contacted human rights activists at Thessaloniki to get information on the local results of the municipal elections. Three out of the four mayors of the Thessaloniki area, who had stated racist views against Roma in the past, did not manage to be re-elected in the Municipal Elections. In June 1998 the four -at the time- mayors (three supported by the government party PASOK and one by the main opposition party New Democracy) threatened to prevent a group of 1,500 Roma from resettling in the Gonou military barrack allocated a year earlier by the state as well as the carrying out of the infrastructure works therein. Last September, four NGOs (among which GHM and MRG) sent letters to party leaders, asking them to withdraw their party’s support to the mayors. No action was taken, however, and the mayors continued to enjoy the support of their parties in the elections. The three candidates supported by PASOK (two of them were also supported by SYN) lost their office in the second round of the elections (October 25), while the candidate supported by ND was re-elected. According to our interlocutors, however, these changes do not reflect a real change of the local public opinion in favour of the Roma; they are rather the result of the general realignment of the party system as well as other local factors.

October 27. GHM member Panayote Dimitras met Mr. Yannos Kranidiotis, Deputy Foreign Minister. He informed him, among other things, about the report on the situation of the Roma in Greece, to be presented at the following week’s OSCE meeting in Warsaw. Mr. Kranidiotis expressed his interest and promised to forward the report to the Prime Minister office. Minority Rights Group - Greece sent an advanced copy of the report to Mr. Kranidiotis on 29 October 1998.

October 29: Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) and Minority Rights Group (MRG) sent a letter to the Minister of Education, Mr. Gerasimos Arsenis, asking for the repeal of the participation of the Ministry of Education at a Roma Conference, organised by a School Counsellor who has developed racist attitudes in the past. According to an article published in the paper "Eleftherotypia", the recently created "Institute for Roma Studies in Greece" is going to organise a meeting, titled "Roma facing the year 2000". However, the president of both the Institute and the Meeting, School Counsellor Mr. Matoulas, supports discriminatory and racist points against Roma. In 1996, he tried to make a research on the attitudes of schoolchildren towards their Roma schoolmates, which reproduced and promoted negative stereotypes against Roma. In an interview to the newspaper "Eleftherotypia", he supported the separation of Roma and non-Roma students, under the reasoning that the first are dirty, and expressed the opinion that racism is the basis for social development. As a consequence, the Ministry of Education withdrew its permission for the research. A year later, Mr. Matoulas repeated the same discriminatory and racist stereotypes against Roma in an article published at the first issue of the magazine of his Institute for Roma Studies in Greece. In their letter to the Minister of Education, the two NGOs call for the immediate repeal of any participation of the Ministry in a function in which Mr. Matoulas may express his racist points once again.

October 30: We received a call from the 17-year-old Roma, L. Bekos, who, together with his 18-year-old friend, E. Koutropoulos, had been ill-treated by police officers at the police station of the city of Messologi last May. Mr. Bekos denounced to GHM that he is under strong pressure from the Deputy Police Security Chief of Messolongi in order to change his testimony that implicates him in the ill treatment.

Otober, 31: As we were informed by the representative of the NGO "DROM Network for the Roma’s Social Rights" Thanasis Triaridis, the situation at the temporary Roma settlement at the Gallikos River of Thessaloniki is deteriorating. Despite the state’s decision in the previous year to allocate the former military barracks of Gonou to the Roma, their resettlement there remains wishful thinking. The necessary infrastructure work has not even started yet and the people in charge refuse their responsibility. In the meantime, the Roma live at an improvised settlement in the drained bed of the Gallikos river, which is dangerous to overflow at the first rainstorm.

There was little progress too with respect to the unacceptable and unhealthy living conditions at the settlement. An team of the Doctors of the World has visited the settlement carrying out medical exams and vaccinations. Several diseases and health problems were reported. Although the Prefecture of Thessaloniki installed, after a lot of pressure by NGOs, water-containers at the end of September, the water supply covers only the 20% of the Roma needs. Only two or three out of the 14 containers are being filled with water two or three times a week, while the 1,500 people living there need 14 containers filled with water on an everyday basis.