MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP - GREECE

P.O. Box 51393, GR-14510 Kifisia, Greece

E-mail: nafsika@greekhelsinki.gr http://www.greekhelsinki.gr

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REPORT ON GREECE TO THE 1998 OSCE IMPLEMENTATION MEETING

29 October 1998

Roma rights

Introduction

Greece’s Roma minority is estimated at some 350,000 people. About one half of that community appears to be integrated in a rather satisfactory way. However, the other half of the Roma are the most marginalized social group in Greece, subject to discrimination in education, employment and housing and to police abuse. An ambitious government plan to help improve their situation, announced in mid-1996, remained a dead letter. So, one half of the Roma continue to have no decent settlement: they live in at least thirty slums throughout the country with some of the worst living conditions in Europe.

Observers Describe the Horror

Speaking to state television station ET-3 (24/10/1998) a Greek "Doctor of the World" Yannis Boukovinas said about the largest Roma settlement near Salonica, near the Gallikos river:

"It is worse than the refugee camps I have visited with our organization in occupied Palestine or war torn Irak ."

After a visit to the largest Roma settlement near Athens, in Aspropyrgos, well-known human rights activist and founder of Body Shop International Anita Roddick said (Eleftherotypia, 11/9/1998):

"The Greek government should be ashamed to allow this settlement to exist."

The "European Roma Rights Center"’s Executive Director Dimitrina Petrova, who visited, along with Minority Rights Group - Greece and Greek Helsinki Monitor, a score of Roma settlements in May 1998, spoke to the French News Agency (12/5/1998). The article, which also gives a very good summary of the situation, follows:

ATHENS, May 12 (AFP) - A European body for Gypsies’ rights on Tuesday slammed Greece for treating its Gypsies in an inhuman and degrading manner, particularly regarding their education.

Dimitrina Petrova, director of the European Center for Romany Rights, told AFP at the end of a 10-day mission to Greece that the gypsies "are not treated and do not live like humans, they exist outside society, their situation is totally unacceptable." Non-governmental organizations (NGO) estimate that there are over 300,000 Gypsies in Greece, many of whom are itinerant.

Education for Greek Gypsies, of whom 80 percent are illiterate according to local NGOs, is at the root of many of their problems, Petrova noted. "In this field, Greece is the worst country in East and Central Europe," she said.

Petrova described as "stupefying" the poverty in which many Gypsies exist and the level of police violence to which they are subjected. "In many regions, it seems routine to badly treat and subject arrested Gypsies to brutality," Petrova said, adding that these incidents were never taken up by the authorities.

Petrova, who is of Bulgarian descent, attacked local authorities which expelled Gypsies or drive them into insalubrious areas. They often refuse to register the Gypsies, depriving them of their civic rights.

Her report, due to be published in three months, will urge the Greek government to improve the status of Romanies in Greece.

The government in 1996 announced an ambitious plan for the social integration of Greek Gypsies. The plan, which was to implement schooling and health programs, has remained a dead letter.

Expulsions

In Ano Liosia, in 1997, Roma were forced out of a state property they had lived in for ten years and moved in a settlement surrounded by a wire fence. All infrastructure promised to them in exchange for the move was never carried out. On the contrary, the local authorities have from time to time expelled some Roma families from that settlement.

Throughout 1998, Roma were expelled or threatened with expulsion from many other sites by the municipal authorities and sometimes by the courts, while the often announced plan to find appropriate living quarters for them had not been implemented.

Most dramatic, and characteristic of Greek attitudes towards Roma, was the multiple expulsions in August 1998 of the largest destitute Roma community, made up of 3,500 people who had lived in Evosmos, near Salonica, for over thirty years. First, on 2/6/1998, four -at the time- mayors (three supported by the government party PASOK and one by the main opposition party New Democracy) threatened to prevent both these Roma from resettling in a former military barrack allocated a year earlier by the state as well as the public contractor appointed by the authorities to carry out the necessary infrastructure works therein. As a result, this resettlement did not take place, neither did the infrastructure work in the camp.

However, in early August 1998, this Roma community was told to leave Evosmos immediately lest large fines be imposed on them for squatting in private land (for 30 years…). The Roma gave in to the threats and had to wander from place to place in the outskirts of Salonica. First, they went to Neo Rysio, but were told to leave. Then they went to Peraia, to face the same reaction. Third "stop," an area behind the Evosmos cemetery: from there, too, authorities ordered them to leave. Finally, they settled near the Gallikos river: a NGO mobilization helped force the authorities to promise they would not be expelled from there until the former barracks be prepared for the final resettlement.

In the meantime, no action was taken against the obviously racist mayors who continued to enjoy the support of their parties in the following elections, despite a public NGO request to the three party leaders concerned that their party’s support be withdrawn… .

Police Brutality

Amidst repeated allegations of excessive police violence against Roma, two cases backed by forensic evidence of a murder of one Rom in April and of torture of two others in May had not led, by late October 1998, to any disciplinary action against the police officers involved. This, despite repeated NGO denunciations, and court indictment in one case. The Ministry had simply launched inconclusive "sworn administrative investigation."

On 1 April 1998, Angelos Celal, a 28-year-old Rom, was killed by policemen in Partheni (near Salonica). Reportedly, he was there with two friends. There were too some policemen, hiding in a barn and waiting in ambush for the driver of a stolen car parked nearby. These policemen opened fire at the three Roma friends, who, in a state of panic, went back to their car to escape police control. A. Celal was the driver. The policemen did not stop shooting at them. One bullet went into Celal’s back and a second one in his head, killing him. The rear window of the car was broken and two more bullets were shot at the car. On 2 April, the forensic Professor Dimitris Psaroulis of the University of Salonica certified that Celal died of a head wound caused by a shot from a firearm he had received in the back of his head; he also reported that he had another wound in the back. On 6 April, Angelos Celal’s father, Panayote Celal, pressed charges against the police. On 24 June, the Prosecutor informed the police he had indicted three police officers for murder, conspiracy to commit murder and other charges. These policemen have not been suspended.

On 8-9 May 1998 Lazaros Bekos and Eleftherios Kotropoulos (17 and 18 years old respectively) were ill-treated by police officers during their detention at the police station of the town of Mesolongi (Western Greece). The two Roma claimed that during their detention at the police station they were physically abused and threatened by police officers. The latter did not allow them even to call home and let their families know their whereabouts. Dr. Orfeas Peridis, the forensic on duty on 10 May, the day the youth were released, confirmed that the two Roma had been beaten up the previous day. More specifically, the doctor certified the presence of "medium bodily injuries, inflicted with a broken instrument 24 hours ago," i.e. during the time of the young people’s detention at the police station of Mesolongi. On 1 July, the two Roma pressed charges against the police. Since then, they have from time to time be harassed by the policemen who tortured them in an effort to make them retract their statements. As recently as 23/10/1998, Bekos reported that the very officer who mistreated him once again put pressure on him to withdraw his statement. Here, too, the police officers who are responsible for the torture not only were not suspended but they continue to serve in Mesolongi!

Minority Rights Group - Greece and Greek Helsinki Monitor have written many times to Minister of Public Order George Romaios about the cases and the unnecessarily long and purported inconclusive "internal investigations", as well as the pressures of the policemen in Mesolongi, but to no avail: in all answers of the Ministry, the NGOs were informed that the allegations were being investigated and that they will be eventually informed of the outcome of the internal investigations.

Likewise, Amnesty International, with whom Minority Rights Group - Greece and Greek Helsinki Monitor cooperate, wrote to the Greek government on both cases (on 19/6/1998 for the Bekos-Kotropoulos case and on 14/10/1998 for the Celal case), adding that Celal’s family should receive adequate compensation. No response was received by the end of October 1998.

Minority Rights Group - Greece, in anticipation of the presentation of this report to the 1998 OSCE Implementation Meeting, has submitted a complimentary copy to the Greek Foreign Ministry on 30 October 1998.

WRITTEN PRESENTATION TO THE 1998 OSCE IMPLEMENTATION MEETING

Minority Rights Group - Greece was created as the Greek affiliate of Minority Rights Group International in January 1992. The members’ broad human rights concerns led them to also create Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) in late 1992, which became member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.

The first major campaign of MRG-G was to alert international public opinion on the considerable number of trials of dissident intellectuals and human or minority rights activists for their opposition to the official Greek policy towards Macedonia and the Macedonian minority in Greece, which took place in 1992-1993. On a related, most recent trial, MRG-G, along with GHM, published, both in Greek and in English, Greece Against its Macedonian Minority: the Rainbow Trial (ETEPE, 1998).

MRG-G focused mostly on the studies of minorities, in Greece and in the Balkans. Its first project aimed at preparing detailed reports on all national, ethnolinguistic and major religious minority communities in Greece (Macedonians and Turks; Arvanites, Pomaks, and Vlachs; Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, and New Religious Movements), as well as the Greek minorities in Albania and Turkey, and the Albanian immigrants in Greece.

In 1997, MRG-G along with GHM in cooperation with the European Roma Rights Center started a Roma Office which has issued reports on both the problems of the Roma and their coverage by the major Greek print media. The three NGOs have jointly made, in May 1998, a fact-finding mission to some 40 Roma settlements in Greece and are preparing the first ever comprehensive report on the situation of the country’s major minority (estimated population 350,000). That office has also followed cases of police violence against Roma, including offering the victims legal advice and continuous support.

In 1998, MRG-G along with GHM, the Institute on South East Europe (ISEE) of the Central European University and the Center of Documentation and Information on Minorities in Europe (CEDIME) based in Montpellier (France) launched a Balkan-wide project to create a web site to cover human rights issues in the region and include comprehensive and comparable presentations of all minorities in the region.