135) Greek Human Rights Violations

 

 

This web site isn't about the Greeks... this is why I'm only putting articles I have arbitrarily come across, on this page. There are countless supporting reports that can be included here, if I were of the mind to seek them out. How the Greeks have brutally suppressed the rights of the Turkish minority in Greece (where it's a no-no for a Turco-Greek to point to his or her Turkic identity) is a paramount case in point... something the world doesn't pay attention to because, well, they're just Turks. (Not that the Kurds are Number One on the Western world's love list either.... but the reason why we have heard no end to the suppression of rights of Kurds in Turkey has been because to do so is to give Turkey a black eye. Don't think so? Then how come we rarely hear [in the USA, at least] of the questionable way other nations treat their minorities, with the same comparative regularity?) Naturally, the way the Greeks treated the Turkish minority in Cyprus, before the island got partitioned, speaks volumes on their "human rights" record... since it goes a little against human rights to want to systematically exterminate a population, a practice the Greeks have been up to with the Turks since their uprising in 1821. The reason why Greeks and Armenians are so quick to use the "G" word when it comes to their own having been massacred has a lot to do with their familiarity with the crime... if they can so easily attempt to commit genocide when they have the upper hand, it's easy for them to assume others would think the same way.

 

 The reason why I'm including some mention of the Greeks and topics like the Human Rights issue when it comes to Turkey is because all of these subjects are related when it comes to the Armenian "Genocide." The Greeks wail like the Armenians that they have been victimized, when they both essentially use the same tactic... Greeks and Armenians act, and Turks... usually after a lo-o-ong period of time... react. And you always find in the myriad anti-Turkish reports references to Turkey's human rights record, to accentuate what a nation of monsters the land of the Turks can be.

 

 
Greek Outlook Toward Kurds 

 

By Brian Murphy

 

Associated Press Writer

 

Friday, February 19, 1999; 4:32 a.m. EST

 

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greece this week found itself in an embarrassing diplomatic predicament that stretched across Europe after a Kurdish rebel leader who had sought the government's protection was abducted by Turkish commandos.

 

Now the government finds itself under fire in a separate controversy, this time at home: A human rights group says that Greece maintains a double standard when it comes to helping out Kurds.

 

"Greece claims to be a friend of the Kurds, but that just seems to extend to those from Turkey. The Iraqi Kurds find no such goodwill in Greece,'' said Aristides Mavroyiannis, director of the Athens chapter of the London-based human rights group Amnesty International.

 

An estimated 50,000 illegal immigrants reach Greece each year -- either sneaking across the marshland and river border with Turkey -- or sailing on clandestine vessels to islands.

 

The overwhelming majority are Kurds fleeing the economic shambles and political uncertainty of northern Iraq, where Saddam Hussein's forces launched a crackdown following the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

 

Illegal immigrants who are caught by border guards are often turned away without the chance to file for political asylum, a violation of U.N.-supervised statutes, some officials say.

 

"Greece seems to have adopted a policy of systematic deportations of all illegal immigrants,'' said Janvier de Riedmatten, who led the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office in Athens until last month.

 

Greek officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But authorities say refugees are given a chance to apply for asylum.

 

Immigrants tell a different story.

 

About 500 Iraqi Kurds were ousted from a tent encampment in a central Athens square on Monday. Some 200 of them were allowed to file for political asylum, but were given no shelter. Greece has just one government-funded shelter for asylum seekers and it is full, mostly with Kurds from Turkey.

 

Since 1984, guerrillas loyal to Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan have waged a battle for autonomy in Turkey's southeast that has cost close to 37,000 lives.

 

Ocalan left the Greek ambassador's residence in Nairobi, Kenya, and was taken prisoner by Turkish commandos on Monday.

 

Greece backs the Turkish Kurds as part of the deep rivalry with Turkey that includes disputes over the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which is divided between two hostile republics -- one Greek Cypriot, one Turkish Cypriot.

 

Athasia Tykiotou, a lawyer for the Greek Refugee Committee, said several reports about illegal detentions and deportations in Greece have been filed with the European Union.

 

``I know Greece is struggling with a refugee crisis,'' she said. ``But that is no reason to violate human rights.''

 

  Mahmut Ozan on Greek Human Rights, and Other Matters

 

APOSTOLOS KAKLAMANIS
THE PRESIDENT OF THE GREEK
PARLIAMENT-THE KING OF
DISINFORMATION

 

Mahmut Esat Ozan

 

January 26, 1995
Mr. Apostolos Kaklamanis
President of Parliament
Governmental Offices, Athens

 

Sir,

 

I read with great dismay a report emanating from Athens News Agency (ANA), which had implications that you, as the President of the Greek Parliament, had allegedly made against Turkey on the subject of "Democracy and Human Rights" in that country.
The News Agency had this to say:

 

Athens, 20/01/95 - The Parliament President Apostolos Kaklamanis said yesterday that the recently published photographs of Turkish soldiers holding the decapitated heads of Kurdish guerrillas "show in the clearest possible way that the road to democratization and the improvements of the human rights
in that country, Turkey, is still a long one."

 

In statements to the German-based DEM news agency, Mr. Kaklamanis added in a most sarcastic tone the following:

 

"With amazement and abhorrence, the international public opinion once again witnesses the 'humanitarian performance' and 'deeds of valor' of Turkey which hopes to become a member of the European Union, and which contradicts all concepts of protection of human rights and respect for international law."

 

"The continuous reports of torture, the curtailing of the operation and freedom of the press, the executions without trial, the torching and forced evacuation of villages, the threats against foreign news media and even Euro deputies, and the recent prohibition imposed on the former deputy Leyla Zana, preventing her from accepting the Sakharov prize, cause painful associations
and raise questions as to that country's true intentions with respect to democratization."

 

Kieyos Kaklamanis, after verifying the veracity of the above-mentioned news items and the statements attributed to you, and consequently being satisfied that those were your own words, I must now tell you that now I believe that the statements made by German scholar and historian Dr. Hans Falmerayer, were one hundred percent correct.

 

Dr. Falmerayer, who is also an anthropologist, claims in his well-known treatise that "today's Greeks do not have any continuity with their namesakes, the Greeks of antiquity." His claims are very meaningful, because in Turkish schools we were taught to believe that in ancient Greece there existed civilization, which is a concept directly related to 'civility.' However, your highly uncivilized comportment and your outrageous prevarications and out and out lies illustrate for all to see that even though the inhabitants of Greece of antiquity understood the true meaning of the word 'democracy', you, Mr. Kaklamanis, do not seem to comprehend that precept at all. Reading your statements, I found well enough proof that those lofty ideals of justice, compassion, honesty and love of freedom, etc., ever-present in the celebrated literary works of Homer, Socrates, or Aristotle, were sadly absent in your delivery.

 

I am a journalist, and have been so perhaps more years than you have been living on this earth. As a layman, with no official governmental title linking me to any administration, I may exercise my first amendment rights and privileges and may criticize a person or persons, or subjects of an infinite variety, obviously, within the boundaries of a civilized, journalistic code of ethics. But, you, Sir, you are supposed to be the second highest representative of the Greek Government.

 

You are the President of the Greek Parliament. You are selected among a group of presumably honorable dignitaries. Your words and actions reflect directly upon your whole nation of Greeks. More than anyone else, you shouldbe aware of the fact that in the case of all civilized countries, there is a universally-adhered-to protocol, beyond which no self-respecting diplomat or politician dares to trespass. But, you went beyond that prescribed line of
honor and decency, and made statements espousing the official diplomatic views of the Greek Government. Furthermore, you carelessly read them to the international press, and talked about them as if they were the gospel truth. You were doing this, knowing well that they were slanderous statements made
just to hurt the Turks. You also did not refrain from showing the ugly photos and text, which were totally repudiated in the European press, and even in the Greek newspapers the next day. Some papers said they were proven to be falsified copies and doctored-up materials. However, you, without batting an eye, with premeditation, tried to convince your German interviewers that you were telling the truth. The Turco-phobic refrains in your language were well camouflaged, as to leave the impression on the listeners that they were as honest as the Solomonic parables from the Old and the New testaments of the holy books.

 

The Turkish people whose character you were besmirching were not only your next-door neighbors, but also those who have been your partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during the last 44 years.Greece's moral and financial support of the PKK, as a terrorist organization, outlawed by most  European countries and the United States of America, is simply untenable and
unacceptable under any norm of international diplomatic behavior. This policy of your government is still being carried out, while the ruthless guerrillas of the aforementioned organization, the PKK, are murdering daily scores of innocent men, women, and children, even as we speak.

 

Knowing all this and more, I now have to ask myself, as to what kind of inner drive of hate for the Turkish people your nation and its government must have accumulated in their hearts to trample over concepts of truth, tolerance, and compassion. Do not these exalted verities, truth, tolerance, and compassion constitute the preamble to the idea of 'democracy' which you Greeks flaunt
with conceited pride in all international circles, and gloat about the fact that you are the 'originators' of them?

 

How can you, on the one hand, reconcile the statement you have made about the 'lack of human rights' in Turkey, and on the other hand continue to stifle the total cultural and religious freedoms of close to a million ethnic Turks living in Western Thrace?

 

There seems to be a dichotomy forming in the Balkans today. The Muslims of ex-Yugoslavia have been showing their gratitude for the Turkish support given to them throughout their deadly struggle with your allies, the Serbs, by the way of using the international Media. In addition to the Bosnian Muslims,
the Hungarian Christians also find positive enough feelings in them for the Turks, to collect funds, and to erect a statue of Suleyman the Magnificent, in a prominent public square of Budapest, thus commemorating the former Turkish ruler. In the meantime, what are the Greeks doing? Well, in stark contrast, the encourage, methodically, common thugs to desecrate Muslim mosques, and continue to violate the basic human rights and
religious freedoms of the Turkish minority there. What follows is one such graphic example of recorded history:

 

  

 On February 12, 1995, fanatic Greek goons assaulted a group of worshippers, praying at a mosque in the Hurriyet province of Xhanti. The hurling of stones at the congregation and the threatening of worshippers with deafening chants of 'death to the Turks' followed these attacks. The smashing of the windows of the mosque and of the official vehicle of the clergyman Ferit
Darman, while he was leading the prayers inside at the time, was the drowning glory of these proud gangs of salaried riffraff, as some of the peace-lovingcitizens of modern Greece.

 

The sizable Turkish minority living in Western Thrace today are the direct descendants of the Turkish colonizers who once ruled that land and they are the direct descendants of the former rulers of the Balkans for over 400 years. You people may have coined the word 'democracy' at one time, but you are surely missing the boat on its applications.

 

Here are some examples:
During the recent brouhaha over the ownership of the small Rock of KARDAK only 3.6 miles off the Turkish coastline, your government, in which you are a member, is brewing trouble. The Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller said that Greeks should leave the solution of the problem to international arbitration. Instead of being so intransigent, you should learn to live in peace with your neighbors. These neighbors, be they Albanians, Macedonians,
Bulgarians or Turks, have every right to be left alone, to live in harmony, without worrying about embargoes or militaristic braggadocios created to appease and divert the appetites of economically and politically dissatisfied internal masses.
The physical help, given by the Greek government to the bloody
Maxist-Leninist PKK and the unsolved murders of your Nov,17 terrorist gangsters, indicate one thing most assuredly, and that is this : Greece has no desire to abandon its lofty dreams of recapturing what you people still call Constantinople. There is a correlation between your foreign policy and your sinister actions. To you, Greeks, the butcher of close to 30 thousand innocent men, women, and children, Abdullah Ocalan whom you are aiding, remains as a symbol of attainment of your daydreams. Mr. Kaklamanis daydreams do not work it is the reality that counts.

 

You may have easily forgotten that in 1941, when the Second World War was raging, several hundreds of Turkish Merchant Marines lost their lives at sea trying to break the German and Italian naval blockades around your country. Their ships were sunk by U-boat torpedoes. The Turks you despise so much today were the kind of altruistic Turks who did not mind risking their lives to bring your starving population flour, sugar, canned meat products, and avariety of other rare staples and commodities to sustain the lives of their hungry neighbors.

 

Instead of fooling the world with fake pictures of decapitated 'Kurdish' heads, and even claiming that the Turkish soldiers were seen 'playing soccer' with them, is a shameful thing to do. Comparing your lies with the magnanimous acts of the Turkish people, performed at a time when food was very scarce and strictly rationed throughout their entire land this magnanimity of theirs alone shines as a glorious advantage for the Turks,
your long-time former masters, from whom you people have not learned much about the concept of civility, it seems.

 

 

Human Right Violations for Turkish-Greeks

 

 

Greece pursues, contrary to her international obligations and even her own constitution, discriminatory policies against the Turkish Minority, almost in all aspects of life. Members of the minority are not sure of their security, cannot perform their professions, cannot issue driving licences and cannot even obtain permits to repair their own houses. The cultural heritage passed on to them by their forefathers, are deliberately destroyed.

 

In the light of all the above, the existence of a Turkish Minority in Greece is denied. Indeed, speaking of a “Turkish� minority in Greece is a punishable crime under the law. Any written correspondence that refers to the “Turkish� identity of the minority is turned down. Neither the (Greek) Government nor the parliament accepts a petition made on behalf of the “Turkish� minority.

 

Greek courts have forbidden the use of the “Turkish Minority�. In one of the high court rulings passed in 1988, it was alleged that the term “Turkish� was attributable to the citizens in Turkey and that the use of the word by the Muslim Greeks jeopardised the public order. As a result of this decision, many Turkish associations were closed or remained closed.

 

As seen from the above provisions of the treaty, Greece is obliged, under the Lausanne Peace Treaty, to extend to the Turkish Minority in Western Thrace, the treatment and guarantees extended to the other citizens in Greece. The practice, however, is just the opposite. Except for the years 1930-50, the human rights in Western Thrace have been persistently and massively violated. Greek authorities have failed to comply with the Lausanne Treaty, as well other agreements to which Greece is a party. In addition, policy of the Greek authorities towards the Turkish minority is in contravention with the principles and values that constitute European Union, Helsinki Final Act, Paris Charter, OSCE documents and declarations and even the Constitution of Greece itself.

 

 

The above are excerpts from a June 1999 newsletter entitled GREECE BEGINS TO PLAY “VERY DANGEROUS� GAMES IN WESTERN THRACE

 

 

Holdwater: What! Yet another violation of the Lausanne Treaty? I'm still trying to figure out how they armed their little islands that were supposed to remain demilitarized.

 

I guess this proves any nation that wants to join the European Union has to align its human rights policies to European requirements... but once the nation becomes a member, the nation would be free to revert back to doing whatever it wants.

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© Holdwater 

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