State Department: Greece is a third world country

The State Department’s annual report on the state of human rights in the world, in 198 countries, for the year 2022, presented by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

The report is divided into chapters such as respect for the integrity of the individual, corruption and lack of transparency, discrimination, workers’ rights, respect for freedoms, while there are also subsections such as freedom of expression, conditions of detention and gender violence.

It is worth noting that in most of these categories Greece gets an extremely low grade, reminding more of a third world country and not a modern bourgeois democracy.

Regarding Greece, it is stated that: “Greece is a constitutional Democracy and a multi-party parliamentary Democracy. Legislative power is exercised by the Parliament, which gives a vote of confidence to the government headed by the Prime Minister. In 2019, the country held parliamentary elections that observers described as free and fair. The government formed by the New Democracy Party led by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis leads the country.

The police are responsible for law enforcement, border security and law and order. It falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Civil Protection, which is also responsible for prison facilities. The Coast Guard, responsible for the observance of the law and borders in territorial waters, reports to the Ministry of Shipping and Island Policy. The Armed Forces are under the responsibility of the Ministry of National Defence. The Police and the Armed Forces share law enforcement duties in some border areas. Border protection is coordinated by the Ministry of National Defense. The civilian Authorities maintained effective control of the Police, Coast Guard and Armed Forces, while the government had effective mechanisms to investigate and punish abuse of power. Members of the security forces committed some acts of abuse of power.”

In the Report on our country it is stated that there were “credible reports” on important human rights issues.

On December 11, Belgian authorities arrested Eva Kaili, a Greek member of parliament and vice-president of the European Parliament, for alleged involvement in a corruption scandal. She has been charged with corruption, money laundering after allegedly receiving bribes from the Qatari government and is in custody in Brussels.

In addition, complaints speak of inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, physical abuse of prisoners by guards, overcrowding, inadequate sanitation.

The Ombudsman, through the National Preventive Mechanism for the Investigation of Arbitrary Incidents, received 288 complaints in 2021, most of which concerned the police and related to the violation of human integrity, health or personal freedom.

More than half of the complaints reported abusive behavior that took place during arrests, detentions and other police operations. In many cases the victims of police abuse were minors, young people, foreigners, immigrants or asylum seekers.

There are also reports from asylum seekers that they were physically abused and deprived of their personal belongings before being readmitted to Turkey. In a recent independent government-sponsored survey, 93% of self-identified refoulement victims said that authorities had deprived them of personal property – 77% reported that they had been deprived of their identity documents. There were also reports of physical abuse or violence directed at migrant detainees and residents of closed facilities.

At the same time, the report does not fail to mention the scandal of the Petsa list and the non-transparent way of state subsidies to the media.

As he writes, Govwatch, the MFRR fact-finding mission in Greece and the Media Pluralism Monitor all denounced the lack of transparency in the distribution of government subsidies to the media during the period of the COVID-19 information campaign (Petsa list).

“The government claimed that it gave subsidies based on objective criteria, such as quantitative for audience exposure, circulation, etc., as well as qualitative criteria such as brand safety. The absence of publicly available award criteria prompted one NGO, however, to file a request demanding disclosure of the criteria. The court rejected this request on the grounds that the petitioner did not have the legal right to access the information,” it said.

As pointed out, the Constitution and laws of Greece prohibit such actions, however, the government did not respect these prohibitions.

In fact, the text points to a 2021 law as an example, which provides a unique exception to the right of citizens to be informed when the government breaches their communications, the reason of “national security”.

The report lists media reports of the government’s use of illegal software to monitor the communications of senior government officials and journalists.