Amnesty International’s annual report on Greece: Pylos, police brutality, wiretapping and a host of rights violations

Amnesty International’s annual report recommends a “slap in the face” for the Mitsotakis government, after the “raping” of the State Department, criticizing the practices of the blue majority in a number of issues.

In the brief introduction he writes:

“Reports of illegal use of force in policing protests continued. Survivors of a shipwreck that killed more than 600 people have blamed the Greek authorities for causing the incident. Human rights defenders continued to face criminalization for their work with refugee, refugee and migrant women. Research by the Greek Data Protection Authority identified 88 people as targets of the Predator spyware. Violations of the rights of conscientious objectors continued. The devastating fires have resulted in the loss of human lives and natural habitats amid concerns about the failure of the forest firefighting system.”

It records excessive use of force by the Police and singles out police attacks on demonstrations, the conviction of a police officer for beating a student in Nea Smyrni Square, and a case of police brutality that was decided in the Court of Appeal after 12 years: “In November, the Court of Appeal found the police responsible for life-threatening injuries suffered by the psychologist Yiannis Kavkas during a demonstration in Athens in 2011 and awarded him compensation”.

It records three incidents of police-involved civilian deaths:

• In September, Kostas Manioudakis died after allegedly being ill-treated by the police during a check in the village of Vryses in Crete.
• In October, a prosecutor recommended that a police officer be indicted for manslaughter and unlawful shooting in connection with the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Roma Kostas Fragoulis in 2022 in Thessaloniki.
• In November, 17-year-old Christos Michalopoulos was fatally shot by a police officer in Leontari, Aliartos municipality, after a car chase. The police officer was charged with manslaughter and unlawful shooting.

It describes many incidents of violations of the human rights of immigrants and refugees and particularly emphasizes the wreck of Pylos.

He mentions the wiretapping scandal and “the sudden replacement by the Greek parliament of several members of the Greek Communications Privacy Authority (CPA) at a critical moment in the investigation of the software monitoring scandal.”

Regarding freedom of expression, it mentions only one incident: “In April, it was reported that in December 2022 a court partially accepted the lawsuit against the journalist Stavroulas Poulemenis and the independent cooperative media Alterthess, ordering the media to pay compensation of 3,000 euros to a senior executive of a gold mining company. The decision was appealed. The case, which bears the hallmarks of a strategic anti-public participation lawsuit (SLAPP), arose out of an alleged violation of data protection laws after Stavroula Poulemeni’s appeal of the executive’s conviction by a trial court for environmental damage.

There are still references to women’s rights, LGBTI rights, the environment, conscientious objection, etc.

The entire Amnesty International report on Greece here

The full Amnesty International annual report on the state of human rights in the world here.