#rbnews weekly bulletin 13-19 July 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews weekly bulletin 06-12 July 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews weekly bulletin 18-24 May 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

Amnesty International: the situation of human rights in Greece is deteriorating

Posted by @IrateGreek

The Greek chapter of Amnesty International organized a press conference to present the organization's annual report in front of the Aliens' Department in Athens today. This symbolic choice reflects Amnesty's key findings about the situation of human rights in Greece in 2013:

"Allegations of human rights abuses by police, including torture and excessive use of force continued throughout the year. Migrants and asylum seekers faced impediments in registering their asylum applications and were often detained in substandard conditions. Hate crime on the basis of race and ethnicity escalated dramatically."

Initiative against the detention hellholes of Piraeus

Source: Anti-Nazi Initiative of Piraeus

Posted by @csyllas, translated from Greek by @anarresti


After the petition below was approved by the 16 May 2013 plenary of the Council of  Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) in the framework of a discussion on the subject of human rights,  it was decided to set up a team of European lawyers which will visit the  police departments where immigrants and refugees are being held under appalling conditions.

The petition, which was drafted by a group of lawyers and citizens from Piraeus and approved by the Board of Directors of the Piraeus Bar Association, is yet another enlightening testimony on the State's arbitrary treatment of foreign immigrants.

LGBT rights in Greece: one new case of State censorship and discrimination

Posted by @IrateGreek

The Athens Pride denounced on Thursday 16 May the decision by the National Council for Radio & Television to ban all Athens Pride publicity spots until the plenary session of the Council can discuss the appropriateness of their broadcast. The reason for given by the Council is the fact that the spots include a lesbian kiss.

This is the second such incident of censorship and discrimination against the LGBT community on Greek media in recent months. In October 2012, State TV channel NET had chosen to edit a kiss between two men out of a episode of Downton Abbey. After viewers reacted angrily on social media, most importantly on Twitter with the hashtag #puritaNET, the channel's director Kostas Spyropoulos had argued that the scene was cut because of the time of the broadcast and the "suitable for all" rating of the show, whereas late-night re-runs would include the scene - ignoring a 2003 ruling by the Council of State which condemned the Council's decision to censor a gay kiss scene on Mega TV channel.

The Kallipoli police station: A little Guantanamo and its little people

Posted by @csyllas, translated/adapted from Greek by @IrateGreek


The following is an eyewitness account from Giorgos Karystinos after a visit to the Kallipoli police station in Piraeus on 03 May 2013

Greece found guilty by European Court of Human Rights over immigration cases

By @Polyfimos, translated from Greek by @IrateGreek

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Greece was guilty of violations of the right to liberty and safety and of humane treatment of migrants in the case of Albanian minor immigrant Albano Barjamaj.

HotDoc Magazine Issue #26 - Maria, the banks and guns-for-hire: the contract on Vaxevanis

The following is a summary of pages 14-41 of the 26th issue of the magazine HotDoc, whose editor is journalist Kostas Vaxevanis. 


The 3rd issue of the magazine HotDoc, dated 24 May 2012, revealed sensitive information about scandals involving Greek banks. Advance copies had been sent to other news outlets. On 23 May, Fimotro, a blog often denounced for engaging in defamation and blackmail, published a picture of a receipt allegedly issued by the Greek Intelligence Service (EYP) in the name of HotDoc’s editor, Kostas Vaxevanis. The receipt was dated 15 June 2011 and said he was paid €50,000 for services to EYP for the 1st semester of 2011. Fimotro, as well as other blogs which circulated this picture of the receipt, also played a role in portraying Reuters’ Steven Grey, who was researching a similar story on Greek banks, as an “agent” of unknown forces who sought to ruin the Greek economy (Reuters published at the time a long piece on the surveillance Grey was subjected to).

The HotDoc team denounced the receipt as a forgery and Vaxevanis tried to sue Giannis Papagiannis, the administrator of Fimotro, whose name is known to the public following a previous court case in which he was accused of blackmail. Strangely, the prosecutor office refused the documents of the previous case file as proof of his identity, and, because Papagiannis could not be charged with a felony in the HotDoc case, Google refused to provide his personal data. The case against Papagiannis was thus dropped, despite abundant online evidence of his identity, including, recently, blog posts signed with his full name.

rbnews international show 16 February 2013: HIV/AIDS as an electoral argument in Greece

This week on #rbnews international, we interviewed at length radiobubble contributor Zoe Mavroudi, who is leading an effort to produce and direct a video documentary on the story of the 26 HIV positive women who were arrested shortly before the May 2012 elections, labeled as prostitutes and paraded on TV channels with claims from the Greek authorities that they were a threat to public health.
This documentary project is supported by the British union Unite as well as the organization Union Solidarity International. You can make a donation to support this project through the Greek Solidarity Campaign on the USI website. You can also read some of Zoe's writing about this topic here, here and here. Finally, if you want to support other radiobubble projects, you can make a donation here.

The podcast is available, as usual, after the jump.

#rbnews international weekly bulletin 02-08 February 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews international show 09 February 2013: Police brutality in Greece

This week on #rbnews international, given the abundant news related to arrests and torture by the Greek police, we discussed the issue of police brutality in Greece with Maro Savvopoulou, the press officer from the Greek chapter of Amnesty International. Amnesty has recently published a report on this matter and is currently conducting a campaign to push the Greek authorities to investigate these allegations and take appropriate action.

You can follow Amnesty Greece on Twitter @AmnestyGreece.

You can listen to the podcast after the jump.

The PICUM workshop on migrants' rights in Greece

On 3/12/2012, the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) organized a one-day workshop in Athens about migrants' rights in Greece, titled "The silent humantiarian crisis in Greece". We compiled in this post the tweets of workshop participants.

"It is about time to expose the country": an exhibition about police violence in Zürich

«Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA)», The Guardian, Tuesday 9 October 2012.

“By August 2008, the Greek police had been convicted at least nine times by the European Court of Human Rights for incidents of abuse”. Global Voices Online, 12 May 2012.

Pogrom against Pakistanis at Nikaia

Translated by @iptamenos33

New attacks by extreme-right wing groups against Pakistanis took place last Friday and Saturday night in Nikaia (Piraeus suburb). After the threats and the ultimatums that were distributed amongst Pakistani shop owners by groups of the extreme right –Golden Dawn –according to eyewitnesses- and after the anti-racism demonstration of last Thursday, the racist groups struck again.

Human Rights Group rings alarm bell for HIV Positive women held in prison

By @zoemavroudi

“Their lives are in danger.” Human Rights Group rings alarm bell for HIV Positive women held in prison for alleged threat to public health

On April 29 2012, shortly before the Greek May 6 election, dozens of women allegedly working illegally as sex workers were rounded up and taken into custody by Greek police in Athens. Rapid HIV testing was performed on them by Greek authorities at police stations where they were told they were being led for identification purposes. They were subsequently diagnosed HIV positive and were charged with “the intention of causing heavy bodily harm” while photographs of 17 of them at first, were published on the official Greek police website.

The case has caused uproar both in Greece and internationally for what human rights groups have called a clear violation of international laws for the protection from the deprivation of one’s freedom, right to consent to medical testing and medical confidentiality.

Was the bailout of Greece legal?

Edited by Keith Ewing, Professor of Public Law at King’s College London, for USI

As the European political crisis becomes ever more intense and the economic crisis ever more acute, there is a third crisis yet to unfold.  This is the crisis of legality now engulfing the EU, an entity that seems to be free to do what it likes and to ignore the legal foundations on which it is supposed to be built.

The EU, its institutions and its representatives are required to act with legal authority and within the scope of legal powers.   To this end, the post–Lisbon treaty is full of clearly expressed principles and obligations, the EU apparently founded on the values of ‘human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights’.