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Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts
Humanists International ✒ is deeply concerned to learn that prominent human rights defenders and members of the Humanist Union of Greece were convicted of filing a “false complaint” and sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for three years.
Members of the Humanist Union of Greece, Panayote Dimitras and Andrea Gilbert were convicted of filing a “false complaint” (Article 229 of the Penal Code) against the Metropolitan Bishop of Piraeus Seraphim by the Three-Judge Misdemeanors Court of Athens on 15 February 2022. They were sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for three years. Dimitras and Gilbert have filed an appeal.

The case relates to a complaint filed in 2017 by the pair while acting on behalf of the Greek Helsinki Monitor, which alleged that a high-ranking Bishop had abused his ecclesiastical office and incited hatred in a statement deemed to be filled with anti-Semitic rhetoric published on the website of the Diocese of Piraeus.

Their complaint, filed before the Department for Combating Racist Violence (Attica Division), was eventually thrown out by the prosecutor two years later; the Bishop responded by filing a counter-complaint against Dimitras and Gilbert.

Continue reading @ Humanist International.



Greece ✑ Humanists Sentenced To One-Year Suspended Jail Term

From MSN News a report that Anti-Gay Violence is on the rises in Greece a year after murder of an activist. 


At first, the crowd seemed too somber to join in the singalong of Madonna's “Like a Prayer” — a song that Zak Kostopoulos loved. But slowly, one by one, people gathered at the Athens School of Fine Arts began to sing and clap.

When they finished the song, mourners called out in unison, “Zackie lives, smash the Nazis.” In Greek, the phrase rhymes, and over the past year, it’s been chanted at protests, marches and drag shows all over the country.

The memorial last Friday was one of several tributes over the weekend to the prominent gay activist who was brutally beaten to death on Sept. 21, 2018. The violence was captured on camera and broadcast widely, and catapulted into the national conversation. In the past year, a larger movement has formed calling for justice for Kostopoulos, who was 33.

Kostopoulos was an advocate for people like himself — LGBTQ people, drug users and those with HIV, and he often wrote about the rights of sex workers and refugees. He made waves in 2013 when he wore a T-shirt to Athens' Pride that said, “HIV Positive.” But he was perhaps most famous as the drag queen, Zackie Oh, often sporting heavy black eyeliner and a rainbow-colored bob. As Zackie Oh, he once impersonated Freddie Mercury, wearing a bathrobe and carrying around a tricolor duster (and using it on audience members). In 2017, Zackie Oh closed out Athens’ Pride with an ebullient performance of "Disco Inferno."

Kostopoulos' death and the aftermath has been a struggle in Greece, where, in recent years, it had seemed LGBTQ rights were improving.

Continue readin @ MSN News.

Anti-Gay Violence Rises In Greece

Mick Hall argues that by electing Syriza the Greek people have grasped the neo liberal nettle by the throat and taken a punt on a future of hope and progress. Mick Hall is a veteran Marxist activist and trade unionist who blogs at Organized Rage.


  • By electing Syriza the Greek people have grasped the neo liberal nettle by the throat and taken a punt on a future of hope and progress.
 

Syriza: Greeks Grasp Nettle

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