Non-Governmental Organizations in Greece

AIM Athens, 4/10/1999

"If you shout 'Mr. President' in the middle of [downtown Athens] Constitution Square, half the people would turn around" according to a popular saying in Greece, scolding the fact that the country has thousands of associations. But as the opposition leader in the early 1960s George Papandreou, grandfather of the current foreign minister, once said "in Greece numbers flourish but society suffers." The sweeping majority of the associations are hardly active and indeed serve mainly to distribute presidential titles to recognition-thirsty Greeks. Some may at times, depending on their boards, show some activity, but usually revert to idleness when leaders change.

In 1974, following the restoration of democracy, a significant number of such associations (re-)appeared. The most prominent were those of the peace movement. Soon, though, the latter split, like so many political oriented movements, according to party lines. The doctrinal communist-dominated (KKE) peace association saw the PASOK and the Eurocommunist sympathizers split away to create their own peace organizations, while even the conservative party of New Democracy felt obliged to create its own group. After the collapse of the communist countries, these organizations lost their reason of existence and faded away.

A partial emanation of the peace movement was a considerable number of, leftist, organizations whose target was aid to and educational programs in developing, "third-world" countries, usually those with a "progressive" regime. These NGOs have prospered since the coming of PASOK to power in 1981, thanks to significant funding from the Greek state and, later, the European Union. Most have adjusted themselves to the new Balkan reality and, along with newly found groups, they carry our programs in that region as well.

At the same time, the state has supported many NGOs in the social field, fighting poverty or serving the needs of disabled persons. In the late 1990s, two laws have in fact been introduced to regulate this state-NGO relationship, one for the social NGOs and one for the developmental NGOs. Rights-oriented NGOs have yet to be acknowledged in a similar way by the state, which had remained hostile at least to the genuine human and minority rights groups until very recently.

Rights-oriented associations are still very few in Greece. The oldest is the Greek League of Human Rights (member of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues - FIDH), founded in the 1950s. With a membership list that includes many prestigious law professors, it has shown very little activity. Amnesty International created a Greek section after the fall of the dictatorship in 1974 and has, as usual, focused its work on defending the rights of human rights victims abroad: until recently, it was even reluctant to publicize in Greece the International Secretariat (AIIS)'s statements when they were related to "sensitive" minority issues. It is by far the best known and respected in Greece and its uncompromized and systematic distribution of AIIS statements on Kosovo and Greece in the last 12 months has led even to slandering attacks against it by mainstream (Serbophile and anti-minority) media.

Also well-known and respected are the Greek sections of Greenpeace, Doctors of the World, and Doctors Without Borders, whose work is usually not focused on civil rights per se. SOS-Racisme Greece was probably the most active NGO in the early 1990s and has kept a lot of its prestige even though it has grown more critical of Greek policy on "sensitive issues." On the contrary, most of the other NGOs that claim to defend human rights tend to focus on "soft" issues: women's rights, conscientious objection, refugees, and sometimes racism, migrants' rights and religious freedom. On the other hand, NGOs that include in their work the defense of the rights of all minorities, including the officially "non-existent" ethnonational minorities, are frequently attacked if not slandered by media, politicians and sometimes even by other NGOs and, like the minorities themselves, are usually ignored. For example, when the government created a National Council for Human Rights in 1998, it handpicked the NGOs that will participate in it, rather than asking the NGOs to select their representatives. The four NGOs which, regrettably, accepted such a role are the aforementioned Greek League for Human Rights and Amnesty International, the Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights and the Greek Refugee Council.

Efforts to coordinate human rights NGOs have all ended up in failure mainly if not exclusively on the issue of minorities. A first NGO Coordination emerged in 1995, on the occasion of the Council of Europe's campaign against racism: the government approved National Commission was to exclude the minorities, but the reaction by some NGOs to the Council of Europe led the latter to impose minority NGOs on the Greek Commission When, though, a year later a ten-point appeal on human and minority rights was published, only half a dozen NGOs signed it, because it called, inter alia, for the recognition of national minorities. In 1997, a Forum of NGOs was launched under the auspices of the state Secretariat for Youth: when faced with the issue of admitting Macedonian and Turkish organizations, the Forum underwent a crisis and eventually dissolved itself in mid-1999. Crucial for such development was the role of the Secretary General for Youth who expressed openly its disavowal and even accused some NGOs of undermining Greece's interests and aligning themselves with "Turkey's chauvinist and obscurantist plans."

So, when a month later, the three Turkish minority deputies in the Greek Parliament and ten Macedonian and Turkish groups signed an appeal for the recognition of these minorities and the unconditional ratification of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, there were only three NGOs that joined them including Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM), Minority Rights Group - Greece (MRG-G). The appeal led to a backlash and extensive hate speech against the signatories, but hardly any other human rights NGO raised its voice just to protest against such reactions, even after the Foreign Minister George Papandreou himself made statements in favor of minority rights.

One group that criticized the attacks against the minority deputies (but was silent about the co-signatory NGOs) was the Network for Civil and Political Rights. It is a leftist political movement which may not be very active on minority rights, but openly supports the right of self-determination of Turks and, with some reservations for their name, Macedonians. It has however been carrying out significant work in the field of immigrants' rights where it has been behind a successful Coordination of many civic rights and migrant organizations. Given the extreme weakness of the immigrants' own organizations, the Coordination has been their vocal spokesperson for their legalization and subsequently the latter's implementation in Greece.

The situation concerning NGOs in Greece is almost schizophrenic. The Foreign Minister, apparently fully backed by Prime Minister Costas Simitis, is trying to steer Greece towards a modern human rights and foreign policy, ridden of the insecure and hence xenophobic elements that had dominated it until now. Papandreou praises civil society and convincingly states that "had I not been a politician I would have been working in an NGO." The Greek delegation to the OSCE Review Meetings publicly welcomes the still thorough yet constructive criticism of Greece's human rights record by Greek NGOs, though understandably it does not always agree with its content, and praises these NGOs. The latter in turn have repeatedly acknowledged the Foreign Ministry's and the Prime Minister's goodwill, adding that it is though not sufficient to help change the attitude of the rest of the public administration.

Back in Greece, such statements and declarations remain unreported, and so does the very "inconvenient" to all intolerant circles statement of implicit support to Papandreou's new minority policy by OSCE's High Commissioner on National Minorities Max van der Stoel. On the other hand, genuine NGOs and the Foreign Minister, along sometimes with some independent intellectuals and few modernist politicians, continue to be subjected to harsh, and frequently slandering, attacks from many circles. They include conservatives like the Greek Orthodox Church, but also a large section of the governing party (a score of Central Committee members asked in August for Papandreou's resignation), most opposition parties and politicians, and, directly or indirectly, most media and intellectuals. "Greeklings" is the preferred term used to describe all of them, not only by the notoriously nationalistic and intolerant Archbishop Christodoulos, but also by Papandreou's predecessor and still member of PASOK's Executive Bureau Theodore Pangalos.

Panayote Dimitras (AIM)