Residents of Hania as well as teachers and students staged a demonstration in the Cretan port yesterday to protest a string of racist attacks in the area in recent weeks, culminating at the end of last month in an attack on a teacher who had swastikas carved into her skin. “We are marching today to remind young people that their grandfathers fought so that the swastika would not fly on flags in the Cretan sky,” a protest organizer said. Police said they believe the perpetrators had targeted the 27-year-old teacher because she had been offering Greek language lessons to the children of immigrants.

Technorati Tags: crete, greece, racism, racist, swastika, immigrants

Via Kathimerini

A bill granting second-generation immigrants the right to obtain Greek citizenship and vote in elections was voted through Parliament in principle yesterday. PASOK and the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) voted in favor of the draft law. New Democracy and the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) voted against. The Communist Party (KKE) said its MPs would cast their ballot when the bill is voted on article by article. LAOS Deputy Adonis Georgiadis claimed that his party has collected 400,000 signatures on a petition demanding that a referendum be held on the citizenship issues. He accused the government’s aim of integrating immigrants into Greek society was “a fairy tale on a Cinderella scale.”

There has been a lot of heated discussions about Greek identity. It would be interesting (to me at least) to have a discussion about it. So here are some questions to get started:

What does it mean to be Greek ?
Can someone become Greek and if not, why not ?
If you have aquired Greek citizenship, do you feel Greek?
Are you a child of immigrants? Do you feel Greek ?

Answer any of those questions. Ask your own questions. Write about the issue in any way you like.

BUT

No insults
No personal attacks
No racist/sexist/homophobic/anti-semitic/etc comments

My strict comment/banning policy is in effect for EVERYONE. Please show each other respect, even if you disagree with what they say. It is possible.
Thank you.

I lost my temper a while back and wrote a post called Time for Banning. The problem with that post was that it was written out of anger, something I have rarely done. Since then, there have been some very nasty comments and accusations flying around and people seem to be more focused on getting their insults and rudeness posted than they are in the actual posts.

I also recently upgraded my Wordpress but didn’t check or update my banned list. My mistake and I apologise. Some of the people who were on that list are now able to comment and others are not. I am not sure why. I’m pretty good with techie stuff but there are some glitches here that I don’t know how to remedy.

Let me just say this: I have no-one in my banned list at the moment. So the person that keeps screaming about being banned needs to calm down. A long time friend of this blog had the same problem commenting here a while back. His comments got dumped into my spam list automatically. I have no idea why this happened but I do know that Wordpress is not perfect and does sometimes mess up. Also, I do delete spam automatically because I get so much and don’t generally read through it all for the odd legitimate comment that gets filtered there. Sorry, but I don’t have time. So please calm down. I will be updating the banned list as of today, assuming Forthnet sort out my connection problems.

If you find that your comments are not getting through, please change your nickname. You will have to wait until your first comment with a new name is approved and then you will be able to post normally. If your comment appears and is then deleted, it means that it was unapproved by me and your name will go on my banned list. Sorry people but you did this yourselves. No-one has EVER been banned for asking questions, arguing with me or anyone else in a respectful manner, disagreement or putting forward alternatives. We can have discussions, even heated ones, without resorting to rudeness and bullying.

BTW: To the person that started a blog in response to my supposed censorship etc, (I will not advertise a blog set up to attack me), I get notification of blogs that link to me ! I hope that it will be a satisfying outlet for your pent-up anger towards me. Good luck with that and thanks for making me laugh.

A SHOWDOWN is looming over a historic overhaul of Greece’s decades-old system of citizenship rules on the naturalisation of immigrants and their children.

Ruling socialist Pasok on February 8 tabled a watered-down version of a bill aimed at putting most children of immigrants who were born and raised in Greece on a path to citizenship.

Based on the draft law, the Greece-born children of immigrants will become eligible to acquire Greek citizenship at birth, provided both parents have been legally residing in Greece for at least five years. The preliminary version of the bill required that only one parent be legal.

The new bill also says immigrant children who were not born in Greece but who have completed at least six years of public schooling in Greece will also be eligible for citizenship. An earlier version of the bill had required only three years of schooling.

Slow down

But not so fast, critics say.
Main opposition New Democracy and rightwing Laos have both harshly criticised the proposed legislation, arguing it will create incentives for undocumented migrants to cross the border with their children.

Both parties also expressed concern the bill would give rise to “birth tourism” whereby foreign mothers who are pregnant come to Greece to have their children so they can become Greek citizens.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party (KKE) and leftwing Syriza blasted the government for making the rules tougher. They blamed Pasok and New Democracy for the country’s failed policies on immigrant integration.

No consensus

From right to left, the gulf between the two arguments is so vast and the politics of immigration so heated that the prospect of a consensus remains distant at best.

The immigrant-citizenship debate has been raging on for several years without resolution. Now the Pasok government appears determined to press ahead with its reform, regardless of the opposition.
The government has the numbers to bulldoze the bill through parliament.

Immigrants make up 10 percent of the country’s population.

By blood

Under existing law, Greece is a jus sanguinis, or “right of blood”, state that only recognises citizenship by blood. A person’s citizenship is determined by his or her parents’ citizenship, so only those with blood ties to Greece may be Greek citizens.

To be eligible, immigrants must prove they have lived in Greece legally for 10 years in the 12 years preceding the date of their application. They must be over 18, and they must not have a criminal record or a deportation order issued against them.

Refugees recognised under the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees can apply after five years. Foreigners married to a Greek can acquire nationality after three years, but only if they have a child of Greek nationality while married.

The Greece-born children of immigrants may apply for Greek citizenship through the process of naturalisation on their 18th birthday.

George Papandreou prime minister

Immigrants live with the day-to-day fear of losing their residence permit and find themselves on the margins of society – as if they came [to Greece] only yesterday.

Their children, the children who were born here, who know no other country, are growing up in fear that as soon as they come of age they will be forced to return to a foreign country that they do not know, or else find themselves in illegality.

An immigrant who was born and raised here needs 28 years in order to even apply for naturalisation. Is this in our country’s interest?

We believe that the bill provides us with a chance to carve out a smooth, secure and cohesive future. We also believe that it creates new opportunities. Greeks of Indian origin, Greeks of Albanian origin, Greeks of Filipino origin, Greeks of Ukrainian origin and so on, all proud of their Greek nationality.

Antonis Samaras New Democracy leader

The automatic granting of citizenship to immigrant children born in Greece… has two problems: One is that it will also benefit their parents – citizenship will not only be granted to the children. Secondly, it will make pregnancy a means of naturalisation.

Based on the proposed measures, if there is a future legalisation, immigrant children already born here [to undocumented immigrants] will be eligible for citizenship retroactively along with their parents. And this is how the automatic citizenship will become a real magnet for the mass influx of immigration.

Mr Prime Minister, we are proposing that the children born in Greece should become eligible for citizenship when they come of age. And that they should meet only two conditions: that they have completed the nine-year basic education… and that they renounce the citizenship of their parents.

Aleka Papariga KKE leader

So does integration mean that he who acquires [Greek] citizenship must forget that he is Albanian, Pakistani or I don’t know what? Are you serious?

Did the Greeks who became citizens abroad forget that they are Greeks? Why should members of our diaspora, who have been living abroad for 50 or 100 years, enjoy more rights?

There are people who have lived 10, 15 and 20 years in Greece and do not even have a residence permit. They have worked and contributed to this country, they have gone to school and they’ve learned Greek. These people are considered illegal.

We don’t consider citizenship a panacea. Citizenship, unfortunately, does not mitigate the rise of nationalism, nor does it wipe away slave wages.

We cannot support this bill, which is even worse than the first draft that was also problematic. But now you are making concessions to New Democracy and Laos.

Alexis Tsipras Syriza leader

I’ve been listening to you talk about illegal immigrants as if there is such thing as illegal people. I’ve been listening to you talk about sweep operations, as if people are garbage.

To all those who talk about illegal immigrants, just think that in each Greek family there is a former illegal immigrant. By the thousands, they packed immigration trains and refugee ships to go to Germany, to go to Europe and to America. In each Greek family there is a former illegal immigrant who is now a European citizen, a German citizen, a Belgian citizen, an Australian citizen and an American citizen.

It is hypocritical to applaud and be proud of high-ranking officials in Europe and America who are members of the Greek diaspora.

My dear colleagues, policymaking over the past years has been distorted, piecemeal and addressed the immigration phenomenon with fear.

Yiorgos Karatzaferis Laos leader

We want a referendum on the issue.
You speak about 534,000 legals. They are not legal, they are legalised. Only those who entered the country legally and who respect the laws of the country are legal. How many of them respected the country when they first set foot in the country?

Mr Prime Minister, for them – those who came legally – I automatically accept any kind of naturalisation procedure. But not for the others who came illegally…

In Greece, there are two things that nobody knows: the number of civil servants and the number of illegal immigrants.

So what are we going to do? In 10, 15, 30 years, they say, Greece will have three million immigrants. And if today the children are, an estimated 18,000 or 19,000, next year there will be 30,000 and one day we will have 200,000 and 300,000 and 400,000.

Technorati Tags: greece,, immigration,, citizenship,, naturalisation

Walking on Thessaloniki’s Aristotelous square some leaflets draw my attention.

“You are born Greek, you don’t become Greek” it was the slogan on them, while they were calling people to condemn government’s proposal for granting Greek citizenship to immigrants.

A few meters away, in the wall you could clearly see the graffiti-written message “Solidarity to all immigrants”.

These two completely different approaches give the notion of a nation divided in two parts.

Why?
A recent law proposal of the government that aspires to grant citizenship to second-generation immigrants who are born in Greece raised a storm of arguments.

Although notoriously hospitable people, the Greeks still treat the immigration issues with great wariness.

In an opinion-poll conducted for Mega Channel during January, 64.9 percent of the participants responded positively in the perspective of granting citizenship to immigrants’ children, however 49.6 percent said “No” to the citizenship for migrants who legally reside in the country during the last five years.

Apparently, the absence of a serious, well-structured, immigration policy consists an issue of high concern.

The country is, for almost two decades now, exposed to uncontrollable illegal migration due to its extended borders.

As columnist Stavros Ligeros points out in Kathimerini, “their (immigrants) number is continually increasing and as a result of this they live in ghettos, usually under terrible conditions.”

It becomes clear that the state has to develop an immigration policy in order to safeguard the country’s borders and, secondly, to create a legal framework for the best possible integration of the legal immigrants in Greek society.

Until now, the existence of a frightfully bureaucratic state system has failed to establish the needed circumstances for the gradual integration of these people in the society.

Nonetheless, it is known that non-integration means more ghettos and therefore social exclusion.

Many Greeks who arrived as migrants in Australia, the United States or Germany in the middle of the previous century certainly understand what means to be socially excluded.
On that point, the scare mongering rhetoric of the far-right comes to exploit every available fear.

The country’s present unstable economic condition, the rising unemployment levels and the occasional increase of crime rates usually become a political “tool” in the hands of the extreme, xenophobic, voices.

But, actually, this rhetoric is the curtain of some vicious obsessions.

The true reasons behind xenophobia is neither the fear for jobs nor for security.

Undoubtedly, the most dangerous ideas derive from the so-called “law of blood.”

Given the fact that Greece is one of Europe’s least ethnically diverse countries (almost 96 percent of the inhabitants claim Greek ethnicity and Greek Christian Orthodox religion), the extreme speculators try to create the fear of lost homogeneity.

Surprisingly, they want to ignore that the essence of Greekness doesn’t exist in race, blood or religion but in the so-called Hellenic education and Hellenism’s admirable capacity to assimilate foreign cultures.

“It was the great ancient orator, Isocrates, who praised the intellectual achievements of Athens noting that the title of being Hellene became “a badge of education rather than of common descent.”

Indeed, there are second-generation immigrants who know no other country but Greece.

There are people with African or Asian backgrounds who deserve, more than many indigenous, the title of being Greek.

They pose no threat to Greek identity but, on the contrary, they enrich its Ecumenical essence. Its an issue of legitimacy and, moreover, humanity.

The Greek political leadership has a historical responsibility to deal with this matter with wisdom and open-mind.

Nicolas Mottas, born in Greece, is a doctoral candidate (Ph.D) He holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Westminster and Master of Arts in Diplomacy from the Diplomatic Academy of London. He writes for the Greek newspaper ‘Macedonia’ as a freelance international news editor and for Phantis www.phantis.com

Technorati Tags: greece, greek, citizenship, immigration,

YIANNIS Dimitriadis says he was always aware of his family’s wartime role in helping Greek Jews and that it still makes him very proud.

At a ceremony held in the Old Parliament building in Athens on January 18, Dimitriadis and his brother accepted the title Righteous among the Nations, awarded posthumously to their father, Nikos.

“It’s a great honour for our family to receive this recognition,” said Dimitriadis, an Athens businessman. “In a way, the award reflects a simple value that was always central to my family ethos – to be good to others.”

The medals were presented on behalf of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Institute and Museum in Jerusalem. The ceremony was part of the Greek events to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.

Representatives of the Rovolopoulos and Kalligas families also received awards for their role in helping Greek Jews avoid arrest and death during the Nazi occupation (1941-1944) of the country.

Attending the ceremony was Thessaloniki native Yolanda Modiano Benuzilio, who, in 1943, found refuge at the Dimitriadis residence, an imposing building designed by Ernst Ziller located at the junction of Akadimias and Omirou streets in Athens.

When Yiannis Dimitriadis was young, he used to play with Yolanda Modiano’s daughters, before the family emigrated to Israel.

“My father, who was 25 when this happened, was the top of his class at university,” says Yiannis Dimitriadis. “His was an old, propertied Athenian family which didn’t have enemies and which always tried to help people.”

Modiano Benuzilio now lives in Jerusalem, where she has published a book recounting her experiences. The Dimitriadis and Modiano families have kept in contact since.

The granting of the title Righteous among the Nations is based on strict criteria and historical evidence, and the recent awards were made on the strength of an application submitted by Modiano Benuzilio.

The names of recipients are inscribed on a special wall at Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. To date, 22,700 individual awards have been made, including 280 to Greeks.

Speaking at the event, Israel’s Ambassador to Greece Ali Yahya, said: “We are [...] here to celebrate the triumph of the human spirit, the survivors who rebuilt their lives and those brave heroes who put themselves and their families at great risk to save their fellow Jewish citizens during the Nazi occupation.”

Previous Greek awardees include Damaskinos, archbishop of Athens, Angelos Evert, chief of police and father of politician Miltiadis Evert, and Loukas Karrer and Chrysostomos, wartime mayor and archbishop of Zakynthos, respectively.

The Modiano family rescue

YOLANDA Modiano was born in Thessaloniki. Because her father, Jacques, was of Italian origin, the family were not forced to wear the yellow stars and remain in the Jewish ghetto, established by the Nazis.

With great difficulty, in April 1943 the Modianos and some other Jewish families managed to make it to Athens, then considered somewhat safer than Thessaloniki for Jews, where they rented an apartment from Konstantinos Rovolopoulos.

In September 1943, when word spread that the Germans were seeking lists of the city’s Jews, Rovolopoulos urged the Modiano family to find shelter with his sister, Virginia Dimitriadou, who, with her two children, Fanis and Nikos, did everything she could to make them feel comfortable, despite the great personal risk.

A few days after moving in, Jacques Modiano died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Thanks to the help of Rovolopoulos and his nephew Nikos, a funeral was organised with false documents so that the burial could take place in a Christian cemetery.

Despite being interrogated by the Germans, Nikos Dimitriadis refused to reveal where his uncle’s Jewish tenants had gone.

Technorati Tags: greece, jews, holocaust, award,

The family subsequently found shelter with the Kalligas family.

Later, Yolanda and her widowed mother, Alin, along with another Jewish family, were spirited away to an area in Evia under the control of the Greek resistance.

Via Kathimerini

A bid to grant citizenship to thousands of second-generation immigrants caused more intense debate over the weekend as the right-wing nationalist Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) claimed it has the Church of Greece’s support in opposing the draft law.

LAOS held a special congress on Saturday to discuss the proposals drawn up by the government, under which children born in Greece to immigrant parents would be able to apply for citizenship if their father or mother has been living here legally for at least five years and the child has completed at least three years of schooling in the country.

It is estimated that 250,000 youngsters would qualify for citizenship and 150,000 of those would be able to apply in time to vote in local elections later this year.

LAOS is opposed to the bill and has demanded a referendum but leader Giorgos Karatzaferis suggested that he would abandon this request if PASOK holds a vote among its own MPs to see if they are in favor. Nevertheless, the LAOS leader encouraged people to take to the streets to protest against the government’s proposals and to drum up support for a referendum.

“Greece is saying ‘no’ to this bill because it does not want Hellenism to be diluted,” said Karatzaferis. “Greece belongs to its history: We were building the Parthenon when they were still living in trees.”

He went on to claim that the leadership of the Church of Greece supports LAOS’s bid to hold a referendum and will sign such a petition. Karatzaferis also said he will collect signatures from other European countries.

In contrast, the Communist Party (KKE) issued a statement calling on the government to legalize all immigrants and to grant citizenship to all young migrants at 18.

Technorati Tags: greece, laos, nationalist, citizenship, immigration

Two British men have been arrested in connection with arson attacks on a medieval synagogue on the Greek island of Crete. The two men, who have not been named, are being held in the coastal town of Hania. A Greek man is also in custody and two Americans are being sought. Hania’s Etz Hayyim synagogue has been targeted by arsonists twice this month.

The UK embassy in Athens said two British men had been arrested on charges of arson. The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Athens said, according to the police, the men are aged 23 and 33 and are nightclub waiters in the seaside town. Police said they were arrested after a 24-year-old Greek man confessed, our correspondent added. The British men have been offered assistance by consul staff on the island.

The first attack happened on 5 January but it was the second attack on Saturday 16 January which caused extensive damage to the synagogue’s interior, its archive material and technical equipment. The financial cost of the fires has yet to be calculated

The Etz Hayyim synagogue, which dates back to the Middle Ages, is the only surviving Jewish monument on the island of Crete. It was restored in the late 1990s and has since become a memorial and a tourist attraction.

By 1941 most of the Jews in Crete had emigrated, leaving only the Hania community of about 270 people. They were deported by Nazi invaders in 1944 and died when their ship was bombed and sunk by the Allies.

Technorati Tags: greece, crete, synagogue, britain, arson, arrests

Greek police on Friday arrested two Britons and a Greek man in connection with two arson attacks against a synagogue on the Aegean island of Crete this month.

Police said they were still looking for a U.S. citizen, who is suspected of setting fire to the synagogue in the city of Chania on January 5, while the other three men watched.

One of the Britons arrested was suspected of launching a similar attack on January16, police said, damaging extensively the roof of the building, thousands of books and computers.

“We have arrested three people over the synagogue attacks, and we are still looking for a U.S. citizen,” said a police official who declined to be named.

The police official said the Britons, both in their early twenties, and the 33-year-old Greek were nightclub employees. They were expected to appear before a prosecutor within the next few days.

The attacks have alarmed Greece’s 8,000-strong Jewish community.

“I can’t say I’m happy now; they should have arrested them earlier, after the first attack and not leave the synagogue unprotected,” Moses Constantinis, head of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, told Reuters.

“We are worried, the Jewish community is worried.”

Technorati Tags: greece, jewish, jews, synagogue, crete

The government’s decision to grant citizenship to immigrants and their children makes sense on so many levels that it is difficult to see why it is the subject of such virulent opposition. It is reasonable to expect a lively and informed debate on an issue that will change the fabric of Greek society but at present the discussion appears to be dominated by the simplistic and emotional extreme right-wing stance that “this is our country and we don’t want to share it.” Let’s look at the issue from a broader perspective.

Greece, with its negative birthrate, needs as many immigrants as it can get. Foreign workers and their families already provide a lifesaving injection for the economy and the social security system. From the time of the first legalization process in 1998, an influx of young, healthy workers has been responsible for providing funds to and sustaining the social security system. In addition, immigrants’ bank deposits have continued to grow as locals went on a spending frenzy stoked by cheap loans; banks say that immigrants’ accounts were worth 2.5 billion euros early last year. They have taken out housing loans worth 100 million euros, or 5 percent of the total.

Immigrants are crucial to the farming and construction sectors, doing the jobs that Greeks will no longer do. Many of them have quickly developed into entrepreneurs and now provide jobs to others. Just as important is the fact that immigrants provide a range of services which have allowed both parents in each Greek family to work rather than stay at home to care for children and elderly relatives. Above all, though, immigrants have contributed to the growth of Greece’s population, which would have shown a decline in the last 10-year census in 2001 were it not for the influx of about 1 million people. This is invaluable in terms of any effort that will be made to save the social security system.

Over the years, the vast majority of immigrants have become part of Greek society. In 2008, a study by the Research Center for Equality found that one in 10 immigrant women had married a member of another ethnic group – a Greek in 90 percent of such cases. In addition, the children born to immigrants in Greece are estimated to number about 250,000. With the great wave of immigration starting at the end of 1990, many of them have passed right through the Greek education system, from kindergarten to university graduation. The principal argument presented by the New Democracy party in its opposition to the immigration bill is that it allows citizenship to be granted to children who have at least three years of Greek schooling, proposing instead the full nine years of mandatory schooling that applies for all Greeks. The argument is moot, as most immigrant parents are dedicated to their children’s advancement through education, but it allows New Democracy to put up a fight and so steal some of the extreme right’s thunder.

Aside from the many economic and social benefits accruing from an increase in the number of citizens, the debate should also focus on the identity of the citizens of Greece. It is time that Greeks came to terms with the fact that their ancient nation has always been an amalgam of natives and immigrants, not a pure race descended from Homer’s time. We are now living through one more surge of new blood, with all the opportunities and challenges that this presents. Things are changing, whether we like it or not. Taking the initiative and trying to control how our nation will be shaped, as the government has done, is far better than trying to stop the tide, destroying the lives of immigrants and missing opportunities for a stronger Greece.

A negative one from Kathimerini

The granting of citizenship and voting rights to immigrants is too serious an issue to be reduced to an exchange of empty slogans or accusations.

Most of Greece’s immigrants have entered the country without permission. Greece has, over the years, legalized a great percentage of them but the trend continues unabated. Thousands make it here every month and end up trapped, because it is easy to get in but almost impossible to get out. Claims that the borders will be closed are groundless. Most coast guard operations are, after all, rescue operations.

The only solution is to adopt a common European policy on returns and refoulement of immigrants who are not entitled to political asylum.

The burgeoning number of illegal immigrants is threatening social cohesion. Clandestine labor is bad for manual workers who work legally. The strain on social infrastructure is growing. Many find it difficult to survive, more turn to crime. Cultural differences prevent even Muslims who have acquired citizenship from integrating into Western societies. In Greece, it is pointless to talk about large-scale integration, as the number of immigrants is constantly rising and, as a result, most live in appalling ghettos.

The challenge is, on the one hand, to curb the influx and, on the other, to manage existing migration problems. Instead, the government is ducking the issue, granting citizenship and voting rights. This is a leap into the void rather than progress, since the bill has many loopholes. Lax legislation will fuel illegal immigration. The granting of citizenship and voting rights must be part of a comprehensive strategy – not ideology. Respecting the human rights of immigrants is one thing, granting citizenship is another. Those who scorn public criticism as “right-wing” and “racist,” are only playing into the hands of ultranationalists like LAOS. They are trying to confine the public debate between Scylla (of those who see Greece as a place rather than a country) and Charybdis (those who fear contamination of Greeks’ supposed ethnic purity).

Technorati Tags: greece, immigration, citizenship, voting, economy,

Dozens of prostitutes, most using headscarves or hoods to hide their faces, demonstrated in central Athens Wednesday, demanding working licenses for brothels across Greece.

Prostitution is legal in Greece, and sex workers have personal permits to exercise their profession. But they can only do that by walking the streets, not using brothels. As a result, many end up working illegally and facing arrest because they operate out of brothels.

“We are here to put an end to our hardship and degradation,” said Dimitra Kanellopoulou, president of Greece’s sex workers’ association, SEPE. “The situation is tragic, hypocritical and miserable.”

About 100 sex workers held a rally outside the Interior Ministry, chanting: “We will not back down until we are given justice.”

“We want to be able to work legally in brothels and not on the streets,” said 47-year-old Maria K., who has been working as a prostitute for more than 20 years. She would not give her surname.

Kanellopoulou, the head of the union, said Interior Minister Yannis Ragoussis met briefly with union members and agreed to discuss their grievances, including cutting red tape and making it easier for prostitutes to obtain licenses.

Technorati Tags: greece, prostitution, license,

Via CBC News

A synagogue on the Greek island of Crete was hit by arsonists for the second time in three weeks, police said Saturday.

The attack happened in the city of Chania when an unknown number of people entered the building, broke through a first-floor door and started a fire, police said.

Fire officials said the blaze partly destroyed the synagogue’s wooden ceiling, as well as many of its archives, computers and CDs.

Police say about 2,500 books, many of them rare editions, were destroyed in this attack and a previous arson attack three weeks ago.

For a personal account of what happened and photographs of the destruction, please visit the blog of the Etz-Hayyim synagogue.

Technorati Tags: greece, synagogue, arson, attack, crete

Debate on religious symbols intensifies

The public debate about whether crucifixes and religious icons should be displayed in Greece’s classrooms is set to intensify after it was revealed yesterday that the country’s Ombudsman received several complaints about infringement of religious freedoms.

Four sets of parents have asked for religious symbols to be removed from their children’s classrooms and one pupil has filed a complaint about her school making her attend religious education classes.

The issue of whether crosses and icons should be hung in schools, as well as other public service offices, has been a subject of discussion since last December when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the presence of crucifixes in classrooms was a breach of human rights after hearing a case brought by a mother from Italy.

“We believe that the European Court of Human Rights ruling on the removal of religious symbols from Italian schools must also be applied by Greece,” said Panayote Dimitras, spokesman for the Greek Helsinki Monitor human rights watchdog.

The possible implications of the ECHR decision for Greece prompted the Greek Orthodox Church to immediately declare its opposition to any effort to remove religious symbols from public buildings. However, Justice Minister Haris Kastanidis admitted at the time that Greece could not ignore the court’s ruling if it stands.

The complaints filed with the Ombudsman could also end up at the ECHR and are certain to stoke debate in Greece. “Religious symbols are part of our country’s cultural heritage, which cannot be shaped by legislation,” said theologian Stavros Yiagazoglou. “In a democratic country, we must respect the rights of minorities but of the majority as well.”

I am very interested in what you think about the statement by the theologian Stavros Yiagazoglou. While I agree that religious symbols are part of the country’s heritage and history, I still do not believe that they have any place in schools or in public buildings. There are countless churches and other religious sites that maintain that religious heritage. Even the flag has a cross on it. I cannot see what damage removing crucifixes from classrooms can possibly do. What do you think ?

Technorati Tags: greece, religion, freedom, crucifix, icons,

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