Today the Commissioner published a letter he addressed to the Greek government concerning the Bill on a complaint mechanism covering law enforcement and detention facility agents. The Commissioner welcomes the fact that the Ombudsman, an independent and efficient national human rights structure, will be empowered to investigate following receipt of complaints and to carry out ex officio investigations. However, he notes that this first step requires the immediate allocation of sufficient and adequate financial and human resources to the Ombudsman’s Office. In addition, the Greek authorities are invited to envisage enlarging the scope of the mechanism’s competencies, which should not be limited to issuing non-binding recommendations to the disciplinary bodies of the relevant authorities.
Moreover, noting with serious concern an increase of recorded hate, especially homophobic, crime in Greece, Commissioner Muižnieks stresses the need to enhance implementation of the existing anti-hate crime law, to collect and analyse hate crime data in a more systematic manner and to raise public awareness. In this context, it is also of utmost importance to provide systematic, continuous anti-discrimination training to law enforcement officials, prosecutors and judges.
- Read the Commissioner's letter to Mr Toskas, Alternate Minister of Interior and of Administrative Reconstruction of Greece, and to Mr Paraskevopoulos, Minister of Justice of Greece.
- Read the replies by the Alternate Minister of Interior and of Administrative Reconstruction and the Minister of Justice of Greece.
- Read more about the Commissioner’s work on Greece here.