ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ ΔΙΕΘΝΕΙΣ ΠΑΡΑΤΗΡΗΤΕΣ ΣΤΗ ΔΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΑΛΒΑΝΟΥ ΔΗΜΑΡΧΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΓΚΟΣΤΙΒΑΡ (ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑΣ)

ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟ ΠΑΡΑΤΗΡΗΤΗΡΙΟ ΤΩΝ ΣΥΜΦΩΝΙΩΝ ΤΟΥ ΕΛΣΙΝΚΙ

(Ελληνική Εθνική Επιτροπή της Διεθνούς Ομοσπονδίας Ελσίνκι για τα Ανθρώπινα Δικαιώματα)

& ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΟΜΑΔΑ ΓΙΑ ΤΑ ΔΙΚΑΙΩΜΑΤΑ ΤΩΝ ΜΕΙΟΝΟΤΗΤΩΝ

(Ελληνικό Τμήμα της Διεθνούς Ομάδας για τα Δικαιώματα των Μειονοτήτων)

Τ.Θ. 51393, 14510 Κηφισιά, Tηλ. 620.01.20; Fax: 807.57.67; E-mail: helsinki@compulink.gr

 

ΔΕΛΤΙΟ ΤΥΠΟΥ

 

31/8/1997

 

ΘΕΜΑ: ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ ΔΙΕΘΝΕΙΣ ΠΑΡΑΤΗΡΗΤΕΣ ΣΤΗ ΔΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΑΛΒΑΝΟΥ ΔΗΜΑΡΧΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΓΚΟΣΤΙΒΑΡ (ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑΣ)

 

Οι συνεργαζόμενες οργανώσεις μας Ελληνικό Παρατηρητήριο των Συμφωνιών του Ελσίνκι & Ελληνική Ομάδα για τα Δικαιώματα των Μειονοτήτων ανακοινώνουν ότι τα μέλη-τους Νάσος Θεοδωρίδης (νομικός σύμβουλος) και Μαριάνα Λένκοβα (ερευνήτρια των βαλκανικών ΜΜΕ) θα παραστούν στην αυριανή δίκη στο Γκόστιβαρ (Δημοκρατία της Μακεδονίας) του αλβανού δημάρχου της πόλης Ρούφι Οσμάνι και του επίσης αλβανού Προέδρου του Δημοτικού Συμβουλίου Ρέφικ Ντάουτι. Τα δύο αυτά στελέχη, μαζί με το Μέτο Γιοβάνοφσκι, Πρόεδρο της Επιτροπής Ελσίνκι για τα Ανθρώπινα Δικαιώματα στη Δημοκρατία της Μακεδονίας, είναι παρατηρητές της Διεθνούς Ομοσπονδίας Ελσίνκι για τα Ανθρώπινα Δικαιώματα.

 

Οι Οσμάνι και Νταούτι κατηγορούνται για παράβαση του άρθρου 377 του Ποινικού Κώδικα (παράληψη εκτέλεσης δικαστικής εντολής) και, μόνο ο πρώτος, του άρθρου 319 (πρόκληση εθνικού, φυλετικού ή θρησκευτικού μίσους, διχόνοιας και μισαλλοδοξίας). Σε πρόσφατη αποστολή (μέσα Αυγούστου) των οργανώσεών-μας στη χώρα αυτή (αποτελούμενη από τον εκπρόσωπο Παναγιώτη Δημητρά και την ερευνήτρια μειονοτικών θεμάτων Βάσω Νεοφωτίστου), συλλέχτηκαν στοιχεία από τα οποία προέκυψε ότι πρώτον (κυρίως με βάση την εισαγγελική απόφαση 168/97 της 8/8/1997) τα φερόμενα ως ενοχοποιητικά στοιχεία για την παράβαση του άρθρου 319 από τον Οσμάνι δεν δικαιολογούν παρόμοια δίωξη σε δημοκρατική χώρα: σημειώνεται ότι περισσότερο εμπρηστικά από τις δηλώσεις του Οσμάνι υπήρξαν μερικά συνθήματα στις φοιτητικές διαδηλώσεις των αρχών του 1997 σε βάρος των Αλβανών χωρίς να υπάρξει καμμιά σύλληψη και ακόμα περισσότερο δίκη.

 

Δεύτερο, υπήρξε πιθανότατα παράβαση του άρθρου 377, αν και οι κατηγορούμενοι, όπως και σχεδόν σύσσωμη η αλβανική κοινότητα της γειτονικής χώρας, αμφισβητούν την ορθότητα της σχετικής απόφασης του Συνταγματικού Δικαστηρίου για την υποστολή της αλβανικής και της τουρκικής σημαίας. Τρίτο, θεωρείται καταχρηστική και απαράδεκτη η προφυλάκιση του δημάρχου επί 53 ημέρες και του Νταούτι επί 30 ημέρες. Τόσο η θέση των κατηγορουμένων όσο και οι ενδεχόμενες παράνομες ενέργειές-τους δεν δικαιολογούν καμμιάν  προφυλάκιση, όπως άλλωστε δεν προφυλακίστηκαν οι ομόλογοί-τους του Τέτοβο που επίσης δικάζονται στις 14/10/1997 για παράβαση του άρθρου 377. Για τους λόγους αυτούς, σε συνδυασμό και με τη χρήση υπερβολικής βίας από την αστυνομία στα σχετικά επεισόδια του Γκόστιβαρ, στις 9/7/1997, έχει δημιουργηθεί η εντύπωση ότι υπήρξε πρόθεση τρομοκράτησης των Αλβανών από τις αρχές του κράτους. Ελπίζουμε ότι οι μακεδονικές αρχές θα φροντίσουν να διασκεδάσουν τις εντυπώσεις αυτές.

 

Τέλος, επισημαίνεται ότι κατά τη διάρκεια της αποστολής-μας πριν δύο εβδομάδες, και μετά τις συναντήσεις-μας με στελέχη των εκεί Αλβανών και Βουλγάρων, το αυτοκίνητο της αποστολής δέχθηκε στην Οχρίδα (στο πάρκιγκ του ξενοδοχείου) επίθεση “αγνώστων” που έκαναν ζημιές στα λάστιχα, στην πινακίδα και στην κεραία του. Δεδομένου ότι, όπως μας δήλωσε η τοπική αστυνομία και η διεύθυνση του ξενοδοχείου, κανένα ελληνικό αυτοκίνητο δεν έπαθε το ο,τιδήποτε εδώ και δύο χρόνια στην πόλη αυτή, αλλά και το ότι το αυτοκίνητο αυτό δεν είχε κανένα πρόβλημα κατά το δεκαήμερο που προηγήθηκε της επίθεσης, είναι προφανές ότι οι ζημιές αποτελούσαν “αντίποινα” για τη δραστηριότητά μας εκεί. Εκφράζουμε την εκτίμησή μας στην τοπική αστυνομία και το ξενοδοχείο που εξέφρασαν τη λύπη τους και φρόντισαν για την αποκατάσταση των ζημιών, ιδιαίτερα όταν κυβερνητικοί και μη κυβερνητικοί φορείς που γνώριζαν το έργο μας και πληροφορήθηκαν το συμβάν σίγησαν.

---

GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR

(Greek National Committee of the International Helsinki Federation)

& MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP - GREECE

(Greek Affiliate of Minority Rights Group International)

P.O. Box 51393, GR-14510 Kifisia, Greece

Tel. 30-1-620.01.20; Fax: 30-1-807.57.67; E-mail: helsinki@compulink.gr

_____________________________________________________________________

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

31/8/1997

 

TOPIC: GREEK INTERNATIONAL OBSERVERS IN THE TRIAL OF THE ALBANIAN MAYOR OF GOSTIVAR (REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA)

 

Our organizations, Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group - Greece, announce that their members Nasos Theodoridis (legal advisor) and Mariana Lenkova (Balkan media monitor) will attend tomorrow’s trial in Gostivar (Republic of Macedonia) of the Albanian mayor Rufi Osmani and the, also Albanian, municipal council chairman Refik Dauti. These two activists, along with Meto Jovanovski, Chairman of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights of the Republic of Macedonia, are observers of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.

 

Osmani and Dauti are charged with the violation of Article 377 (neglect to execute a court ruling) of the Penal Code of the Republic of Macedonia, and, just the former, for the violation of Article 319 (inciting national, racial and religious hatred, discord and intolerance). In a recent mission (mid-August) of our organizations in that country (made up of spokesperson Panayote Dimitras and minority rights researcher Vaso Neofotistos), the information gathered led us to the conclusion that, first, (based mainly on the prosecutor’s act 168/97 of 8/8/97) the alleged incriminating evidence for the violation of article 319 by Osmani does not justify such prosecution in a democratic country: we should point out that even more inflammatory than Osmani’s statements were some anti-Albanian slogans during the student demonstrations in early 1997 without leading to any arrests or, even more, trials.

 

Secondly, there was probably violation of article 377, though the defendants, like almost unanimously the neighboring country’s Albanian community, challenge the correctness of the Constitutional Court’s related verdict for the dipping of the Albanian and Turkish flags. Thirdly, we consider abusive and unacceptable the preventive detention of the mayor for 53 days and of Dauti for 30 days. Both the status of the defendants and their alleged illegal acts do not justify preventive detention, just like their counterparts of Tetovo, who go on trial on 14/10/97 for the violation of article 377, have not been detained. For these reasons, and in combination with the abusive use of force by police in the related events in Gostivar on 9/7/1997, the impression has been created that the country’s authorities intended to terrorize Albanians. We hope that the Macedonian authorities will see to disprove these impressions.

 

Finally, we mention that, during our mission there two weeks ago, and following our meetings with Albanian and Bulgarian activists, the mission’s car, while in the parking of an Ohrid hotel, became the target of an attack by “unknown assailants” who damaged the tires, the license plate, and the antenna. Since, as local police and the hotel’s management told us, no Greek car in Ohrid has had any problems in the last two years, nor did our car for the ten days preceding the attack, it is evident that the damage was a “reprisal” for our activity there. We would like to state our appreciation to the local police and the hotel who expressed their regret for the incident and took care of the repair of the damage, especially as governmental institutions and non-governmental organizations, familiar with our work and informed about the incident, remained silent.

“HELSINKI” DOESN'T GUARANTEE FAITHFULNESS TO HUMAN RIGHTS

GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR

(Greek National Committee of the International Helsinki Federation)

& MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP - GREECE

(Greek Affiliate of Minority Rights Group International)

P.O. Box 51393, GR-14510 Kifisia, Greece

Tel. 30-1-620.01.20; Fax: 30-1-807.57.67; E-mail: helsinki@compulink.gr

_____________________________________________________________________

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

3/8/1997

 

TOPIC: “HELSINKI” DOESN'T GUARANTEE FAITHFULNESS TO HUMAN RIGHTS

 

By Panayote Elias Dimitras and Aaron Rhodes

 

 Since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act over 20 years ago, the name “Helsinki” has become emblematic of specific political  principles and values. The so-called “Human Dimension” commitments  undertaken by the members of the Organization for Security and  Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are “politically-binding” pledges to uphold the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief; the freedom of expression and the principle that independent media should be permitted; the freedom of movement; and the obligation to hold free and fair elections. The “Helsinki” commitments also obligate the participating countries to prevent torture and cruel and degrading treatment; to uphold international humanitarian law; to work toward the abolishment of capital punishment; to uphold the “rule of law”; to promote tolerance and protect the rights of national minorities.

 

 Following the lead of the first “Helsinki committees,” who in the 1970s stood up to the Soviet government by citing its failures to abide by its commitments under the Helsinki Final Act and recommending how it could better comply, human rights groups that call themselves by the “Helsinki” label thereby associate themselves with these basic principles and values. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) and its constituent 31 national Helsinki committees in Europe, North America and the former USSR, committed to the defense of human rights principles consistently and across the political and geographical spectrum, have by now established a long record of strong criticism of all OSCE governments for whatever human rights violations are recorded. We have done this in both the East and the West, and regardless of a government's political orientation. In many cases, including the troublesome case of Greece, an EU member, the IHF has been the sole source for the international exposure of such problems. But lately, the official defensive rhetoric of two of the Europe's most human rights-abusing governments is being supplied by an organization named the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. This organization is not affiliated with the IHF, whose British member is the Parliamentary Human Rights Group. But  the IHF now finds itself dogged by reporters and angry members, especially in Belarus and Albania where the British human rights organization has staked out strongly political positions defending Presidents Lukashenko and Berisha against criticisms of their human rights records, and the group has also defended the policies of Slovakia's authoritarian Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar.

 

In Belarus, Hitler-admiring President Lukashenko has made much use of press releases, articles and statements by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group to defend his program of returning Belarus to totalitarianism. Anyone believing in liberty, in freedom, in civil society, in the cherished democratic principle of checks and balances, in the need to constrain the absolute power of the state, and in free markets has to be horrified by the concentration of huge powers in the presidency; by a rubber-stamp parliament consisting of presidential appointees; by a program of “rule by decree;” by police violence and inhumane conditions in pre-trial detention for those having participate in opposition demonstration; and by the regime's economic re-nationalization program and it flaming attacks on civil society. But in a 1 December 1996 article published in the Wall Street Journal, a representative of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group defended the rigged referendum, which massively violated the law and democratic principles, and by which Lukashenko destroyed the 1992 constitution; they claimed it proved that Lukashenko was “genuinely popular.” How would anyone know that, in the absence of a free and fair poll? Of course, the red-brown Lukashenko regime has made maximum propaganda use of such political assertions by a “human rights group,” and as part of a program of degrading the IHF-affiliated Belarusan Helsinki Committee.

 

In recent days the British Helsinki Human Rights Groups has taken to de-legitimating the results of the recent Albanian election, in which its apparently favored candidate Sali Berisha lost his shirt. The story actually started a year ago, when virtually every international governmental and non-governmental organization monitoring the 1996 parliamentary elections concluded that Berisha's Democratic Party had improperly used the state apparatus, plus old-fashioned vote fraud, to win a landslide. A report by the British group at that time was a long political harangue against the OSCE, including a ludicrous charge that Albanian socialists have manipulated the OSCE's election monitoring mission by packing it with left-wing fellow-travelers from countries like Norway. The charge was made again two months ago in the pro-Berisha newspaper “Albania”.

 

The corruption of the 1996 elections was one of the factors feeding into the final collapse of confidence in the president and his party, whose undemocratic practices started soon after he first come in power in 1992. Now we are hearing from the British Helsinki Human Rights Group that the OSCE has papered-over the problems in the May 1997 elections. The group followed the official Berisha line that “the communists” are behind the armed gangs that made it impossible for Democratic Party candidates to campaign in some of the areas they control. They have even used selected and distorted incidents of violence to back their arguments, such as claiming that a Democratic Party leader's relative's assassination was politically motivated, which even the victim's family denied. They have also apparently deliberately ignored  equally condemnable incidents of violence involving victims who are members of other parties, the result of the chaos into which the country had slid.

 

It is hard to find any Albanian outside of the desperate inner circle of the Democratic Party who accepts this distortion of the facts. The Democratic Party also has ties with many of the gangs, while some of them are political free-agents. And, not every armed group is a criminal gang. The Democratic Party, too, has been associated with many of the attempts to disrupt the elections by violence; indeed, the “Presidential Guards” under Berisha's direct control were responsible for several such actions. The British Helsinki Group's Jonathan Sunley, in another Wall Street Jounral article (2 July) quotes Vlore's “Public Salvation Committee statement that they well topple Berisha “dead or alive,” but forgets the oath of Berisha to his guard that he will prevent the socialists from coming to power. Anyone who has spent a night in Tirana in the past months knows that the armed violence there is often highly coordinated and would be impossible without some level of approval or even cooperation with the police and other officials.

 

All the Albanian parties agreed to accept the results of the elections, but in recent days, and using arguments like Sunley's, it seems that the Berisha clique has joined forces with the other big loser, viz. the would-be King, attempting once again to create chaos,

which always serves to keep those who would have dictatorial powers. The IHF published a well-documented statement about the recent Albanian elections. Irregularities were mentioned, but overall, and especially under the circumstances, we considered the elections free and fair, like almost all other monitors. This did not prevent us from including in our statement a warning that Albania's human rights record is a far cry from expected standards, and an appeal to the new government to work towards its improvement.

 

To avoid confusion, our statement carried a note that the IHF is not associated with the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. To retaliate, British Helsinki Human Rights Group published a denunciation of the IHF in -where else?- “Albania”, as full of distortions as anything ever published in the notoriously truth-trashing Albanian state

media-a piece that sounds like denunciations the IHF  receives from statists in the region who resent independent human rights monitors, decorated with prickly Oxford debating-club flourishes.  Our uncompromising 15-year record is a guarantee that we will be as vigilant in Albania as in Belarus, Croatia, Serbia, Kosova or Turkey. But our job isn't made any easier by the work of another group which, rather than monitoring adherence to the Helsinki principles, seems to prefer the role of PR flack for a new breed of authoritarian rulers in Europe.

 

 

Panayote Elias Dimitras is Spokesperson for Greek Helsinki Monitor & Minority Rights Group - Greece (Athens).  Aaron Rhodes is Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (Vienna).