UNPLEASANT BUT NECESSARY REMARKS ABOUT ORHAN HATZIIBRAHM

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: office@greekhelsinki.gr      http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/

 

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

31/3/1998

 

TOPIC: UNPLEASANT BUT NECESSARY REMARKS ABOUT

ORHAN HATZIIBRAHM

 

The cooperating organizations Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group - Greece consider it their duty to remark upon the statement of 20/3/98 by the lawyer of Xanthi Orhan Hatziibrahm (O.H.). The unacceptable and defamatory tone of his statement obliges us to make a new and final announcement about his overall attitude.

 

First of all, O.H. targeted his attack to two specific members of our organizations. However, it is well-known that one of them has been out of Greece for the past three months, whilst the other one had no immediate responsibility for the content of the 19/3/98 announcement denouncing the activities of O.H. Our organizations consist of collective bodies and, therefore, their comments represent their members as a whole.

 

Unfortunately, O.H. claims that, with two exceptions, he did not appear as our representative. However, in September 1997, he offered his help to our organizations on the issue of submission of petitions for granting temporary identity cards to the stateless persons of Xanthi (such as his colleague Adem Bekiroglou did about Rodopi). Something which was announced publicly and with his presence in many meetings in Thrace, but also by a published announcement of ours which was not  refuted.

 

In fact in December 1997 O.H. talked in a public meeting about the stateless people organized by us in Athens by his own wish and not at our invitation, as it can be proved by our relative announcements. It was then that he left the three deputies of the minority and the stateless Aissel Zeibek speechless, because he persistently refused to inform us about the petitions of stateless persons that he had taken over, and because he argued that he considered the whole mobilization for granting of documents to be useless.

 

After the decision for granting documents, O.H. called the stateless people and either advised them not to accept the temporary identity cards, because they would lose the right to regain their citizenship, or to return them because they would be useless. At the time, in a press release that had criticized a similar position of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, our organizations denounced O.H. - without mentioning his name -for this attitude. Only when it became common knowledge that the state had started re-granting citizenship automatically and despite his views that the whole struggle was useless, O.H. remembered the submission of petitions for revocation. In fact in his reply he admits that he had asked for the expenses of extrajudicial delivery, which was a superfluous burden for those persons, as we mentioned in our previous press release.

 

Why had not O.H. submitted similar petitions some months or years earlier, in order to push the administration as he claims? Since he constantly reminds us of his term as a deputy, is he able to inform the public of how many parliamentary questions or other activities he made concerning the stateless persons, or even Article 19? Someone would expect more modesty from a lawyer who, during a visit of a large delegation consisting of members of the GHM and the American Human Rights Watch/Helsinki in September 1997, had been caught in his office, ignoring the law 139/1975 about the rights of stateless persons. This was in spite of the fact that all the relative books were on the shelves of his library. Implementation of this law allows these people to be human beings, and not “ghosts”; to register legally in schools and to have legal stores, instead of being repeatedly brought to courts.

 

As a result of the above, our source of information about the unacceptable activities of O.H, is not only Abdulhalim Dede, the head of our office in Thrace, but also many stateless persons and the three deputies of the minority. Especially we should mention Birol Akifoglou, who coordinated 3 months ago, along with our members A. Dede and A. Zeibek, our efforts aiming for the settlement of the problems of all the stateless persons and the re-granting of their citizenship. That is why the personal and miserable attacks of O.H. against A. Dede are unsuccessful. Moreover, the arguments of O.H. are contradictory, since he claims that he is related to A. Dede although the latter is now presented by him as having been a reprehensible person for many years, even before they became related.

 

It is known that the human rights organizations are attacked and defamed on  a constant basis by those offended by their activities. Either because they share nationalistic and intolerant ideologies that are incompatible with the goals of these organizations, which are the creation of a truly democratic and tolerant society. Or because they have interests and targets which are diametrically opposed to the real interests of the citizens who belong to minorities. Such attacks do not come only from the majorities, but also from minorities, some of whose members, seem to imitate their oppressors.