GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR & MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP-GREECE
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 web site: http://www.greekhelsinki.gr
 

PRESS RELEASE

12/2/1999

TOPIC: ATHENS NEWS AGENCY AND GREEK MFA FABRICATED "FAVORABLE" COUNCIL
OF EUROPE REPORT ON MINORITY IN THRACE

The cooperating organizations Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority
Rights Group - Greece denounce Athens News Agency (ANA) and the Greek
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) for publishing a fabricated story on
a supposed "favorable" Council of Europe report on the minority in
Thrace, on 28/1/1999. They call on the leadership of ANA and MFA to
take swift appropriate action, which will convincingly indicate that
this was an isolated incident of "excessive zeal" of their staff that
does not reflect the official policy of these agencies. Since a
journalist signed the ANA text, the Association of Athens Dailies'
Journalists of (ESIEA) is called upon to also take a stand so that
such "fabrication" of news not be considered as tolerable to the
country's journalist community.

More specifically, on 28/1 ANA carried a story with the title "CoE
report: No worry over condition of Muslim minority in Thrace" saying
that "A Council of Europe report on the Greek Muslim minority was
released yesterday, noting that conditions of the minority in western
Thrace does not justify any worries. The Italian and Moldovan
[deputies] authors of the report, entitled 'The conditions of human
rights in Greece and especially in Thrace,' said the condition of the
minority was anything but desperate, while it does not warrant the
concern of the Council of Europe."

(http://www.hri.org/news/greek/ana/1999/99-01-28.ana.html#23).
 
An identical text (unsigned and without any reference to a source) was
also published on the same day in the newsletter "Cyber Thesis" of the
Foreign Ministry, distributed in the Internet.


Our organizations asked the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe for the report, only to receive the answer (the correspondence
is available upon request) that "no report 'on the Greek Muslim
minority' was released recently. (…) The Legal Affairs Committee has
indeed now appointed an Italian and a Moldovan rapporteur to seek
further information, but these rapporteurs have just started [their
work] and not yet produced any paper."