E/CN.4/1997/91 page 12 A/51/542/Add.2) at the invitation of the Sudanese Government and pursuant to General Assembly resolution 50/197 and Commission on Human Rights resolution 1996/73. The two reports on these visits he submitted to the General Assembly at its fifty-first session are also before the Commission on Human Rights at its current session for information. 47. The thrust of the report on Greece (A/51/542/Add.1) can be summarized in the following remarks. 48. The Greek Constitution guarantees freedom of belief to all whilst freedom of worship, although constitutionally protected, may be subject to certain limitations owing to the establishment of the Eastern Orthodox Church as the “dominant religion”, the uncertainties surrounding the notion of a “known religion”, and the fact that proselytizing is banned. This situation has definite repercussions on religious minorities. 49. The Catholic, Protestant and Jehovah's Witness minorities are confronted to varying degrees with a general climate of intolerance. Subject to direct or indirect, often insidious attacks, they tend to be consigned to the sidelines both in religious matters and in professional life and education. The State does not always appear to be independent enough of the dominant Orthodox Church. Among the Christian minorities, the plight of the Jehovah's Witnesses gives the greatest cause for concern: adherents are often convicted and fined or, worse, imprisoned, and they suffer social ostracism which sometimes takes the form of physical and verbal abuse. This is certainly not unconnected to their religious militancy as expressed through their proselytizing activities, their conscientious objection to military service and the various public demonstrations they stage which challenge the Orthodox Church and aspects of State legislative and political activity. 50. The Jewish minority, by contrast, seems to escape discrimination, but like the other minorities it decries the indication of religion on identity cards (which has not yet been banned despite an appeal by the European Parliament). 51. The situation of the Muslim minority in western Thrace, despite some positive developments in, for example, higher education, has not budged, and there have been tensions and serious blocks, as can be seen in the way “muftis” are appointed, the way religious property is managed and the status of religious and mother-tongue instruction. Serious religious malaise is spreading, and is increasingly being taken up for reasons evidently nothing to do with religion. The status of the Muslim minority in western Thrace is intrinsically both a religious and a political question in which religion is often turned to political ends. The situation is best explained by political relations between Greece and Turkey. Most people the Special Rapporteur has met who have no governmental ties, whatever their political stripe, emphasize that the Muslim minority in Thrace is a hostage to relations between Greece and Turkey: Turkey regards them as political pawns and Greece pays little heed to the community, which has long been kept on the sidelines and subjected to both visible and latent forms of intolerance. The fate of the Muslims in Thrace is still bound up with that of the Greek minority and Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople, which are said to suffer intolerance and discrimination in Turkey.