incidents of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and memorials and attacks on Muslim houses
of worship.
On 7 March 2015, In Dimetoka(Didimoticho), a town inhabited with a significant proportion
of Turkish Minority members, Dimetoka Muslims, Sports, Cultural and Educational
Association was attacked by unknown assailants. Nobody was injured, but windows were
broken.
On 17 April 2015, the Komotini (Gümülcine) Mahmutaga mosque located in the same yard
as Yenice Neighbourhood Minority School in Komotini, was set on fire by an unidentified
person or persons in the morning. At the Alankuyu Masjid, a hundred meters away, trees
were cut. Another noteworthy aspect of this attack is that the elected Mufti of Komotini
Ibrahim Serif’s residence is very close.
On 8 December 2015, the only political party of the Western Thrace Turkish Minority, the
Friendship Equality and Peace (FEP) Party suffered an attack. The new headquarters of
the FEP Party was attacked during the late hours by an organization called “Guardians of
Thrace”; the building’s windows were broken and the organization name was written on the
walls with blue paint. The sad thing is that the Party’s founder and minority’s leader Dr.
Sadik Ahmet’s car, in which he lost his life in 1995, was stolen. Following these events, the
criminal complaint and investigation started by the police, like in other attacks, brought no
solution and no official explanation by authorities regarding the attack.
Another hate crime was reported in Xanthi on 28 January 2016. Fully covered with masks,
a group of men kidnapped an imam who is working at the Elected Mufti Office of Xanthi
and forced him to get on a minibus. According to the imam, they threatened him saying that
they would kill the Elected Mufti of Xanthi and would attack his children. They also told that
they were closely following the movements of the Mufti Office. The perpetrators called
themselves “The Guardians of Thrace” and in the end they released the imam to bring
these threatening messages to the Mufti himself.
Although there is no history of ethnic and or religious violence in the region of Western
Thrace, there is a growing risk of division by combination factors of religion, ethnicity and
language during the multiple economic and humanitarian crises in Greece. Therefore we
recall Recommendation 20(c) that effective measures should be implemented for
advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination,
hostility or violence. We stress the importance of Recommendation 20(f), which mentions
establishment of an institutional framework for ensuring attention to minority issues within
relevant national bodies, including those dealing with humanitarian action.
We recall Recommendation 20(a) that States and non-State actors should at all times
respect, protection and fulfillment of minority rights as essential elements in their daily
governance and development programs in order to defuse potential tensions between
minority and majority communities and to foster integrated, resilient and prepared minority
communities that are not disadvantaged relative to other groups in society when crises
occur.
We recall Recommendation 20(h), (i), (j) that it is very important to work together with
minority communities and to establish complaint mechanism in order to prevent
discrimination on any grounds.