BATI TRAKYA AZINLIĞI YÜKSEK TAHSİLLİLER DERNEĞİ ΣΥΛΛΟΓΟΣ ΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΟΝΩΝ ΜΕΙΟΝΟΤΗΤΑΣ ΔΥΤΙΚΗΣ ΘΡΑΚΗΣ WESTERN THRACE MINORITY UNIVERSITY GRADUATES ASSOCIATION UN Forum Fifteenth session of the Forum on Minority Issues 01 - 02 December 2022 ROOM XX, PALAIS DES NATIONS IN GENEVA REVIEW. RETHINK. REFORM. 30TH DECLARATION ON MINORITY RIGHTS ANNIVERSARY OF THE UN Rethink: Minority rights defenders and their role in promoting principles of the Declaration Thank you, Mr./Ms. Moderator, I am Kerem Aptourachim Oglou and I am representing Western Thrace Minority University Graduates Association as a member of the Turkish Minority of Western Thrace in Greece. Dear participants, In today's meaningful and crucial discussion regarding the role of human rights defenders in the promotion of UN DM, I'll present questions that human rights defenders for the Turkish minority in Western Thrace have been asking for decades, as well as the treatment they have received for merely raising the issue of their minority and human right. Accordingly, Articles 2 and 4 of the Declaration grant minorities the right to maintain their own language and culture, to practice and profess their own religion, and to establish their own associations. Let me present what we say in every opportunity as human rights defenders to give a voice to Turkish minority. The Turkish minority in Western Thrace is unable to get a bilingual education in Turkish and Greek at the kindergarten level, which is a crucial age for minority students to acquire their mother language and culture. Similar to this, over years the quality of education and Turkish language instruction in minority elementary schools has been weakened by arbitrary interventions by the state. The structural issues at the Minority High School in Xanthi, which offers instruction in inhuman conditions inside a former tobacco warehouse, represent an additional dimension of Greece's minority policy. Additionally, since the Turkish community of Rhodes and Cos Islands is not even acknowledged by the Greek government as a minority, they are not able to take advantage of any minority rights, including access to minority schools and education in their mother tongue Turkish, as well as religious rights. On the other hand, not recognizing minority religious leaders, appointing muftis, amending laws regulating mufti offices against the minority's will, and referring to elected muftis of the Turkish minority as "pseudomouftis" all contradict the UN Declaration's understanding of religious freedom. We as the human rights defenders when speak out for abovementioned human and minority rights abuses in the region we became target of some local Greek media organs and subject of criminal or financial investigations in tolerance of state. B.T.A.Y.T.D. Egnatias 75, 69100 Komotini, YUNANİSTAN Tel. & Fax: +30 25310 29705 Σ.Ε.Μ.Δ.Θ. Εγνατίας 75, 69100 Κομοτηνή, ΕΛΛΑΔΑ • E-mail: btaytd@otenet.gr W.T.M.U.G.A. Egnatias 75, 69100 Komotini, GREECE • Web: http://www.btaytd.com/