Activists convicted of falsifying accusation” of the Greek bishop for hate speeches

An Athens court sentenced two prominent human rights defenders to a three-year suspended sentence after they found the couple guilty of "wrongly" accusing a Greek Orthodox racial hate speech.

The three-member tribunal sentenced the activists to 12 months in prison after the Bishop Seraphim, the metropolitan of Piraeus, had acquitted anti-Semitic rhetoric.

"Today's outrageous judgment of today is representative of the institutionalized anti-Semitism, which exists in Greece," said Andrea Gilbert, one of the accused who works at the Greek legal group "Helsinki Monitor". "We immediately appealed and will fight against it."

The process on Tuesday was closely observed by human rights groups. Amnesty International called the conviction "alarming" and tweeted: "The judgment represents a direct threat to the right to freedom of expression and has a deterrent effect on human rights defenders who are committed to racism and hate speeches."

Before the hearing, Human Rights Watch described the charges against the activists as part of a worrying trend in Greece that the criminal judiciary is used by the state against civil society.

The activists, including the spokesman for the Greek Helsinki monitor, Panayote Dimitras, had filed a lawsuit against Seraphim in April 2017. In it, they threw public reversal to violence and hatred as well as abuse of the church office for the submission of a declaration before the country's Central Board of Jewish Communities (KIS) is crammed with "known anti -Semitic stereotypes, conspiracy theories and traditional anti -Jewish attitudes".

After a prosecutor had rejected the complaint more than two years later-with the argument that the statement in the context of the teaching of the Christian Orthodox Church should be seen-the bishop then filed his own advertisement against the activists because of supposedly false statements against him. A prosecutor referred the case to court after officially charging the couple in November.

It is not the first time that the religious leader ensures turmoil with his statements. In 2015, he attributed new laws that granted same -sex couples to expanded civil rights, the "International Zionist Monster", which controlled the left government at the time.

five years earlier he had told a local television station that Jews had staged the Holocaust and were to blame for the paralyzing debt crisis of Greece-statements that he later said were his own opinion and not that of the church.

Although Athens has recently made excellent work relationships with Israel, anti-Semitic attitudes in a society in which also regularly report vandalism on Jewish monuments are not uncommon.

The criminal complaints against the activists had been convicted by a number of human rights groups before the process, with many of the increasingly difficult circumstances under which NGOs work.

"Human rights defenders [in Greece] are constantly being targeted because of their lawful work," said the international secretariat of the world organization against torture and described the situation for activists in the country as critical. "[They] exposed to different types of attacks, including surveillance, judicial harassment, arbitrary arrests, detention, ill -treatment, entry bans and instructions."