United Nations issued the last edition of Human Right’s Council report

6th annual Report of United Nations Human Rights Council meeting that was held between 10-28 December 2007 in Geneva, has been published. The report declares the decisions taken at the 6th Annual meeting, emphasizing elimination of all kinds of human rights violations all over the world. Meanwhile, one of the interesting points that was touched upon for the first time was the “religious rights violations”. In the last chapter of the report which was titled “Elimination of all kinds of Religious Basis Discrimination and Intolerance”, United Nations called for more guarantee for different belief groups’ and minority’s religious rights.

Religious freedoms covering an important portion of the report

The call for recognizing freedom of religious institutions was the most related issue for Western Thrace Turkish minority. As might be recalled, the Greek authorities do not recognize the Muftis elected by Western Thrace Turkish minority, but rather appoint their own Muftis. Regarding this issue, United Nations Report stated that establishing and managing their own religious institutions should be guaranteed for the minorities. In the report, it was especially underlined that member countries should respect minority’s basic rights to establish and manage their own religious bodies, adding the need to guarantee those rights via necessary national regulations. UN calls for more tolerance for minorities and their religious freedoms, stating that religious basis discrimination increased day by day.

ABTTF’s works under the auspices of United Nations are likely to strengthen UN’s call for eliminating religious basis discrimination against minorities. As might be recalled, ABTTF’s proposal that was presented by Baris Hasan, ABTTF’s Director of Academic Research, on human rights violations in Western Thrace was accepted at the Human Rights Council meetings. In the proposal, unfair treatment of Greek authorities regarding Muftis was the main issue.

Halit Habipoglu, chairman of ABTTF, made a statement and stated that “I believe that our continuous efforts to present Western Thrace Turkish minority religious problems positively affected the content of the report.”

UN statements should create concern for Greek authorities when we consider Greek’s unfair treatment regarding Muftis. It is widely expected that Greek authorities will have to reconsider their stance on the mentioned issue. It is clear that Greece has been outdated by the improvements realized in the international community recently. It is a big question mark whether Greek authorities will consider their mistake and decide to take the issue on the agenda in 2008.