ABTTF President: “If human rights are not a luxury, why does our country perceive human rights as a luxury and do not grant them to our community, which fights for human rights to survive as a minority? We ask this to our President and demand that the double standards applied to our community in the implementation of human rights in our country end immediately’’.
President of our country Greece, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, attended the commemoration event held in Geneva, Switzerland, on 11 December 2023, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In her speech at the event, President Sakellaropoulou indicated that we should all work together to keep the spirit of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights alive and protect the gains achieved since 1948, adding the following: “Human rights are not a luxury. They have always been and will remain an imperative for our international community as a whole’’.
Reminding that inequalities continue to persist even in democratic societies, President Sakellaropoulou noted that women, children, immigrants, refugees, persons with disability, the elderly and many other vulnerable social groups face intersectional forms of discrimination and fight for dignity and equal treatment.
“The president of our country emphasises that human rights are not a luxury, and we completely agree with her. However, if human rights are not a luxury, why does our country perceive human rights as a luxury and do not grant them to our community, which fights for human rights to survive as a minority? Why does our country still is not restoring restore the legal status of the Xanthi Turkish Union, our oldest non-governmental organisation, which has been waging a legal struggle for 40 years, despite the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, and does not allow it to hang its signboard again? Why are our autonomous primary schools being closed? Although we constitute 55 percent of the population in the prefecture of Rodopi and 45 percent in the prefecture of Xanthi, why are bilingual Turkish minority kindergartens not allowed to be opened in Western Thrace? We ask all these to our President, and we demand that the double standards applied against our community in the implementation of human rights in our country to end immediately’’ said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
