Throughout the last two years, we have been witnessing an alarming increase of hate crime incidents in Greece. This is linked both to the reversion of the generalized welcoming sentiment towards refugees and migrants that was prevalent in Greece throughout 2015-2016, and to the fact that the Golden Dawn trial is in a turning point, triggering new developments.

Within this context, new formulations and modus operandi of organized racist groups appear, such as targeting refugee shelters and homes of refugees,  or targeting lawyers and human rights defenders that are directly linked with the Golden Dawn trial, as well as the appearance of new organized racist groups that substitute for the ones we had seen in the past and are now dismantled because of the GD trial. At the same time racist violence incidents have appeared in the daily life of this population in the communities e.g in the public transportation (metro/bus etc) while “traditional” forms of hate crimes that target specific communities are on the rise, an alarming phenomenon for which members of the civil society –including those of HumanRights360 – have filed a complaint before the Prosecutor of the High Court.

Combatting hate crime is a horizontal approach running throughout all HumanRights360 projects and coordinated actions in an advocacy and legal level through:

Recording incidents for the Network of Racist violence

(https://www.humanrights360.org/combatting-hate-crime/)

Participating to reports : Against Racism-ENAR, Report Justice gap: racism pervasive in criminal justice systems across (https://www.enar-eu.org/Justice-gap-racism-pervasive-in-criminal-justice-systems-across-Europe in which is highlighting that the mishandling of racially motivated crimes by the authorities, and in particular the police, begins with the recording of racist crimes. Evidence suggests that police do not take racist crime reports seriously or that they do not believe victims of such crimes

Promoting campaigns and in particular the campaign X them out! A Black Map of Athens (https://valtousx.gr/en/ ) which is designed to pinpoint and highlight the unseen criminality related to racist attacks in the public space and the campaign #OrdinanryWorkingPeople , which focuses on what unites us rather on what divides us

Facilitating the Greek edition of the research undertaken by Ipsos Greece for the international organisation More in Common, and commissioned in conjunction with the Social Change Initiative Attitudes towards national identity, immigration and refugees in Greece which provides insight into the attitudes of Greek people towards their country and its place in the world, their sense of national identity, and their views on immigration and refugees

Participating to researches : “Dominant Counter-Narratives to Islamophobia – Greece” that was conducted by University of Leeds within the context of Counter-Islamophobia Kit, (https://cik.leeds.ac.uk/publications/workstream-2-dominant-counter-narratives-to-islamophobia/dominant-counter-narratives-to-islamophobia-greece-ws2/)

Providing legal support to victims of racist crimes

Projects through which the horizontal approach of combatting hate crime is implemented are:

1. The Social Change Initiative
2. Border Monitoring with the support of Open Society Foundations
3. Embassy of The Kingdom of the Netherlands