End Greek Blasphemy Laws campaign continues
The campaign to abolish blasphemy laws in Greece continues in 2017. A very promising development is the fact that Ms. Maria Yannakaki was appointed as the Secretary-General for Transparency and Human Rights at the Ministry of Justice of Greece.
M. Yannakaki spoke at the EHF’s General Assemble in 2015 and where she clearly supported the organization’s call to abolish blasphemy laws in the country. Since then, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also called on Greece to repeal the two articles in its penal code, namely article 198 and 199.
It is therefore with great interest that both the European Humanist Federation as well as the International Humanist and Ethical Union follow these developments and issued the below letter addressed to Ms. Yannakaki to encourage and support her in her endeavor.
This is all the more important as blogger Philippos Louizos ( a.k.a. “Elder Pastitsios”), who was convicted in January 2014 at first instance to a suspended sentence of ten months in prison for the violation of the blasphemy Article 199 of the Greek Criminal Code will have his trial on appeal on 2 March 2017. It would be of utmost importance that the blasphemy articles are repealed before this date so as to allow Elder Pastitsios to benefit from this modernization of Greek Law.
Stay tuned for more!
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Read the letter here.