03/10/2012 Session
Strasbourg, 02.10.2012 – Impunity for violent attacks against migrants in Council of Europe states represents a danger for democracy, according to participants at a hearing with representatives of Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) organised in Strasbourg by PACE’s Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons Committee.
According to the Amnesty representative, the escalation of violence against migrants in Greece, including racially-motivated attacks, requires an urgent response that has so far not been taken. Human Rights Watch stressed that the police had largely failed to respond effectively to protect victims and hold perpetrators to account. Instead, both NGOs stressed, impunity for such attacks, either from law enforcement agents or others, is a big part of the problem, leaving many victims of violence in a fearful silence.
They both expressed concern that in the context of a deepening economic crisis anti-immigrant feelings in certain sectors of society were increasing at alarming levels.. Indications that members or supporters of the Golden Dawn party in Greece had been involved in xenophobic violence were particularly worrying, they said.
HRW also expressed concern about violence targeting migrants in Italy. “In our report on Everyday Intolerance, focusing on migrants, Italians of foreign descent as well as on Roma, we documented not only attacks, but also a pervasive climate of intolerance, nurtured by racist and xenophobic public discourse,” the HRW representative stressed.
Participants at the parliamentary hearing recognised the extreme problems faced by Greece and other Mediterranean countries, in terms of the state of the economy and the migratory pressures. They however made it clear that measures had to be taken to stop racist and xenophobic attacks, which were becoming a dangerous challenge to democracy.
According to AI and HRW further measures had to be taken in order to:
• ensure that all racially-motivated violence and other discriminatory or hate crimes be subjected to a full, prompt, independent and impartial investigation;
• establish and operate a special system for recording and monitoring racist incidents and hate crimes that links information from NGOs, hospitals and other appropriate bodies;
• train law enforcement officials.