World Day against Racism 21st of March 2022

The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is celebrated every year on 21 March. It was established in 1966 by the United Nations General Assembly in commemoration of a tragic event that shocked world public opinion.

On 21 March 1960, police in racist South Africa fired in cold blood at a student demonstration in the city of Sharpville, killing 70 people.

From the bloodshed in Sharpsville on 21 March 1960 against anti-Apartheid protesters to the present day, racism remains a dark page in human history.

Violence in all its forms is constantly changing its face, and it is imperative that we recognise the new challenges in time and protect individual freedoms and rights institutionally. By exhausting every margin provided by the Constitution and the legal framework, we must eliminate the danger for those who may be considered an expression of difference. For in reality, we are all different but also absolutely equal, in a Rule of Law that preserves democracy as the apple of our eye.

Greek society, which is struggling to remain standing and maintain its cohesion, is called upon to bear a disproportionate burden for its size and strength, that of the refugee flows. In a Europe which is conspicuously turning a deaf ear and in which the extreme right is fighting to regain power, it is a supreme democratic obligation to protect and safeguard the human rights of all citizens, but especially of the weak. Those individuals and groups who are targeted on the grounds of race, colour, religion, religion, descent, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

Any attempt to declare hatred, any incitement or exercise of violence, by anyone, organised or individual, anonymous, must be firmly and non-negotiably opposed by us as a whole as Greek society.