A petition calling for the jailing of the strawberry farmers, who were cleared by a Greek court for shooting and wounding 28 Bangladeshi workers in Manolada, southern Greece last year, was delivered on Wednesday to the Greek ambassador in the Irish capital of Dublin, according the Journal.
The two farmers opened fire in April 2013 on the Bangladeshi strawberry pickers who were demanding six months in unpaid salaries, seriously injuring four of them.
The farmers were subsequently acquitted by a Greek court in July despite admitting they shot the workers, triggering outrage in Greece and abroad with human right groups calling it a ‘racist scandal’.
The victims lawyer Moisis Karabeyidis, who felt ‘ashamed as a Greek’, said he would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Gerry Lydon, the man behind the petition – ‘Jail Greek farmers who walked free after shooting 28 Bangladeshi workers’ – is also calling for a boycott of Greek strawberries and has said he will e-mail Irish MEPs and business who deal with Greek strawberry farms, to that effect.
On the ‘Boycott Greek strawberries and keep the EU slavery free‘ Facebook page, petitioners say the large number of signatures “should hopefully show the Greek ambassador that, even though migrants seem powerless, there are people all over the world ready to show solidarity with them.”