According to the organisations, the proposed amendments to the Immigration Code radically escalate criminal liability for members and employees of registered NGOs. As they explain, “the mere status of membership in an organisation registered in the NGO Registry upgrades misdemeanours such as facilitating illegal stay or refusing to hand over a travel document to felonies, carrying up to ten years’ imprisonment and fines of tens of thousands of euros”. At the same time, they note, “the initiation of criminal prosecution alone is sufficient to remove an organisation from the Registry”.
The statement comes just days after the trial of 24 humanitarian workers in Mytilene, who were prosecuted for eight years on criminal charges that the organisations describe as unjust. Against this background, the Ministry is now preparing amendments to articles 24 and 25 of the Immigration Code. With these changes, the organisations stress, “being an employee of an organisation registered in the NGO Registry of the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum is effectively criminalised”.
The signatories underline that “after five years of continuous recommendations by the European Union, the Council of Europe and the United Nations to lift arbitrary restrictions on the operation of civil society organisations supporting refugees and migrants, the ministry continues to pursue a policy of targeting”.
They argue that treating lawful participation in a registered organisation as an aggravating circumstance contradicts basic principles of criminal law and anti-crime policy. “The declared and approved exercise of the right to association is transformed into grounds for harsher punishment,” they state, adding that the provisions function primarily as a mechanism of intimidation.
The organisations also link the proposed amendments to earlier threats made by the Minister of Immigration and Asylum against lawyers representing migrants who arrived in Crete during the illegal three-month suspension of asylum procedures, cases that were temporarily blocked by interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights. Those threats, they recall, were condemned by national and international institutions and have never been withdrawn.
Concluding, the 56 organisations describe the legislative initiative as “unfair, illegal and absurd” and call for the immediate withdrawal of the proposed provisions, warning that they undermine civil society, the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights.
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