Sept 25, 2023. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
Democratic Union of the Greek Ethnic Minority, OMONIA, has denounced what
it considers violations of minority rights by census enumerators in the first
week of the population and housing census.
Through a communique for the media, OMONIA states that in minority areas “repeated cases are observed where the registrars exert unmotivated emotional pressure on citizens when they insist on registering answers about their Hellenic origin and Orthodox faith”.
“Registrars often show up without the necessary electronic equipment and collect data on the fly. In many cases they do not refer at all to the part of the Questionnaire related to data on nationality, religion and mother tongue.
They refuse to take into account the declaration of the residents about the members of the family unit who are not present.
They repeatedly do not return to the verification of answers for confirmation before the definitive registration on the Registration platform.
Repeated cases are observed where registrars exert unmotivated emotional pressure on citizens when they insist on registering answers about their Hellenic origin and Orthodox faith.
Moreover, in apartments where the registrars wrongly consider that their residents do not live there, they do not make the act of written notification for the repetition of the survey according to the provisions of the Registration Regulation.
Also,
it is intolerable the fact that the competent authorities in the local units
for following up the process, manifest deliberate indifference to the citizens’
complaints regarding the violations of the Registration rules”, it is state,
among other things, in the communique of OMONIA.
Census started on September 18 and will last 4 weeks, while the data will
be published by INSTAT in the summer of 2024.
The last census was conducted in 2011, where it resulted that the population
was 2,821,977 inhabitants, with a decrease of 8%, from the 2001 census.
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