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Muslim religious leader in Komotini sentenced for “participating in prayer”

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Muslim religious leader in Komotini sentenced for “participating in prayer”

According to Turkish news agencies, an elected Muslim religious leader in Komotini, Greece, was sentenced to 80 days in prison for usurping authority.

Ibrahim Serif is the ‘mufti’ (religious leader) of Komotini, which is home to a Muslim minority of around 150,000 people.

Serif tweeted on Wednesday that he was convicted by a court in Alexandroupoli, on Tuesday, on the basis of his participation in a Friday prayer in Evros, in 2016.

Serif also shared a copy of the court summons.

His lawyer has appealed the decision in a higher court.

Serif previously won a case in 1999 over the same charge after appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.

He was elected mufti of Komotini in 1990 by the local Muslim community.

The election of muftis by Muslims in Greece was regulated in the 1913 Treaty of Athens between Greece and the Ottoman Empire and was later included in the Greek Act 2345/1920.

However, Greece annulled this law in 1991 and started appointing the muftis itself.

The majority of Muslim Turks in the cities of Komotini and Xanthi do not recognise the Greek-appointed muftis and elect their own instead. These muftis are not recognised by the Greek state.

Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” reimagined at Greek National Opera in Athens

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Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” reimagined at Greek National Opera in Athens

Four seasons, a performance for children and adolescents, based on Antonio Vivaldi’s timeless masterpiece, is currently playing at the Greek National Opera Alternative Stage, according to int.ert.gr.

A work of great artistic value which praises nature, Four Seasons comes to life in a unique, playful and entertaining way, while developing children’s ecological awareness and artistic education.

The play will be staged by the Patari project under the guidance of talented director Sophia Paschou, a company whose performances in the last years have become a point of reference for children and young people’s theatre audiences.

The idea of recycling lies at the heart of this special project’s concept. Renowned composer Nikos Galenianos will use Vivaldi’s original music as a point of departure in order to create new soundscapes, which will range from Vivaldi’s original sound to music made from recyclable materials and electronically processed natural sounds.

CAST
Alexis Vidalakis, Giannis Giannoulis, Theodosis Konstas, Katerina Mavrogeorgi, Stefi Poulopoulou, Erifyli Stefanidou, Apostolis Psyhramis.

Sourced from Tornos News.

The Hellenic Initiative and HOPEgenesis tackle Greece’s population issue

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The Hellenic Initiative and HOPEgenesis tackle Greece’s population issue

HOPEgenesis is a Greek non-profit organisation active in the field of medicine and social welfare that addresses the major issue of Greece’s low birth rates.

Greece is heading towards a demographic deadlock as the birth-to-death ratio in Greece is negative.

It is estimated that by 2050 Greece’s population will have fallen to 8,000,000 citizens from today’s 10,800,000 million. According to official data from the Greek Ministry of the Interior, in 2017, Greece reported 88,132 births compared to 123,079 deaths, resulting in a dramatic population decline.

The Hellenic Initiative granted HOPEgenesis US$30,000 so that it can provide a medical and psychological umbrella to all pregnant women of the following six islands of the Dodecanese: Arkioi, Chalki, Kasos, Leipsoi, Patmos and Tilos.

HOPEgenesis provides free medical treatment to these women who have very limited access to medical facilities and enables them to travel to an affiliated medical unit and be properly monitored during their pregnancies by a team of obstetricians and gynaecologists.

These six islands have a total of 6,223 inhabitants. Based on their population, there should be 65 births per year and a total of 195 births in a three-year period.

However, according to the official Hellenic Statistical Authority’s figures (ELSTAT), the number of births during the three-year period of 2015-2017, prior to HOPEgenesis involvement, for the 6 islands was only 115.

HOPEgenesis operates in 354 areas across Greece and the network of affiliated hospitals of the organisation consists of 18 medical centres and over 80 doctors. Until today, it has supported more than 260 families in areas where the number of births was very low or even zero.

The organisation was awarded the European Citizen’s Prize 2018.

Sourced via Hellenic News of America

New tax laws in Greece lure investors during economic boom

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New tax laws in Greece lure investors during economic boom

PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis has announced a series of incentives to attract the global rich to invest in Greece.

On Thursday, the government revealed a legislative proposal of a flat tax of €100,000 on global earnings, if investors move their tax residence to Greece.

Mitsotakis said Greece is in need for investment if regeneration was to take hold.

This move came after Mitsotakis’ visit to Shanghai last week, where he told Chinese president Xi Jinping:

“Today in Greece there is a government that is determined to facilitate foreign investors, attract foreign capital and create wealth and prosperity for all Greeks in a way that is sustainable and protects the environment.”

Under the proposal, investors must reside in Greece for 183 days a year, and make a €500,00 euro investment within three years.

The tax law anticipates that further investments of the rich will have Greece’s businesses and households paying lower taxes.

Under the draft bill the corporate tax rate will be cut from 28% to 24%.

The relief measures in the programme, now put to parliament for debate, will apply until 2034.

“The tax incentive will run for a duration of up to 15 years and will include the benefit of no inheritance tax for assets outside Greece,” a senior official told Reuters.

“The investment can be in real estate, stocks or bonds. If the investment reaches €1.5m then the flat tax is cut by half.”

Investments of €3m or more would reduce the flat tax to €25,000.

The senior official also added that the measures would be irreversible despite changes in future government, so investors would be protected.

The government hopes the incentives will help lure back Greek shipping magnates who fled Greece due to its high taxes.

These measures were a result of the IMF’s economic report which predicted Greece’s economic rate would grow by 1.8% this year – higher than Australia’s.

Brussels – who released their autumn economic report on Thursday, said they foresaw Greece’s economy growing by 2% in 2021.

Greece itself are targeting economic growth rates of 2.8%, which the EU and other economic institutions found ambitious.

Though, the EU also predicts unemployment rates in Greece to drop from 17.3% to 15.4% in 2020. At the height of the economic crisis in 2008, Greece’s unemployment rate was almost 28%.

How Trump’s tariffs will impact Greece

The Greek Herald
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How Trump’s tariffs will impact Greece

US President Trump has implemented worldwide tariffs – higher taxes on imports and exports – leaving the world concerned for the possibility of a trade war.

Trump’s tariffs will target a range of goods, including Scotch whiskey, Italian cheeses, French wines and Greek peaches.

Greece is the world’s biggest exporter of tinned peaches, with 20% of their annual production being sent to the United States.

The import levy was historically 18%, but after the EU subsidised the manufacturing of ‘Airbus’ airplanes (the competitor of US’ Boeing), Trump responded by increasing the US import tax to 43%.

“Trump would do well to behave himself and let us get to work so we can have a livelihood,” said peach farmer Tasos Halkidis. “We don’t want this tariff business,” he told Reuters.

Kostas Apostolou, head of the Greek Canners Association, said the dispute is threatening their livelihood and will potentially shut them out of their biggest market.

“Why are they punishing us?” Apostolou told Reuters.

The increase in tariffs came into effect on October 18, just as Greece prepared to ship 50 million tins to the United States.

The US is dependent on Greece’s tinned peaces in their supermarkets, hospitals, schools, and military. Many of these companies have stated they are not prepared to pay for any tariff increases, which would result in order cancellations of peaches from Greece.

“Suddenly there was this (trade) war … We could never imagine that this could affect our jobs here in this small area,” Apostolou said.

Greece have tailored their tinned products to suit their US’ packaging requirements, which means they cannot be sold in Europe, Asia or Latin America.

Industry experts predict the impact of Trump’s tariffs on Greece will be roughly $50 million.

These tariffs will directly impact Greece’s farmers, who harvest millions of peaches on 50,000 acres, housing 10,000 small farms and supporting around 10,000 workers.

Vasili’s Taxidi: Athena Cakes – Marrickville’s longest running cake shop

The Greek Herald
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Vasili’s Taxidi: Athena Cakes – Marrickville’s longest running cake shop

By Vasilios Vasilas

What is interesting about shops and businesses that have been located at the same spot for decades is these shop and business owners have witnessed all the changes in their local area. They have seen shops and businesses come and go, the demographics change, and people’s attitudes and values change too. In the last fifty years, Marrickville has seen great developments and changes, and will continue to do so.

Just across the road from Danas Deli Café is Marrickville’s longest running cake shop, Athena Cake Shop, and talking to Efy Ahtypis (nee: Spyropoulos) of Athena Cake Shop, it is so fascinating to listen to her knowledge of the local area and its contemporary history.

Her father, Aristomenis Spyropoulos, had worked in Nikolaos Karavitis’ cake shop in Patra from the age of twelve; years later, Aristomenis and his wife, Athina, established their own cake shop, Astoria, in Nafpaktos.

As a young child, Efy migrated to Australia with her parents, Aristomenis and Athina, and brother, Kosmas, in 1969. Aristomenis’ first job was in the ‘Glass Factory’ and he also worked in an oil factory as well as the Hellenic Bakery (called Artos Bakery at the time).

Within two years, the Spyropoulos family bought their first home; within four years, they bought the premises, on Illawarra Road, Marrickville, to establish a cake shop. Aristomenis decided to call the cake shop, Athena Cakes, after his wife, Athina. When Kosmas and Efy became teenagers, they also helped their parents in this family buinsess.

Over forty- five years, Athena Cake Shop has been through a few renovations; Aristomenis and Athina retired; and, Efy and her husband, Christos, have been running the business since 1995.

But what has been truly amazing is the changes to Marrickville Efy and her family have experienced over the years, as she recounts the story of when Athena Cake Shop, local Australians at the time would pass the shop and ask Aristomenis if he had anything Australian so he would also make up ‘slabs’ of jam and cream and lamingtons to cater for their requests and tastes.

As Efy points out, ‘Nowadays, so many Australians come into the shop and they love the Greek sweets and savouries! It is rather amusing to hear them order a ‘baklava with custard’ (‘galaktobouriko’) and a ‘tiropita with spinach’ (spanakopita). And they love eating our mousaka! These days, people really want good quality food and our shop caters for this. Gone are the days (1980s) when people were rushing for cheap fast food… Our customers are looking for freshly baked food, with no preservatives…’

As I have been emphasising for some time now, it is shops and businesses such as Athena Cake Shop that has played an important role in maintaining our Greek identity and culture- through their vast array of sweets, biscuits and cakes; equally important is how Efy and her family have broadened the appeal of their recipes and products to influence Australian tastes and likes.

It is so important to highlight how so many Greek foods are now part of the Australian cuisine and it is fitting to pay tribute to shops such as Athena Cakes and its contribution towards this process and acceptance.

Greek-American shop owner uses Greek heritage as defence for tax fraud

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Greek-American shop owner uses Greek heritage as defence for tax fraud

Emanuel Panousos aka Mike Panousos, a shop owner in Boston, USA, pleaded for leniency at his tax fraud sentencing at the US District Court because it “was simply his Greek way of doing business,” the Boston Herald reported.

Mr Panousos, 43, is the manager of Mike’s Famous Roast Beef and Pizza in Boston, USA.

During his sentencing, on November 5th, US District Judge Woodlock, rhetorically asked, “Is there a Greek family exception to income tax laws?”

Panousos reportedly “diverted cash receipts to himself and paid for his company’s supplies and portions of his employees’ wages with cash between 2013 and 2016, for an amount totaling approximately $1.9 million,” the Boston Herald reported, adding that “he pleaded guilty in May to two false tax return charges for avoiding $387,180 in taxes.”

His case included a mitigating letter from psychologist, Daniel Kriegman, which blamed Panousos’ behaviour on “his parents and brother, who were sentenced to probation last year for their own tax evasion scheme at their Peabody pizza restaurant,” the Boston Herald reported.

The letter wrote, “Did [Emanuel] know he was cheating on his taxes? Without question, but that was simply his Greek immigrant family’s way of doing business,” and citing a news article, wrote that the behaviour was “probably brought overseas from Greece, ‘a country where everyone knows a thousand ways around the rules.”

Judge Woodlock responded that the “inappropriate conclusions undermined the value of his letter,” the Boston Herald reported.

“I did not consider stereotypes of Greek families in fashioning [a] sentence,” the judge said.

Woodlock issued a lower end sentence of 21 to 27 month prosecutor recommendation, and ordered Panousos to pay a $7500 fine as well as the amount of owed taxes.

Greek migrant hotspot now EU’s ‘worst rights issue’

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Greek migrant hotspot now EU’s ‘worst rights issue’

Almost four years after its launch with great fanfare, the EU’s so-called ‘hotspots’ in Greece have morphed into its worst fundamental rights issue.

The head of the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, Michael O’Flaherty, told MEPs on Wednesday (6 November) that the plight of trapped migrants on the islands “is the single most worrying fundamental rights issue that we are confronting anywhere in the European Union.”

His comment, qualified as personal, follow a complete breakdown of the EU and Greek efforts to help some 14,000 people stuck at the Moria camp in Lesbos island, designed to house just 3,000.

The hotspot, a term coined by the EU to obfuscate the mention of camps given Europe’s Nazi past, was meant to rapidly and humanely deal with people arriving from Turkey seeking international protection.

But in reality, people (of which around half are children) are forced to live in conditions so bad that some have tried to kill themselves given the misery, traumas, and utter lack of hope.

“Some [suicide attempts] were younger than 10 years old,” said Inma Vazquez from NGO Doctors Without Borders, noting that around a quarter of their child mental health patients in Lesbos also commit self-harm.

Some of those stuck on the islands have been there for well over a year. In Lesbos, there is a toilet for every 200 people. In Samos, another Greek island, it is one for every 300.

Teenagers are now reportedly turning to prostitution to make ends meet as many are forced to live under tarpaulin sheets, sleep out in the open, and struggle to fight away hunger.
Many of these conditions have persisted for years amid repeated promises by the European Commission and the Greek authorities that everything is being done to improve the conditions.

The commission has since offloaded the blame onto the Greek government, while Athens attacks other EU states for not doing more to help.

Both appear increasingly trapped by the EU-Turkey deal – with an assertive Ankara using it as leverage against an EU that is bent on preventing any repeat of the one million plus migrant arrivals in 2015.

That deal included the EU spending €6bn to help some 3.6 million refugees in Turkey, funds which are mostly shuffled through big NGOs like the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The plan was also supposed to send back rejected arrivals from the Greek islands but backfired given Turkey’s patchy application of the 1951 Refugee Convention and Greece’s slow asylum process and appeals system.

At the time, the European Commission had also given its legal okay on the non-binding pact, amid claims Turkey would extend protection rights to all non-Syrians such as Afghans and Iraqis.

Turkey’s recent invasion into north-east Syria has since displaced some 130,000 people but the vast majority currently heading to the Greek islands are from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Close to 54,000 people have reached the islands from Turkey since the start of 2019, compared to just over 42,000 last year.

The new centre-right Greek government now says it is doing everything possible to ease the overcrowding on the islands, which totals some 35,000, but is unable to manage despite receiving €2bn of EU funds in aid.

“We can’t manage so many people when they arrive at the same time. We cannot do it. We can’t help everyone, we can’t guarantee everything all the time. We are not providing enough protection,” said Michalis Chrisochoidis, Greece’s minister for citizens’ protection.

Part of Chrisochoidis response to the overcrowding, however, has only sharpened further criticism from human rights groups.

The Greek government recently passed a new asylum law it says aims to ease a backlog of 68,000 asylum demands and speed-up new requests.

But some of those provisions are controversial and described by Human Rights Watch as an effort to lock access to protection and increase deportations.

Chrisochoidis also appealed for EU states to help take in some 4,000 unaccompanied minors – but was then broadly ignored.

“I have asked for each country to take in voluntarily a small number of these unaccompanied minors. Unfortunately, I received only one response to that letter,” he said.

Sourced from EU Observer.

Chief of the Greek armed forces says Greece needs to change its “tactics” on migration

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Chief of the Greek armed forces says Greece needs to change its “tactics” on migration

Greece is facing an “asymmetrical threat” from Turkey vis-a-vis the refugee and migration crisis, and the European union is “incapable and unwilling” to deal with the issue, except “superficially, putting money into it,” the honorary chief of the Greek armed forces, Konstantinos Ginis, told SKAI on Tuesday.

The retired admiral said that Greece needs to change its “tactics” towards Turkey on the issue, suggesting that Athens could denounce the EU-Turkey agreement on migration and seek a new deal that would compel all the countries in the bloc to share the burden more equally.

Greece must also stress to Turkey that its failure to staunch refugee and migrant flows across the Aegean is an “act of aggression,” Ginis said, adding that Athens needs to treat it as such.

Ginis dismissed efforts by the government to speed up the asylum procedure as a “tertiary issue,” saying that the focus needs to be on “why all these people are coming and how.”

“Do we have a strategy for preventing their arrival?” Ginis asked, saying that Greece needs to strengthen its presence along its border with Turkey.

He also slammed an ongoing scheme for transferring thousands of refugees from overcrowded island camps to the mainland, saying that it “sends the wrong message” when photographs of buses taking refugees and migrants to hotels are publicly broadcast. “It’s like we’re telling them: ‘Come over’,” he said.

Sourced via Ekathimerini.

Mitsotakis visit to China: successful outcomes for Greek investments

The Greek Herald
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Mitsotakis visit to China: successful outcomes for Greek investments

“Greece offers major comparative advantages as a trade hub and tourism destination, both through its geostrategic position and through its cultural heritage and natural beauty,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis noted in an interview with the Chinese network CGTN on Tuesday.

“Greece is ‘open for business’. We are attracting Chinese, European, American and Japanese investments,” said the PM.

“I would like, however, to point out that the Chinese invested in the port of Piraeus when few other countries were considering direct investments in Greece’s infrastructure. This is, therefore, a project that will move forward. This is a commitment that we have made and I sincerely believe it is a win-win project for all involved.”

The Greek Prime Minister pointed out that ships carrying goods from Asia to Europe could save between 7 to 10 days in travel, if they sailed to the port of Piraeus instead of the ports of northern Europe.

He also stressed that Greece’s ultimate goal is to make Piraeus the biggest port in Europe, and that the Greek government has approved a new cycle of investments in two months that will significantly upgrade the port.

Mitsotakis noted the government’s determination to make the maximum use of actions to open up the massive Chinese market to Greek goods, in a bid to boost growth through exports.

He said that Greece wants to increase its footprint in the agri-food products market, through its high-quality wines, cheeses and olive oil, at a time when a growing Chinese middle class is exploring new gastronomic sensations.

“It is our intention to make our presence felt in China,” Mitsotakis said, noting that Greek products could benefit from the EU-China agreement for protecting geographic origin indication products, such as feta cheese.

With respect to tourism, the Greek premier repeated that Greece’s goal was to attract 500,000 Chinese tourists by 2021. He pointed out that Greece was the first country on the route from China to Europe, while its rich history offered a unique experience for visitors.

“If you are Chinese and come to Europe, you must come to Greece,” Mitsotakis said, while highlighting the “cultural connection” between two ancient civilisations that had both had a profound impact on the world, like those of Greece and China.

He said that Greece has a strategy for boosting cultural exchanges and tourism, with 2021 to be a Year of Culture and Tourism.

Referring to the introduction of a second direct flight between Greece and China, from Shanghai to Athens, Mitsotakis said the Greek side hoped to see even more direct air connections and greater promotion of Greek services in major electronic travel platforms, as well as referring to Greece’s desire to attract Chinese audiovisual productions to Greece, to help the broader Chinese public understand “what Greece means.”

Sourced via ANA.

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