Day: July 25, 2022

Dear Minister, Mr. Ambassador,

Dear Miltiadis,

Honorable Ambassador ad honorem, Mr. Bitsios,

General-Secretary,

Ladies and Gentlemen Ambassadors,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Allow me to begin by welcoming former Minister and Ambassador Petros Molyviatis, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to such familiar surroundings of his.

Mr. Molyviatis is a noble man of public life and a noble representative of Greece’s Diplomatic Service. It is a great pleasure to have him with us today.

With today’s ceremony, we officially welcome to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the late former Foreign Minister and Ambassador Ad Hon., Dimitrios Bitsios’ archive, which was handed over to us by his son, Konstantinos, himself an Ambassador, and I would like to thank him heartily for this offer. It is not a symbolic gesture. It will contribute significantly to the effort to document important events in our country’s modern diplomatic history.

Dimitrios Bitsios joined the Diplomatic Service in 1939, on the eve of World War II. After the war, he served at our Consulate General and Embassy in Cairo and at our Embassy in London until 1954. In 1955 – that is when the archive that was handed over to us begins- he served as a member of the Greek Delegation to the Tripartite Conference on the Cyprus issue.

He served as Greece’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations for the first time during 1961-1965 and then again between 1967 and 1972. Shortly afterwards, following the restoration of democracy in Greece, Konstantinos Karamanlis initially appointed him as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of National Unity and then as Minister of Foreign Affairs until the elections of 1977.

This archive contains personal letters and documents relating to foreign policy issues, namely the issues that Dimitrios Bitsios dealt with during his multifaceted career.

A small number of items from his personal archive are also included, especially after he left the Ministry, that is, after the elections of 1977.

In addition to his father’s archive, Konstantinos Bitsios was kind enough to offer archival material from his own personal archive, for which we also thank him, as well as 16 volumes from the family’s collection, the majority of which pertain to the minutes of Security Council and the United Nations General Assembly discussions on the Cyprus issue and have already been added to the collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Library.

Once fully cataloged and organized, although it is being handed over to us in a very organized state, the archive will be made available to the Ministry’s services and, of course, will be digitized in its entirety, as part of the digitization process which we hope to have completed by the end of next year.

It will be extremely useful in conducting our foreign policy in a well-documented manner and allow me to use a personal experience of mine to demonstrate how important this is. In the context of the negotiation of the First Amendment Protocol to the Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States, the so-called MDCA, we referred to the exchange of the Bitsios-Kissinger letters; and it was particularly helpful that Konstantinos was able to bring before we could get hold of them, copies of those letters, which constituted the element that enabled us to ask the United States, the then US Secretary of State, Mr. Pompeo to send a letter to Prime Minister Mitsotakis.

Of course, as part of this material, the contacts with our neighbor beyond the Aegean, the contacts that Dimitrios Bitsios had with his Turkish counterparts from time to time, are also of great interest. In general, it was an extraordinarily eventful period, albeit not always a pleasant one. It’s about Greek-Turkish relations and the Cyprus issue.

In addition to accepting this archive, I believe a broader gesture of recognition for Dimitrios Bitsios’ contribution is appropriate.

I, therefore, have the pleasure and honour to announce today that the Historical Archive’s Reading Room, where scholars interested in Greek diplomatic history can come and work, will be renamed the “Dimitrios Bitsios Reading Room”.

We are grateful to Dimitrios Bitsios for his service to his country and we warmly thank his son for the initiative. I would like to assure him that the material will be used to the best of our ability for the benefit of our country.

Thank you very much.

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hellenic Republic

On 10 May, human rights defender Jeannot Randriamanana – who had been in arbitrary detention for two months- was granted provisional release. On 12 July, the Court of Appeal of Fianarantsoa upheld his conviction and two-year suspended sentence on the charges of “defamation and humiliation of members of Parliament and public servants and identity fraud”. Jeannot Randriamanana was convicted solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression when he denounced on Facebook the alleged mismanagement and embezzlement of humanitarian aid by several authority figures in the district of Nosy Varika, in east Madagascar.

Source: Amnesty international

Authorities in Benin and Togo must ensure that the fight against armed groups respects human rights, Amnesty International said today, amid reports of arbitrary arrests and detentions and violations of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression, and as French President Emmanuel Macron visits Benin on 27 and 28 July 2022.

People have been arbitrarily arrested and detained in both countries, including on the basis of community affiliation. In Togo, at least two opposition party assemblies were banned on the pretext of national security, and the editor of a newspaper was summoned by an administrative authority for reporting on suspicions of a “blunder” by the army in the death of seven children – claims which later turned out to be true, according to testimonies gathered by Amnesty International.

Security forces are committing human rights violations in the context of the fight against armed groups in Benin and Togo, particularly against members of the Fulani ethnic group. There is a risk that human rights violations will become systematic and worsen, as is the case in neighbouring countries that have been fighting the same armed groups for several years. The Beninese and Togolese authorities must put an end to this now.”  

“The threat of armed groups is also being used as a pretext to restrict civil and political rights. In his upcoming discussions with the Beninese authorities, French President Macron must not gloss over these abuses in the name of a common global fight against terrorism, or France’s economic and political interests.”

Since the end of 2021, the northern regions of Benin and Togo have been subject to increasingly frequent and deadly attacks attributed to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda-linked armed group formed in Mali that now extends to the northern regions of several countries in the Gulf of Guinea.

State of emergency

The authorities of Benin and Togo have adopted exceptional measures in response to attacks by armed groups. 

On 13 June 2022, a state of security emergency was established in the northern Savanes region of Togo for 90 days, which authorizes “the prohibition of movement and assembly of people on the public highway”, and allows the police and military to question nany person whose behaviour may lead to the belief that there is a risk that this person could commit an attack”, according to comments made on national television by the Minister of Territorial Administration.

On 29 June 2022, the Beninese authorities announced that “any refusal or abstention to collaborate with the Security and Defence Forces and local authorities in the fight against terrorism will be considered as support to armed groups and treated as such”.

As reaffirmed in a resolution on the Rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in July 2022, emergency measures must be necessary, proportionate to the assessed risk and applied in a lawful and non-discriminatory manner, even in times of crisis. They cannot be legitimately used to justify a crackdown on the exercise of human rights, especially in a context where people are likely to be intimidated or threatened by armed groups.

Arbitrary arrests and detentions

In north-east Benin on 19 March 2022, a 70-year-old man was arrested by the police in the town of Tanguiéta, in the Atacora Department bordering Burkina-Faso. He was released almost two weeks later without being charged. First, he was taken on a days-long 587km journey from Tanguiéta to Cotonou on the southern coast, followed by a week in detention there.

“He had come to Tanguiéta to take someone to hospital. When he left the hospital the police appeared and asked him if he was Fulani. He replied that he was, and he was taken away with several other men arrested the same day,” said one of his relatives, whose anonymity has been preserved to ensure their safety.

“During the journey the police hit them on the back with the butt of their guns. They drove at night and remained in custody during the day. One of the policemen told them that it is the Fulani who kill the policemen.”

In Togo, several dozen people were arbitrarily arrested on 16 May 2022 in the town of Timbou in the Savanes region on the basis of their membership of the Fulani ethnic group, according to the testimony of two people interviewed by Amnesty International. They were detained by the military forces of Timbou, Dapaong, Biankouri and Cinkassè without access to a lawyer, photographed and released on 20 and 21 May 2022 without being charged.

In Kpinkankandi, a man was arrested at his home by soldiers on the night of 24 May 2022 and taken to detention in Dapaong, where he remains.

“The military told him that a wanted person had entered his house. They handcuffed him and put him in a cell at the Mandouri gendarmerie before transferring him to the Borgou gendarmerie, where he remains until now,” said one of his relatives.

“We do not understand the reason for his detention, as no documents have been communicated to us. One of our neighbours was arrested in the same conditions and is still in detention in Dapaong.”

‘Turning point’ for peaceful assemblies and the human right to expression

Several assemblies of opposition political parties have been banned in recent months by the authorities in Togo under the pretext of national security, while assemblies of the ruling party have been authorized.

On 22 June 2022, the Ministry of Security and Civil Protection banned a scheduled assembly of a coalition of opposition parties stating that “the current worrying sub-regional and national security context, marked in particular by volatility and unpredictability, is likely to compromise ongoing efforts to preserve public order and national security”. On 29 June 2022, the prefect of Agoe-Nyieve banned a scheduled assembly of the opposition party citing the “current sub-regional and national security context and the need to preserve security and public order”.

The right to freedom of expression is also under threat. On 11 July 2022, Togo’s High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication summoned the director-in-chief of the daily newspaper Liberté following a front page referring to a possible “blunder” in the death of seven children in the village of Margba on 9 July 2022. The army later acknowledged responsibility for the deaths of the children, who were killed after being targeted by an aircraft that “mistook them for a column of jihadists”.

In Benin, two journalists were arrested near Pendjari Park while investigating the African Parks organization. Suspected of espionage, they were arrested and detained for four days outside of any legal framework.

Benin and Togo are at a turning point as they are increasingly targeted by armed groups. The international community, including France, must impress on the authorities of these two countries on the need to fulfil their international obligations in terms of human rights and humanitarian law, and by ensuring that the security context does not serve the abusive/arbitrary practices observed in recent months.

Background

Benin has experienced nearly twenty attacks by armed groups since the end of 2021, according to the vice-president as reported by Agence France-Presse, although authorities have only communicated some of them. Togo has suffered at least four attacks targeting members of the defence and security forces and civilians since November 2021.

Source: Amnesty international