Greeks battle over religious symbols

[Renew Deal]

This is about Greece's struggle with EU membership.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/video_and_audio/8423027.stm

[Jim__]

1. That seems to be an effect of a ruling in the Court of Strasbourg.

As discussed in this article:

In a judgment dated November 3, the European Court for the Rights of Man, in Strasbourg, considered that the presence of crucifixes in Italian classrooms was against the parents’ right to bring up their children according to their own convictions, and against the children’s right to religious liberty. On its part, the Italian government argued that this presence was natural, the crucifix being not only a religious symbol, but also, as the “flag” of the only Church named in the Constitution, a symbol of the Italian State. But the judges of Strasbourg deemed that the cross could be easily be interpreted by pupils of any age as a religious sign, a sign which may be disturbing for students of other religions or for atheistic children.

Already in 2002, Soile Lautsi, a Finnish-Italian woman, had asked the public school Vittorino da Feltre, in Abano Terme (Padua) attended at the time by her two children, to remove the crucifixes from the classrooms, because they were in opposition to the principle of secularization according to which she wanted to bring up her children. The Italian tribunals ruled against her. But, on November 3, the Court of Strasbourg declared that the compulsory presence of the symbol of a given religion had “restrained the parents’ right to bring up their children according to their conviction, as well as the children’s right to believe or not,” and it unanimously concluded that article 2 of Protocol 1 (right to instruction) and article 9 of the European Convention of the Rights of man (freedom of thought, of conscience and of religion) had been violated.

“The presence of a crucifies in the classrooms does not signify adhesion to Catholicism, but it is a symbol of our tradition,” declared Mariastella Gelmini, Italian Minister for Education to news agency Ansa. “The history of Italy is also transmitted through symbols: by suppressing them, we suppress a part of ourselves. In our country, no one wants to impose the Catholic religion.” And she added that “no one, and even less so an ideological European court, will manage to suppress our identity. Besides, our Constitution precisely recognizes a particular value to the Catholic religion.”
The Italian government has already announced that it would lodge an appeal against the decision of the Court of Strasbourg, using as intermediary Judge Nicolas Lettieri, who defends the Italian State before the European Court of the Rights of man. If the appeal were rejected, the decision would become final within three months. It would then be up to the Committee of the ministers of the European Council to decide, within six months, what actions the Italian government should undertake not to cause more violations of the law by the presence of crucifixes in classrooms.

The Italian government has already announced that it would lodge an appeal against the decision of the Court of Strasbourg, using as intermediary Judge Nicolas Lettieri, who defends the Italian State before the European Court of the Rights of man. If the appeal were rejected, the decision would become final within three months. It would then be up to the Committee of the ministers of the European Council to decide, within six months, what actions the Italian government should undertake not to cause more violations of the law by the presence of crucifixes in classrooms.

[BolivarianHero]

2. Greece...WTF?

How does a country that routinely give 60% of its vote to social democrats and Marxists (the right only wins because it benefits from some disproportionality in the system) have school prayer?