The European Court of Human Rights convicted Greece for violating the right to respect for private life over the 2012 publication by the Greek authorities of the identities -names and pictures – of HIV-positive sex workers and the circumstances in which they were required to undergo a blood test.
Judgment O.G. and Others v. Greece – disclosure of identities and medical data of prostitutes diagnosed with HIVhttps://t.co/erEWYWSraH#ECHR #CEDH #ECHRpress pic.twitter.com/2vo080kOXs
— ECHR CEDH (@ECHR_CEDH) January 23, 2024
In its decision, the court condemns Greece for violating Article 8 of the ECHR which refers to the Right to respect for private and family life and awarded a total of 70,000 euros to four of the women who had appealed to the European Court.
The court decided that Greece must within three months pay 20,000 euros for moral damage to two of the applicants and 15,000 to the other two.
The ECtHR decision was published on Tuesday and is available in French here.
It is recalled that the case concerns female prostitutes who were diagnosed as HIV-positive, with the then Minister of Health Andreas Loverdos and the then Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrysochoidis releasing their photos and personal information under the guise of protecting public health, so that to inform any of their customers and to be examined themselves.
It should be also recalled that in some cases, the Greek Health Ministry and the Ministry of Citizens’ Protection had also published the sex-workers’s parents’ name as well as birth place, KTG reported in March 2012.
In 2019, a Greek court acquitted the eleven drug-addicted women (three of whom were prosecuted due to death) of serial grievous bodily harm charges, while the extradited women law offense they were also facing had been reduced to a misdemeanor and it was time barred.
For three of them the prosecution was dropped due to defendants death. One of the women committed suicide.
In its decision, the court adopted the proposal of the district attorney, who recommended their acquittal, judging that from the evidentiary process “it did not appear at all that the defendants were prostituted, not at all that they came into body contact with other people without the use of a condom, not at all – except of the first defendant – that they knew their HIV status.”
The prosecutor legally documenting her acquittal proposal noted that “a condition for causing serious bodily harm is deceit or the failure to use precautions, recalls newspaper documento.gr
PS it is obvious that the two ministers and not the taxpayers will pay the fine imposed by the ECHR, isn’t it?
Your comment at the end of the article is the real sting in the tail. Politicians and public sector employees are never held liable for the consequences and cost of their incompetence and stupid actions.