Man Arrested In Greece For "Blasphemous" Facebook Page

An anonymous reader writes "A 27-year old man was arrested yesterday in Greece (Greek-language original) by the electronic crime police, for creating a Facebook page "Geron Pastitsios" which made fun of an extremely respected Orthodox Christian monk who lived in Mount Athos, as well as the Greek Church. The arrest came promptly after the Greek far-right party — which holds 7% of the parliament seats — submitted an official petition asking the government to take down the page. The charges that the young man faces are 'blasphemy' and 'disrespect to the religious beliefs of others.'" What would the UN say?

Petition...

[kyriosdelis]

...to repeal the Greek blasphemy law is here [change.org].

The inmates are running the prison...

[Aardpig]

The monks on Mount Athos have a quite a history of corruption and greed (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatopedi_monastery#Land_deal_controversy [wikipedia.org]). I wonder if this blasphemy case is a retaliatory measure against a whistleblower?

Re:Don't you just loooove Conservatism?

[sumdumass]

I can understand that you have no concept of anything outside America. But you should note that this is about Greece, not the US. Crying about what you think is wrong in the US has nothing to do with the situation in a foreign country.

Just to speak out

[jdavidb]

I am a Christian. I am not Orthodox, but I have enjoyed reading about their church and traditions online, and I have a lot of respect for them as compared to a lot of Protestantism.

But this is intolerable. Requiring anybody to respect anything is slavery and is an unChristian violation of liberties. The Bible says in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 15 that the church's judgment is to be enforced only within the church. Even St. Paul the Apostle expressly denied that he had any authority to judge those who are outside of the church.

This is wrong, immoral, and unChristian.

Re:This arrest is blasphemous

[shutdown -p now]

Greek Orthodox Church is the only one that has special status in Greek constitution. Others need not apply. Go away, infidel.

Re:man it sucks here in the USA

[ethanms]

This is certainly news for nerds. A man is being arrested for posting something on facebook. To be arrested for posting ANYTHING on facebook seems *insane* to me.

The US, for it's faults, certainly does have some good points. I was watching an old (2 years) youtube video about Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) who was under investigation by the Australian Crimes Commission. He went on TV talking about the investigation, the video I was watching was a follow up by some sort of a talk show host who was saying that it's illegal to talk about the investigation or even admit you are being investigated--that seems absolutely insane to me as well. So not only are we going to accuse of crimes, but it will BE A CRIME if you tell anyone we are investigating you......... that is nuts.

a little inside information

[etash]

this guy had this page for a long time. he was mocking a (dead now) religious figure (father Paisios) who is supposed to have prophesied a lot of thing about the future of Greece and how Greece will take back lands from Turkey etc. etc. This father Paisios is very famous among the right-wing-religious-low-education nutjobs in Greece. Also a big deal of those prophecies have been constructed by others after his death. Also he is known for "miracles" that he has made after his death ( saving people blabla )

The problem was not the site that his guy had in facebook making fun of paisios. What hurt the religious nutjobs in Greece was the fact that this 27 years old guy, recently ( august if i'm not mistaken ) fabricated a new miracle of Paisios ( a story of how the mother of a young boy who had an accident and was in critical condition, visited the tomb of Paisios and the next day the boy miraculously came out of his coma ). So he spread word of his own fabricated miracle to a couple of Greek religious blogs and from then it was very easy for the most part of the (right,religious) Greek blogosphere and news site to reproduce the news. Hell, even a newspaper had a whole front page cover story on the miracle. The miracle was also front page in the Greek neo-nazi party ( golden dawn ) website

link with screenshots of the story where he confessed his prank: http://vlahatasamis.blogspot.gr/2012/08/blog-post_1999.html [blogspot.gr]

You can imagine now how the story ended. The guy came forward and said "gotcha, the miracle wasn't real, I just imagined it". So he actually trolled them and they bit hard. Of course that hurt a lot, and from that point it was only "logical" that those right-wing guys would ask for his arrest. The golden dawn party indeed brought the issue to the parliament .. and you know the rest.