Third Party Intervention in Koutra & Katzaki v Greece

Transgender Europe, ILGA Europe, Greek Transgender Support Association, and the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe submitted to the European Court of Human Rights joint written comments in Electra Leda KOUTRA and Anastasia KATZAKI v. Greece (Application no. 459/16) on 13 July 2017.

The case involves a transgender woman and her lawyer, who challenge that their rights have been violated during organised systematic actions of police harrassment in Thessaloniki in the summer of 2013. The facts of the case are representative of wider patterns of state persecution of (trans) sex workers in Greece and beyond, which typically include assault and arbitrary arrest.

The submission presents, first, evidence available in that respect and describe the features of that phenomenon. Second, the comments analyse the positive obligations of States to protect the rights of (trans) sex workers against violence and discrimination based on gender identity under Article 14, in conjunction with Articles 3 and 5 of the Convention, from the perspective of international and comparative law.

See an earlier article on the systematic actions of police harassment in Thessaloniki