People in Greece have a long tradition of engaging in protests as a means to express concerns over issues such as austerity measures and measures affecting workers’ rights, health, and education and cases of unlawful use of force by police.
In the past three years, the country has witnessed large-scale protests in Athens, Thessaloniki, and other cities, as well as protests abroad, demanding justice and accountability for the 2023 Tempi rail crash tragedy, which claimed 57 lives, many of them young students. The phrase “I Have No Oxygen,” spoken by one of the victims during the emergency call, became a rallying cry during the protests. Protests have also taken place in several cities and ports in solidarity with Palestinians and against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Despite this tradition and culture of engaging in protest as a means to express dissent, concern and campaign for change, as well as Greece being party to the key international treaties requiring protection for the right to peaceful assembly, Amnesty International has had persistent and serious concerns about violations of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Greece both in law and in practice.
Amnesty International has documented some of these violations, including specifically around unnecessary or excessive use of force in the policing of demonstrations, problematic legislation on assemblies and long-standing impunity in previous reports—one of them regionally focused—published in 2021 and 2024.
However, concerns expressed in those reports on Greece have only grown in the face of persistent efforts by the Greek authorities to further restrict the right to freedom of peaceful assembly as evidenced by a contentious legislative provision that came into effect in October 2025, introducing a blanket ban on protests and the peaceful occupation or alterations in parts of Syntagma Square outside the Greek Parliament and ongoing reports of unnecessary or excessive use of force in the context of the policing of demonstrations.
This report presents Amnesty International’s research into the current situation of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Greece and the organization’s assessment of the compliance by Greece with its international, regional and domestic obligations.
Read “Protests Are Not Battlefields: Patterns of Unlawful Use of Force by Police and Impunity in Greece.”