Welcome to Vasiliadis Pavlos web page! .  

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What is contained in that site? 1. Info about me (photos, hobbies, friends, links, etc). 2. The condition of religious conscientious objectors of military service at Greece..

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   My name is Pavlos Vasiliadis and I come from Thessaloniki, Greece. I was born 26 years ago! -  --( o )--  - I am a Computer Engineer and I work as a Computer Science Teacher at a High School of Thessaloniki. Also I have my personal computer trading and servicing company named PC Action. I have studied Information Systems Engineering at the Technological Institute (TEI) of Thessaloniki. -  --( o )--  - As a Jehovah's Witness, great part of my time is spent to spiritual activities, like preaching, studying the Bible, attending meetings, etc. I love listening to good music, esp. the black music family (R&B, soul, jazz, funk, etc) and spending time with good friends (either physical or virtual ones!). My link with sports is jogging, cycling and playing basketball, but I adore hiking as well. Also, I like reading on religion, history, sociology and literature. My current occupation is learning russian, in order to help russian-speaking people get to know more about God. In addition, I am attending yearlong courses on pedagogics, teaching and psychology. I hate lies, nationalism, racism, cooked leeks and over-anxiety...  If you want to see some photographs of me and my family click here... . .

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  . . THE CONDITION OF RELIGIOUS CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS IN GREECE:    

At Military Prison of Avlona, Attiki. (unofficial foto) . .   "One 'Jehovah Witness' was executed  at Larisa-He didn't take up a gun" Newsparer ToVima, 11-Feb-1949

.   On March 23, 1997 I was released from the Agricultural Prison of Kassandra. After 362 days of imprisonment I was back to the world. But let's see the things from the very beginning:  March 27, 1996: I was presented to join the army at the military camp of Thiva. Our refusal (we were 6 male Jehovah's Witnesses) to take the regimentals/clothing and armour resulted in our confinement at the camp infirmary/recovery ward. We stayed there for about a month. Most of the soldiers and officers were polite toward us.  April 24, 1996: The Military Court sentenced  us 4 years imprisonment each. Then we were led to the Military Prison of Avlona. The condition there was really awful: small and crowded cells with a window near the ceiling, non-nutricial food, few and full of problems visits by relatives, about 1 hour every day being at yard, visits [only by relatives] behind a 3-fold metal netting, etc... For decreasing the 4-years sentence we should work every day: work at kitchen, cleaning, "gardening", etc. We were 74 up to 114 Jehovah's Witnesses there.  August 20, 1996: Trasported to Agricultural Prison of Kassandra, Chalkidiki. Daily working with animals (milking cows, shepherding lambs), or agricultural activities. Visits were very restricted. The buildings were/are pretty old--leaking when rains. Because of my degree on Computer Software Engineering, I was working for about 6 months at the Prison Secretary's Office. I helped them to have a complete computer data processing. We were 8 up to 35 Jehovah's Witnesses there.  March 23, 1997: Free again... I forgot to say that we didn't have any leave for more than 10 months. We were almost out of time/world for that period!

    Religious Conscientious Objectors (Jehovah's Witnesses) in Greece  

decade	persons	final sentence (in years)	served sentence
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990-1994	127 79 137 288 1.279 818	448 372 663 960 4.972 2.635	283 226 482 612 2.975 1.153
total:	2.728	10.050	5.731

 !!

Lifelong: Death Penalty: Exile: Executed: Tortured to death:

26  42  68  2  5

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Info Source: 1. Conscientious Objectors,

Kostas Tsarouhas, ISBN 960-344-176-7

 2. Human Rights Without Frontiers:

Greece-Deliberate Violations of Human Rights,

B.P. 1, 7090 B-l-C, Belgium

3. Amnesty International Report,

1992, Greece

 

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Why are Jehovah's Witnesses ready to suffer to death than join the army?  

I would like to mention only historical sources:

• "Whether warfare is proper at all for Christians...I banish from us the military life." (Tertullian (c. 200 C.E.), "The Chaplet, or De Corona" (XI), The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1957, Vol. III, pp. 99, 100)
• "We who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have each through the whole earth changed our warlike weapons,-our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into implements of tillage." (Justin Martyr, of the second century C.E., in his "Dialogue With Trypho, a Jew" (CX), The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, p. 254)
• "A careful review of all the information available goes to show that, until the time of Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.], no Christian became a soldier; and no soldier, after becoming a Christian, remained in military service." (The Rise of Christianity, by E. W. Barnes, 1947, p. 333)
• "It will be seen presently that the evidence for the existence of a single Christian soldier between 60 and about 165 A.D. is exceedingly slight; . . . up to the reign of Marcus Aurelius at least, no Christian would become a soldier after his baptism." (The Early Church and the World, by C. J. Cadoux, 1955, pp. 275, 276)
• "In the second century, Christianity . . . had affirmed the incompatibility of military service with Christianity." (A Short History of Rome, by G. Ferrero and C. Barbagallo, 1919, p. 382)
• "The behavior of the Christians was very different from that of the Romans. . . . Since Christ had preached peace, they refused to become soldiers." (Our World Through the Ages, by N. Platt and M. J. Drummond, 1961, p. 125)
• "The first Christians thought it was wrong to fight, and would not serve in the army even when the Empire needed soldiers." (The New World's Foundations in the Old, by R. and W. M. West, 1929, p. 131)
• "The Christians . . . shrank from public office and military service." (Persecution of the Christians in Gaul, A.D. 177, by F. P. G. Guizot in The Great Events by Famous Historians, edited by R. Johnson, 1905, Vol. III, p. 246)
• "While they [the Christians] inculcated the maxims of passive obedience, they refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defence of the empire. . . . It was impossible that the Christians, without renouncing a more sacred duty, could assume the character of soldiers, of magistrates, or of princes." (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, Vol. I, p. 416)
• "The act of emperor worship consisted in sprinkling a few grains of incense or a few drops of wine on an altar which stood before an image of the emperor. Perhaps at our long remove from the situation we see in the act nothing different from . . . lifting the hand in salute to the flag or to some distinguished ruler of state, an expression of courtesy, respect, and patriotism. Possibly a good many people in the first century felt just that way about it but not so the Christians. They viewed the whole matter as one of religious worship, acknowledging the emperor as a deity and therefore being disloyal to God and Christ, and they refused to do it." (Essentials of Bible History, by Elmer W. K. Mould)
• "The Christians who lived nearest to the time of our Saviour, believed, with undoubting confidence, that he had unequivocally forbidden war-that they openly avowed this belief, and that, in support of it, they were willing to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, their fortunes and their lives. Christians, however, afterwards became soldiers.-And when? When their general fidelity to Christianity became relaxed;-when, in other respects, they violated its principles; . . . In a word, they became soldiers, when they had ceased to be Christians." (An Inquiry into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity, Jonathan Dymond Pp. 60, 61)

     Governments around the world spend 5.4 percent of their gross national product on military activities but only 4.2 percent on health care, reports Demos, a bulletin published by the Dutch Inter University Demographic Institute. The ratio in the developing countries is even more lopsided: 5.6 percent for defense but only 1.4 percent for medical care. Governments in Southeast Asia, notes Demos, top the list by spending seven times more on the military than on health. (Awake! 1991 22/9 p.29)    

Jesus Christ: "This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. [Father,] I have given your word to them, but the world has hated them, because they are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves. You must love your neighbor as yourself." (John 15:12; 17:14; 13:35; Matthew 22:39)

   

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  please...   Created: October 24, 1997. Last update: June 19, 2000. Last e-mail address update: March 12, 2002.   visitors until now...   Thank you for your visit!!