This is my blog about the ECHR, the
European Court of Human Rights and why it is failing the people that
need it most regarding the Convention for the Protection of Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. If you think you, as an every day EU citizen has human rights when you travel or live elsewhere within the EU, read this, think again.
Human rights law is not automatic, it is paid lip service by countries like Portugal, and the European Court of Human Rights in not the knight in shinimg armour / the cavalry, far from it, the ECHR are a much derided nay saying bureaucracy. 90% of applications to the ECHR are dismissed without giving you reason; if you do not have a well connected lawyer doing it for you, kiss your application goodbye.
Human rights law is not automatic, it is paid lip service by countries like Portugal, and the European Court of Human Rights in not the knight in shinimg armour / the cavalry, far from it, the ECHR are a much derided nay saying bureaucracy. 90% of applications to the ECHR are dismissed without giving you reason; if you do not have a well connected lawyer doing it for you, kiss your application goodbye.
In God's name, if you can help me, help
my family, please email me;
Having filed two applications with the ECHR already against Portugal, which have both been rejected on the ECHR's infamous "Admissibility Grounds", I am faced with the daunting prospect of having to file three more for violations of our rights under the Convention.
In Portugal you can not get any lawyer
to help you with ECHR applications, and none have any ability
regarding racial discrimination and racism anyway. Not just that, but
the so called anti-racism body in Portugal, the ACIDI (Alto
Comissariado para a Imigração e Diálogo Intercultural) do not even
recognize indirect racial discrimination and employ so called
commissioners who are totally untrained and work according to their
own agendas; see ECRI's Last Report on Portugal. To show you how bad
it is for foreigners in Portugal, consider this, there has NEVER been
a civil case of racial discrimination brought before the highly
derided Portuguese court system. The law exists for such civil
cases, but just you try and find a lawyer that will undertake it;
impossible.
So, basically, you are alone with no
help. Even the anti-racist NGO's and Racial Discrimination Support
Centres do nothing in reality except offer patronizing comments and
tea and biscuits. No help with translations (not official ones
anyway, so you can not use them), no help with lawyers.
I am now struggling to try and find
help outside of Portugal, to try and find a law firm that will at
least review my ECHR applications, to try and stop me being ruled
inadmissible yet again because I didn't cite case law, cross all the
"t's", dot all the "i's". I am British, my wife
is Asian, our two children are both British citizens, so myself and
our two children should also get extra protection under the
Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373. But of course, the British Foreign &
Commonwealth Office refuse to help, to do this, to help us in any
way.
Here is a summary of what happened to
us.
We are the only foreigners in the
village and have been subjected to racial abuse. Then, the access
road to the village and our home, which we were told was public, which we have
seen the council / camara maintain, which has public street lighting
and a Stop sign where it meets the main road, we were sued to stop
using it on the basis it was private and the alleged owners did not want us, alone, to use it. I appointed the supposed best law firm on the Iberian
Peninsular to defend us, Uria Menéndez and they did a terrible job IMHO; they ignored my
instructions to make racial discrimination the number one defence
point, they instead added some weak statement at then end of the
defence that I felt discriminated against; be warned, Portuguese
lawyers will not defend you on the grounds of racial discrimination. They even charged me twice for work done.
I also filed racial discrimination
complaints with the ACIDI. They informed me that they had no
jurisdiction over the courts but then decided to conduct an
"investigation" anyway. We made four racial discrimination
complaints in total; they investigated only two but abused the other
two respondents as witnesses in support of the people they did
"investigate". They refused to interview us, as per our
legal right, and they refused to accept additional evidence I
submitted (that the respondents had used racist slurs against my wife
/ Asians in court documents and testimony). The ACIDI, having told us
that they had no business investigating our complaint because of
jurisdiction, went ahead and made a decision against us anyway. The
ACIDI said that because we had not proved the discrimination against
us was racially motivated, it was not racial discrimination. Of
course, this is total nonsense and against European law; please seeindirect racial discrimination / 2000/43/EC
It is quite clear according to European law (EC Regulations), we just need to
prove discrimination, which the ACIDI accepted we did, and then the
respondents needed to prove that the discrimination was not racially
motivated. I am sure the only reason the ACIDI insisted on
"investigating" our complaint in light of lack of
jurisdiction, was to appear to fulfil Portugal's International legal obligations.
When I told the president of the ACIDI, Rosario Farmhouse, that
Portugal were committing fraud over their implementation of 2000/43/EC, she told me I could
face criminal defamation charges if I ever repeated this; her
threats against me, a suffering victim already, according to European law are unlawful and themselves
constitute racial discrimination, and just show what the Portuguese are really like
The process against us was a farce. The
authors and their many friends lied and lied; in Portugal, you are
not required to swear an oath when you give evidence and if you lie
and get found out, you simply say "That is what I thought
happened. I did not lie, I was just mistaken." Conflicting
testimony was accepted by the judge. The judge did nothing about the
racist language used against my wife and Asians. He refused to order
the fire department to asses the alternative road we were being
forced to use, because the fire chief claimed he had already driven
his largest fire truck around that alternative road without any
problem.
Knowing the fire chief's testimony to
be a lie, as there is a sharp bend in the alternative road that
prevents larger vehicles from using it, I hired a topographer to map
the road, got the technical specification including turning circle of
the largest fire truck from Mercedes, and then had an engineer run a
program to determine if the largest fire truck could indeed traverse
the alternative road; it could not, not by a long margin. However, when
we tried to submit this evidence, it was rejected on the grounds we
had taken too long to get it! So the fire chief's lie was accepted as
fact.
The fire chief was not the only "amigo"
of the authors of the civil case against us, there were many,
including the local village president, the city engineer and more;
they all lied. The city engineer claimed the camara / council had
maintained the litigated caminho once, by mistake, even though I
submitted photographic evidence covering 5 years that showed the
hedges to have been mechanically trimmed and the asphalt maintained, which could only have been done by the council / camara.
The judge said of this, that it was possible that the days the
photographs were taken on did not prove the circumstances of the road
on other days.
We lost the case, the appeal and the
Supreme Court appeal. Regarding racial discrimination, they just kept
saying "This has to be another process", but we can not
afford it. By the way, once we lost the case, the camara / council have begun maintaining the road again.
We have been refused Legal Aid and
Social Security in Portugal even though we qualify for it according
to their online eligibility calculators. In fact, we even have it in
writing from Social Security that we quality, and then they pretended
they had not said it! I have been refused an appeal, even though the
law says I am entitled to appeal to a judge. So we can not afford to
defend ourselves and are paying off the legal costs and court taxes
of the civil process against us, which we were refused legal aid for.
In addition, I had medical problems
after my father died. I was on some pretty powerful drugs and could
hardly stand up; everyone knew this, they could see it. One day, I
was pushed to the ground from behind and beaten across the back of the
head and neck with a wooden club until I was unconscious; there were
three men involved, two who actually assaulted me. The doctor said I
was lucky to be alive. The police refused to provide an interpretor
and the lawyer I was forced to appoint, because I was refused a state lawyer, was as bent as they came; he colluded with
the attacker's lawyer (he admitted he had "spoken" with him, which is against the rules of course) and then
ran off with my money, the job not a quarter done. One of the
attackers is said to be the best friend of the police chief. I was
not examined by a state doctor, though they claim I was.
Only one of the attackers was prosecuted. He appealed and the judge there said the entire trial was unsafe and ordered a retrial. This man lied about his wealth which directly affects what he might be expected to pay; he said that his new business had not yet started. I went out and got the proof that it had, and they judge / prosecutors ignored this evidence. The other man who beat me was actually used as a witness on his behalf; luckily they could not lie their way out of everything, as much of the assault was captured on video. The trial happened twice and was appealed twice. In the end I got a conviction and I was awarded a paltry 1350 Euros, because the man claimed he was unemployed and could not afford to pay much, while he actually had a thriving business, several cars, a boat and many houses. There are no costs in Portugal and my legal fees were in excess of 5000 Euros, plus the camera I had with me was smashed. What makes it worse is that because I asked for 7000 Euros in compensation, the judge decided I was being greedy, and fined me another €169.
My daughter no longer speaks to people outside our home after that same thug who assaulted me threatened to hang her by the neck; she was 5 at the time. I can not report the crime because the Public Prosecutors will demand I appoint a lawyer, which I can not afford to do. The law says I am entitled to ask for a local judge to review my application for legal aid / a lawyer) for each criminal complaint I make, but they ignore me / refuse me this right.
I can not work or operate a business,
because someone posted notices all around town / the area claiming I
am a paedophile, a criminal and on the run from Interpol, all of
which is totally false of course. And we are given no social
security. One official joked with me that my wife was attractive and
therefore could earn money as a prostitute, but then he possibly would, as I am sure he uses local prostitutes. Even my beloved dog, my
pet boxer Max was poisoned. So, I will admit to you, I turned to
crime to keep my family alive. We can not sell our home because
no-one wants to buy the only house that can not use the main access
road. We as a family are humiliated every day, often jeered at, as
the only ones forced to use the alternative road. We can not flee to
the UK as we have no money and the UK Government will not give my
wife a visa under their new eligibility criteria.
I need to take three complaints, make
three applications to the ECHR.
1) Refusal of Portugal to grant me
Legal Aid and Social Security.
2) Racial Discrimination (the civil process that bans us from using the main road)
2) Racial Discrimination (the civil process that bans us from using the main road)
3) Giving me peanuts for the serious
assault against me, which has left me out of pocket by over 4000
Euros.
I have asked the ECHR and other EU / EC bodies for help, but they all ignore me.
If you can help me, please do. I need a lawyer to at least review my ECHR applications, even better to help me with them.
Everyone else, read my updates, what a fraud the ECHR is, because they do not help people like me. For me the ECHR are simply a burden on the tax payer and only serve the needs of wealthy or connected applicants, not everyday people abused by an increasingly nasty Europe.
I have asked the ECHR and other EU / EC bodies for help, but they all ignore me.
If you can help me, please do. I need a lawyer to at least review my ECHR applications, even better to help me with them.
Everyone else, read my updates, what a fraud the ECHR is, because they do not help people like me. For me the ECHR are simply a burden on the tax payer and only serve the needs of wealthy or connected applicants, not everyday people abused by an increasingly nasty Europe.
