Justice Minister: Special provision for ‘bullying’ included in draft bill

Anyone who harms with his behavior the physical or mental health of a third party or causes any other kind of harm will be punished with imprisonment

Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos will reportedly add a special provision for anyone convicted of “bullying” envisioning a term of at least six months in jail.

The same draft bill will also include misdemeanor dereliction of duty charges against officials that failed to prevent “bullying”, a more recent and Europeanized term for hazing.

The rush to include the provision comes on the heels of a highly publicized case over the past six weeks in Greece whereby a vocation school student was allegedly hazed aggressively and systematically by fellow students in a tertiary school in northwest Greece.

The young man apparently committed suicide in early February 2015, although his body wasn’t discovered until last week, all following a nationwide search, public appeals and heightened media attention.

The case focused attention on the issue of “bullying”, behaviour usually associated with school pupils.