The corrupt and dishonest people who have taken over Atheist Alliance International, also turn out to have been grossly incompetent. Whereas this group likes to boast about how they are “supporting atheists around the world”, it is instructive to compare this claim with their treatment of one very admirable group in particular. The utterly appalling treatment of the Humanist Union of Greece by the dishonest cabal in control of AAI, at once demonstrates both the naked corruption and also the utter incompetence of the cabal. The details are illustrated by the timeline below.
February 2018
On 1st February 2018, AAI was awarded Participatory Status at the Council of Europe. The relevant correspondence from the Council of Europe to the then AAI President, is available in full at the bottom of this page. There is an onerous process required of any NGO to acquire this Participatory Status, but once it has been earned it offers significant opportunities for effective activism and international lobbying.
July 2021
On 25th July 2021, a supposed ‘Annual General Meeting’ was held by AAI. Mr Panayote Dimitras attended as the representative of the Humanist Union of Greece (HUG), which was a fully paid-up member group of AAI. Consistent with the corrupt manipulation of the electorate that had gone on within AAI since 2018, the HUG was not permitted to vote. The corrupt cabal informed the HUG that they were deemed to be merely an informal group, this determination having been made behind closed doors without giving the HUG an opportunity to respond.
The HUG submitted a formal complaint to the President of AAI about their exclusion from the vote, and asked that their complaint be circulated to all AAI member groups. The complaint was not shared with other member groups and the HUG were not permitted to discuss the issue during the so-called AGM. It is worth reading the full details of this corruption, as they were reported by Mr Dimitras himself.
May 2022
Following their exclusion from the so-called ‘election’ at AAI during 2021, the HUG explained in detail why they are very much a formal activist group, and in no way informal. This included descriptions of their formally recognised submissions to:
- the United Nations
- the Council of Europe
- the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
- the European Court of Human Rights
It is difficult to imagine how any secular organisation could be more formal than this, or how more evidence could be provided that the HUG is not at all informal. Nevertheless, following the same pattern of experiences as those of other member groups within AAI that had disagreed with the corrupt cabal, on 21st May 2022 the HUG was again excluded from voting. Mr Dimitras again raised this directly with the personal who was then claiming to be the new President of AAI, David Orenstein.
It is utterly contemptible that AAI would insult the HUG and Mr Dimitras by excluding them as a merely informal group, while in fact the HUG and Mr Dimitras have been for many years engaging in effective activism within many national and international bodies. This kind of corruption within the democratic process leaves the entire group currently claiming to be the ‘AAI Board’, as totally illegitimate. Whereas AAI boasts about how much they support atheists, in fact it is rather easy to find very many examples of AAI mistreating atheists in the most appalling manner.
October 2022
On 19th October 2022, I was informed by the Council of Europe that their Secretary General had decided to revoke the Participatory Status of AAI. The Council of Europe reported that AAI had submitted a four-year report as part of their efforts to retain Participatory Status. However after reviewing this AAI report, the Secretary General still decided to revoke the AAI status, because they:
“… have had no co-operation with the Council of Europe”
Council of Europe Secretary General Communication to the Committee of Ministers
In other words, in the four full years since they had been awarded Participatory Status at the Council of Europe, the sum total of all the submissions made by corrupt cabal at AAI had been precisely zero. The same incompetent clown car who continually refused to allow the HUG to vote because they were too informal, turned out themselves to be doing exactly and precisely nothing at the Council of Europe.
In the same month that the AAI Participatory Status at the Council of Europe was revoked, here is what Mr Dimitras was doing:
The betrayal of so many hard-working atheist activists by the corrupt cabal who control AAI, is an unmitigated tragedy for international organised atheism.