Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Greece

Chowdury and Others v. Greece

European Court of Human Rights · Greece · 2017-03-30 · Regional court or body

Citation: no. 21884/15
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Did Greece protect Bangladeshi strawberry pickers from forced labour and trafficking, and punish those responsible?

What the court decided

No. The workers were in forced labour; Greece failed to prevent it, protect them and run an effective investigation and prosecution (Article 4(2)).

In plain language

Workers from Bangladesh picked strawberries in Greece for months without pay. When they asked for their wages, a supervisor shot at them. A Greek court cleared the employers of trafficking. The European Court said Greece failed to protect the workers from forced labour and ordered compensation.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Pekerja dari Bangladesh memetik stroberi di Yunani berbulan-bulan tanpa upah. Saat mereka menagih upah, seorang mandor menembaki mereka. Pengadilan Yunani membebaskan majikan dari dakwaan perdagangan orang. Pengadilan HAM Eropa menyatakan Yunani gagal melindungi para pekerja dari kerja paksa dan memerintahkan ganti rugi.

Pertanyaan: Apakah Yunani melindungi pemetik stroberi asal Bangladesh dari kerja paksa dan perdagangan orang, serta menghukum pelakunya?

What happened afterwards

  • 2013-04: Workers shot at after asking for wages.
  • 2017-03-30: Violation found; compensation ordered.
  • later: [Check execution status with the Committee of Ministers.]

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/chowdury-2017/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

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