Historic
Visit of Pope John Paul II in Bulgaria Greece has no right to be a member of the European Union. Greece should give back Macedonia to the Macedonians, which is obvious for any one not Greek. Article publish in Denmark.
An article published in a Danish newspaper MORGAENAVISEN JYLLANDS-POSTEN, 26.02.1999
Greece is an unworthy EU member By Gunnar Nissen
If this chronicle gives rise to conflicts or trouble, it is not the fault of the
Macedonians, nor me. When the politicians in EU countries don't speak out, it is
due to ignorance or indifference.
Denmark is a member of the EU. It remains a mystery that Greece is too. The
member countries must recognize human rights and minorities rights. Those are
the demands put in front of the central European states and they must abide by
them. That has been hard on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who are brought to
recognize national minorities, especially that large Russian one. Slovenia is on
that point influenced by the Yugoslavian constitution of 1974, an exemplary
country with full recognition of small Croatian and Italian minorities. But
Greece - Oh Dear! From official Greek side it is bombastically announced: Only
Greeks live in Greece. Nonsense! In southeast Europe, not a single state exist
of one nationality alone. In Greece, you find a large Turkish minority (who do
not wish to be presented as Greeks that has converted to Islam) in Thrace, a
small Albanian minority in Epiros and finally a Macedonian minority in Aegean
Macedonia, who numbers somewhere between 75.000 and 500.000. An exact estimate
doesn't exist, since Greece persistently deny there existence.
If one put some pressure on high ranking civil servants and
self-proclaimed experts, one may achieve an admission that " a small Slavic
speaking minority exist in Greek Macedonia", but they "do not wish to
be a national minority; they can freely use their language".
A pack of lies! For many years I have had a friendly relation with
numerous Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia - a people that officially doesn't
exist. I do speak Greek, but I speak fluently Macedonian. Almost every time I
take the train south, over Munich to Balkan, I run into Macedonians from Greece
(2. generation of workers). The same happens when I traverse the Greek border.
Some people speaks only Greek, but a lot, really a lot, speaks additionally
Macedonian ("our mother tongue") which is forbidden as language in
school. Last year a couple of shop owners were taken to court -their
"crime" was that they had written some words in Macedonian in their
shop windows.
When I sit on cafe's in villages in Aegean Macedonia, the conversation always
ends at "the Macedonian identity". "What do you in the rest of
Europe know about us?" I must admit that it's very little. "We would
like to have some Macedonian schools" the man continues at the cafe.
"I speak my Macedonian mother tongue, but my son is struggling, although he
watches Macedonian TV, Televizija Skopje". He, and the others speak in a
low voice, while glancing towards the neighboring table where a man is picking
up his phone. Moments later, two angry police officers enter and the
gathering around my table splits up. The border control between the Macedonian
Republic and Greece are, known to be among the toughest in Europe. Certainly the
slowest. Not on the Macedonian side, where the border police take a peek at the
Danish passport, after which it's over. But on the other side of the border, the
border police confiscate all passports and later we have to spend a long time,
be it snow storm or bumming hot, cueing to get the passport back. With
particular thoroughness, the custom control ransack the luggage of travelers
from the Republic of Macedonia. Foreigners can not be sure to get a travel
permission, even when born in Aegean Macedonia in Greece. It has happened that a
Canadian bus full of Macedonians with Macedonian names, but born in Aegean
Macedonia, were not allowed to enter the country.
When it in 1991 was clear to the Macedonians in the Yugoslav sub-republic
Macedonia, that their value norms could not possibly harmonize with the roaring
nationalism of Serbia, they split with the Yugoslav republic after a popular
referendum - Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina had already done that. The
Serbs protested and the Serbian terrorist leader and specialist in ethnic
cleansing Vojislav Seselj announced that all he needed was two divisions and
then "the Macedonian problem would be solved". Loudest, however, were
the protests from Greece, apparently because of the name. The Greek regime could
perhaps accept that the new state could call it self Skopje (after it's capital)
and the Greeks postulated wildly and crazily that the Macedonian state with it's
2.1 Mio, inhabitants and an army smaller than our national guard might attack
it's large neighbor Greece.
The Greeks gave as a reason for not recognizing the Republic of Macedonia, that
" we have a Macedonia here in Greece and thus there cannot be a Macedonia
just on the opposite site of the border". The logic in this is absurd and
I'm ashamed that so many ignorant journalists quoted the Greek reason without
comments. Apparently they were unaware that Macedonia is split between three
different countries. After a meeting in Brussels, where the EU-recognition of
the state of Macedonia was postponed, although Macedonia fulfilled all
requirements for recognition, the then Danish foreign minister, Uffe Elleman-Jensen,
in a final salute as EU chairman, commented to the Greeks that they had to get
themselves together and get the problem solved, concerning the name Macedonia
and called it despicable of the Greeks to treat the Macedonians in this way.
The Greek spokespersons reacted violently, amongst them the former Greek
vice prime-minister Athanasios Kannellopoulos, who angrily pronounced "
with his comments, Mr. Jensen is a very bad example of the other foreign
ministers. Mr. Jensen said that he'd be ashamed to be Greek because we're
against that the new Skopje republic's use of the name Macedonia. To that my
answer is: We'd be ashamed if Mr. Jensen was Greek!"
In "Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten" the MP Ame Melchior published a
letter to the editor that exhibited his lack of knowledge about the populations
in the Balkan peninsula under the title "Show concern for our Greek
allied". He was answered by "Jyllands-Posten"s correspondent Per
Nyholm "Show concern for the Macedonians".
Finally the Greeks accepted the name of Macedonia, but only in the form
of The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, FYROM.
Now to the decisive point that journalists ought to have oriented "
themselves about: In ancient times and in the Osmanian era, Macedonia was an
area without internal borders, where the people after the 6. century had the
south Slavic language Macedonian as mother tongue. It was in Macedonia the
Cyrillic alphabet came to life, named after the monk Kyril. The bible was
translated by the Macedonians to old-church-Slavic, that had the same influence
on ecumenical language in eastern Europe as Latin had amongst the Catholics in
western and central Europe. The Cyrillic alphabet spread not only to Bulgaria
and Serbia, but also to Russia and other eastern Slavic countries.
"Genuine" Hellenes described the ancient population of Macedonia as
barbarians and Phillip II and Alexander the Great greekness
are rather dubious. Albanian historians name them Illyrians, the oldest nation
on Balkan and the Albanians are arguably their ancestors. Of higher importance
was the Slav's immigration to the Balkan area in the 6. century. The Slavic
tribe that settled in Macedonia took name after the province and preserved their
language to modem times (with some grammatical exceptions...)
After the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, Macedonia was split in three.
Aegean Macedonia came under Greece, Vardarmacedonia under Serbia and
Pirimacedonia under Bulgaria. Vardarmacedonia was in 1945 after a heroic
partisan war, one of the six republics in the new federal Yugoslavia and as
promised by Tito, the republic got full national and cultural independence
- with due acknowledgment of it's compact Albanian and small Turkish
minorities. As Yugoslavia split in 1991, the country had 23 Mio. inhabitants.
Had all of Yugoslavia had the birthrate of the Albanians in western Macedonia
and Kosovo, they would have been at 50 Mio! Kosovo and western Macedonia would
have had to let the Albanians migrate to the rest of Serbia and Macedonia with
resulting unemployment rates around 50%. The Albanians in the Republic of
Macedonia are not oppressed. They have all rights - except the one to rise the
Albanian flag and get an Albanian university - which wouldn't make a lot of
sense as soon as they again can study at the large university in Prestina in
Kosovo, Tito's pride. By the way, the ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia in
Denmark is Albanian, the much respected Muhammed Halili.
Could one imagine the situation: the government of the North German
federated state Schleswig Holstein declare: Schleswig is German and in Germany,
Germans are living. Thus with no further notice, the Danish schools, including
the "Duborgskolen" high school and "Jaruplund" high school,
the Flensburg newspaper, Danish libraries and other foreign institutions will
close. The Danish language is declared "not-wanted"? How about the
opposite situation - if everything German was forbidden in southern Denmark?
Unthinkable of course!
When a person misbehaves, it is in the first line the closest people's
duty to intervene. National oppression is taking place in many countries outside
the EU. But Greece is an EU member and is thus a "part of the family".
But do we intervene, we, the closest people? No, we shut up. Of ignorance or
misunderstood solidarity with the Greek leaders, who as the Serbs, consider
themselves "superbalkanian". Other people knows more about the
oppression than I, but I know a great many and every year more ignored and
oppressed Slavic Macedonians in the Greek part of Macedonia. Can we justify our
silence? I'm sure that Greece's unwillingness to accept the Republic of Macedonia
is due to their black conscience over the oppression of Macedonians in Greece.
Greece is (yet another) unworthy member of the EU.
Reed more:
Forgive them, they don't understand what are doing!
Historic
Visit of Pope John Paul II in Bulgaria
The
Macedonian Question - Macedonian Scientific Institute
THE MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE - Bulgarian with Serbian letters
Ethnicity in Macedonia without Greek falsification
90 Years Greek Ethnic Cleansing of Bulgarians in Aegean Macedonia