HELSINKI AND THE REFUGEES
Written by Prof. Dr. Todor Dzunov (Macedonian Times, April 1977)
The Helsinki document most directly regulates the various rights of
aliens, to various categories and rights such as personal, statutory and
other general rights. This document has political meaning, as it states,
but the participants express their willingness to act in accordance with
the provisions of these texts by the signatures of their highest representatives.
The Final Document even provides the implementation measures: unilateral,
bilateral, an multilateral, such as the 1977 Belgrade Conference and so
on, as well as conferences treating the CSCE humanitarian dimension such
as those in Paris 1989, in Copenhagen 199O and in Moscow 1991. Does Greece
act in accordance with these rules? In this edition of our newsmagazine,
we focus on their legal status today, as well as the legal status of the
Macedonian refugees from the Civil War in Greece.
At the end of the Civil war in Greece in 1948, fifty
thousand persons of Macedonian national origin - underage children and
women - fled across the Greek-Albanian and the Greek-Yugoslav borders as
civil refugees from the war, first to Yugoslavia, then to the countries
of "people's democracies" in Eastern Europe. Organized transports of the
then members of the "Democratic Army of Greece" followed them later. All
of them became refugees with an unsolved citizenship status, using the
right of asylum in Hungary, former Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria and
the former Soviet Union.
The status of protected refugee (i.e. protected
person) implies an alien who, without naturalization, is put under the
protection of the territorial state. He is a quasicitizen in internal relations,
and an alien in international relations.
According to accepted standards of international
law, the protected person-refugee is not automatically equal in rights
to the domestic citizen, even when his status is established by an individual
act of the territorial state. Such a position of the host country is explained,
on one hand, by the fact that refugees, especially larger groups, find
it harder to adjust themselves to the surroundings where they are located,
and on the other hand, providing such protection may lead to problems between
states. (Thus, the then Yugoslav Federal Government even did not allow
these refugees to remain in the People's Republic of Macedonia: Rather,
it sent them first to Vojvodina, and then to the countries of Southeast
Europe.) Because of this, these persons are treated by a special regime
in control of their activities and conduct in their host countries.
After the Second World War, the increase of the
number of refugees to about two million had a direct impact on UN actions
for an international guarantees of refugee status. The 1951 Convention
on the Refugees' Status provides several such guarantees among which the
first is the right of repatriation, as well as some guaranteed standards
of various kinds of rights (concerning employment, exercising business
activities, property rights, etc.).
However, the status of refugees in the internal
laws of the states - even in times when this convention was about to be
passed, when there was relative ly smaller number of refugees (about two
million), not to say now when there are ten times more (over twenty million)
- shows that: 1) although in the host country refugees live under the rules
of the law that is applied to domestic citizens, 2) their status is the
status of an alien - lower than that of domestic citizens, 3) as a rule,
the refugees are excluded from using political rights and limited by specific
restrictions, 4) their position differs from that of the ordinary aliens,
5) the prin-ciple of reciprocity in conduct toward the refugees is applied
only when provided for by a specific agreement.
As concerning the legal status of a protected person,
who is not a citizen of a country-signatory of the Convention for Refugees,
there is a specific problem. We can ask the following question: if the
protecting country does not provide some kind of right to the protected
person, could he, in addition to his status as a protected person, site
also his citizenship in order to request using one such right on that basis;
i.e. to enable him to use a right that, as a protected person, that he
cannot have; rather; he can have it as a citizen of his national country,
based on diplomatic or factual reciprocity. Based on international law,
a citizen of one country makes use of its protection, regardless of his
place of stay. Therefore, an alien may refer to his citizenship and request
the rights that have been provided for by his national country, based on
diplomatic or factual reciprocity. He has the right to return to his national
country and to place himself entirely under its protection. But, Macedonian
refugees from Greece were denied even this possibility. Thus, the Law (Decree)
on Discharging from Citizenship was passed in Greece on October 1, 1947,
the Law No.2536 on Colonization of the Frontier Regions on August 23, 1953,
the Law on Giving Declarations of Loyalty in 1959, a constitutional act
on depriving citizenship 1967... Such and similar illegitimate acts have
not been revised even by recent legal acts concerning the repatriation
of Greed citizens and political refugees (the 1982 Decree No. 106841 by
the Ministry for Internal and Public Affairs) which stipulates that only
"Greeks of Greek origin" may return to Greece. According to the same discriminatory
clause, the realization of the property rights by the Macedonian refugees
has been made impossible in the Republic of Greece (the 1985 Law No.1540).
Part of these refugees - which later succeeded in
regulating their personal status by accepting citizenship (through naturalization)
of some host country or of some overseas immigration country (USA, Australia,
Canada) - are still banned from entering their country of origin, to visit
their relatives, to use their properties and to enjoy other rights.
This happens despite the passage of the 1975 Helsinki
Final Document of the Conference for Security an Coop-eration in Europe
(CSCE), among whose signatories is the Republic of Greece. Above all, Principle
VII of the Declaration, concerning the conduct of signatory countries toward
the respect of human rights and basic freedoms, confirms again commitment
to nondiscrimination.
Furthermore, this Document provides measures of
cooperation in humanitarian and other sectors ("The Third Basket"), such
as contacts, - individual and collective, private and official - among
persons, institutions and organizations: a) contacts and regular meetings
based on family ties, i.e. allowing persons to enter and leave the territory
of other countries in order to visit members of their family (issue of
travel documents and visas within reasonable deadlines and by reasonable
fees); b) connecting families, i.e. providing the necessary administrative
permission, allowing the transfer of personal property; c) marriages of
citizens in their country with citizens of another signatory country and
allow-ing them to move to the country where one of the spouses resides;
d) traveling for personal and professional purposes, i.e. making easier
and simpler the procedures for going in and out of the country, softening
the regulations concerning the movements of aliens of one signatory country
within the territory of another country, making smaller the fees for visas
and formal travel documents, as well as concluding multilateral or bilateral
consular conventions or other related agreements or accords in order to
improve the arrangements for providing consular services, including legal
and consular assistance.
These international documents set forth most directly
the various rights of aliens, to various categories and rights such as
personal, statutory and other general rights and even to the refugees -humanitarian
rights. This document has political meaning, as it states, but the participants
express their willingness to act in accordance with the provisions of these
texts by the signatures of their highest representatives. The Final Document
even provides the implementation measures: unilateral, bilateral, an multilateral,
such as the 1977 Belgrade Conference and soon, as well as conferences treating
the CSCE humanitarian dimension such as those in Paris 1989, in Copenhagen
l990 and in Moscow 1991. Does Greece act in accordance with these rules?