Greek Helsinki Monitor and
Minority Rights Group - Greece
(26/12/1998, AIM Athens)
"There are people with some sensitivities, and they should have the
right to be free, to have their offices, their newspapers, to have their
language taught, to celebrate in their own way, to run in elections. When
they feel they are not recognized or their rights have been violated, they
could appeal to the European organizations which have henceforth coercive
mechanisms and mandatory procedures for all of us." What a better definition
of the existence of a minority, the need to respect its
fundamental rights, and the way to defend them, you would say. Right?
Wrong! When Greek Foreign Minister Theodore Pangalos made this statement
on
22 December 1998, during an official visit to Skopje, in response to
a question about the need to recognize and to respect the rights of the
Macedonian minority in Greece, he added squarely that "Greece will never
recognize a Slavic minority in Western Macedonia."
Worse, he added insult to injury: "We should not return to Titoism and
communism so as to create minorities for the benefit of some evil bureaucrats,
and perverted intellectuals, including perverted journalists." He also
repeatedly used pejorative if not slandering language for the Macedonian
minority party "Rainbow". He characterized it "a coalition of Slavomacedonians,
Stalinists and homosexuals that got 1,700 votes in the last elections."
He added, later on, that Rainbow "took part in the elections forming alliances
with the Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of
Greece (OAKKE) which is Stalinist, and the Movement
for the Liberation of Homosexuals managing to obtain throughout Greece
only 1,840 votes."
Given that Rainbow never took part in an election in coalition with
an organization representing homosexuals, the above statement by Mr. Pangalos
brought to memory similar attacks made by intolerant and nationalist circles
towards human rights activists, independently of the clarifications the
Minister resorted to later on. Besides, it must be reminded that Rainbow
obtained in the 1994 European elections, in which it stood alone, 7,300
votes; and in the parliamentary elections of 1996, in coalition with OAKKE,
3,500 votes. Therefore, the figures presented by the Minister, who insisted
they were official, were false. But, even if only 1,700 persons
claimed the right to a minority identity, the argument that they constitute
a very small number in order to be recognized as a minority weakens decisively
the demands of the Greeks of Turkey who, with the tolerance of successive
Greek governments, have been reduced to 2,500 persons.
All these arguments proved once more to be of little importance not
only to Mr. Pangalos but to all political forces, practically all media
and almost all Greek non-governmental organizations (NGO) dealing with
human rights. Mr. Pangalos’ statement was hailed as "the appropriate answer"
(Vima 25/12/1998), "a tough but justified reaction" (Kathimerini 25/12/1998)
to "the irredentist claims" (Ethnos 25/12/1998) of the Macedonian side.
The fourth of the country’s largest newspapers even devoted two pages to
"reveal" the "strategic alliance between Ankara and Skopje at the expense
of Greece" (Typos tis Kyriakis 25/12/1998): to justify its arguments, it
mentioned as real facts an -allegedly but never really- attempted alliance
between "Rainbow" and the Turkish minority party "Friendship, Peace, and
Equality;" or the presence of representatives of the two minorities
in a seminar in Germany, on 12/11/1998, alongside this author. But I was
in Athens on that day! Never mind the truth, as yellow journalism has to
make a case that these "perverted intellectuals" are working with the "alien"
minority leaders against Greece’s interests!
There were two exceptions: one of the country’s five major newspapers (Eleftherotpyia 24/12/1998) and another, small in circulation but influential, daily (Avghi 24/12/1998) were the only ones to report the reactions to the minister’s statements by Rainbow, OAKKE and the NGOs Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group - Greece. However, even these two papers did not go as far as to criticize themselves the Pangalos’ statements. While no other Greek NGO and no one political party issued any statement, not even those actively campaigning during the same days for an alternative New Year’s Eve anti-racist celebration alongside the migrants and the refugees. Once again it was demonstrated that the human rights struggle has its limits for most Greeks: the country’s two national minorities, who identify themselves with the adjacent Macedonian and Turkish nations, are beyond these limits.
The "Skopje incident" was not the only one of this kind, in 1998. Five months earlier, the same Foreign Minister made similar statements against the Turkish minority, while visiting the Western Thrace area the latter lives in. It need be reminded that Greece does recognize that minority, but only as a religious Muslim one, while denying its Turkish national identity. There is hardly any human rights report as well as any statement by the three minority deputies (including the deputy of Pangalos’ PASOK party) that is not full of references to the many human rights violations in Thrace.
All these notwithstanding, Pangalos, on 26 July 1998, praised "the freedom
that characterizes all aspects of everyday life of the Muslim minority"
adding that "this is an achievement of all the people of Thrace and at
the same time a lesson to those who try to present themselves here
as so-called protectors of human rights. I call upon them not to give lessons
of democracy and human rights to Greece, when the whole political leadership
of the country has paid with blood and exiles for these values while they
know about human rights only from the books. (…) My presence here is a
slap in the face to all these disgraceful slanderers, who do not dare say
openly that they serve illicit financial interests and dealings while pretending
to be human rights defenders in Thrace, whereas they forget the major and
horrible crimes carried out at this very moment a mere few kilometers from
here" [meaning in Turkey].
A month later, on 17 August 1998, the Speaker of the Parliament Apostolos
Kaklamanis said he favored the "homogenization of the population of Thrace,
made up of Christina and Muslim Greeks." On 23 August he explained
further that "there is no Turkish minority in Greece, as the Muslim minority
of Thrace is made up of Greek citizens while Turkey is trying to ghettoize
it and present it as a national minority."
In both cases, not one critical voice was raised by any political forces, while the media were again almost all praising the Pangalos statements. This time, even the minority stayed silent for a while, letting the Turkish foreign ministry respond to these statements. That, naturally, only helped strengthen the image of the minority in Greece as manipulated from Ankara, an impression that was to be further enhanced by the minority’s pro-Turkish reactions in the Ocalan problem in late 1998 (see related separate December 1998 AIM article by Nafsika Papanikolatos).
In our November 1998 AIM article, we were saying that "one should not misinterpret this turn of events in the Greek-Macedonian relations though; (…) the existence of a distinct legitimate nation of Macedonians has yet to be admitted. A major consequence of this situation are the continuing problems of the Macedonian minority in Greece. It would not be too simplistic to argue that the Interim Agreement and the ensuing improvement in the bilateral relations has hardly had any effect on that minority. In fact, many interpreted the "coincidence" of the signing of that Agreement in September 1995 with the sacking of the Macedonian minority "Rainbow" party’s offices in Florina as a clear indication that the minority should not expect anything out of it."
The Pangalos statements in Skopje and their ensuing almost unanimous
approval in Greece confirmed, soon after that article was written, our
evaluation of the (lack of) impact of the spectacular improvement in Greek-Macedonian
relations on the status of the Macedonian minority in Greece. The -also
negative- previous statements on the Turks of Thrace help explain the roots
of the problem. Greek society and the vast majority of Greek intellectuals
(including unfortunately most human rights defenders) have yet to come
to terms with the fact that Greece is not a homogeneous society; that one
can be a Greek citizen but have a non-Greek
ethnonational identity.
What the first lines of this article, when seen in conjunction with
the following ones, indicate is that, for Pangalos as well as for almost
all Greeks, Greek citizens can freely enjoy their cultural diversity as
long as they have a strong Greek ethnonational identity and seek no minority
status. This is how hundreds of thousands of Albanian-speaking Arvanites
and Aromanian-speaking Vlachs have been "successfully" incorporated in
(i.e. assimilated by) modern Greek national culture: they have been showing
a strong, sometimes even extreme, degree of attachment to Greek nationalism,
in exchange for which they have been allowed to keep their,
oral only but never written or taught, ethnolinguistic "sensitivities."
It requires a very sustained effort for the few "multiculturalists" of
Greece, which include even some government ministers, to dispel this ugly
image of Greek "national" policy that can be summarized in a choice between
assimilation or discrimination.
=======================================================
Update:
Regretfully, Th. Pangalos "recidivated" in an interview to "Apogevmatini"
(28/12/1998) by stating that those in Macedonia who say there is a
Macedonian minority in Greece are "monkeys;" and he added: "I told them
that a minority exists on the basis of international treaties or it is
being shaped on the basis of such reality. Minority means a special legal
framework; it means that a category of citizens is set aside from the others
and you treat it differently. Such a minority does not exist in Greece.
Because their number is not sufficient. I told them that "Rainbow"
is, according to their declaration, a coalition of Slavomacedonians,
of Stalinists who want to restore the old communist party, and of homosexuals
of the Gay Liberation Movement in Greece. In the elections they received
1,700 votes." Beyond doubt, the repetition of false information like the
alleged participation of gays in "Rainbow" and that they received 1,700
rather than 3,500 votes in 1996 indicates that the Minister was deliberately
deceiving his audience in Skopje as well probably in an effort to discredit
the Macedonian minority activists. One can only agree with the satirical
(and otherwise nationalist) Greek weekly "Pontiki"
(30/12/1998): "it is incredible that, after all that, he remains foreign
minister."
Greek Helsinki Monitor &
Minority Rights Group - Greece
P.O. Box 51393
GR-14510 Kifisia
Greece
Tel. +30-1-620.01.20
Fax +30-1-807.57.67
e-mail: office@greekhelsinki.gr
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr
________________________________________