By Mike Karadjis
From Tony Johnston's account, we would have to believe that today everything is rosy for Greece's ethnic Macedonian minority and there are hardly any of them anyway — a view based almost entirely on the testimony of a visiting member of the Greek government (perhaps his next article will be a discussion with a Turkish leader called "Paradise in Kurdistan").
The point should be made that journalists should endeavour to know what they are talking about. When Johnston writes of a section of Macedonia's constitution "which refers to territorial ambitions of a Greater Macedonia" he is simply using the Greek government's "big lie" technique. There is no such article in Macedonia's constitution, but there is an article which states:
"The Republic of Macedonia has no territorial pretensions towards any neighbouring state" (Article 3). Does such a provision exist in the Greek constitution?
As for Johnston's comments that "there is no such thing as a Macedonian ethnicity" and that "until a couple of decades ago there was no such thing as a written or spoken Macedonian language" and that it is a "Serb-Bulgar mix", this well-worn Greek nationalist line does not stand up to historical scrutiny — but that would require an article of its own.
Incidentally, does Johnston believe that Aboriginal languages which were not "written" were any less real?
His prettying of the situation of the Macedonian minority contrasts not only with the views of many Greek activists who I worked with in Greece from 1988-91 and with my own observations, but with the recently released report by the widely respected Human Rights Watch/Helsinki called "Denying Ethnic Identity: The Macedonians of Greece". This is one of the most thorough reports done on this issue and anyone with doubts about the existence or oppression of the minority in Greek Macedonia ought to get a copy. It is essential reading for "Greek patriots" like Tony Johnston, Jeff Kennett and the like. It also sheds some insight into the "free climate for people to express themselves" referred to.
But of course, how can they be oppressed when they were able to run in the European elections? And aren't they irrelevant anyway, given their party "Rainbow" got only 5500 votes? And why let the facts ruin a good line?
It was actually quite a struggle for the Macedonian organisation, the Macedonian Movement for Balkan Prosperity (MMBP), to be allowed to contest the elections. The good will of the "Rainbow" forces, a Europe-wide group of parties, in allowing the Macedonians to use their cover, helped this process.
Rainbow was finally set up on May 21. Eight days later the High Court ruled that Rainbow and two far-left parties were barred from standing in the election due to a legal technicality which had not been used since the time of the fascist junta (1967-74). When the absurdity of this became apparent, the Court responded by allowing the other parties to stand, but outlawing Rainbow! A cross-section of progressive groups and individuals forced this ruling to also be reversed a couple of days later. By the time this was all over, Rainbow had about ten days to campaign for the June 12 elections.
And that wasn't the end of it. Its campaign was meticulously kept out of the mass media, except for some references to its members as "paid agents of foreign enemies of Greece". Its ability to produce and distribute election material was already impaired by the forced closure of MMBP's bank account two months earlier — apparently without reason.
Even the material they did distribute didn't all reach its destination, according to the MMBP, which had previously denounced similar problems with the distribution of its newspaper. Similar problems have been reported by the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Greek observers of the Helsinki human rights agreement, and the Greek Communist Party. Indications point to a fascist group around the newspaper "Stohos", which appears to have powerful links in the Greek secret services.
In such a situation, 5500 votes isn't all that bad. Some Macedonian activists screamed fraud, a charge difficult to prove. Still, many people thought it strange that the state electoral body didn't release Rainbow's results for so many weeks after everyone else's.
In a joint statement, Rainbow and the MMBP declared that "the biggest achievement from the elections was that Macedonians in Greece freed themselves of the feeling of oppression and fear, imposed on them for years".
In any case does every member of a particular ethnic group vote for an ethnic-based party? On the basis of the votes gained by various Aboriginal parties or candidates in the recent past, we would have to conclude that there were only a few thousand in Australia and, using Johnston's logic, that they are not oppressed as they were allowed to stand in elections.
Yet when a Macedonian candidate stood in the Greek elections last year and received only 369 votes, some Greek-Australian journalists confidently told us that this was the size of the minority. By Greek nationalist logic, the ethnic Macedonians have increased in number by 1500% in nine months!
Of course, existence and oppression of a minority don't depend on its size. As left-wing Greek journalist Nikos Filis writes, if the size of the minority is based on these votes, "then the Slav-Macedonian minority is much larger than the Greek minority in [the Turkish capital] Constantinople (2000-3000 altogether). Further, let's remember that the Party of Human Rights in Albania gained less than 50,000 votes, while officially Greece speaks of 250,000-600,000 ethnic Greeks in the neighbouring country".
Of course the Macedonian minority is much bigger than its 5500 votes, but no one doubts it is massively smaller than it was when Greece conquered 50% of Macedonia in 1913. Then ethnic Macedonians numbered 326,000, compared to 240,000 Greeks out of a population of about 1 million.
Talking of the very small size of the Greek minority in Turkey, Greek journalist V. Syros wrote, quite correctly "after a long period of discrimination and persecution by the Turkish rulers, the minority suffered a serious decline, and from 110,000 in 1923 it has fallen to 2500 today!"
Why not admit the truth about the similar reasons for the decline of the Macedonian minority in Greece?