Firstly, I would like to tell you all that I am an 87 year-old man, now living in Australia and my young great-grandson is writing what I say.
I was born in Aegean Macedonia (many of you know it as Northern Greece). In my youth and in the youth of my father, the village names, city names and people's names were different. They were Macedonian.
I will tell you now, there were many of us, Macedonians living in Macedonia (now occupied by Greece). The Greeks gave us no rights, no freedoms. As a child I (together with my older brothers, god rest their souls) watched as my mother was beaten by greek authorities for speaking the Macedonian language (it was not allowed). We were beaten, ethnic-cleansed, re-located and all our possessions stolen from us because we were Macedonians and would not turn greek (assimilate?).
Everything that was Macedonian, was destroyed. Our lives, our families, our culture, our history, our land, our homes, all taken from us and many of us (like myself) were forced to flee the country, because we were not Greek, we are Macedonians.
Now I want to tell you that my parents and grand parents lived before the division of Macedonia and lived through the uprising against the turkish empire (Ottoman). When this happened, Greece took most of Macedonia, Bulgaria took another section and what was Yugoslavia took the part you now know as Republic of Macedonia.
In my lifetime I have seen many arguments over the Macedonian identity and I cannot blame either side for the heated arguments. The Greeks, growing up, have been taught based on the political agenda of their government (and passed on through generations). The same applies for the Macedonians.
But as someone who lived through this, as someone who knows what it feels like to live under oppression by the Greeks and someone who knows what it feels like to be Macedonian and forced out of my home and out of Macedonia (now Northern Greece) because of my ethnicity, I can tell you that Macedonia is not greek. It is occupied by Greece today, as with many lands from many nations, but it has never been greek and as old as I am, I dare any young man say to me that I am Greek. If I were Greek, I would not have been forced out of the house built by my Great Grandfather in 1874.
Now you go on telling people that Macedonia and Macedonians are greek. You remain the oppressor and I do believe in karma.
