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SATURDAY, 13. MARCH 2010, 18:35:51
By Risto Stefov
rstefov@hotmail.com
March 14, 2010
One cannot make such a remark without having lived under the Greek thumb. For most of its existence, Greece has spawned more dictatorships than the worst countries in the world. And why exactly have these dictatorships been spawned?
Most lowly Macedonians have no clue as to why these dictatorships came into being and I doubt most Greeks do either but the fact remains that they came into being, existed and were a torment to the people, particularly to the unrecognized minorities for whom life was made and is still being made a living hell.
There is something about Greece that the world does not comprehend and, as I discover more and more about it, it gives me nightmares. It is unbelievable what some Greek regimes have done to their own people and I don’t mean just in war time but also during peace. There are many books written about them in Greek and I hope someday they will be translated into other languages so that the rest of the world can learn the true barbarism of Greece .
What amazes me about this however is how little the world knows and how blind it has been to the true nature of Greece .
But as we accept most things we are born with, good or bad, we take them for granted as part of life. Things are the way they are because we don’t know any better and because we have not experienced anything different in life. If we did, as some have done outside of Greece , then we come to the realization that “life in democratic Greece is not the best life one can have in this world”.
I had an opportunity to watch a homemade film made in one of the Macedonian villages in Greece and to see and hear a toothless raggedy old man, who probably has never been out of his own village, say in Macedonian, a forbidden language, “there is no better life in the world than the life we have here in Greece ”. How ironic! How could he say such a thing considering he has been downtrodden all his life by regime after regime that refuses to recognize the very same language he spoke? But then I think of when I was growing up in Greece and of having said the exact same thing to the chagrin of my parents. Most people believe what they are told and in addition to being poisoned by Greek propaganda to be xenophobic and haters of diversity, the Greek educational system also drills into young peoples’ brains that “ Greece is the best place to live in the entire world”. Had I not been made aware of who I was and had I not left Greece when I did, I too would be saying exactly the same words as well as denying the existence of my own people and on top of that I would have been a proud “pure Greek and descendent of the ancient Greeks”!
Surely we were all taught to speak “atvanitika” (Albanian), “Vlahika” (Vlach), or “Makedhonika” (Macedonian) by our own mothers and we were speaking these languages on the sly because we did not want to be caught and chastised by the authorities. So surely some of us would have found it odd that as “pure Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks” we spoke other and forbidden languages? You would think that we would have found “something odd” about this wouldn’t you? I thought so too but then I ran into other “pure Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks” who spoke to me in Macedonian and told me so that they were “pure Greeks”. Hasn’t it ever occurred to them to question “how they acquired such a language” if they were “pure Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks”? Oddly enough it has not because they truly believe that they are “Greeks” because all their lives they were told to ignore reality and embrace the myth that they are “Greeks” without having to question it. You see you are told that Gods exists and is everywhere and it’s sacrilegious and a sin to question God’s existence especially since everyone knows God exists! How can you even think of such a thing, even in your private thoughts that God may not exist? Need I say more?
Now one might think that once one leaves Greece that they are free of this. But my friends, fear has no bounds and knows no borders. Just recently a friend of mine was collecting signatures for a petition and I decided to stay with him for a while. A lot of people know me so I thought I could be of help. While most people signed the petition without question, some refused to sign it. Puzzled I asked why? Most made some excuse or another but one woman said, “I don’t want to sign anything of this nature because I don’t know in whose hands this petition will land, and God knows what the consequences would be if this lands in Greek hands.” I said it was only a harmless petition and what harm could it bring even if it fell into Greeks hands? She looked at me and said: “You had not been slapped around the face much and humiliated before have you?” I said no! So how could I possibly understand? Surprisingly, even my own father had said the same thing to me on several occasions when I told him I was not afraid to express my opinion, especially about the truth. To my surprise he said that, “Truth has nothing to do with anything! It is fear that will prevent you from telling the truth, from saying it is black when clearly you see it as white! It will then haunt you and give you pain every time you think about it!” My father spent five years of his young life in Greek prisons in the desolate Greek islands being tortured and tormented and to this day does not know why and what wrong he had done.
There is much to say about human rights abuses in Greece so I will begin with a quote from an article composed 14 years ago. Here I would like to present to you a slightly edited segment from a 1996 report entitled “Human Rights Violations Against Ethnic Macedonians” compiled by the Macedonian Human Rights Movement of Canada. I have edited the text to bring it up to date;
Ethnic Macedonian emigrants born in Greek occupied Macedonia
Background
A large number of ethnic Macedonians living in northern Greece (Greek occupied Macedonia ) were forced, in the early and middle parts of this century, to abandon their native ancestral homes. This tragic occurrence, composed of several stages, took several years to achieve full realization.
The first stage followed the partition of the territory of Macedonia after the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, culminating with the annexation by Greece of approximately fifty-two per cent of Macedonian territory. (1) Greece immediately embarked on a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in order to change the ethnic demographics of the newly acquired territory. The ferocity of this campaign (1912-13) is well documented in Carnegie's Report on the Balkan Wars, published in 1914. The result was thousands of Macedonians killed, tortured, and raped, while over 30,000 Macedonians left their homes because of the intensity and brutality of duress inflicted by the Greek government and its supporters. (2) The purpose of such indiscriminate efforts was to eradicate any sign of the Macedonian identity. (3) The First World War also falls in this stage, when another 21,000 Macedonians were forced to leave their homes and became refugees in Bulgaria . (4)
The second stage of migration was signaled by the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 ending the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. Under the terms of the treaty, a "voluntary exchange of populations" (5) was established where the Greek government settled 565,143 Christian Turkish settlers from Asia Minor in Greek occupied Macedonia . Another 53,000 colonists from southern Greece (i.e. from the Greece of its pre-1913 borders) were also settled in Greek occupied Macedonia . (6) As a direct consequence of these government-orchestrated settlements, approximately 127,000 ethnic Macedonians were forced to leave their birthplaces.
The third stage of migration occurred during, and soon after, the Second World War and the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). Two different groups comprised this mass exodus: first, those who were active participants in the conflict, i.e. the anti-monarchist Partisans who together with their families numbering approximately 50,000 (7) had to flee for safety in eastern European countries; and second, approximately 28,000 child refugees (8), ages two through fourteen, who were removed with the assistance of the Red Cross in order to escape the systematic bombing and destruction of the cities and villages in Greek occupied Macedonia by Greek government forces. The vast majority of these two groups that constituted the third set of migrants from Greek occupied Macedonia are prohibited, even today, from returning to their birthplaces. (9) The reason for this is primarily due to the refusal of these migrants to identify themselves as "Greeks." (10)
The fourth stage of Macedonian migration from northern Greece characterizes the period from 1950 to the present where people left for a variety of reasons. Many individuals left Greek occupied Macedonia in order to join family members who consequently were denied re-entry into Greece after previously fleeing during the third stage of migration. (11) Others left primarily for economic reasons, due in part to the lack of investment by the Greek government in the region, as well as the discriminatory hiring practices of the largest employer, the Greek government. (12) A large number of ethnic Macedonians have also migrated as a consequence of the Greek government's refusal to recognize their separate ethnic identity. Moreover, this refusal has led to gross violations of all fundamental human and national rights of Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia . (13)
By Risto Stefov
rstefov@hotmail.com
March 14, 2010
One cannot make such a remark without having lived under the Greek thumb. For most of its existence, Greece has spawned more dictatorships than the worst countries in the world. And why exactly have these dictatorships been spawned?
Most lowly Macedonians have no clue as to why these dictatorships came into being and I doubt most Greeks do either but the fact remains that they came into being, existed and were a torment to the people, particularly to the unrecognized minorities for whom life was made and is still being made a living hell.
There is something about Greece that the world does not comprehend and, as I discover more and more about it, it gives me nightmares. It is unbelievable what some Greek regimes have done to their own people and I don’t mean just in war time but also during peace. There are many books written about them in Greek and I hope someday they will be translated into other languages so that the rest of the world can learn the true barbarism of Greece .
What amazes me about this however is how little the world knows and how blind it has been to the true nature of Greece .
But as we accept most things we are born with, good or bad, we take them for granted as part of life. Things are the way they are because we don’t know any better and because we have not experienced anything different in life. If we did, as some have done outside of Greece , then we come to the realization that “life in democratic Greece is not the best life one can have in this world”.
I had an opportunity to watch a homemade film made in one of the Macedonian villages in Greece and to see and hear a toothless raggedy old man, who probably has never been out of his own village, say in Macedonian, a forbidden language, “there is no better life in the world than the life we have here in Greece ”. How ironic! How could he say such a thing considering he has been downtrodden all his life by regime after regime that refuses to recognize the very same language he spoke? But then I think of when I was growing up in Greece and of having said the exact same thing to the chagrin of my parents. Most people believe what they are told and in addition to being poisoned by Greek propaganda to be xenophobic and haters of diversity, the Greek educational system also drills into young peoples’ brains that “ Greece is the best place to live in the entire world”. Had I not been made aware of who I was and had I not left Greece when I did, I too would be saying exactly the same words as well as denying the existence of my own people and on top of that I would have been a proud “pure Greek and descendent of the ancient Greeks”!
Surely we were all taught to speak “atvanitika” (Albanian), “Vlahika” (Vlach), or “Makedhonika” (Macedonian) by our own mothers and we were speaking these languages on the sly because we did not want to be caught and chastised by the authorities. So surely some of us would have found it odd that as “pure Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks” we spoke other and forbidden languages? You would think that we would have found “something odd” about this wouldn’t you? I thought so too but then I ran into other “pure Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks” who spoke to me in Macedonian and told me so that they were “pure Greeks”. Hasn’t it ever occurred to them to question “how they acquired such a language” if they were “pure Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks”? Oddly enough it has not because they truly believe that they are “Greeks” because all their lives they were told to ignore reality and embrace the myth that they are “Greeks” without having to question it. You see you are told that Gods exists and is everywhere and it’s sacrilegious and a sin to question God’s existence especially since everyone knows God exists! How can you even think of such a thing, even in your private thoughts that God may not exist? Need I say more?
Now one might think that once one leaves Greece that they are free of this. But my friends, fear has no bounds and knows no borders. Just recently a friend of mine was collecting signatures for a petition and I decided to stay with him for a while. A lot of people know me so I thought I could be of help. While most people signed the petition without question, some refused to sign it. Puzzled I asked why? Most made some excuse or another but one woman said, “I don’t want to sign anything of this nature because I don’t know in whose hands this petition will land, and God knows what the consequences would be if this lands in Greek hands.” I said it was only a harmless petition and what harm could it bring even if it fell into Greeks hands? She looked at me and said: “You had not been slapped around the face much and humiliated before have you?” I said no! So how could I possibly understand? Surprisingly, even my own father had said the same thing to me on several occasions when I told him I was not afraid to express my opinion, especially about the truth. To my surprise he said that, “Truth has nothing to do with anything! It is fear that will prevent you from telling the truth, from saying it is black when clearly you see it as white! It will then haunt you and give you pain every time you think about it!” My father spent five years of his young life in Greek prisons in the desolate Greek islands being tortured and tormented and to this day does not know why and what wrong he had done.
There is much to say about human rights abuses in Greece so I will begin with a quote from an article composed 14 years ago. Here I would like to present to you a slightly edited segment from a 1996 report entitled “Human Rights Violations Against Ethnic Macedonians” compiled by the Macedonian Human Rights Movement of Canada. I have edited the text to bring it up to date;
Ethnic Macedonian emigrants born in Greek occupied Macedonia
Background
A large number of ethnic Macedonians living in northern Greece (Greek occupied Macedonia ) were forced, in the early and middle parts of this century, to abandon their native ancestral homes. This tragic occurrence, composed of several stages, took several years to achieve full realization.
The first stage followed the partition of the territory of Macedonia after the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, culminating with the annexation by Greece of approximately fifty-two per cent of Macedonian territory. (1) Greece immediately embarked on a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in order to change the ethnic demographics of the newly acquired territory. The ferocity of this campaign (1912-13) is well documented in Carnegie's Report on the Balkan Wars, published in 1914. The result was thousands of Macedonians killed, tortured, and raped, while over 30,000 Macedonians left their homes because of the intensity and brutality of duress inflicted by the Greek government and its supporters. (2) The purpose of such indiscriminate efforts was to eradicate any sign of the Macedonian identity. (3) The First World War also falls in this stage, when another 21,000 Macedonians were forced to leave their homes and became refugees in Bulgaria . (4)
The second stage of migration was signaled by the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 ending the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. Under the terms of the treaty, a "voluntary exchange of populations" (5) was established where the Greek government settled 565,143 Christian Turkish settlers from Asia Minor in Greek occupied Macedonia . Another 53,000 colonists from southern Greece (i.e. from the Greece of its pre-1913 borders) were also settled in Greek occupied Macedonia . (6) As a direct consequence of these government-orchestrated settlements, approximately 127,000 ethnic Macedonians were forced to leave their birthplaces.
The third stage of migration occurred during, and soon after, the Second World War and the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). Two different groups comprised this mass exodus: first, those who were active participants in the conflict, i.e. the anti-monarchist Partisans who together with their families numbering approximately 50,000 (7) had to flee for safety in eastern European countries; and second, approximately 28,000 child refugees (8), ages two through fourteen, who were removed with the assistance of the Red Cross in order to escape the systematic bombing and destruction of the cities and villages in Greek occupied Macedonia by Greek government forces. The vast majority of these two groups that constituted the third set of migrants from Greek occupied Macedonia are prohibited, even today, from returning to their birthplaces. (9) The reason for this is primarily due to the refusal of these migrants to identify themselves as "Greeks." (10)
The fourth stage of Macedonian migration from northern Greece characterizes the period from 1950 to the present where people left for a variety of reasons. Many individuals left Greek occupied Macedonia in order to join family members who consequently were denied re-entry into Greece after previously fleeing during the third stage of migration. (11) Others left primarily for economic reasons, due in part to the lack of investment by the Greek government in the region, as well as the discriminatory hiring practices of the largest employer, the Greek government. (12) A large number of ethnic Macedonians have also migrated as a consequence of the Greek government's refusal to recognize their separate ethnic identity. Moreover, this refusal has led to gross violations of all fundamental human and national rights of Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia . (13)
