AMAC’s racial vilification complaint dismissed
Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC)
Press Release
8 Sept 2011
The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) would like to express its disappointment at the decision of VCAT Member Noreen Megay to dismiss AMAC’s racial vilification complaint against the ‘Australian Macedonian (sic) Weekly’ (AMW).
Last week Ms. Megay handed down her judgment on the matter which was heard at VCAT on the 3rd and 4th of August 2011. The AMW’s article which was the subject of the AMAC’s complaint was published in May 2009, and Ms. Megay found that the article did not meet the high threshold imposed by Section 7 of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 (Vic) for a finding of racial vilification. Section 7 requires that the conduct “incite hatred, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of” a class of persons on the ground of the race of that class of persons.
AMAC’s legal advice was that the disgraceful language used in AMW’s article would likely have fallen foul of Section 7. The article in question was titled ‘Who in this Celestial World (sic) gave the Greeks the right to take away the Macedonian language?’ and AMAC’s complaint was based mainly on the following parts of the article:
December 05, 2010
In response to the article posted by the UMD (United Macedonian Diaspora) (http://umdiaspora.org/content/view/524/1) and written by a leading member of the UMD´s operations in Australia, Dame Krcoski:
The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) is disappointed, but not surprised at the attack on a Winthrop Professor from the Classics & Ancient History department (University of Western Australia), Professor Melville-Jones, for his honest address in our quarterly newsletter. The professor is 1 of 7 Australian classics academics to have signed the Macedonia Evidence Petition (see http://macedonia-evidence.org/). The Petition has now been signed by 367, mostly non-Greek, academics world-wide, in order to preserve and protect Macedonian history from FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).
Dame Krcoski (from UMD Australia) states that....
PRESS RELEASE
8 September 2010
AMAC was disappointed to discover the content of a survey conducted by the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, a research centre of Victoria University, for people of Slav-Macedonian background: http://www.cfses.com/survey-macedonia-2010.htm. According to this link, the survey was conducted “in partnership with the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Macedonian Diaspora”.
The UMD is a nationalist, US-based lobby group with its head office in Washington DC. The UMD is well-known for their supporting territorial claims by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia against Greece and Bulgaria.
Question 1 asks for the respondent’s country of birth and gives the option “Aegean Macedonia (in Greece)”. This sort of terminology is highly inappropriate. The term “Aegean Macedonia” is a term coined by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in order to legitimise its claims on the Greek province of Macedonia and, in particular, the port of Thessaloniki.
Question 15 then asks.....
The perennially racist and deceptive newspaper, the ´Australian Macedonian Weekly´, has again been caught printing fabrications.
An article in the July 20 edition of the AMW, on page 35, stated that "The Australian Greens are the only political party in Australia that openly supports Macedonia's right to self-identification under its constitutional name."
The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) contacted the Greens´ leadership to clarify whether it had such a policy. A letter from Brett Constable, National Manager of the Australian Greens Party, read as follows: "Thank you for your letter of 30 July referring to the Greens policy on the identification of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Greens do not have a policy on this issue."
This letter establishes that, contrary to...
Adelaide, 10.02.2010
“I will speak of Macedonia being Hellenic and nobody will silence me, because it is something I believe in”. This was the answer of the PM of South Australia Mike Rann, to the reactions of citizens coming from FYROM.
Mr. Rann has been supporting in every possible way the Greek side on Macedonia and Cyprus, outraging the citizens of Australia who come from Turkey and FYROM.
“It is important because no one is entitled to steal another nation’s history or culture,” Mr Rann said.
Mr Koloski, president of the self proclaimed “United Macedonian Diaspora”, told The Advertiser that his people had been “slandered” and demanded an unconditional apology. He also met the Minister of Multicultural Affairs, Michael Atkinson in Adelaide and issued a letter of protest to Mr. Rann.
Mr. Rann stated in the past that “Macedonia is as Greek as the Acropolis”The newspaper of Adelaide “The Advertiser” published an article whereby reference is made to Mr. Rann’s speech during the Dimitria Greek festival in the western suburbs in November in which he stated that FYROM’s president Giorgi Ivanov is“stirring up trouble in the most dangerous way” and affirms his commitment to Adelaide’s Greek voters and promises his Government will “remain firm and unswerving in our support for your cause”.
Source: ANA – MPA
Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) 
