UN Committee: Slavmacedonians must recognise its “Slavic Macedonian” culture.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has considered the combined sixteenth to nineteenth periodic reports of Greece on its implementation of the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Below you can read the points that consern the Slavmacedonians in Greece.

Report of Greece

In the context of minorities, references made by a very small number of non-governmental organizations to a so-called “Macedonian minority” in Greece do not correspond to existing realities. The fact that a small number of persons who live in Northern Greece use, in addition to the Greek language, Slavic oral idioms, does not indicate the existence of a national minority. Furthermore, the use of the term “Macedonian” to describe a so-called minority usurps the name and national and cultural identity of some two and a half million Greeks who identify themselves for many centuries as Macedonians (Makedones) in the regional and cultural context and can therefore not be accepted.

Presentation of Report

In this connection, claims that Greece did not recognize the existence of a national linguistic minority by the name of “Macedonian” were totally unsubstantiated and threatened to create potential tensions over existing identities in the region, as well as serious confusion over that name, as it was also used by hundreds of thousands Greek Macedonians living in the northern part of the country, said Ms. Telalian. Also, the non-recognition of numerically small groups as a national minority did not imply discriminatory treatment.

Oral Questions Raised by the Rapporteur and Experts

JOSE LINDGREN ALVES, the Committee Expert serving as country Rapporteur for the report of Greece, said he could not agree more with Greece’s answer to his question as to why Greece had not ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe, while it had signed it in 1997. In its response Greece had said that the diversity of legal and socio-political circumstances and historic traditions prevailing in each country called for tailor-made rather than “one size fits all” conceptual approaches and practical solutions. If this response held true for Europe, it held truer for the rest of the world.

Turning to the question of those who insisted on a Slavic Macedonian minority, Mr. Lindgren Alves said that the most important thing was to assure their human rights in general, including their right to use their dialect or mother language, as any other group. The non-recognition of a group as a minority did not deprive such a group from the enjoyment of its rights. He had been interested to learn that even a political party to foster the claims of Slavic Macedonians had been accepted and had been freely participating in parliamentary elections.

One Expert noted that there was a group speaking a Slavic language in the country, they did not need to be considered as Macedonians, if this led to confusion over the name, but they were still using a Slavic language, which they had not invented and they should have the right to use it. Also political parties should not be divided by ethnicities as this could undermine the unity of the State. Further, for him it was more important to know whether a minority had the right to use its language, not if it had the right to form a political party.

Response by Delegation to Oral Questions

On the so-called Slavic “Macedonians” the delegation said that this was not a case of self identification as this group did not base its identification on objective criteria. The “Slavic” qualifier was not used in this case. The only qualifier used by this community was the “Macedonian” one. The problem was that the “Macedonian” term was already used by thousands of people in Greece. Up until recently, this group of “Slavic Macedonians” had been completely unknown, not only to Greece but to the whole Balkan region.

The delegation said that the “Slavic Macedonians” were however not prevented from speaking their oral idiom or from stating that they were part of a certain group. The fact that the Greek State had not officially recognised them did not mean that this community was not fully enjoying its rights and that its members were not fully respected by the Greek State.

The delegation underscored that there was a dignity in the name of the Greek Macedonians and said that Greece had not gotten any answer yet on why the State should not respect the cultural and historical heritage of the Greek Macedonians. It had nothing to do with the denial of the existence of a minority group but the denial of a name that was already used since a long time.

Further Oral Questions Posed by Experts

Jose Lindgren Alves, the Committee Expert serving as country Rapporteur for the report of Greece, said that, on the question of the so-called “Slavic Macedonians”, he did not know that they were denying their Slavic origin, even though he had been an ambassador to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. He wondered if it would change something if this community would recognise its “Slavic Macedonian” culture.

Replies by the Delegation

Responding to this question, the delegation said that they were not in a position to respond in a hypothetical sense. Very recently, Greece had said that the “Slavic Macedonians” should have used a qualifier to clarify their origin. Why were they constantly using the name Macedonian, which already identified 2.5 million Macedonians in the cultural sense? Even the former leaders of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia had admitted that they were of Slavic origin. This question had only come up in the last years. Everyone in the Balkans knew very well what minorities there were in the Balkans, as the question of minorities in the Balkans had created so many tensions in the region. This was the very first time that they had heard of a “Macedonian” group in this region. It was a question of dignity of the name “Macedonian”.

This difference had created a tension with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and even the United Nations Security Council had said that there was a difference in the name. This situation had to be solved. In Security Council resolution 1845, the Council had asked the two parties to settle the question under the auspices of the United Nations.

This clearly showed that what was in a name had several historical and political implications. It was not a question of a specific denial but the risk of creating tension among identities in the Balkans.

The use of the Macedonian name as a state appellation in no way confers the right to appropriate everything and anything derived from or pertained to the entire region of Macedonia. This needs to be legally clarified and remain binding erga omnes. The state name needs specifically to refer to and describe the present region of FYROM. It should apply erga omnes in multilateral and bilateral international relations and transactions and should be observed by all organizations, states, and other non-governmental international organizations, including the government and the agencies of FYROM. As Kofos said [7] Greek and FYROM parties should accept the name used by the inhabitants of FYROM for their region of geographical Macedonia, i.e. Vardar Macedonia, or preferably Vardar Makedonija.

It is therefore clear that the appropriation of the name Macedonia by the FYROM, on which they have based all their propaganda and even their national existence, does not even correspond to their own false national identity since their artificially created state does not have any national homogeneity. This appropriation of the Macedonian name goes against every principle of justice and conceals other expediencies which directly insult Greek national and Macedonian Cultural Identities as shows the unchanging nature of their continuous propaganda.

Athens' response to UN report

GENEVA (ANA-MPA) --

Greece's permanent representative to United Nations on Friday responded in detail to a handful of findings listed in recent report by an independent UN expert on minority issues focusing on the EU and NATO member-state, taking the opportunity to again reiterate Athens' standing positions.

Amb. Frangiskos Verros, speaking before the UN's Human Rights Council, first thanked the UN expert, Gay McDougall, for opening the way "to a frank and constructive dialogue on a number of issues concerning the implementation of human rights standards towards minorities (in Greece)", as he noted.

In reference to the Muslim minority in the extreme northeast Greek province of Thrace, Verros reminded that the Greek government "respects the right of every person to self-identify. However, such self-identification should neither be arbitrary nor at the expense of the right of self-identification of other groups."

He was commenting on claims, mostly put forth by successive Turkish governments, to identify the entire Muslim minority as "Turkish", instead of the internationally recognised "Muslim minority" as foreseen in the landmark 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which refers to a Greek minority in Turkey and a Muslim minority in Greece.

"It is a fact that the Muslim minority in Thrace consists of three distinct groups, those of Turkish, Pomak and Roma (gypsy) origin. Each group has its own distinct spoken language and cultural traditions, which are fully respected. Thus, any attempt to identify the entire Muslim minority in Thrace as 'Turkish' is unacceptable, not only for political reasons, but also because it does not objectively reflect the actual composition of the whole minority," he said, speaking in Geneva.

Verros also charged that any effort by the "Turkish-origin component" of the minority to impose its own cultural characteristics and traditions on the Pomak and Roma communities contravenes modern human rights standards vis-?-vis minority protection.

Moreover, he defended the appointments of muftis, Muslim quasi-judicial officials, as conducted in an absolutely transparent manner, while calling efforts to organise "elections" by certain individuals in the province illegal, pointing to, among others, the exclusion of women and most of the minority's members.

Additionally, he said the Greek government will study possible readjustments with regards to the current and partial application of Sharia law (domestic unions, inheritance etc.) for members of the Muslim minority in Thrace, noting that "Greece takes seriously into account the need to strengthen the substantive review and control by domestic courts of the conformity of muftis' decisions with the Greek constitution and international human rights treaties."

In a separate issue, Verros outlined Greece's categorical and unwavering opposition to any recognition of a "distinct or linguistic minority in Greece by the name 'Macedonian', since the name Macedonian is used in the cultural/regional sense by Greek Macedonians living in the region," Verros' reference to the province of Macedonia, Greece's largest, which more closely approximates to geographical and historical Macedonia.

"Thus, the term 'Macedonian' to denote such an identity in Greece not only fails to respect Hellenic cultural heritage and the identify of 2.5 million Greek Macedonians living there, but also threatens to create a serious confusion or even a potential clash over identities in the whole region," he said, adding:

"Greece believes that references in the report to the name 'Macedonian' to denote an ethnic 'minority' living in the Greek region (province) of Macedonia or a 'language' spoken in this region should have been avoided. These references should not be interpreted as implying a determination that such a minority or language exists in Greece, but claims emanating from the individuals concerned ... Let me add that the political party ("Rainbow" or "Ouranio Toxo"), which claims to represent the so-called 'Macedonian minority', obtained in the Greek parliamentary elections of 1996 a very small number of votes, which further decreased to 1,139 votes in the 2000 elections," Verros said, in reference to the last time the specific political formation stood in national elections.

In concluding, he emphasised that all Greek citizens are free to manifest their traditions and culture, saying festivities and cultural events are regularly held in the Florina region of northwest Greece, where the tiny political party is headquarters.

McDougall´s UN Report - unilateralism regarding Greek minority issues

Displaying a memorial report [1] of unilateralism and unprecedented revisionist mood, American UN envoy Gay J. McDougall "discovered" a Turkish and Macedonian minority in Greece and called for the Greek government to "respect" their language and to give them their rights.

An impressive and suspicious at the same time fact, is that she throws the Lausanne treaty[2] in the garbage can, a treaty that establishes the status quo of the Greek-Turkish relations for the last 86 years, probably because she wants to find a way to review it.

In her report, the American who had visited Greece in September, literally speaks with venomous words for the so called 'supposedly homogeneous Greece' supporting that Greece mostly consists of at least three minorities, namely Turkish, "Macedonian" and the Roma. She also attacks against the Greek State for "attempting to establish the idea of an ethnically homogeneous state".

Not only urges the Greek government to recognize the "Macedonian" minority but also to protect the rights and their language and asks for the review of the Lausanne treaty (a treaty that even Turkey has recognize in it's own signature that there is no such thing as a ''turkish minority'') and the recognition of such a minority. In her report also describes the ''limitations of the minorities rights in Greece'' and calls for the Greek State to review it's behavior towards them.

We should also give further attention to the fact that the report does not comes for a ''usual suspect'' meaning the U.S. agency or U.S. government agency, but from the UN, despite the fact that the report has been written from an American citizen.

Especially in the issue of the recognition of a ''turkish minority'' which actually means the change of the content of the Lausanne treaty, special attention should be given from the Greek side because any review even to one article causes a rivew of the entire Lausanne treaty, in what ever this might mean for the Greek islands of East Aegean.

A lot of arguments were caused during her visits in Macedonia and Thrace. Besides the so-called «independent» expert of the United Nations for minorities Ms Gay McDougall had chosen to keep in mind, mainly the views of the protestants instead of the Greek government. Ms McDougall was in Greece from 8 to 16 of September 2008 in order to prepare a report on minorities in Thrace and in Florina.

The report of the independent expert's was released during the 10th Conference of the UN Human Rights Council, held in Geneva. A careful reading, proves that Mrs McDougall takes the most extreme elements of the Muslim minority (Turkish view) for granted but also attempts to validate the existence of «Macedonian» minority in Greece, a claim which is strongly promoted by the Nationalist Prime Minister of FYROM Mr. Nikola Gruevski.

In order to justify her interest in the supposedly "oppressed" minorities in Greece, this "independent" expert considers that «her concerns focus in the extent to which legislation, policies and practices meet their obligations under international law on human rights, including rights for minorities, which go beyond the bilateral treaties and agreements. The decision that a particular group should be protected as a minority has no impact on interstate relations. Minorities are the founding groups of Greek society, not a foreign element »

After a brief "human rights seminar", Mrs McDougall cuts to the chase and asks for the Greek government "not to disagree in the existence of Macedonian and Turkish minority in Greece and to focus on protecting the rights of self-determination, freedom of expression and freedom of trade union of those communities. Their rights (meaning the specific «minorities») must be kept in accordance with the Declaration on Minorities and the core of international human rights. Greece must fully comply with the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, specifically when those decisions provide that unions must be able to use the words «Macedonian» and «Turkish» and express their national identities freely ".

Moving within (supposedly) independent scientific spirit, she characterizes the perception that minority issues should be determined by "old international treaties" outdated, referring indirectly to the Treaty of Lausanne. Mrs McDougall cite the Greek government that the perspective of minorities is restrictive and does not cover modern standards because it remains attached to the historic view of the ethnic minorities created by the dissolution of empires.

The government does not recognize a ''Macedonian'' ethnic minority existence living in Central and Western Macedonia ... Successive governments pursue a policy of denial of the "Macedonian" ethnic community and the "Macedonian" language which is not recognized nor taught ..» referring in the report, which also projects the requests of extreme clubs for a reference of toponyms in "Macedonian" language as well, even using the example of Florina / Lerin

The Greek government can neither recognize a minority with the same name, as the majority, nor build non-Greek schools and churches with the same name. Greek courts have offered to open cultural centers for their minority, under a different name (than Macedonian). They have refused. As long as they use the term "Macedonian" to describe their nationality, their minority in Greece cannot be recognized as such, since the same name is used by the Greeks of Macedonia to describe themselves for much longer that the written history of any Slavic tribe.

In order to support her arguments concerning the alleged existence of the Turkish minority in Western Thrace, the «independent» Mrs McDougall takes advantage of the existence of the Turkish Consulate in Komotini, indicating that «.. from the moment the members of the Muslim minority are Greek citizens, it has been allowed to Turkey to maintain a Consulate in Western Thrace and to interfere in the affairs relating to the Muslim minority .. ».

However it is important to note that the independent expert «buries» the reports of the Pomaks and Roma, who complained that they receive heavy pressure in order for them to speak the Turkish language and to define themselves as Turks!

This report raise some questions that need answer from Mrs McDouggal:.

1. Since the visit of this «independent expert» in Greece was official in order to present a report in the UN for Greece, then how is it possible not to inform the official state for her actions but instead acted as if she was a representative of a foreign power in the country? How is it possible for her to present a report as a result of an official visit from the UN when the only people who were «accompanying» her were the Rainbow party representatives that got her away like she was a fugitive? In final analysis, it is possible to speak for minorities when during the «historical» meeting in a cafeshop she spoke with 15-20 people who were presented as a whole «minority»?
2. How It is possible in an official document of the UN to mention that Muslim is a Turk and that «people» of western and northern Macedonia are not Greek? A representative of the UN may use «sources», which only cause erroneous impressions without even approaching people who have an opposite view. How it is possible since in a way she conducts an «anthropological» research to close out the one side and from the other side simply refers to the positions of the Greek government as «impersonal» and has not shown the slightest interest in talking to everyday local people?
3. Since the «independent expert» is really interested for any human rights of any «oppressed» human and since she stated that the Pomaks indeed are being opresses from the Turks, why doesn't she mentions that the «Turks / Muslims» are actually a factor of «oppression» and that for any reason they are not the ones who have been «oppressed»? In other words, her conclusions may not make clear that «Muslims» are not equal to «Turkish» ?
4. Ultimately, how it is possible for an «independent researcher» not to see how the concept of «minority», not only in our region, but especially on it, has a deep historical, political and military role particularly where boundaries are changing and people lost ? Did she ever hear the "Macedonian salad" expression?
5. Is it an accident that extreme nationalist clubs of Fyrom, like the extreme-right party of Gruevski 's VMRO and AMHRC and MHRMI organisations "celebrated" for the content of the report?
6. How is it possible for her to reject the cultural identity of 2,5 million Greeks of Macedonia, over a small group pf Slavmacedonians?

With this report Gay J. McDougall shows that she has no respect as regards the Greek cultural Identity, but the only that she cares is the US political views since her report complies with the reports that have published from the US State Department and not with the UN views.

Written by Akritas
Edited by Ariadni_Nefeli

Endnotes

1]- A/HRC/10/11/Add.3, 18 February 2009

2]- The Lausanne Treaty was signed on 24 July 1923 by the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania, and the "Serbo-Croat-Slovene" State on one part and Turkey on the other. The treaty provided for the independence of the Republic of Turkey but also for the protection of the ethnic Greek minority in Turkey and the mainly Muslim minority in Greece (Turks, Pomaks and Roma).