The Statistical Battle for the Population of Greek Macedonia

by Iakovos D. Michailidis
from the book "Macedonian History"

Greek comments as regards the FYROM issues at ECRI’s report(pages 61-62)

With respect to the references to ‘’Macedonian’’ community and language (paras. 111-120), we would like to stress that a small number of people in Greek Macedonia, mainly in the prefecture of Florina, apart from Greek, speak a Slavic dialect, which is confined to family or colloquial use. This dialect has similarities with the language spoken by the Slav-Macedonians in the neighbouring Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Cross-border contacts, such as tourism and trade, keep this dialect alive,as is the case with the Greek language spoken in the southern part of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. All people in Greece speaking this dialect are bilingual (Slavic/Greek).

Subjective claims or perceptions of some of the above-mentioned individuals, which are not based on objective facts and criteria, that they are ethnically “Macedonians” do not establish by themselves a corresponding obligation of Greece to officially recognize this group as a «minority» and to guarantee to its members specific minority rights, additional to those guaranteed by human rights treaties. Moreover, the use on their behalf of the term “Macedonian” in order to define a distinct ethnicity creates confusion with the 2,5 million Greeks who identify themselves as Macedonians in the regional/cultural sense.

In any case, in Greece, even if a group is not recognised as a minority enjoying specific minority rights, individuals are free to declare that they belong to a distinct ethnic or cultural group, without any negative consequences resulting from such a statement. In addition, these persons enjoy fully all their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, which are recognized by the provisions of national and international law. Both the judiciary and the administration are obliged to implement these provisions. Persons who consider that their rights are
being violated can bring their case before the Greek courts and also have the possibility to appeal to the competent international bodies, as provided for by the relevant treaties binding Greece.

A couple of examples prove the above mentioned affirmations:

- There is a political party in Greece, which claims to represent the “Macedonian minority”. This party operates freely and participates without any impediments in the elections. One of the leading figures of the party is a civil servant, working for the Greek State, regardless of his political activities and views.

- There are regular cultural events and festivities organised by the Slav-speaking persons in the region of Florina, where everyone is free to participate, including nationals of the neighbouring Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

In conclusion, all persons residing in Greece, regardless of their nationality, ethic origin, language, religious or political affiliation enjoy full protection of their human rights and liberties. Everyone is free to declare his/her origin, speak his/her language, exercise his/her religion and observe his/her particular customs and traditions.

Finally, with regard to the implementation of measures of reconciliation, the Greek State, in order to definitely heal the wounds of the Civil War, proceeded to the reinstatement of the citizenship and the return of confiscated property of persons of Greek origin who had fled the country after this traumatic historical experience. However, all individuals, irrespective of their ethic origin, have the possibility to bring before Greek courts any claims regarding property or other issues, under the general provisions of law.

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.

OSCE : STATEMENT BY THE GREEK DELEGATION in exercise of its Right of Reply (Slav-Macedonian issues in Greece)

HDIM.DEL/141/081 October 2008
OSCE HUMAN DIMENSION IMPLEMENTATION MEETING WORKING SESSION 3: FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS II (30.9.2008)WORKING SESSION 5: TOLERANCE AND NON-DISCRIMINATION I(1.10.2008)

STATEMENT BY THE GREEK DELEGATION in exercise of its Right of Reply

“Macedonian” minority in Greece

There has never been a “Macedonian” minority in Greece. Any individual who claims to belong to a distinct ethnic or cultural group is free to do so and there are no negative consequences resulting from such an expression of wish. However, subjective claims or perceptions of a small number of persons, which are not based on objective facts and criteria, do not establish by themselves a corresponding obligation of the State to officially recognize a group as a «minority» and to guarantee to its members specific minority rights, additional to those guaranteed by human rights treaties.

There is a small number of people in Greek Macedonia, mainly in the prefecture of Florina, who, apart from Greek, speak a Slav dialect, which is confined to family or colloquial use.

In fact, the non-recognition of a group as a minority, enjoying specific minority rights, on the basis of solid legal and factual grounds, does notdeprive persons belonging to such group from the enjoyment of all civil,cultural, economic, political and social rights, which are recognized undernational and international law.

Greece has ratified the most important international treaties for theprotection of human rights and has adopted a series of measures, legislative and other, for their implementation. The provisions of the above mentioned international treaties have been fully integrated into the Greek legislation and once ratified by law, prevail over internal legislation. Both the judiciary and the administration are bound by the Greek Constitution to implement these provisions. Moreover, every person who considers that his or her rights are being breached can take the case to the Greek courts. They also have the possibility to appeal to the competent international bodies, as provided forunder the relevant treaties.

Rainbow party

A political party claiming to represent the so-called “Macedonian minority” in Greece, called the “Rainbow” party, was set up in 1994. Since then it participates freely in both National Elections as well as in the Elections for the European Parliament. In the 1996 National Elections it was voted by)13.476 people (percentage of 0,05%). During the April 2000 parliamentary elections the party joined other minor parties into a coalition called OAKKE (“Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of Greece”) which received overall a percentage of 0,017% (namely, 1139 votes). During the elections for the European Parliament of 2004, the coalition of parties to which the Rainbow Party belonged, received the percentage of 0, 10 (6.138 votes). Most probably, due to the fact that in the course of the last years the party’s number of votes has decreased significantly, it decided not to participate in the National Elections of 2004 and 2007. The small number of votes this party is receiving at elections taking place in Greece could serve as a proof that it does not manage to win the support of the people it is claiming to represent.

With regard to the issue of the sign located at the entrance of theoffices of the Rainbow Party, depicting the name of the party in the Slavic dialect, it should be noted that the local population, including those that the party is claiming to represent, are the first ones to feel disturbed and the protagonists of the complaints for such a provocative action, as they do not wish to become tools in serving the interests of political aspirations and foreign propaganda they do not share.

Cultural and religious freedoms

The Greek Constitution guarantees full protection of human rights andliberties of all persons residing in Greece, irrespective of their nationality, language, religious or political affiliation. Everyone is free to declare his/her origin, speak his/her language, exercise his/her religion and observe his/her particular customs and traditions.

The festivities and cultural events that regularly take place in the region of Florina are integral part of the local population’s culture and should not bethe vehicle of a small number of people who are trying to usurp the cultural particularity of the region, which is also attributed to its border-character, as well as the cultural and historical heritage of the Greek Macedonia .

Establishment of “Macedonian” Cultural Centers

It is to be noted that the adjective “Macedonian” is being extensively used in the Greek region of Macedonia as well as throughout the country andthe diaspora by Greeks originating from Macedonia. There are hundreds ofscientific, business, professional and sports associations which bear theMacedonian name to denote their regional and/or cultural provenance.

The use of the word “Macedonian” for the denomination of an association founded by a small number of individuals who attach to it a different meaning, in terms of culture or origin, would inevitably create great confusion as to what they actually mean or pursue by using this word. One would assume that this association is a Greek-Macedonian one, like hundreds of other Greek associations bearing the word “Macedonian” in their denomination, while, in fact, it refers to another, different culture.

Moreover, the use of the term “Macedonian” by an association of asmall number of people, with a different ethnic and cultural identity, negatively affects the exercise of the rights of the majority of the population of the region, which attaches to the term a completely different meaning. Consequently, the exercise of the right of self-identification by a small number of people could be viewed as a deliberate effort to prevent the whole population of the region to determine themselves with the name “Macedonian”.

The use of the “Macedonian” language and the obligation to be introduced in the educational programs in Greek schools

Every person has the right to freely speak the Slavic dialect. In fact, people who wish to do so sing in Slavic at festivities organised regularly by the local communities. Another expression of the free use of this dialect in Greece is the fact that the idiom is being developed and is spoken in different forms in some villages of the region.

Efforts being made by the Rainbow party, seconded by the official authorities of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, to name thisdialect “Macedonian” language and claim that it should be introduced in the educational programs of Greek schools of the region is politically motivated. Such a claim is not even supported by the small number of people who, apart from Greek, speak the dialect. The use of the “Macedonian” language in Greek schools is one of the main priorities for the Rainbow party, but such an agenda does not seem to be attractive for the people of the region.

It is surprising to observe the persistence by which the Rainbow Party and the official authorities in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are trying to establish the term “Macedonian language” when referring to this dialect. Such an effort runs contrary to the fact that scholars in international linguistic conferences (a) have defined the dialect as well as the language spoken in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as being of Slavic character and (b) that the term “Macedonian” could only be applied to the Greek dialect spoken in Ancient Macedonia.

It is obvious from the above that efforts to upgrade and rename thesaid dialect are politically motivated and resulting in harming the cultural diversity of the region where the dialect is spoken, as well as insulting 2,5 million people in Greek Macedonia, who attach to the terms “Macedonia” and “Macedonian” a completely different meaning.

One should also bear in mind that the Slavic idiom spoken in Greek Macedonia is not identical with the language spoken in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Given the above, it is clear that the Greek state has no obligation tointroduce the Slavic dialect in the educational programs of Greek schools in the region.

The use of the term Macedonia

Exercising the right of self-identification should not result in harming neighbouring countries, nor should it imply territorial claims against them.

Macedonia is a geographical region which extends “beyond one sovereignty”, that is Greece, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania all include different parts of geographic Macedonia intheir own sovereign territories.

The problem arises because one country, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, insists on monopolizing the name of this particular geographic region as the name of its own state and nation, although a) the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s sovereignty extends only in part (35%) over this region and b) another state, Greece, which includes 55% of geographic Macedonia in its sovereign territory, uses the same name. Not surprisingly, this name constitutes the foremost element for the self definition of the Greek population (2,5 million people) in Macedonia, yet with a completely different content than that in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

From this perspective, the use of the name Macedonia by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, without any further clarification or definition, is totally misleading, because it directs to the erroneous identification of millions of citizens of one state (Greece) with that of the citizens of a neighboring state (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), who have a totally different perception of themselves, their culture, their ethnic identity and language.

It is more than obvious that a same term for two completely different cases, provokes only confusion on every level and in every sector (semantic, symbolic, geographic, ethnological, linguistic, etc.), with consequences which, in any case, are negative, dangerous and totally unnecessary for all sides concerned.

Greece does not claim exclusive rights on the geographical region of Macedonia, but is opposed to efforts of falsification of history, resulting in monopolizing a certain culture and heritage.

Property issues

Quite recently, Prime Minister Gruevski undertook - through a series ofletters addressed to a large number of countries - an effort to derail andundermine the UN negotiation process, by raising well-known unacceptable property issues of people that left Greece in the aftermath of the Second World War.

We recall the reply already given by the Greek Prime Minister to his counter part of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, stating that allegations raised by our neighbouring country are unacceptable, unfounded, politically motivated and disrespectful of the historic reality of the region.

In any case, any individual could make use of any legal recourse before the Courts on such issues, including the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and does certainly not need to be patronized by the Prime Minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Human rights to the Greeks of FYROM

As you may know, the Skopje government abuses Hellenic human rights. We urge you all to mobilize your constituents to attend a national demonstration on Monday, October 27th at 12:00 noon to be held at United States Mission to the UN. Located at 140 East 45th Street (between Third and Lexington Avenues)

It is imperative that we send a clear and powerful message that we oppose Skopje’s cultural genocide program, its support for global terrorism, threats to destroy the Hellenic people. and its blatant abuse of human rights.

more informations in northmacedonians blog

Recycling Propaganda: Remarks on NGO Reports on Greece's "Slav-Macedonian Minority"

Between November 1993 and October 1994 various NGO reports focused on the alleged ethnic "Macedonian" minority living in Greece. Supported by a number of books and articles published during the same period, NGOs argue that "Macedonian" is a primordial ethnic identity embraced by a considerable proportion of the population of Macedonia and still corresponds to a sizeable but suppressed and violently assimilated ethnic minority in Greece.

The below paper written from Vlassis Vlasidis and Veniamin Karakostanoglou is not intended to challenge the apparent ideological obstacles that an ethnic nation-state like Greece faces when it has to deal with minority issues.
It seeks to contest the generalising character of these accounts by revealing
-the misuse of data and terms
-the use of deceptive data
-the selective use -indeed the recycling- of biased bibliographical sources.

The general line is that international observers have failed to give an objective view of the minority question in Greece. Basically this was due to a general misinterpretation of ethnicity in the Balkans and to various political necessities which unfortunately seem to be assessed together with human and minority rights.

===================================================================
Recycling Propaganda: Remarks on Recent Reports on Greece's "Slav-Macedonian Minority"[1]
by Vlassis Vlasidis - Veniamin Karakostanoglou
Macedonian Press Agency-Institute for Balkan Studies , 1996
For fair use only

Between November 1993 and October 1994 various NGO reports focused on the alleged ethnic "Macedonian" minority living in Greece. Supported by a number of books and articles published during the same period, NGOs argue that "Macedonian" is a primordial ethnic identity embraced by a considerable proportion of the population of Macedonia and still corresponds to a sizeable but suppressed and violently assimilated ethnic minority in Greece. This paper is not intended to challenge the apparent ideological obstacles that an ethnic nation-state like Greece faces when it has to deal with minority issues. It seeks to contest the generalising character of these accounts by revealing (a) the misuse of data and terms, (b) the use of deceptive data, (c) the selective use -indeed the recycling- of biased bibliographical sources. The bottom line is that international observers have failed to give an objective view of the minority question in Greece. Basically this was due to a general misinterpretation of ethnicity in the Balkans and to various political necessities which unfortunately seem to be assessed together with human and minority rights.

1. In less than twelve months, between November 1993 and October 1994, at the height of the controversy over the recognition of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (hereafter FYROM), at least five different NGO reports have focused on the alleged ethnic "Macedonian" minority living in Greece. They all share an extremely critical point of view of Greek policy. I nNovember 1993, Professor Erik Siesby, on behalf of the Danish Helsinki Committee was the first to submit a fifteen-page long report on The Slav Macedonians in Greece. Lois Whitman, Deputy Director of Human Rights/Helsinki Watch, and her staff, followed in April 1994 with a most detailed booklet of 85 pages, under the poetic title, Denying Ethnic Identity. The Macedonians of Greece. These two accounts were the result of a joint visit to Greek Western Macedonia in July 1993. A similar visit by two Oxford dons followed in May 1994. The report was prepared basically by a journalist, Noel Malcolm, and was sponsored under the hitherto unknown British Helsinki Human Rights Group. It was entitled Macedonian Minorities: The Slav Macedonians of Northern Greece and the Treatment of Minorities in the Republic of Macedonia and drew a lot from the previous counterparts by Helsinki Watch. Siesby's and Whitman's views have been incorporated in the annual report by the International Helsinki Federation published in the fall of 1994. Whitman's account was also mentioned as a source in the U.S. Department of State annual report on Human Rights Practices in Greece for 1994, although the Department's authors were careful to keep distance form Whitman's far-fetched assertions and conclusions. In the same period (fall 1994) Minority Rights Group International published its own review on the Southern Balkans. Its intention, as it is openly stated by the editor Alan Phillips (see p. 5), was to focus on the Greek case exclusively; but after second thoughts it was considered preferable to expand the scope in order to avoid a misinterpretation of their motives. In any case the chapter on "The Slavomacedonian Minority in Greece: a case study in Balkan nationalism" occupies almost one half of the report. It was prepared by Minority Rights Group Greece, that is -in name at least- by its Greek representative Mr Panagiotis Dimitras, a lawyer who had also escorted Sies by and Whitman in their Greek Macedonian expeditions in 1993 and apparently had been the main contributor to their reports. The very same year the MRG International reprinted for the third time Hugh Poulton's book, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict, first published in 1989, whose views and conclusions on "Macedonians" in Greece fully correspond with the above mentioned reports [2] . Indeed it appears that Poulton was the basic source of all these reports. Similar views by the same author can be traced in the 1989 report (No 82) of MRG International on Minorities in the Balkans, as well as in a chapter on "The Rest of the Balkans", which he prepared for a book on Minority Rights in Europe published in the series "Chatham House Papers" in 19943. Students of Balkan affairs would be reluctant to accept the view that the publication of all these reports has been purely coincidental. Indeed these twelve months (1993-94) have coincided with a period when relations between Greece and FYROM had reached a dead end. Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that the heated international discussion of the Macedonian Question and the minority issues which are part of it have attracted the interest of the relevant NGOs. After all, it is their task to monitor the living conditions of minorities, which during periods of international crisis, as a rule, deteriorate considerably. However, a thorough examination of these reports has revealed certain interesting aspects that cast a shadow on the objectivity, if not the motives, of their authors. The terms, the arguments and the sources employed indicate that foreign observers have become active participants in the prolonged controversy between Greece and FYROM. In other words instead of examining the minority issue ad hoc, i.e. outside its obscure diplomatic framework, these publications seem to have contributed significantly to the crisis by creating additional points of friction and misunderstanding.

In brief all four reports as well as Poulton's studies and some recent anthropological articles, convey the impression that:

(a) "Macedonian" is a primordial ethnic identity embraced by a considerable proportion of the Christian population of Macedonia and still corresponds with a sizeable ethnic minority in Greece.
(b) Since 1912 this alleged minority has been suppressed and assimilated by the Greek State.
(c) Persecution of the minority at various levels is still practised widely and systematically by the Greek authorities.

In support of these arguments an extensive -at least at first sight- bibliography has been employed, together with interviews, xeroxed documents, and accounts of human rights violations. The uninformed reader as well as most foreign politicians and diplomats, NGO activists and journalists are exposed to dozens of references to scholarly publications, even to unpublished articles, statistics, decrees, state gazettes, and textbooks which allegedly testify to the writers' competence and industry and guarantee the objectivity of their views. This critique will not venture either to present historical counter arguments for each single point made in the reports or to undermine the validity of their interviews with the authors' informants. Instead it will seek to challenge the generalising character of their accounts (i.e. the idea of an on-going "ethnic cleansing") by revealing (a) the misuse of data and terms, (b) the use of deceptive data, (c) the selective use -indeed the recycling- of biased bibliographical sources

2.1. To start with, it would be interesting to examine the views of the organisations' observers about ethnic identities, an issue which has been the subject of many anthropological studies. For Erik Siesby the existence of a Macedonian ethnic identity in Greece is self-evident since there is a distinctive and corresponding language. This is perhaps why most of his points, actually one third of his report, deal with the language rights both in the past and nowadays. As a lawyer he even produced the testimony of a linguist who verified that the official "Macedonian" language spoken in FYROM exists! However, throughout his report Sies by used various terms, like "Slav-Macedonian", "Macedonian" and "local Slav-Macedonian" as identical to each other. Had he tried to define their content, as other observers after him did, he would have realised that they correspond to extremely ill-defined groups of people, bilingual, Greek- or Slav-speaking, of Greek ethnic identity in their overwhelming majority. Groups which in any case would all agree that linguistic criteria are not only insufficient to denote ethnic nuances in the Balkans; they can also be misleading.

2.2. Others appear to be more familiar with local problems of identification -at least at first sight. Whitman mentioned in her report (see p. 1) that during her field work in Greek Macedonia she had met "ethnic Macedonians" who identified themselves as such and they accepted their slavic origin; she also encountered "Macedonians" who claimed to be Greeks of Macedonian origin and "Greeks not of Macedonian descent" who considered themselves as "Greek". Then, on page five of her report, she regrouped the population of Greek Macedonia into two lots: the locals of Slavic origin (settled around the 6th century) and the Greeks, many of whom are inter-war Asia Minor refugees. It would be interesting to know how and to whom the questions were asked and phrased and how they were translated from English into Greek and vice versa, since in the Greek language the terms "ethnic" and "national" are used as identical, while katagogi -another term which must have been employed often in the discussions- means not only ethnic but geographical origin as well. In any case Whitman and her staff opted (see p. 1 note 1) to use the term "Macedonian" to refer to members of the "ethnic Macedonian minority" in Greece. The majority of the Slavophone inhabitants of the districts visited would hardly agree with this conclusion, as they identify themselves as Greeks. It is interesting to learn after all why representatives of Helsinki NGOs appear to discard the right of a person to self-determination -as sanctioned by CSCE documents on the Human Dimension- and assume for themselves the role of detectors of such identification based on linguistic or historical data of dubious validity.

Whitman's choice can only be understood if two points are clarified: American observers although they copy a widely acceptable definition of ethnicity, appear to believe that it is a primordial and pure identity with immutable characteristics and tend to ignore that it is historically constructed. This is perhaps why they believe that people who claim to be Greek but are of "Macedonian origin" (i.e. "they descend from a Slavic group which settled in the area around the sixth century A.D."!) must be classified as "ethnic Macedonians".

The second point is the bibliography which has been used. When searching for arguments in support of a distinct Macedonian identity reference is made either to an anthropologist, Loring Danforth [4], who relies exclusively on secondary FYROM sources, or to interviews with a limited group of activists in Greece. Similar problems with bibliography can be traced in all issues dealing with the fluctuations and the actual size of the "minority": For the number of "ethnic Macedonians" in 1912 Hugh Poulton is cited as an expert [5], but the latter is using also FYROM post 1945 secondary sources only [6]. In the case of inter-war demographic changes in Macedonia Poulton (using the FYROM historian Hristo Andonofski [7 ] as well as Elizabeth Barker [8] is cited again. In both cases the figures are mistaken. In another case (see p. 8) the number of the Slav-speaking men and women of the so-called Democratic Army who fled to Yugoslavia after the end of the Greek Civil War (1949) is estimated at 35,000 to 213,000! The lowest figure is drawn by Evangelos Kofos9, but it is deceitful because Kofos clearly says that this figure includes also people who had been drafted by force. Surely the source was not checked properly. The upper limit is also a mistake. It is based on p. 82 of Macedonia and its Relations with Greece (Skopje, 1993) published by the "Council for Research into South-eastern Europe" of the Macedonian (i.e. FYROM) Academy of Sciences and Arts. In support of that figure in particular, in this latter publication, reference is made to the communist newspaper Protoporos, issue of 15 May 1946, that is even before the beginning of the Civil War. If readers are to believe that the correct figure lays in between they are wrong again.

American observers' difficulties in assessing the sources and in using valid criteria is also evident when they eventually deal with the present size of the minority. Four different sources are cited, but the figures given are not compatible at all. Activists think that all non refugee Greeks in Greek Macedonia are "ethnic Macedonians", whom they estimate to be one million. FYROM officials claim some 230-270,000 co-nationals in Greek Macedonia. The 1951 Greek census gives 41,000 Slav-speakers. The 1992 State Department report mentioned 10-50,000 people descendants of Slav-speakers but refrained from characterising them as "ethnic Macedonians". Again the confusion between language and ethnicity is obvious.

2.3. The theory of Noel Malcolm, the observer who prepared the chapter on Greece for the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, is in no less problematic than that of Siesby and Whitman. He seems to accept that race and language determine ethnicity (see pp. 1-2). On these grounds Slavophones in northern Greece (whose "ancestors came to this part of the Balkans in the Slav migrations of the sixth and seventh centuries") are classified willy-nilly as "Macedonians" (potentially a FYROM national minority in Greece) [10]. Malcolm's obvious partiality to FYROM on the question of identities is not an exceptional phenomenon in his report. Unlike Siesby and Whitman, he has made clear that he relies more comfortably on FYROM sources regarding figures as well. Thus he considers as the "most careful estimate" of the population in 1912, that furnished by historian Stoyan Kiselinofski [11]. Malcolm also draws figures from the same author for the inter-war period and the departure of Slav-speakers to the north after the Greek Civil War[12]. Additional examples also reveal his uncritical handling of data. Dimitris Lithoxoou [13], a leading member of the "Rainbow" (claiming to be an "ethnic Macedonian" party in Greece) has calculated that the number of Slav-speakers in a certain region of Greek Macedonia in 1951 was 3.5 times higher than that given by the official census[14]. Based on that calculation Malcolm went as far as to claim (p. 6) that the total number of Slav-speakers in the whole of Greek Macedonia was 3.5 higher, that is 140,000 instead of the official 41,000. Even Mr Lithoxoou, however, has been more cautious in dealing with figures. As far as the present size of the minority is concerned his verdict is that it must be ranging between 40,000 and 100,000. These figures are based on two social anthropologists: The former is an anonymous one, which, according to Malcolm, mentions a core of 40-70,000 "ethnic Macedonians" and an associated circle of roughly 100,000. The latter is A. Karakasidou, who wrote that 80% of the population of the Florina region are either Slav-speakers or descendants of Slav-speakers[15]. Two points must be made here: why are anthropologists considered by Malcolm a reliable source for figures? In fact Karakasidou mentioned explicitly that this percentage is not official and used the conditional form ("I would estimate") probably to express some doubt. But even if her figure was right, to move to the second point, descending from Slav-speakers does not make one necessarily an "ethnic Macedonian".

2.4. Anastasia Karakasidou's academic influence is also obvious in the report prepared by Panagiotis Dimitras (Minority Rights Group - Greece, MRG-GR ), a paper heavily loaded with references to a rich but standardised bibliography. In particular MRG-GR reproduces roughly her theory on the classification of the population in Greek Macedonia[16]. Four groups of inhabitants are mentioned: (a) Those who have a "Macedonian" national (i.e. FYROM) identity; (b) those who identify themselves as neither Greek nor FYROM nationals and seek recognition of their cultural specificity; (c) the largest group, assimilated "Slav- Macedonians" with a Greek ethnic and national identity and (d) pure ethnic Greeks with a Macedonian Greek regional identity. Dimitras uses the term "Slavo-Macedonian" but throughout the report one can hardly distinguish between the first and the second group (see for example p. 14 where he is referring to those identified with FYROM as "militant Slavomacedonians"). It is inevitable that in the mind of a careless reader by the end of the MRG-GR (i.e. Dimitras') report all groups have been unified into one, the "Slavomacedonians", who are classified as more or less militant but definitely not as ethnic Greek. All these contrary to the author's initial and explicit statement that the overwhelming majority of them claim the opposite (p. 7).

As in other NGO reports problems in terminology acquire additional importance when they are related to figures, estimates and censuses. MRG-GR, for example, makes reference to a Greek scholar, Professor Mavrogordatos, in order to question the validity of the official 1928 census which estimated Slav-speakers in Greece as few as 82,000. The report claims that "Slavomacedonians", according to the Greek scholar cited, were probably 200,000 (p. 12). But the full text used reads: "Contemporary Greek reports estimate that as many as 200,000 'Bulgarian'-speaking inhabitants live in Macedonia, of whom no more than 80,000-90,000 are considered to be lacking a Greek national consciousness..." [17]. Further on, if one checks Mavrogordatos' reference, he will find that he has cited two reports both by a high-school inspector submitted to the Association for the Dissemination of Greek Letters in Athens[18]. Regardless of the actual text and the questionable validity of its sources one is finally left with the impression that "Slavomacedonians" (whatever one thinks this term means) were roughly 200,000.

In the same fashion gross errors can be easily spotted when MRG-GR ventures to estimate the present size of the minority (p. 14). Its argument is based on four sources: (a) Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the Year 1987, which gives 180,000; (b) an anonymous ethnologist (apparently the same anthropologist mentioned by Malcolm), who gives 200,000; (c) Anthropologist Riki van Boeschoten gives 100-150,000; (d) "Conservative" Greek prefects, who talk of 100,000 Slavophones. The unexpected (to say the least) conclusion for MRG-GR is (p. 15): "Therefore the 200,000 estimate for the Slavomacedonian community seems reasonable. Among them a minority of a few tens of thousands, a figure growing since the beginning of the recent Macedonian imbroglio, have a non-Greek consciousness". The last part of this conclusion is based on Karakasidou and Danforth, but if references to their articles are checked, then it becomes clear that none of the two says anything about "few tens of thousands" nor about "a growing figure".

3. The second pillar of the NGO reports is the alleged violent assimilatory policy implemented by the Greek state in Greek Macedonia. According to the observers the first period of such practices covered the span from the Balkan Wars to World War II. The main charges against the Greek state refer to its unfulfilled educational obligations towards the minority, to the change of Slavic surnames and toponymes names into Greek, to the abolishment of Slavic scripts, even to the prohibition of free expression in Slav-Macedonian and the deportation of Slav-speakers.
Some comments must be made on these accusations. The source of the observers on minority educational issues used is Hristo Andonofski (either directly or indirectly via Poulton) [19]. The same author is also used to substantiate the rest of the accusations, in addition to a FYROM state publication (Academy of Sciences and Arts, Macedonia and its Relations with Greece, Skopje, 1993) [20], and reports prepared by Greek Civil War political refugees or their descendants from Greek Macedonia now living in FYROM or in Australia (see for example Chris Popov and Michael Radin, Contemporary Greek Government Policy on the Macedonian Issue and Discriminatory Practices in Breach of International Law, Melbourne, 1989). The use of selective non-Greek sources by the aformentioned writers does not necessarily imply that the inter-war policy of the Greek state, especially under Metaxas' dictatorship, or, indeed, of many states in Europe during this period, was non-assimilationist. Nor does it imply that this policy, whatever it was, is justifiable. It is just one more an indication of the observers willingness to accept at face value all kinds of partisan allegation and also to use past practices in order to corroborate modern accusations.

Full acceptance of the sources, however, sometimes might be troublesome. Only few examples will suffice to show the shortcomings of an unreserved and perhaps ill-prepared case.

(a) Lois Whitman took for granted (p. 6 note 15) an undated report by the Association of Refugee Children from "Aegean Macedonia" which said that by Law No 87/1936 Slavic surnames had to be changed. Similar references are given by Popov and Radin. Still, all of our attempts to trace state laws calling for the change of surnames were in vain. And certainly the law cited is quite irrelevant to the subject mentioned. Non-Greek toponyms, however, names in Greek Macedonia were changed in the 1920s, following certain State guidelines, which were normally followed in such cases by nation-states.

(b) Malcolm as well as MRG-GR make reference to Karakasidou's above mentioned article toconfirm charges for torture and ill-treatment of "anyone" who would speak "Slav-Macedonian". Karakasidou herself, however, does not provide such information; in her introduction she cites such an allegation, made during a conversation she had as an anthropologist, with one informer during field work in a grocer's store. Two NGOs have made a point implying massive harassment, based exclusively on that comment.

(c) References by MRG-GR to substantiate deportation of "many" Slav-speakers from Greek western Macedonia to Crete are based on citations from books by S. Kargakos, and A. Tounda-Fergadi. The first citation, to Kargakos, mentions a deportation from one village in Thrace; the second, to Fergadi, again refers to Thrace. Indeed deportation from Bulgarian villages along the railway line in Thrace took place during the last months and shortly after the Greek Army's Asia Minor campaign (1922), when Bulgarian armed bands were threatening the rear of the Greek Army. By any stress of the imagination these Bulgarian nationalists from Thrace could hardly qualify as Macedonians. Unfortunately it was impossible to check Whitman's point about the deportation of 5,000 Slav-speakers from Greek western Macedonia during Metaxas' dictatorship. Poulton is again her source, but his reference is to the official Istorijata na Makedonskiot Narod [History of the Macedonian Nation] (Skopje, 1969, pp. 271-275) which lacks further references.

(d) The case of Abecedar, a Slav primer using Latin, not Cyrillic, characters produced in 1925 by the Greek state for Slav-speaking Greeks, is mentioned by all organisations because it was no tforwarded to the villages in spite of Greece's international obligations. Had anyone done some real research on this he would have found that there are official interwar documents which testify that the books were indeed forwarded. But they were withdrawn after some noisy demonstrations took place, organised by the Slavophones themselves [21], rejecting the books as an insult to their Greek identity. But even if these demonstrations had not taken place and the books were successfully forwarded, the Slav-Macedonian, like any other traditional language, had few if any chances to compete effectively with the official state language which secures economic and social advancement.

One of course understands the sensitivity to infringements of human rights. Using however a country's past record on this question in the selective way that is being done these days raises questions about the motives of all these retrospective reports. When it comes to past infringements others would have been more appropriate targets. Isn't it reasonable to ask after all whether the tough post-war behaviour of Britain in the colonies, the persecution of Jews in inter-war Germany, the cleansing of Indians in 19th century U.S.A., the slaughter of Protestants in 16th century France and the expulsion of Muslims and Jews alike from 15th century Spain are monitored, re-evaluated and re-assessed every year together with modern incidents of human rights violation in these countries?

4. Post-war evidence of terrorism exercised by the Greek state upon Slav-speakers is no more accurate than the alleged inter-war infringements. The basic arguments are three:

(a) After the Greek Civil War [22], the villages or houses abandoned by Slav-speakers, were given to "nationally minded" citizens (else "with healthy national consciousness"). No villages are mentioned, no numbers, no records. Indeed transhumant pastoralists were settled only in few deserted villages (no more than a dozen) along the northern part of the Greek-Albanian border but the relative law made no reference whatsoever to their national loyalty. The inverted commas, which give the impression that the expression has been cited from official Greek sources, is a long story. On the issue of the alleged "colonization" both Malcolm (p. 6) and MRG-GR (p. 13) cited Poulton [23]. Poulton has copied (and translated) the very expression from Mojsov ("so zdrava nacionalna svest") [24]. Mojsov, in his turn, cited a conversation between two Greek Ministers during a debate in a parliamentary sub- committee for foreign affairs in the mid 1950s; but he did not mention his source. Therefore cross-checking is impossible.

(b) The establishment of kindergartens and nurseries was deliberate in order to accelerate the promotion of the Greek language among Slav-speakers. The importance of such institutions for educational or social reasons is obvious but it does not necessarily indicate that they were designed for the alleged purpose since the measure was implemented nation wide. In addition no observer is willing to consider other factors which might explain in a different way the implementation of such a policy within agriculturists, e.g. shortage of manpower, due to overseas emigration, calls for more intensive work of housewives in the fields.

(c) Peasants in Greek Western Macedonia were forced to take a public oath, declaring they would never use their mother Slavic tongue again. Whitman says (p. 8) that such ceremonies took place in "several" villages and (p. 40 note 59) "in the villages around Lerin, Kostur and Kajlari the inhabitants were asked to confirm...". MRG-GR says in "many" villages, and Poulton that "villagers were asked to make public declarations" (p. 6). MRG-GR is drawing information from Greek newspapers, Malcolm from Poulton, Poulton from Andonofski (who also talks about "several" villages) [25] , Whitman from Danforth, Danforth from Stoyan Pribichevitch [26], Pribichevitch from the American Consul General in Thessaloniki, and the last one most likely from the Greek newspaper Ellinikos Vorras (July 8, 1959, August 5, 1959, August 11, 1959). In fact such oaths were indeed taken by villagers after church service under yet unknown circumstances, probably at the initiative of local officials. Apparently they were discontinued once they became known to authorities in Athens. But the villages were definitely no more than three out of a total of 2,500 communities scattered in Greek Macedonia [27].


5. Obviously the most significant accusations refer to the treatment of minorities after the restoration of Democracy in Greece in 1974. To corroborate these accusation the four NGO reports list at least 17 judicial cases against "Macedonian" activists. Such cases are also named in the State Department 1991-1994 reports; six cases are mentioned by Poulton, four by Danforth and one by Karakasidou. The record appears depressing indeed, not to mention additional allegations for ethnic discrimination in the army, in the public sector, in education, preferential treatment of refugee descendants at the expense of the indigenous peasants, even attempts to change toponyms and to hinder the public use of the Slaviv dialect. Under these seemingly appalling circumstances -testified to also by Whitman, MRG-GR, and Siesby- the International Helsinki Federation decided to include some extremely negative comments about Greece in its annual report for 1993 (see pp. 57-58).

It must be understood in advance that during the five year period covered by the afore mentioned reports cases against Slav-Macedonian activists taken into court were four in all and involve three individuals (Mr Christos Sidiropoulos, Mr Anastasios Boulis, Mr (ex-rev.) Nikodimos Tsarknias) and one association (where Mr Sidiropoulos and Boulis were also involved). To put it in a different way these cases are not typical examples; they constitute the whole record available. This critique is not to apologise for any unfair persecution nor will it defend either the Greek judicial system or the Ministry for Justice. But it must be stressed that numerous cancellations and appeals to higher courts, year after year, have artificially increased the record. Moreover, the same record was unjustifiably overloaded by extra references to cases which are related to the recent rise of national feelings in Greece but not to the activists' actions or welfare. It is also astonishing that observers have failed to notice that the involvement of the state in these trials has been minimal. In fact, in almost all cases taken to court, relevant or irrelevant to minority rights, complainants were private individuals [28]. They also failed to make clear that not a single activist in these trials has been imprisoned or served any sentence.

In the category of legal problems one could possibly include the cases of Law 3370/1955 on the Greek nationality and Ministerial decree No 106841/29 Dec. 1982 on the free repatriation and return to Greek citizenship of political refugees of the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949. They both accept as a criterion of implementation the ethnic identity (genos) of the citizens and apparently contradict the Greek Constitution. For this reason they are considered by the a aforementioned reports as indispensable evidence for the unfair treatment of ethnic minorities in Greece. A better understanding of these laws requires a deep knowledge of the Macedonian Question and its special and complex relation to the Greek Civil War, when Greek Macedonia became the target of Yugoslav territorial expansionism using Slav-Macedonian activists in Greece as a vehicle for these aspirations. Fears associated with the danger from that direction die hard. Only in such a historically informed context may one evaluate -not necessarily justify- the function of such laws and decrees in Greece. Unfortunately observers are reluctant to understand and explain but more apt to judge and condemn.

Alongside these legal problems one can trace in all reports a second distinct category of arguments which aim to substantiate current discrimination against Slav-Macedonians in all aspects of everyday life:
One complained that during his military service someone has called him an "agent from Skopje", because his place of origin was a Slav-speaking village. One activist resigned from public service when he was transferred to an island.

Two entrepreneurs complained that their clients vanished when they became actively involved in minority affairs. Another said that his child was harassed at school by its class-mates for having spoken in Slav-Macedonian on teachers' orders. In one dispute over land rights between two communities, which has already been taken into court, some expect, even before the trial, that the court decision will favour the village of Greek speakers and not the one of Slav-speakers. Once a local festival was interrupted by a prefect who disapproved of Slav-Macedonian songs. One village name was changed from Slavic into Greek. Very much alike the first category, all these cases have one point in common: they are unique and not typical cases which have been publicised by the same persons, that is those implicated in the trials. Weak or rare cases like the above do not imply that all evidence from the handfull of activists should be dismissed a priori. But they do suggest that given the provenance and the extremely limited number of cases occasionally, observers should be more cautious. Most of them, for example, have bitten the bullet about a 1982 Greek national security service document urging not to employ "Slav-speakers" in the public services in the Florina region (Greek Western Macedonia). The documentwas partly published in a journal issued by the Society for Minority Rights (i.e. MRG-GR). Among those who had worked for the preparation of that issue (No 1, January 1992) were Mr Dimitras, the writer of the 1994 report and Mr Lithoxoou. The same document was also published as an annex to the proceedings of a public debate where Mr Lithoxoou and other MRG members had actively participated [29]. All observers agree [30] that this well known document is sufficient evidence for official discrimination against Slav-speakers. Had observers asked Mr Dimitras and Mr Lithoxoou to have the whole document translated for them they would have been surprised to read that, in one of the last paragraphs, it recommends the preferential employment of Slav-speakers in all public services, and particularly in the Army, the Security Services and elsewhere. Be that as it may, the alleged report -if one does not contest its authenticity- appears to be a series of recommendations by a public security official. There is hardly any evidence that they were ever transformed into government policy. A similar blunder can also be traced in Malcolm's report (p. 11): he wrongly thought that the "Rainbow" party was excluded by the Greek Supreme Court from the 1994 European Parliament Elections and he commented this decision as a "political mistake" because he said, "even the Ouranos (i.e. the "Rainbow") spokesman did not expect his list to receive more than 20,000 votes". In 48 hours the Court's decision was repealed and indeed the "Rainbow", supported by some minor splinter Communist parties, took part in the elections and received approximately 7.200 votes nation-wide. The result made clear once again how mistaken observers' speculations can be when they take all activist information at face value.


6. Once again it must be stated that this critique is not intended as a challenge to the apparent ideological obstacles that an ethnic nation-state like Greece faces when it has to deal with minority issues, but to stress that international observers have failed to give an objective view of the minority question in Greece. Basically this was due to a general misinterpretation of ethnicity in the Balkans. In this region ethnic identities have been constructed rather recently (in fact it is a still on-going process in certain countries) not exactly on linguistic foundations and they do not denote people of the same national origin, as many Americans would have thought, judging from their own U.S. experience. Thus, the distinct Slavic dialect spoken in certain villages in Greek Macedonia does not necessarily certify the existence of an ethnic minority.

However, some additional short-comings which are found in abundance in these reports must be clarified more explicitly:

(a) Testimonies and various data concerning the past and the present of Slav-speakers have been derived only from activist sources. In fact there is not even one single argument, piece of information, citation or reference of those employed by the observers, which can not be found in the activists' publications. On the contrary, opposite views and data are in exremely short supply.

(b) Most of these data have initially been published in FYROM, sometimes even by ultra nationalist circles, but this does not seem to undermine their validity at all, as far as NGOs are concerned. All information available is taken at its face value.

(c) Articles and other sources in English reproduce the same kind of data originating most of the times from the very same FYROM sources, a fact which foreign observers seem to have failed to notice or have disregarded completely.

(d) MRG-GR members, minority activists, the documents' producers, the writers of the reference articles, "Rainbow" party members, observers, interviewers, victims, and informers are the same individuals, members of a small community who cooperate cordially for the reproduction of the necessary "evidence".

(e) All reports seem to rely more on past than on present evidence of human rights violation, a tendency which cannot be tracked in similar reports on other countries.

(f) Present data included in the reports tend to reproduce older but not always standing stereotypes (e.g. locals vs. refugees); as they are insufficient they are artificially increased by mixing various cases only indirectly connected with the minority issues concerned. This is known as "patchwork fallacy". The use of terms like "in one example" (Whitman, p. 40), "some attempts" (Malcolm, p. 9), "some", "from time to time", "often" (MRG-GR, p. 15) tend to imply that the cases refered are indicative, typical or the most striking examples available. Indeed they are unique.

(g) A variety of major or minor errors and a reluctance to deal with some revealing aspects of the Macedonian Question (for example the Communist factor) reveals that observers tend simply to reproduce a standardised file of xeroxed leaflets, pamphlets, articles and other translated documents given to them. But they do refrain from carrying any research at all which might change their clean-cut view (evil state vs. suppressed peasants) which is indispensable in order to substantiate prefixed ideas and biased conclusions.

It is obvious from the above that the reports in question have not been written simply to inform. In fact some statements and comments which have been included -occasionally pompous and more suitable to politicians rather than to observers- make it clear that these NGOs feel confident enough to urge even the implementation of an unfavourable policy towards Greece based on their reports. Apparently, as it was asserted in the first paragraph of this study, the preparation and the publication of these reports is by no means irrelevant to the charged atmosphere of the Balkan crisis nor to Greece's policy vis-?-vis Milosevic's Serbia and the recognition of FYROM by its neighbours. It could also be pointed out that by blaming Greece, NGOs "balance" smoothly their critique for more severe minority violations in Greece's neighbourhood (i.e. in Albania, FYROM, Bulgaria and Turkey). Finally it could be argued reasonably that NGOs are working for the protection of minorities and are pro-minority by definition. Bearing also in mind some diplomats' and NGO activists' support of small states, the criticism of alleged Greece's minority policy is easily interpreted after all, especially in the context of the lengthy and acute dispute between Athens and Skopje. But, on the other hand, FYROM diplomats and politicians exploit the very same reports as internationally recognised and neutral views to support their minority claims against Greece. Therefore, it should be emphasized, that assisting the democratization and economic development of small and weak states does not necessarily require the direct or indirect justification of their irredentist claims as well.

Concluding, the authors of this critique would like to make clear that their comments as to the shortcomings of the particular reports under review, should in no way be interpreted as a degradation of the role played by NGOs in general, for the protection of human and minority rights. This function is both necessary and important as a supplement to the role of international organizations like the UN, the OSCE or the Council of Europe. But indeed, in view of the fulfilment of this task, NGOs should maintain a high degree of credibility and objectivity. The arguments presented in this critique aim to promote this objective.

NOTES
[1]. This study has been benefited immensly by comments and researches of various scholars cooperating with the Institute for Balkan Studies and the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, in Thessaloniki.
[2]. See pp.173-192.
[3]. Hugh Poulton, "The Rest of the Balkans", Minority Rights in Europe, Hugh Miall (ed.), (London: Chatham House Papers, 1994). This critique does not include Hugh Poulton's most recent study Who are the Macedonians ? (Hurst and Company, 1995).
[4]. Loring M. Danforth, "Claims to Macedonian identity", Anthropology Today, 9/4 (1993), 7.
[5]. The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict, p. 175 (London, 1994).
[6]. He is citing Todor Simofski's, "The Balkan Wars and their Repercussions on the Ethnical Situation in Aegean Macedonia", Glasnik, 16/3 (1972), 61. It must be pointed out here that Simofski himself is apparently using the Bulgarian professor Jordan Ivanoff's book, La Question Macedonienne au point de vue historique, ethnographique et statistique (Paris, 1920), pp. 186-187 which is based on an early 20th century Bulgarian statistic compiled by Vasil Kancev, an inspector of the Bulgarian schools in Macedonia who naturally counted numerous Bulgarians but no Macedonians at all; see Makedonija. Etnografija i Statistika, (Sofia, 1900), pp. 281-283.
[7]. Poulton is using a paper by Andonofski in English with no references at all. We preferred to use the original work i.e. Hristo Andonovski, "Makedonskoto Nacionalno Malcinstvo vo Grcija, Bulgarija i Albanija", Glasnik, 18/1 (1974), 33, in order to be able to trace down the latter's sources. Again it seems that Andonofski, in his attempt to estimate the number of inter-war refugees leaving Greek Macedonia he used (rather he misused) the classic Bulgarian article by Vl. Rumenov; see "Balgarite v Makedonija pod grucka vlact", Makedonski Pregled, 4 (1941), 90, issued at the time when Bulgaria occupied part of Greek Macedonia and certainly was in need of arguments to support its annexationist aims.
[8]. Macedonia. Its Place in Balkan Power Politics (London, 1950). The British writer is drawing her figures from C. A. Macartney, National States and National Minorities (London, 1934), p. 439 and Stephen Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York, 1932); but both lacked the final report on the exchange of populations between Greece and Bulgaria which came out in 1932.
[9]. Nationalism and Communism in Macedonia (Thessaloniki, 1964; New York, 1993), p. 186 (page ref. to N.Y. edition).
[10]. It is bizarre that for the same author linguistic affinity between east- and west- (i.e. Macedonian) Bulgarian dialects does not imply common ethnic identity (see p. 2). The rhetorical question which must be posed here is: does Malcolm believe that the difference between ethnic identities depends on the degree of linguistic affinity? An affirmative reply would necessarily put in doubt ethnic difference between French-speaking Belgians and French, Austrians and Germans etc.
[11]. Grckata Kolonizacija vo Egejska Makedonija, 1913-1940 (Skopje, 1981), pp. 36-37. A careful reading of Kiselinofski's writings reveals that he had copied the Carnegie Committee 1914 report on the Balkan Wars which also counted Bulgarians and not Macedonians. A further investigation makes clear that the Carnegie Report had presented but not endorsed the above mentioned Bulgarian statistic by Professor Ivanoff. The Greek version of the population break-down had also been given by the same Committee in the same report, which expectedly has been ignored by Kiselinofski, and subsequently by Malcolm.
[12]. It is mistaken to claim that Kofos referred to the emigration and deaths of Slav-speakers as a "beneficial side-effect". The term "beneficial" in his book refers only to those Slav-Macedonians who had collaborated with the Axis forces and Communist Yugoslavia in order to dismember the Greek state.
[13]. An ethnic Greek, resident of Athens, with no links to Macedonia (or to FYROM) and a "Rainbow" candidate for the 1994 European elections.
[14]. Dimitris Lithoxoou, "I mitriki glossa ton katoikon tou ellinikou tmimatos tis Makedonias prin kai meta tin antallagi ton plithismon" [The mother tongue of the inhabitantsin the Greek part of Macedonia before and after the Balkan Wars], Theseis (January-March 1992), 61.
[15]. Malcolm estimated that the 80% refers to a population of 100,000 though the population of the Florina prefecture in 1981 was no more than 50,000.
[16]. It must be stated here that the views cited by MRG-GR, on the various ethnic identities in Greek Macedonia, are not substantiated nor do they form the main argument or the conclusions of Anastasia Karakasidou's paper on "Politicizing Culture: Negating Ethnic Identity in Greek Macedonia", Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 11 (1993), 22-23 notes 2-3. It is also interesting that Karakasidou in the same article accepted that "the bulk of the population in Greek Macedonia is nothing less than Greek", but these views have never been quoted by anyone.
[17]. George Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic. Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922-1936 (Berkeley, 1983), p. 247.
[18]. Op.cit., p. 247 note 49.
[19]. Hristo Andonofski, a former Communist elementary school teacher from Edessa, who settled in Skopje after the Civil War, has published widely on these matters See: "The First Macedonian Primer between the Two World Wars-The Abecedar", Macedonian Review, 1 (1976), 65-69; "Makedonskoto Nacionalno Malcinstvo vo Grcija, Bulgarija i Albanija", Glasnik, 18/1 (1974), 40; "Abecedar-The Primer for the Macedonian Children in Aegean Macedonia", Macedonian Review, 18/1 (1988), 5-10.
[20]. The book has been severely criticised in Greece by Spyridon Sfetas and Kyriakos Kentrotis, "Skopje in Search of an Identity and International Recognition", Balkan Studies, 35/2 (1994), 337-377.
[21]. See for example Istorikon Archeion Ypourgeiou ton Exoterikon [Foreign Ministry Historical Archives], file 1926//37 Ekpaideftika Slavophonon [The Education of the Slavophones], Police telegram to the Ministry of Defence, Sorovich 29 Jan. 1926, confidential No. 280/1. See also the easily accessible Thessaloniki newspaper Ephimeris ton Valkanion, 2 Feb. 1926.
[22]. It is interesting to note that observers willingly accept that during World War II and the Greek Civil War parts of the Slav-speaking regions were under Communist control, without asking the critical questions, whether and why there was a special link between Slav-Macedonian nationalism and Communism. Indeed, it is obvious that all observers have little if any knowledge at all of that period. MRG-GR uses Mavrogordatos interwar study and Poulton (citing Popovski). Whitman makes reference to a six page irrelevant article by Danforth. Poulton gives a three book bibliography but no page numbers which would at least indicate that he had read any part of them. It is better to be considered as a bibliography for further reading rather than sources employed.
[23]. Malcolm wrongly thinks that the expression was used in the decree.
[24]. Mojsov Lazo, Okoly prasaneto na makedonskoto nacionalno malcinstvo vo Grcija (Skopje, 1954), p. 17.
[25]. Andonofski, op.cit., p. 43.
[26]. Stoyan Pribichevitch, Macedonia: its People and History (Pennsylvania State University, 1982), pp. 245-247.
[27]. Additional arguments for past suppression can be found in Malcolm's report such as the claim that Slav-speakers were dismissed from public services in 1954 etc. Needless to say Poulton (i.e. Andonofski) is the only source.
[28]. The only exception is the case of Mr Tsarknias who was persecuted by the authorities for wearing the cloth after being officially defrocked. However, Mr Tsarknias has not been defrocked because he had claimed a Macedonian ethnic identity. Strangely the opposite view has been supported by Hugh Poulton in his work "The Rest of the Balkans", Minority Rights in Europe, Hugh Miall (ed.), (Chatham House Papers: London, 1994), p. 81 and note 19 although his reference is to the Macedonian Information Centre bulletin, 26 Oct. 1992, that is three months before the final decision of the Church.
[29]. Dimitris Lithoxoou et allii, Ellinikos Ethnikismos, Makedoniko Zitima: I ideologiki chrisi tis istorias [Greek nationalism, Macedonian Question: the ideological use of history] (Athens, 1992), p. 75.
[30]. MRG-GR, p. 15; Whitman, p. 45 note 69; Malcolm, p. 8 coping Whitman.

Denying Ethnic Identity: The "Macedonians" of Greece!

The below article is an answer to the one-side report as about the Slavmacedonians that live in Greece and contributed from the Human Rights Watch/Helsinki in 1994. It written from Phaedon John Kozyris and publish in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies (Volume 14, Number 2, October 1996, pp. 358-361). The name of the report is......Denying Ethnic Identity: The Macedonians of Greece.

Keeping watch on governments and calling them to account for human rights is a top priority in the international arena, and the mission of Helsinki Watch, past and future, in ferreting out violations should be commended and supported. Focusing on the treatment of "Macedonians" in Greece is an appropriate subject for investigation, but it does require special care, a historical perspective, and sensitivity to the national security concerns that, regrettably, are largely missing from this report.

To be sure, Greece over time, concerned about the loyalty of some of its citizens who spoke a Slavic dialect or language that resembled Bulgarian, discouraged activities that may have been connected to the various movements and ideologies that aimed to detach Greek Macedonia from Greece and to annex it either to Bulgaria or to a Greater Slavic Macedonia. Elementary familiarity with the history of the region, and with the bloody wars that were fought there until very recently, would suggest that these fears of Greece about "activity contrary to . . . its territorial integrity and political independence" (Article 8 of the Declaration) were anything but imaginary.

The job of Helsinki Watch was to check the facts, identify any related Greek measures in reliable ways, place them in context, and evaluate their compatibility with any legitimate security concerns. This job was done poorly regarding the facts and almost not at all regarding context and compatibility. To begin with, the report most often uses FYROM's terminology--"Aegean Macedonia"--for Greek Macedonia. It also refers to the repression of "the Macedonians in Greece" without qualification, which not only generates confusion but also gives the impression that members of this small minority constitute the only or true Macedonians in the region. With all due concern for the excesses of Greek nationalism, to attribute the name and the identity of Macedonia to a certain group within a certain minority in this geographical area is not only naïve but shows gross partiality. In a vacuum, any one or any group may adopt any name they want. When, however, at least two groups claim the same name in the same location, and there has been a lot of history and bad blood regarding that location, Human Rights Watch should be careful about how it uses the name. Besides, there are also the (different?) Macedonians of FYROM. For example, I myself was born a Greek and a Macedonian and my "ethnic identity has not been denied." Furthermore, many of the Macedonians who speak or are familiar with that Slavic language also speak Greek as their primary or secondary language and do not associate with the separatist elements. They are the "dopii," a Greek word meaning "locals," distinguishing them from the refugees from Asia Minor, whom the report confuses with its own Macedonians. Indeed, these Macedonian Slavs--called "Grecomans" because they refused to join the Bulgarian Exarchate and remained faithful to Constantinople--associate with Greece, and many fought on the Greek side during the Macedonian wars.

Even more seriously, the report should be faulted for creating questionable impressions about the twentieth-century demographics in the region.

Let me cite a few examples.

The report suggests that "most of the inhabitants" (italics added) of the geographic region may be "a distinct Macedonian ethnic group."
This cannot be true.
Next, and in the same vein, it states, using a recycled FYROM source, that in 1912 in "Aegean" Macedonia there were 326,426 Macedonians and 240,019 Greeks.
This also cannot be accurate, and not only because at that time the statistics did not recognize a "Macedonian" nationality and there was no distinct Aegean Macedonia. As reported by Loring Danforth, if at that time the "Slavic-speaking Christians in [greater] Macedonia were pressed to state their national identity, some of them would have said that they were Serbs, many of them would have said that they were Greeks, but the majority of them would undoubtedly have said they were Bulgarians" ("Competing Claims to Macedonian Identity: The Macedonian Question and the Breakup of Yugoslavia," Anthropology Today 9/4 [August 1993], p. 7). An early Turkish statistic (Hilmi Pasha, 1904) had counted for the Vilayets of Thessaloniki and Monastir (now mostly in Greek Macedonia) 634,510 Greeks and 385,729 Bulgarians. The maps prepared and published by the Istituto Geografico de Agostini in Rome in the early 1900s, showing the schools and churches of the same Vilayets, corroborate the major presence of the Greek element in the area. According to statistics compiled under the auspices of the League of Nations in connection with the resettlement of the Greek refugees, in 1912 there were 513,000 Greeks and 119,000 Bulgarians (Exarchists) in the region, and by 1926, following the exchange of populations with Turkey and Bulgaria, the numbers changed into 1,341,000 Greeks and 77,000 Bulgarians. The Greek census of 1928 shows 81,984 persons speaking the Macedonian Bulgarian dialect and 16,775 the Sophia Bulgarian dialect. More recently, following the Greek civil war of 1946-1949, when the Left, supported from the north, not only pursued the communist ideology but also included a secessionist component, the size of the remaining Slavic population was significantly reduced. Those who had associated with Slavic ethnic causes left or were pushed beyond the Greek borders. The 1951 figure for that linguistic group of 41,017 reflects this change. While all figures about demographics in contested areas tend to be biased, and these figures may underrepresent at the various times the size of the population that spoke exclusively or knew the Slavomacedonian tongue because many identified themselves as Greek, this is probably a more dependable picture of dimensions and loyalties. Now the numbers are small by any count. In the last European election, the total vote of the related movement, together with splinter communist candidates, was about 7,200 nationwide. The population of Greek Macedonia alone exceeds two million. When, however, the report refers to current numbers, while it does not take a position, it still cites with a straight face and on equal footing with the other sources the statements by its Macedonian witnesses and FYROM that today in Greek Macedonia there are between 230,000 and 1,000,000 (half the population) "Macedonians," without charging this incongruity to the credibility of the same witnesses regarding other issues. Thank God that the report also gives the State Department's figures of "well under 10,000 to nearly 50,000 . . . Greek citizens who are descended from speakers of a Slavic dialect . . . some [of whom] still speak it and a few [of whom] identify themselves as 'Macedonians'" (italics added).

All this background, when added to the failure to emphasize the recent creation of a "Macedonian" national identity or that identity's crass promotion by Tito in pursuit of communist expansionist aims, shows the report's lack of sensitivity to context and also undermines its claim of neutrality.

Turning now to the claims of repression, the informational basis of the report consisted mostly of a few oral interviews with victims of discrimination, often vague and sometimes anonymous or hearsay, and a few citations from publicly available records.
Any official statements were discounted.
While the nature of the investigation justifies the use of that kind of oral testimony and while government responses tend to be self-serving, this does not dispense with the necessity for some overall evaluation. One of the weaknesses of the report relates to the dimensions of time and proportion. In the aftermath of the civil war of 1946-1949, the Greek measures were harsh and were not narrow enough to strike only at treasonous activities. Now, however, they are minimal. In the recent elections, for example, those who associated with the "Macedonian" ideology were able to express their views, nominate candidates, and participate. The report itself cites a "Macedonian" source to the effect that in Florina 40% of the public employees are "Macedonians" in a purported population of 70%, and states that there is nobody in prison for reasons of expression. But the report is not very clear about where the past ended and the present began.

The report selects two kinds of Greek action for special comment.

First, the change in the names of villages from Slavic to Greek. There is no question that the official names of most villages and towns are now Greek. This, of course, does not necessarily mean that they were changed into Greek, as implied in the report. Under Turkish rule, many villages had Turkish, Greek and/or Slavic names, depending on which community was talking. Following the division of the Macedonian region among Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia after the bloody wars of the 1910s, and with the major movements of populations, each nation made official its own ethnic toponymics and also did change a considerable number of the foreign ones, often translating them into its own language. All the Greek toponymics, most of them ancient and consecrated like Monastir and Philippoupolis, disappeared from the neighboring nations. Most of this action took place in the 1920s and was meant to convey a clear, important, and major message: there must be no more irredentist wars in the region, the current borders are permanent, and the local populations must be loyal to the nations where they live. The occupation of Eastern Macedonia by Bulgaria under the Nazis, the participation of certain "Macedonian" elements in the Greek civil war, and the secessionist rhetoric from many sources in FYROM were inconsistent with this understanding, whereas Greece is not chargeable with anything comparable. Not only is the reversal of this name strategy now practically impossible, but it could help unglue whatever hard-earned peace reigns in the region. The recent events in former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia, suggest that ancient rivalries and hatreds run deep, that they do not amount merely to cultural differences, and that the price of peace is dear.

The same Article 8 considerations of territorial integrity and security affect the second kind of action, which relates to the refusal of Greece to give equal rights of repatriation, return, or visitation to Greece to those "Macedonians" who left Greece after defeat in the civil war and acquired foreign citizenship, and to those few who even now propagate the cause of a secessionist Great Macedonia abroad. To assume that these categories of persons are only "culturally" Slav Macedonian and not associated with the irredentist cause, when the recent and devastating civil war in which they participated almost succeeded in detaching Macedonia from Greece, and especially now that FYROM has revived the ancient issues, requires a leap of faith. In this context, and given the discretion of nations under international law in establishing their citizenship and residence rules, I believe that we should be slow in second-guessing Greece's judgments on the dangers and on whether and when some further liberalization is indicated.

In conclusion, the report, however well intentioned, breathes rarefied air. Accepting or propagating the FYROM-Macedonian vocabulary and statistics, outside time, space, and context, not distinguishing between cultural repression, on the one hand, and defense against subversion of territorial integrity, on the other, it has some value but only in an eyewitness, candid-camera, raw-news kind of way. Incidentally, for those purposes the United States State Department's annual reports are more carefully drawn and more informative. This is not to say that everything Greece does is totally proper. But it does say that Greece, which has walked the mile of liberalization, should not be criticized on the basis of exaggerated reports and, more importantly, without taking into consideration its legitimate concerns. Before we conclude that Greece has overreacted to a particular threat, the risk must be evaluated according to its magnitude and probability, especially in light of recent history. The same standard should apply to other situations nearby.

For example, it would seem that currently there is some legitimate reason for concern about the aspirations and activities of Albanians in Kossovo, of Greeks in Albania, of Kurds in Turkey, of some Muslims in Greece but not of Greeks in Istanbul, and not of Vlachs and Gypsies anywhere. In other words, it is a fact of life that human rights for minorities sometimes come into conflict with the majorities' commitment to preserve the national state, and that international law requires only some sort of balance and accommodation.

Thus, the conclusions and recommendations of the Helsinki Human Rights Watch report should be taken with many grains of salt.

for fair use only