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April 22, 2005

A Potential Strategy – Name Recognition through Human Rights Demands for the Macedonians from Aegean Macedonia

Zorba (the Greeks) is like a small child that sees another ( Macedonia) holding a toy (our name). Now Zorba, thinking to himself, “that’s the best bloody toy I’ve ever seen, I need to have it now”, doesn’t want his own toy anymore, but throws a tantrum and demands (from the international community) the toy of the other child. Having seen it, he now must have it for himself.

The international community has shown itself to apply only one principle – the door that squeaks the loudest shall be oiled. Why do anything unless someone complains and you are compelled to? The Greeks understand this principle only too well. Unfortunately for us, we do not!

The name issue is one battle we cannot afford to lose – otherwise everything will be lost, not just our name. With the loss of our identity we stand to lose our history, our culture, our church and everything that is sacred to us as Macedonians – our national consciousness. We would have betrayed our ancestors and un-inherited our grandchildren. This discussion, however, is not necessary as we all agree that changing our identity is completely unimaginable, unacceptable, ridiculous and impossible.

The question is, “How do we get the Greeks, or at least the international community, to accept us for who we are?” The answer is multi-faceted and needs considered debate, followed by actual action. One of its elements, however, is the need to identify and then eliminate the very reason Greece has to oppose our name.

This reason is that Greece currently occupies over 51 per cent of ethno-historical Macedonia and in order to assimilate it, the Greek political establishment has illegitimately appropriated Macedonian history and identity, and attempted to put an international trademark on it. By doing so, Greece has created and perpetuated a new national myth – that Macedonia does after all exist (having previously denied the very existence of the concept of Macedonia), but that it has always been Greek. It refuses to recognise the existence of a Macedonian nation outside of the new Greek conception of it. Most appallingly, the Greek state has thoroughly brainwashed its citizens with the new national ideology – that Greeks are now Macedonians! Hence, the Greek government over the past two decades has built up a new web of nationalist mythology (and by now probably believes the very lies it has propounded) and it cannot recognise the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name.

The only way we can make this a non-issue for the Greeks, and hence force them to recognise our name (or at least stop obstructing everyone else from doing so) is through the backdoor. We need to use the only principle the international community applies, to our own advantage. We need to cry out to the world and show them the suffering of our ethnic kin inside of Greece. We need to force, embarrass or manipulate (whatever it takes) the Greeks into adopting European standards and implementing international human rights declarations, and recognise not only the existence of the Macedonian minority within its borders, but its right to self-identify as Macedonians. Having done so, Greece would, in effect, contradict its new national mythology because it would now accept that the Macedonians are Macedonians, and therefore, de-facto recognise Macedonia’s historical and legitimate right to its constitutional name.

It is essential that the Greek population breaks with the official propaganda and realise that they are actually Greeks and not Macedonians, and that there is no correlation between the two. The only way this can be done is by the continued lobbying of the European Union to force Greece to implement the Copenhagen Criteria and EU human rights standards (remember the Copenhagen Criteria did not exist when Greece joined the EU). Having been forced to recognise the Macedonians as Macedonians, they will have de-facto recognised the historical legitimacy of the Macedonian people and the Republic of Macedonia’s right to that name.

Whether this approach would actually work, or whether the Macedonian Government has the courage to seek human rights for the Macedonians in Greece is unclear. Perhaps our fist battle is with the Macedonian Government itself.

Tom Vangelovski