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Diethnistis Ergatis
(Internationalist Worker)
Monthly
journal furthering the struggle for internationalism and the working class
Nos. 5–6, September 1999, 300 dr.
We Who Don’t Exist
(An interview with Pavlos
Voskopoulos)
This interview with
Pavlos Voskopoulos, political representative of Rainbow, the party of the ethnic
Macedonian minority, took place a week after the European elections of 13 June.
Question: What did it mean for Rainbow to take part in
these elections? What were your aims and to what extent did you achieve them?
Answer: Right. First of all let me say I’m very
glad to be giving you this interview, because I feel I’m talking to someone who’s
especially aware of minority and democratic issues. Now for your question. Let me start by
saying that we thought very hard about whether we ought to take part in these elections,
given that the war in Kosovo had been going on for the past two months. The reason
wasn’t whether we ought to give our opinion on all the issues, but that both at a local
and at a national level, minority issues are taboo. A very large segment of public
opinion, of the public, is at best uninformed and at worst prejudiced.
We all know about the hypersensitivity to minority issues
in Greece: if you talk about minorities in Greece, as far as the Greek nationalists are
concerned you’re talking about problems that create problems. And when we had a minority
problem in Kosovo, oppression of the Albanians, intervention by the international
community, the KLA, and given that, anyway, any public action of ours leads to an orgy of
mudslinging by the nationalists, we were seriously thinking that we might cause problems
if we took part, that we might be regarded as extremists. One very common accusation might
have been: ‘See what the “Skopjans” are doing? Look at what’s happening in the
Balkans, look at what’s going on in Kosovo, and this lot comes out in Greece to
destabilise the situation, et cetera, et cetera.’
We also bore in mind that the mass media shut us out. Ever
since 1994, ever since we’ve been operating as an organisation, we’ve never once had
any real opportunity, not just to present our case, but even to show people we’re not
monsters.
After due consideration and discussion, we concluded that,
as an organisation and as a party, we have to express our opinions in difficult times too,
and we decided we would take part in the European elections with a view to
persuading people that minorities have something to say and have opinions too.
Our financial situation is far from rosy. We started off by
handing out our manifesto in person, calling in at the coffee-houses ? mainly in northern
Greece, of course, in the areas where ethnic Macedonians live. We were very careful, and
so we never had any serious problems, apart from some isolated reactions in the form of
verbal attacks. ‘You’re Skopjans, you’re out to cause trouble,’ that sort of
thing. But in most cases, even though we appeared in public, we had the opportunity to
talk things over in good faith and get our message across.
Q.: There are groups and parties in Greece, particularly
on the left, who sometimes recognise the Macedonians as a distinct segment of the
population and refer to them with some sort of qualifier. The Communist Party of Greece
calls them ‘bilinguals’, for instance, and others call them ‘Slavonic-speakers’ or
‘Slavo-Macedonians’, and so on and so forth. But most of them are talking about a
distinctive linguistic and historical, rather than ethnic, identity. In the end, are the
Macedonians just a linguistic minority or are they an ethnic minority too?
A.: A very good question! This whole issue has to do
with a lack of information. Because we too are products of the Greek education system,
we’re ‘test-tube babies’, regardless of whether we have a different national
consciousness. That’s why we can understand and feel in the same way as the average
Greek thinks. Unfortunately, the average Greek’s under the impression that he’s living
in an ethnically ‘pure’ nation. The average citizen either doesn’t know or has never
even wondered what a nation-state really is, has never considered that there weren’t
always nation-states, that three hundred years ago the term ‘nation’ didn’t mean
anything like what it means today; they never suspect that a nation-state presupposes a
certain level of productive relations and organisation of society. The average Greek looks
into the mirror and, instead his actual image, sees himself wearing Pericles’ helmet,
holding Leonidas’ spear, wearing Kolokotronis’s fustanella, and in the past few
decades he’s been astride Alexander the Great’s horse.
These prejudices prevent him from being able to see, and
consequently to tolerate, the existence in his country of citizens with a different ethnic
identity. How they acquired their different national consciousness is a question we could
discuss for hours. We respect the right to self-determination. All the Balkan countries
have minority populations ? the Greeks in southern Albania, for instance, who are Albanian
citizens with Greek national consciousness ? and in the same way there are people in
Greece with a different national consciousness.
The myth of the ‘historical continuity of the Greek
race’ makes people blind to the most obvious things. Why should the Turks in Western
Thrace be called ‘Moslems’ and not Turks, which is what they feel they are? By the
same reasoning, shouldn’t the Greeks in Albania be called ‘Albanian Christians’?
This is how identifying the birth of the modern Greek state with ancient Greece and
Byzantium forces the people living within the national borders to become Greeks.
Now for whether the Macedonians are a linguistic,
historical, or ethnic minority. Well, they’re all three. First of all they’re a
linguistic minority: a brief visit to the Edessa and Florina areas, even to villages
around Thessaloniki, is enough to convince you that there are people there who speak a
completely different language, Macedonian. That doesn’t mean they all have Macedonian
consciousness. They may perfectly well have Greek national consciousness or no national
consciousness at all. For example, many old men and women, if you ask them ‘What’s a
nation?’, won’t be able to tell you. National consciousness has to be imprinted on the
mind: it’s the state that creates national consciousness. If someone grows up in a
non-state environment, I’m certain they won’t have any national consciousness at all.
Consequently, as regards the ‘Slavonic-speaking’
Macedonians, the populations that have a distinctive linguistic identity: some of them
have Macedonian consciousness, some of them have Greek consciousness (mostly owing to
forcible political assimilation by the Greek state, rather than by their own free choice),
and some of them are still looking!
Q.: For about a hundred years now, since the start of
their [struggle] for national emancipation, the Macedonians have historically associated
themselves with the ideals of the left and work with the communist movements in the
countries that oppress them as an ethnic group. For instance, the Ilinden rebels, who were
fighting to get the beys’ land shared out among the peasantry and followed an
internationalist strategy; Vlahov and his collaboration with the socialist Federacion
and later with Tito’s partisans; the Communist Party of Greece and the Democratic Army
and their collaboration with NOF and SNOF and so on. Today, however, the Macedonian
minority is obviously expecting more immediate, more tangible results from the European
Union, rather than from the solidarity of the left and the labour movement in Greece. How
did things get to this stage?
A.: First of all, I have to disagree that
Rainbow’s expecting more from Europe and less from the Greek left. That’s not so.
Let’s take things in order. First of all, we believe that minority issues are issues
that have to be resolved by the whole of society, they’re central to political democracy
in the country. Even if we’re twenty or fifty or two hundred thousand ethnically aware
Macedonians, it doesn’t mean we’ve solved the problem of our being tolerated and our
rights being recognised and respected by Greek society.
It’s a problem that can be resolved only by society as a
whole. The Greek left is a part of this society, to be sure. As you’ve pointed out, in
the past there’ve been splendid examples of ethnic Macedonians, ethnic Greeks, and
others too working and fighting under the same flag for the same cause, and when it was
necessary they died for the same ideals.
But what we’ve been seeing in recent decades is that the
Greek left ? and I’m talking more about the Communist Party of Greece (rather than the
extraparliamentary left, which has given us some very good examples of conduct and
attitudes to minority issues) ? is no different from any bourgeois party on ethnic
issues. Because the key to whether a party really is democratic, left-wing, truly
internationalist, is precisely its position on the ethnic question in Greece. I mean,
Papathemelis says: ‘Sir, you’re a Skopjan, you don’t exist,’ and bops you on the
head straightaway. The Communist Party says: ‘Let’s find a solution, yes, I see what
you mean, hm, let’s find some geographical definition or some other definition,’ et
cetera, et cetera. I mean, what are they doing? They’re undermining you. They’re both
using different means to the same end.
That’s why we’re frequently forced to turn to European
movements, because I think the bourgeois democracies in Europe are a few decades ahead on
these issues. Fifty years ago, for instance, the Germans and the French were slaughtering
each other over territorial issues. Alsace was in German territory one minute and in
French territory the next. Today, the Germans and the French are the mainstays of the
European idea, however unsatisfactory that might be for a Greek left-winger.
For us, united Europe is the only choice, because we
believe that the views and principles at a European level regarding minority rights are
definitely more advanced than they are in Greece. I believe the issues we present will be
resolved by the Europeanisation of Greece.
Now, if Greece’s passport to this united Europe is the
economic standard, reduced inflation, and a level of prosperity commensurate with that of
the western countries, the visa in that passport will be the Greek state’s behaviour on
minority issues and on issues relating to respect for and safeguarding of the other social
groups who suffer from discrimination.
For instance, how does Greece treat immigrants? How can it
be that an Albanian or any other foreign worker gets half the wages a Greek gets? Why is
it allowed? And why should they have no insurance? If they get ill, why shouldn’t they
be able to go to hospital?
I believe all these issues will be on the way to being
resolved through the European institutions.
And something else. We work with the Greek left. We took
part in the last elections with the OAKKE. You may have all sorts of objections on
ideological grounds, but on minority issues the OAKKE sets a shining example. And that’s
precisely why we worked well together in the elections, on a joint platform. It was an
effort on our part to show we want to cooperate. We Macedonians aren’t going to be
tucked away in our shell, like picturesque Indians, with our own different little language
and our dances and our music, for all sorts of researchers to come along to see how
we’ve preserved our folklore and our traditions. No, once and for all, no! Rainbow and
the Macedonian minority are going to play their part on the Greek political scene, with
the direct aim of securing real democracy in Greece.
Q.: What political initiatives is Rainbow going to take
next? Apart from moves by leading cadres is it going to include public campaigns? A rally?
Are you going to start publishing Nova Zora again? What else?
A.: Let’s start with the fact that almost all the
mass media have been cold-shouldering us all these years. I’ll give you a typical
example. Eleftherotypia published a report by Takis Diamandis, in which he
mentioned some statements made by the Macedonian Foreign Minister, Dimitrov, on a visit to
Canada. That was in April 1999, quite recently. The report stated that Dimitrov,
addressing Macedonian emigres, gave them the message ‘We must fight for a united
Macedonia.’ We reacted immediately, sending press releases to Eleftherotypia and
the other papers, condemning statements like that. We, as Rainbow, condemn Macedonian
irredentism. Well, nothing was printed in the papers!
When announcements like that don’t get through, you can
imagine what happens with issues like the Macedonian language, people being stripped of
their citizenship because they’re ‘not of Greek origin’, cases of police oppression
and high-handedness . . .
Of course, we’ve got Nova Zora as our organ, but
it hasn’t come out for a year, because of objective difficulties. There’s finances,
but also the fact that we’re not like the other parties, we operate more spontaneously
with a number of volunteers. Our commitments have been so heavy lately that they can’t
be handled in an amateurish way; they need a professionalism we haven’t got. We’re
going to bring out Nova Zora again, and we’re seriously thinking about starting
up a radio station, to give us more direct contact with people and enable us to tell them
what we’re doing. That’s number one. Number two, we intend to move very firmly in the
direction of strengthening our relations with the Greek democrats, it’s a key issue for
us, because Greek nationalism is pushing us into isolation. We’ll take part as much as
we can in any meeting where we can state our case on issues relating to peace, democracy,
and minorities in Greece.
Q.: How do you intend to fight for the Macedonian
language to be recognised and included in the education system?
A.: The average Greek needs to realise that
difference is a prime cause of progress, at a national or any other level. Can you imagine
a member of the Greek minority in Albania not being able to read Seferis and Elytis, not
being able to write a poem in his mother tongue? Isn’t it good for Albanian society to
have contact with the Greek language and culture through the Greek minority there?
Wouldn’t we protest if they were all forced to read only Albanian poets and writers? Why
don’t the same standards apply to the Macedonian minority in Greece?
And let me make something clear. We do not want to
set up a parallel education system and shut ourselves off in a ghetto. No sir! The
Macedonian minority isn’t going to make the same mistakes as the KLA, nor the Albanians
in Tetovo, who want a parallel education system. In this day and age, when we’re quite
happy to go off and study in America, for instance, or England, it seems to me that for
everybody to demand university education in his or her minority language is a cover, in
the Balkans at least, for irredentist tendencies, secessionist tendencies. That’s why we
believe the Macedonian language should be brought into the Greek education system at
elementary and junior level for all those who want to study it.
Q.: Do you intend to wage a special campaign for the
abolition of the disgraceful distinction ‘not of Greek origin’ that’s been applied
to the thousands of political refugees and to the Macedonian emigres in Australia whom the
Greek government won’t allow to come back to their villages?
A.: People don’t know anything about the
Macedonian refugees, either in Greece or in Europe. The pictures we’ve seen of the
Kosovar refugees being chased out of their villages are a repeat of what happened in the
Macedonian villages in 1949. There was ethnic cleansing fifty years ago, the effects of
which are still being felt today.
As for the Macedonian economic emigres who can’t come
back, their citizenship’s been taken away by the famous article 20. I mean, what’s the
Greek state doing? In recent years, given the relative democratisation of Greek society,
quite a lot of Macedonians have become bold enough to demand their rights, and the
state’s found another way to make the minority shut up. And this is how: many of the
Macedonian economic emigres in Australia, Canada, and America have left the Greek
churches, parishes, and organisations and gone off to join their Macedonian counterparts.
Thanks to the narks in the consulates, the Greek state picks out two or three Macedonians
from each village, strips them of their citizenship, and declares them personae non
gratae, so they’ll be black sheep in their own societies.
Someone whose been stripped of citizenship can’t visit
Greece, and what’s more isn’t even told, they usually find out when they get off the
plane in Athens or Thessaloniki, and they’re sent back. The news gets round their native
villages pretty quickly, and so they become an example to be avoided by all their fellow
villagers. So the message from the Greek state is: ‘Anyone who joins the Macedonian
organisations and not the Greek ones is going to pay for it!’ That’s what the Greek
state’s been doing for the past ten years. |
