GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR
(Greek National Committee of the International Helsinki Federation)

& MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP - GREECE
(Greek Affiliate of Minority Rights Group International)

P.O. Box 51393, GR-14510 Kifisia, Greece Tel. 30-1-620.01.20; Fax: 30-1-807.57.67; E-mail: office@greekhelsinki.gr

PRESS RELEASE

30/3/1998

The cooperating organizations Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights Group - Greece wish to bring the case of Nikos Konstantinidis (N.K)/ Michaelofski, a Greek from the Republic of Macedonia, to public attention.

Our organizations reported this case to the Macedonian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (MHC) following the first reports in the Greek press. These appeared in October 1997 alleging that N.K. was being persecuted because of his Greek origin. The MHC agreed to monitor the case and informed us that it appeared to be a simple penal case. It is alleged that N.K. wounded another person in a fight. However, as he declared to a representative of the MHC, "during this fight, one of my neighbors bumped into my knife while he was trying to hit me." We were disappointed to discover that the MHC failed to send an observer to the 19/3/98 trial, nor did they give us advance warning that this would be the case.

The coverage of this case by much of the Greek mass media has been incredibly one-sided. When even the Greek state kept its distance, the media - not just the right wing nationalistic newspapers (Adesmeftos Typos and Eleftheros Typos), but also those which are normally more open-minded (Avghi and Eleftherotypia) - presented wholeheartedly the figure of a "persecuted Greek." "I am on trial because I declared my origin" was the title of Avghi in a half-page interview with N.K. (24/12/97). Among other things he expressed his nationalistic views on the citizens of the neighboring country e.g. calling the Macedonians "Bulgarophones" and the Vlachs of Macedonia "Greek Vlachs." These opinions were supported by Avghi’s correspondent. To those who knew that N.K. had been a contributor to Stohos (an extreme nationalist-fascist paper) since 1995, and that they awarded him the "Diploma of National Dignity" in January 1997 (Stohos, 24/12/98) these views were not surprising. N.K.’s links with Stohos were widely known but not mentioned by the newspapers.

The misinformation continued. According to Avghi (24/12/97) N.K. was not tried because of the alleged wounding of a neighbor, but because a 77-year-old resident of Ressen accused him of "observing him with a hostile look." According to the Sunday’s Press (21/12/97) the "modern Greek national martyr" was brought before the court simply because he succeeded in making his attackers leave. In other words, the accusation of wounding someone has been withheld. As Adesmeftos Typos (16/12/97) mentions, "he sees himself as being persecuted for allegedly beating four Skopians at one and the same time."

The Sunday’s Press (21/12/97) printed a photograph showing N.K.’s lawyer and the "shameful legal brief." However in a fax from N.D.’s MP Evgenios Haitidis to our organization and Amnesty International (14/3/97), it is claimed that N.K. has neither a lawyer nor a copy of the legal documents. None of the press mention that the court provided N.K. with an interpreter of the Greek language.

Furthermore, in an attempt to ridicule Amnesty International, the MP has "invented" a non-existing "Skopian branch" within their organization. (Adesmeftos Typos 24/12/97 and 20/3/98) Mr. Haitidis seems to be fond of lies and defamation but as a deputy enjoys the safety of his special legal status of inviolability, which has sent our previous lawsuits for intended libel to the archives. He declares that although Mr. Dimitras was in Skopje [meaning the Republic of Macedonia] in near-by Ohrid on the day of the trial "obviously he thought there was no need to be concerned about a person who was going to be tried for serious accusations and by a process which brutally violates human rights. My information that Mr. Dimitras is financed by Skopje is clearly true." (Adesmeftos Typos, 20/3/98)

In fact, the representative of our organizations was in Vienna during the time of the trial, and not in Ohrid until the evening of 19/3/98 where he joined 70 other delegates at a conference. E. Haitiidis was obviously informed about his presence there by N.K., whom Mr. Dimitras contacted and asked to meet at some point during the international conference in Ohrid. He also asked for all the legal documents referring to the case to be sent to our office, which has not happened so far. In order to strengthen the rumor that it is difficult for someone to find him, as Avghi (24/12/97) reported, it is typical that N.K. told our representative that he does not have a phone line at home. This was contradicted by the N.D. MP’s office which gave us the phone number which our representative used to contact him for the second time.