CDeliso writes "Just over 6 months ago, Bulgaria-based freelance journalist Matthew Brunwasser reported on the brief return of Macedonians expelled from Greece during the Greek Civil War. What follows is the text of Brunwasser's summer 2003 trip to Thessaloniki, which makes for stimulating reading for all interested in the Balkans.
For the first time since the Greek Civil War ended more than 50 years ago, ethnic Macedonian refugees have been allowed back to their former homes and villages. But it was by no means a free return. Between August 10 and October 30, the refugees are allowed to visit for 20 days. Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Andrea Loverdos announced the reversal of Greece's policy in June. But the attempt at righting the wrongs of the past, while improving relations with the Republic of Macedonia, Greece's northern neighbor, did not go smoothly.
Many of the would-be homecomers were turned back at the border. Macedonian activists were refused entry and many groups reported that the border authorities had a political blacklist. Those whose passports contained the old Macedonian-language names of their villages were turned away: they would have to get new passports listing the new Greek names.
About 300 have entered, according to the Greek Foreign Ministry, and at least 150 were turned away. But many more heard about the border problems, and cancelled their travel plans.
"They have nothing to fear from these people. They might have come and said strong words against Greece. So what?" says Panayote Dimitras, Spokesman of the Greek Helsinki Monitor, a human rights group. "We are a strong democracy. It was about time for these people to return."
For those who made it, there were emotional reunions with family-members, visits to villages and former homes. Some took rocks as souvenirs from abandoned houses. Former residents of the ethnic Macedonian village formerly known as D'mbeni had a shock. The Greek army not only changed the name, but bulldozed all the buildings, including the graveyard.
The recent gestures toward the refugees and the Republic of Macedonia comes as the solidly pro-European government of Prime Minister Costas Simitis pushes Greece gingerly toward a more diverse, tolerant and, some might say, European and Democratic society. The government also craves the respect of its European partners.
Cold War Ethnic Cleansing
The bloody Greek Civil War, from 1946-1949, was only one of the violent episodes to convulse the Greek Republic in the modern era. The first "proxy" battle of the Cold War saw the US support rightist monarchists in their mountain campaign against 30,000 leftist guerillas. Ethnic Slav-speaking Macedonians, related to kin in socialist Yugoslavia to the north, fought for autonomy and aligned with the leftist insurgents.
To deny the guerillas support, more than 700,000 people were forcibly evacuated from mountain villages and dumped into miserable camps near towns. 3000 government executions were recorded. Atrocities were committed by brother against brother on both sides, no different than those seen in Bosnia in recent years. When it was over, some 100,000 were dead, 1 million were displaced and the country was destroyed.
Ethnic Macedonians were singled out for reprisals because of their support for the leftists. About 60,000 Macedonians fled, 28,000 of whom were children. They went north across the border to Yugoslavia, the Republic of Macedonia and the new People's Republic of Bulgaria. Others went as far as Australia, Canada and the United States. A 1982 Greek law allowed return to Greece for war refugees, but only ethnic Greeks.
Greece's collective memory of the civil war remains keen. Strong enough that this army of elderly immigrants is considered a threat to the security of the Greek Republic. But beyond personifying painful memories, the returning Macedonians make Greece aware of another uncomfortable reality: not all Greeks are ethnic Greeks, speak Greek and are Greek Orthodox Christian.
"The national line is that there are no minorities in Greece, that we are all Greeks," says Pavlos Voskopulos, member of the secretariat of the Rainbow political party of ethnic Macedonians in Greece.
"Anyone expressing a different ethnic, national or linguistic identity is often stigmatized in the public and in the media. They are accused of being anti-Greek."
Greece's iron-fisted policies were forged when the country faced security threats and political instability while incorporating the northern regions into the country. Thrace, where most Greek Muslims live, was not incorporated into Greece until 1923, and Macedonia didn't become part of Greece until 1913.
According to the US State Department's 2002 Human Rights report on Greece: "Laws restrictive of freedom of speech remained in force, and some legal restrictions and administrative obstacles on freedom of religion persisted. ....
"There were legal limits on the freedom of association of ethnic minorities. Some leaders of minority religions noted a general improvement in government tolerance, but others reported difficulty with the authorities."
The Greek Foreign Ministry could not be reached for comment.
Officially, Greece has no ethnic or linguistic minority citizens, like France and Turkey. According to researchers, minorities in Greece number between 5-10% of the population, or 500,000-1 million people. These include not only ethnic Macedonians, but Gypsies, Turks, Romanian-speaking Vlachs, indigenous Albanians, and Pomaks: Muslims with Koranic names and traditions, who speak an archaic dialect of Bulgarian.
The only minority recognized by Greece is the "Muslim minority" created by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne which ended war with Turkey. It defined exemptions from the enormous population transfers, to allow some Turks to stay in Greece, and some Greeks to stay in Turkey. Because it makes no distinction between Turkish, Gypsy and Pomak Muslims, the Greek state has been able to manipulate the Muslims' identities according to country's political interest.
The region the Macedonian refugees are crossing into today bears little resemblance to the one they left generations ago. Most of the remaining Macedonians have been assimilated. While they may speak Macedonian as a first or second language, most identify as Greeks first.
The Rainbow political party in Florina, in northern Greece, tries to employ a gradual approach to broaden Greek society. It does not seek separate institutions, such as Macedonian-language schools. But simply by trying to encourage respect for diversity it finds itself in the center of controversy and conflict.
"The doctrine is that modern Greeks are the children of the so-called ancient Greek civilization and this makes them have a superiority complex," says Pavlos Voskopulos.
"We are talking about a united Europe, a European identity. Everyone knows how important it is to respect diversity. Today to discriminate against people at such a broad level is completely unacceptable."
Feelings in the region are still very sensitive. In 1995, when passions around the name dispute with the Republic of Macedonia were particularly high, the Rainbow office hung a sign outside its door saying "Rainbow � Florina Committee" in both Greek and Macedonian. The prosecutor ordered the police to remove the sign and a mob led by the Mayor attacked and burned the office. Then Voskopulos and three colleagues were charged with "having caused and incited mutual hatred among citizens" for having hung up the sign.
They were acquitted in 1998 after a wide spectrum of international protest. Voskopulos has tried to bring charges against the attackers, but various Greek courts have not brought charges due to "lack of evidence." He says he finally applied to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which has not yet ruled on whether to hear the case.
What's in a name? If the name is Macedonia, a great deal
The problems faced by Rainbow are tightly connected to the scramble of politics, identity, history and territorial ambitions of those inhabiting this complicated place called "Macedonia."
Ancient Macedonia was the Greek-speaking empire of Alexander the Great. During the Turkish Ottoman empire, from roughly the 15th to 20th Centuries, Macedonia was the name of an enormous administrative region in the southern Balkans. As the House of Ottoman crumbled and new states emerged in the Balkans, the Balkan Christians fought together to drive Turkey out of Europe in the First Balkan War. In the Second Balkan War a year later, Bulgaria invaded to grab a bigger chunk of Macedonia and lost.
Greece and Serbia took the biggest parts of Aegean Macedonia and Vardar Macedonia respectively, after the Aegean Sea and Vardar River. Vardar Macedonia would later become the Republic of Macedonia in Communist Yugoslavia. Bulgaria took the smallest piece, a region containing the Pirin Mountains, called Pirin Macedonia. Bulgaria joined Germany in World Wars I and II, largely to take back Macedonia.
When Yugoslavia crumbled in 1991, the constituent Republic of Macedonia declared independence, and Greece became hysterical. Greece made both a nationalistic claim of ownership of the name and civilization of Macedonia, and it feared, lingering since World War II, that the impoverished nation of 2.3 million Macedonians might still have designs on Greek territory and to "reunite Macedonia" and realize the dream of Macedonian guerillas during the Greek Civil War.
A similar article by the same author was published in the Scotsman.