If we can´t get the Macedonians out, we breed them out; Can Greece be charged with Genocide?
Alexandra Aleksovska
May 06, 2009
You ever go through an old box and find a love letter to or from someone who you can´t stand now – and you feel embarrassed that you actually felt that way? Sometimes the past can come back to haunt you. Well I am pretty sure the Greek government is feeling a little like that now. Recently a document purporting to have been a ´Top Secret´ 1982 Greek National Security Service protocol printed in a non-public Greek political magazine called ´Sxoliastis´ in 1989 has been brought to light. It is an interesting read – not because it has elegant prose or wit, which it doesn´t – but because it blatantly talks about how to do away with the Macedonian ethnicity that exists in Greece. You know, that minority that the UN could find within a few hours and that the Greek government always states ´doesn´t exist´. If you want to see what I am talking about check the following texts.
The full details of the document are available here in Greek
http://www.florina.org/images/national_security.gif
and here in English
http://www.florina.org/news/2009/april26_e.asp
The document outlines techniques that would be used by the Greek government in eradicating the Macedonian minority in Greece. The document states that in order to combat Macedonian culture the Greek government only needs to target the regions near the borders of Macedonia, as other regions like Kastoria were deemed by the Greek government to be no longer in the grip of ´Macedonian language and culture´. So they are claiming that their previous attempts at ´ethnic cleansing´ have worked and they can now focus in other areas.
Why are they so concerned about the presence of another culture? The ´Ethnic Macedonians don´t exist´ line doesn´t work in this context – because it obviously exists enough for the Greek government to target it. Part of what they may be afraid of appears to be the concern that Macedonian elements on the Socialist side during the Greek civil war may repatriate into Greece. That appears to be one reason why they are so adamant that there is no Macedonian minority. Some Macedonians were exiled and had their land confiscated by the Government and given to more politically reliable ethnic Greeks and Greece fears that they might start trying to get their lands back. Or maybe they feared a second civil war?
The document recommends the creation of a government institution – the name of which we don´t have. This institution would work with other Greek government institutions – like schools and churches - against the Macedonian minority.
Point 2 of the document recommends that public servants should not understand Macedonian – and particularly stresses that teachers cannot speak it or understand it. This automatically presents a bias against Ethnic Macedonians – something that Ethnic Macedonians have felt in relation to Greek public service employment - and still feel. What Greece was trying to do was to make sure that Macedonian never became the face of the Greek government, to anybody. Here in Australia, for example, the government provides services in Macedonian (which it calls Macedonian) – but in Greece, a country partly built on Macedonian land, they actively exclude the Macedonian language. Why is that?
Point 3 states that "special enlightenment seminaries" – that is, political indoctrination seminaries would be held for public service employees and clergy. Let´s not forget, in Greece, the clergy are effectively civil servants, as the Greek government helps fund the church. The government having the right to indoctrinate the clergy comes with the pay. Presumably, the ´enlightenment sessions´ would be to monitor and stop any public servants (including the clergy) sympathizing with the Macedonian minority. Point 4 states that they will pay public servants more to go to these Ethnic Macedonian areas and therefore be subject to these extra employment conditions.
Point 5 states that the government will fund cultural associations to proclaim the Greek ´national sentiment´ – that is, propaganda units to declare that the region is Greek and to tell the Macedonian Diaspora that their homeland is now Greek. That of course is a subtle way of saying "DON´T COME BACK!".
Point 6 states that they will actively persecute people who study in Skopje. They will do this by ´inserting obstacles´ like not recognizing degrees. Point 7 states that they will find influential people within the community and pay them off if they act as champions of Greek culture. Point 8 states that Macedonians will not be employed in the public service, but if they do, they will be shipped out of Macedonia – and it is likely that they would be subjected to the type of indoctrination or brainwashing that occurs in the military and other state institutions.
Point 9 is the one that made my skin crawl. The government recommends that Greek officers go to Macedonia and marry the Macedonian women – presumably so they can breed our ethnicity out of us. The Greek government is trying to use a ´recommended´ marriage as an ethnic weapon. Marriage is about two people – it is not about ethnicity – it is not about politics. I feel the Greek government trying to use marriage as an ethnic weapon is just repulsive, but it is not the first time I have seen a similar attitude.
I was not always a rabid Macedonian nationalist who collects death threats from Greek nationalist readers. In fact I even dated a Greek man once; he had been bugging me for months. He even referred to me as Macedonian. I think it was about the third date when he stated something like ´If we have kids they will be brought up as Greeks.´ I was floored. I hadn´t even considered anything remotely like reproduction with this gold jewellery wearing Neanderthal; and yet he was trying to dictate the identity of my future children. He assumed he was going to ´breed the Macedonian´ out of me and my future children. I was so angry. I looked at my red Thai curry which I had taken about 3 spoonfuls from and wondered what type of idiot would assume that their ethnicity is superior and automatically claim my children as pawns for his political cause. A minute later I got up without a word and left the protesting bigot to pay for the rest of my uneaten curry. Being upset, I walked the wrong way down the street for a minute until I realized my car was in the other direction. I walked past the restaurant again and took a quick look through the window, although I doubt he saw me. The Neanderthal was eating my curry, in a messy manner, like a little hairy pig – nom, nom, nom. Well he paid for it after all, so I don´t care.
Having experienced that I can understand where the Secret Police are coming from; I know what they are thinking. I imagine that they, much like the Neanderthal I dated, had an assumption that if a Greek officer marries a Macedonian woman that the Macedonian woman would give up on her identity and surrender her children to Greek culture. Given the ethnic superiority that is indoctrinated in to Greek culture – and especially in the military – they would see this as natural. Of course cultural arrogance is not the only factor; the gender inequality in Greece would also put pressure on a woman to conform to her husbands wishes.
Try to think of what a Greek marriage is like for a woman. A woman is traditionally seen as the property of a man. This can be seen in the fact that in Greece there were no laws against marital rape until 2006 – and then only under international pressure from human rights groups and the EU. A Greek man could commit rape – one of the most heinous crimes – but if the victim was his wife, it was no longer deemed criminal. A recent Greek study, reported by the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues has shown that 1 man in 4 between the ages of 20 and 35 in Greece beats his wife (older groups have even higher rates) and 25% of female admissions to hospital emergency clinics in Greece are for domestic violence (Greek National School of Public Health figures). Greece has traditionally been much closer to the Islamic world when it comes to women´s rights in marriage than they are to the rest of Europe. Given this type of marital environment it is not hard to see how in the minds of people like this, marriage could be considered to be a legitimate ethnic weapon. In this type of situation do you think a woman is likely to feel free to help influence their child's upbringing?
This rather odd ethnic weapon has an interesting characteristic – it is a stated policy (albeit secret) of a modern European government. It is a policy – a technique that is designed with one purpose: to stop the reproduction of Ethnic Macedonians. Why would the Greek government target Macedonian women? Because left in their natural environment, a Macedonian woman is likely to give birth to Macedonian children. This Greek policy only makes any sense if it is seen as a method for preventing the production of Macedonian children.
Of course when you start looking at the eradication of an ethnicity through a government policy, you start coming close to that awful "G" word. Would it be appropriate to consider this a form of genocide? To be sure this policy is no Darfur, Cambodia, Rwanda or Holocaust – but it was promulgated by an EU and NATO member, by a democratically elected government. We like to think that in Europe that genocide is only committed by crazed dictators – that it could never be caused by a modern nation. However, if the attempted eradication of an ethnic group by a government is not genocide – what is it?
The legal test for genocide is outlined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (hereafter shortened to CPPCG). Article II of the convention outlines some of the behaviors that are considered genocide. Not all genocidal behaviors involve violence or killing – but that is the public perception. The specific statement that is relevant to this situation in Article II of the CPPCG is part (d):
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
If the policy of marrying the Macedonian women to Greek men did not prevent the birth of Macedonian children, why would the Greek government recommend it? The government sanctioned policy of having non-Macedonian Greeks marrying Macedonian women is an attempt to remove their reproductive capacity from the Macedonian culture. There is no other rational explanation for such an absurd order. A government policy aimed at removing the reproductive capacity from a culture would fall squarely under Part d of Article II of the CPPCG. It is trying to prevent births within the group by removing the women from the group and placing them under the control of the Greeks.
In Rwanda they used machetes to get rid of the unwanted population, in Nazi Germany they used concentration camps to get rid of the unwanted population, in Greece from the 1980s they used government policy to get rid of the unwanted population. If the document is shown to be accurate, and these policies were formulated by the Greek government, it could be argued that Greece has a case to answer for in relation to Genocide.
Fortunately in most countries, Ethnic Macedonians are free to express themselves in their language – and are not targeted by Greek men for marriage with a view to committing ethnic cleansing. I count myself lucky; by ditching the Neanderthal I missed out on my own personal version of ethnic cleansing. In fact the only thing of mine that he cleansed was my red Thai curry bowl. Nom nom nom little piggy.
The full details of the document are available here in Greek
http://www.florina.org/images/national_security.gif
and here in English
http://www.florina.org/news/2009/april26_e.asp
The document outlines techniques that would be used by the Greek government in eradicating the Macedonian minority in Greece. The document states that in order to combat Macedonian culture the Greek government only needs to target the regions near the borders of Macedonia, as other regions like Kastoria were deemed by the Greek government to be no longer in the grip of ´Macedonian language and culture´. So they are claiming that their previous attempts at ´ethnic cleansing´ have worked and they can now focus in other areas.
Why are they so concerned about the presence of another culture? The ´Ethnic Macedonians don´t exist´ line doesn´t work in this context – because it obviously exists enough for the Greek government to target it. Part of what they may be afraid of appears to be the concern that Macedonian elements on the Socialist side during the Greek civil war may repatriate into Greece. That appears to be one reason why they are so adamant that there is no Macedonian minority. Some Macedonians were exiled and had their land confiscated by the Government and given to more politically reliable ethnic Greeks and Greece fears that they might start trying to get their lands back. Or maybe they feared a second civil war?
The document recommends the creation of a government institution – the name of which we don´t have. This institution would work with other Greek government institutions – like schools and churches - against the Macedonian minority.
Point 2 of the document recommends that public servants should not understand Macedonian – and particularly stresses that teachers cannot speak it or understand it. This automatically presents a bias against Ethnic Macedonians – something that Ethnic Macedonians have felt in relation to Greek public service employment - and still feel. What Greece was trying to do was to make sure that Macedonian never became the face of the Greek government, to anybody. Here in Australia, for example, the government provides services in Macedonian (which it calls Macedonian) – but in Greece, a country partly built on Macedonian land, they actively exclude the Macedonian language. Why is that?
Point 3 states that "special enlightenment seminaries" – that is, political indoctrination seminaries would be held for public service employees and clergy. Let´s not forget, in Greece, the clergy are effectively civil servants, as the Greek government helps fund the church. The government having the right to indoctrinate the clergy comes with the pay. Presumably, the ´enlightenment sessions´ would be to monitor and stop any public servants (including the clergy) sympathizing with the Macedonian minority. Point 4 states that they will pay public servants more to go to these Ethnic Macedonian areas and therefore be subject to these extra employment conditions.
Point 5 states that the government will fund cultural associations to proclaim the Greek ´national sentiment´ – that is, propaganda units to declare that the region is Greek and to tell the Macedonian Diaspora that their homeland is now Greek. That of course is a subtle way of saying "DON´T COME BACK!".
Point 6 states that they will actively persecute people who study in Skopje. They will do this by ´inserting obstacles´ like not recognizing degrees. Point 7 states that they will find influential people within the community and pay them off if they act as champions of Greek culture. Point 8 states that Macedonians will not be employed in the public service, but if they do, they will be shipped out of Macedonia – and it is likely that they would be subjected to the type of indoctrination or brainwashing that occurs in the military and other state institutions.
Point 9 is the one that made my skin crawl. The government recommends that Greek officers go to Macedonia and marry the Macedonian women – presumably so they can breed our ethnicity out of us. The Greek government is trying to use a ´recommended´ marriage as an ethnic weapon. Marriage is about two people – it is not about ethnicity – it is not about politics. I feel the Greek government trying to use marriage as an ethnic weapon is just repulsive, but it is not the first time I have seen a similar attitude.
I was not always a rabid Macedonian nationalist who collects death threats from Greek nationalist readers. In fact I even dated a Greek man once; he had been bugging me for months. He even referred to me as Macedonian. I think it was about the third date when he stated something like ´If we have kids they will be brought up as Greeks.´ I was floored. I hadn´t even considered anything remotely like reproduction with this gold jewellery wearing Neanderthal; and yet he was trying to dictate the identity of my future children. He assumed he was going to ´breed the Macedonian´ out of me and my future children. I was so angry. I looked at my red Thai curry which I had taken about 3 spoonfuls from and wondered what type of idiot would assume that their ethnicity is superior and automatically claim my children as pawns for his political cause. A minute later I got up without a word and left the protesting bigot to pay for the rest of my uneaten curry. Being upset, I walked the wrong way down the street for a minute until I realized my car was in the other direction. I walked past the restaurant again and took a quick look through the window, although I doubt he saw me. The Neanderthal was eating my curry, in a messy manner, like a little hairy pig – nom, nom, nom. Well he paid for it after all, so I don´t care.
Having experienced that I can understand where the Secret Police are coming from; I know what they are thinking. I imagine that they, much like the Neanderthal I dated, had an assumption that if a Greek officer marries a Macedonian woman that the Macedonian woman would give up on her identity and surrender her children to Greek culture. Given the ethnic superiority that is indoctrinated in to Greek culture – and especially in the military – they would see this as natural. Of course cultural arrogance is not the only factor; the gender inequality in Greece would also put pressure on a woman to conform to her husbands wishes.
Try to think of what a Greek marriage is like for a woman. A woman is traditionally seen as the property of a man. This can be seen in the fact that in Greece there were no laws against marital rape until 2006 – and then only under international pressure from human rights groups and the EU. A Greek man could commit rape – one of the most heinous crimes – but if the victim was his wife, it was no longer deemed criminal. A recent Greek study, reported by the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues has shown that 1 man in 4 between the ages of 20 and 35 in Greece beats his wife (older groups have even higher rates) and 25% of female admissions to hospital emergency clinics in Greece are for domestic violence (Greek National School of Public Health figures). Greece has traditionally been much closer to the Islamic world when it comes to women´s rights in marriage than they are to the rest of Europe. Given this type of marital environment it is not hard to see how in the minds of people like this, marriage could be considered to be a legitimate ethnic weapon. In this type of situation do you think a woman is likely to feel free to help influence their child's upbringing?
This rather odd ethnic weapon has an interesting characteristic – it is a stated policy (albeit secret) of a modern European government. It is a policy – a technique that is designed with one purpose: to stop the reproduction of Ethnic Macedonians. Why would the Greek government target Macedonian women? Because left in their natural environment, a Macedonian woman is likely to give birth to Macedonian children. This Greek policy only makes any sense if it is seen as a method for preventing the production of Macedonian children.
Of course when you start looking at the eradication of an ethnicity through a government policy, you start coming close to that awful "G" word. Would it be appropriate to consider this a form of genocide? To be sure this policy is no Darfur, Cambodia, Rwanda or Holocaust – but it was promulgated by an EU and NATO member, by a democratically elected government. We like to think that in Europe that genocide is only committed by crazed dictators – that it could never be caused by a modern nation. However, if the attempted eradication of an ethnic group by a government is not genocide – what is it?
The legal test for genocide is outlined in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (hereafter shortened to CPPCG). Article II of the convention outlines some of the behaviors that are considered genocide. Not all genocidal behaviors involve violence or killing – but that is the public perception. The specific statement that is relevant to this situation in Article II of the CPPCG is part (d):
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
If the policy of marrying the Macedonian women to Greek men did not prevent the birth of Macedonian children, why would the Greek government recommend it? The government sanctioned policy of having non-Macedonian Greeks marrying Macedonian women is an attempt to remove their reproductive capacity from the Macedonian culture. There is no other rational explanation for such an absurd order. A government policy aimed at removing the reproductive capacity from a culture would fall squarely under Part d of Article II of the CPPCG. It is trying to prevent births within the group by removing the women from the group and placing them under the control of the Greeks.
In Rwanda they used machetes to get rid of the unwanted population, in Nazi Germany they used concentration camps to get rid of the unwanted population, in Greece from the 1980s they used government policy to get rid of the unwanted population. If the document is shown to be accurate, and these policies were formulated by the Greek government, it could be argued that Greece has a case to answer for in relation to Genocide.
Fortunately in most countries, Ethnic Macedonians are free to express themselves in their language – and are not targeted by Greek men for marriage with a view to committing ethnic cleansing. I count myself lucky; by ditching the Neanderthal I missed out on my own personal version of ethnic cleansing. In fact the only thing of mine that he cleansed was my red Thai curry bowl. Nom nom nom little piggy.
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