Why am I doing this – again?
Risto Stefov
July 24, 2010
Despite my explanations a few times before, there are readers out there, mostly Greeks, who still want to know "why I am doing this" and by "this" I mean why do I write "negative things" about Greece and the Greeks.
To them I say, show me something "good" that Greece and the Greeks have done for the Macedonians and then I will write something "positive"! Ah but wait a minute aren´t we forgetting something? Aren´t the Greeks the ones who claim that "the whole world knows that Macedonians do not exist"! So, what Macedonians am I talking about?
Frankly it is this kind of negative attitude that "Greeks" show for the Macedonians that "compels" me to write "negative things" about Greece and the Greeks!
In fact I am surprised by their questions. They should know better than to ask such questions after treating the Macedonians badly for so many years. If they continue to trample on our rights not only as Macedonians but as human beings, they should know that some of us are bound to complain!
To think that I am doing this because of "some personal vendetta" or because "I am jealous" of the Greeks, as they have accused me so many times, is to admit that they either don´t know anything about the Macedonians or they simply don´t care!
Do they truly believe that Macedonians don´t exist and that Greeks do? Do they truly believe that because they decided to call themselves "Greeks" that they are now the descendents of a 2,500 year old race? Why should we or anyone else believe them?
Let me ask them this, do they deny that Greece was created by the Philhellenes and that the people living in that region when Greece was created were not Greeks at all but Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs, Turks, Latins and a variety of other ethnic people? Do they deny that the present Greek language which they think makes them "Greek" because they speak it was their mother tongue in the 19th century when Greece was created for the first time?
If they deny all these things then they are simply lying to themselves. If they don´t deny them then how can they say they are Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks? What gives them the right to call themselves Greek, descendents of the ancient Greeks and at the same time call the Macedonians "Slavs" implying that they are not Macedonians at all? Aren´t they "Slavs" too? How can Macedonia then belong to the fake Greeks who are in fact themselves Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs and Turks and not to the indigenous Macedonians who are in fact Macedonian?
But, setting all this aside, this is not my main argument with Greece. It is only a side argument to point out that while the Greeks themselves are standing on "shaky" ground with their own identity, they blatantly attack the Macedonians and deny theirs!
My main argument with Greece and the Greeks is that they know all this especially about themselves, their fake identity and their imposed language, but ignore it and deliberately and openly attack the Macedonians with lies and deceit. They do this in order to "fool" their audience and the general public and do it aggressively and persistently to make their story sound credible.
They continue to bolster their "fake" identity with lies and deception and at the same time deny the Macedonians theirs with more lies and deception. They believe that as long as there are two sides to the story that greatly differ, then no one will know the truth or what to believe because the world will not know who to believe. Then as the world continues to experience "confusion" as it has for over a century now, the Greeks will conduct "business as usual" because they already possess Macedonia and will continue to exploit it to no end!
Today the Greeks are inside Macedonia, occupying 51% of it, and they will do everything in their power to hold on to it. So what if they have to lie, cheat and deceive people. This is how this game is played not only by Greece but by countries all over the world. Greeks have never been afraid or ashamed of lying before so why should they start now?
But how do Macedonians see all this?
Now allow me to put it the way we Macedonians see it! The way we see it, you Greeks invaded and occupied our country Macedonia in 1912 and, in 1913, you divided it with your partners the Serbians and Bulgarians illegally taking 51% of our country for yourselves.
After attempting and failing to liberate ourselves from the Ottoman Empire in 1903, you lied to us by telling us that you would send your armies to Macedonia to assist us in our liberation. Then when you did send your armies and together we drove the Ottomans out, you changed your mind and told us that you are now here to stay. You told us that Macedonia was no longer ours, but yours! You told us we Macedonians do not exist and now that Macedonia is yours we are all Greeks! Accept it or get out of our country.
Those of us who protested you permanently exiled or outright killed. Then you imposed your rules and fake Greek language on us and banned our Macedonian language. If that was not enough you then proceeded to change all our personal and place names so that to a stranger they would sound Greek. You then destroyed everything that was Macedonian including the gravestones of our ancestors; removing every trace of our existence. Then you proudly proclaimed that "Macedonia is Greek" and has always been Greek since ancient times. This is what you have done to us!
As if that was not enough, and even though you yourselves claimed Macedonians did not exist, you continued to abuse us by any means possible including treating us like animals, denying us education, convincing us that we are inferior to you and incapable of higher learning. You took our ancestral lands and gave them to your colonists that you brought from Asia Minor and other parts of the world and made them our overlords. The poverty and abuse that you brought upon us drove many of us to become permanent refugees, to live on foreign lands forever. But being away from you we discovered that we were intelligent and compassionate human beings after all and that you were racists and criminals of the worst kind!
Don´t let me forget to mention what you have done to the tens of thousands of Macedonians you jailed, tortured and tormented over the years, whose bones you left scattered in unmarked graves or on the surface of dry sand on your desolate islands to be picked on by wild beasts, simply because they were Macedonians.
So, after what you have done to us do you expect us to forget everything and forgive you so that you can continue to torment us and treat them like vermin?
The Turkish colonists you brought to Macedonia in the 1920´s today you call Macedonians and on top of that you claim that "they" and not us are the rightful heirs of the Macedonian heritage. The indigenous Macedonians you found in Macedonia in 1912 when your armies arrived there, whose lands today you possess, you publicly call, when under duress, "Slavophone Greeks". But to their faces you call them "Slavs", "Bulgars", "Gypsies", "Skopjans" and every other derogatory term that comes to your mind! While every minority in the world enjoys its human rights, we the indigenous Macedonians of Greek occupied Macedonia have absolutely no rights, not even the most basic human rights!
And now you have the nerve to question my motives as to why I am so negative towards Greece? If you want to know the truth, I have not yet begun speaking negatively about Greece because none of you fake Greeks will open your minds and realize the damage you have done to us. So what would be the point! As long as you remain the racists that you are, you will never understand never mind admit to the injustices you perpetrated against the Macedonians. As racists you lack the capacity to see us as people and to understand our plight and pain. As racists you still see us as vermin to be eradicated by any means possible.
You don´t have to go any further than to look at how Greece is treating the Republic of Macedonia today! The Republic of Macedonia has done everything, outside of committing ethnic suicide, to please Greece but Greece remains displeased and relentless with its abuse and aims to destroy us to the last one.
The Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian people, given their circumstances, did not have to do anything to please Greece. In fact they could have demanded that the Greeks "get out" of Macedonian territories. They had reason to because Macedonia belongs to the Macedonian people and not to colonial Greece! The Republic of Macedonia could have taken the offensive and exposed Greece´s lies and deception. At the very least, the Republic of Macedonia could have demanded of Greece to immediately recognize the Macedonians living in Greece.
But no, the Republic of Macedonia did not do any of those things, yet Greece remains relentless in its endeavours to see it destroyed!
I will take one step further here and say that, the way I see it, Macedonians have done the Greeks many big favours in the past. Because, in spite of what the Greeks had done to them, the Macedonians never raised arms against them, even when they were in power to do so. They never expressed themselves to tell the world how they felt about what the Greeks had done to them. In fact the Macedonians all these years have kept their pain and troubles to themselves. Even though many were driven out of Greece and lived in free countries in the Diaspora, they kept to themselves and for years lived in silence. But I will guarantee you that that will not be the case in the future.
Macedonians have had enough of Greek abuse and someday soon they will wake up and start making noise, a lot of noise, and as it happened not so long ago in South Africa, another racist country like Greece, the world will hear the Macedonian side of the story and it will not be pretty.
I would have been content and kept silent had I been recognized as a Macedonian from Greece and in public been able to say so without being challenged and ridiculed. I would have been even happier had Greece had the capacity to grant every living Macedonian their right to call themselves Macedonians in Greece. But no, Greece has done none of those things!
I would have been content and would not have said anything negative about Greece had I been able to freely speak my Macedonian language, call myself by my Macedonian name, call my friends and neighbours by their Macedonian names and call my village by its Macedonian name! I would have been happy if Greece would have allowed the exiled Macedonians to go back home and visit their place of birth. But no, Greece would not allow this either!
These are things that Greece and the Greeks can easily grant the Macedonians and it will cost them nothing. But Greece does not want that, it prefers to be racist and belligerent.
Many Macedonians would be content and grateful today had Greece accepted and recognized the Republic of Macedonia in 1991. In fact I will go a step further and say had that happened, instead of the belligerence we have witnessed, Greece today would find a best friend in the Republic of Macedonia. But Greece prefers to remain racist instead of democratic or compassionate!
To those who are constantly at me demanding to know "why I do this", I hope I have given you some insight. Whether you accept it or not is your prerogative, but this will help you understand why I to do what I have do. I must also warn you that what I have said so far about Greece and the Greeks is only a mild description of what Greece and the Greeks have done to the Macedonians.
It is my hope that some day soon more Macedonians, who have the stomach for it, will pick up the torch and carry it to its fullest, for the sake of those who have suffered and died at the hands of the Greeks, Serbians, Bulgarians and Albanians. I hope they will pick up from where I left off and expose all atrocities these Balkan belligerents have committed over the years against the peaceful Macedonian people. I believe the Macedonian story has yet to be told!
Other articles by Risto Stefov:
http://www.maknews.com/html/articles.html#stefov
http://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/3446
You can contact the author at rstefov@hotmail.com
To them I say, show me something "good" that Greece and the Greeks have done for the Macedonians and then I will write something "positive"! Ah but wait a minute aren´t we forgetting something? Aren´t the Greeks the ones who claim that "the whole world knows that Macedonians do not exist"! So, what Macedonians am I talking about?
Frankly it is this kind of negative attitude that "Greeks" show for the Macedonians that "compels" me to write "negative things" about Greece and the Greeks!
In fact I am surprised by their questions. They should know better than to ask such questions after treating the Macedonians badly for so many years. If they continue to trample on our rights not only as Macedonians but as human beings, they should know that some of us are bound to complain!
To think that I am doing this because of "some personal vendetta" or because "I am jealous" of the Greeks, as they have accused me so many times, is to admit that they either don´t know anything about the Macedonians or they simply don´t care!
Do they truly believe that Macedonians don´t exist and that Greeks do? Do they truly believe that because they decided to call themselves "Greeks" that they are now the descendents of a 2,500 year old race? Why should we or anyone else believe them?
Let me ask them this, do they deny that Greece was created by the Philhellenes and that the people living in that region when Greece was created were not Greeks at all but Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs, Turks, Latins and a variety of other ethnic people? Do they deny that the present Greek language which they think makes them "Greek" because they speak it was their mother tongue in the 19th century when Greece was created for the first time?
If they deny all these things then they are simply lying to themselves. If they don´t deny them then how can they say they are Greeks, descendents of the ancient Greeks? What gives them the right to call themselves Greek, descendents of the ancient Greeks and at the same time call the Macedonians "Slavs" implying that they are not Macedonians at all? Aren´t they "Slavs" too? How can Macedonia then belong to the fake Greeks who are in fact themselves Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs and Turks and not to the indigenous Macedonians who are in fact Macedonian?
But, setting all this aside, this is not my main argument with Greece. It is only a side argument to point out that while the Greeks themselves are standing on "shaky" ground with their own identity, they blatantly attack the Macedonians and deny theirs!
My main argument with Greece and the Greeks is that they know all this especially about themselves, their fake identity and their imposed language, but ignore it and deliberately and openly attack the Macedonians with lies and deceit. They do this in order to "fool" their audience and the general public and do it aggressively and persistently to make their story sound credible.
They continue to bolster their "fake" identity with lies and deception and at the same time deny the Macedonians theirs with more lies and deception. They believe that as long as there are two sides to the story that greatly differ, then no one will know the truth or what to believe because the world will not know who to believe. Then as the world continues to experience "confusion" as it has for over a century now, the Greeks will conduct "business as usual" because they already possess Macedonia and will continue to exploit it to no end!
Today the Greeks are inside Macedonia, occupying 51% of it, and they will do everything in their power to hold on to it. So what if they have to lie, cheat and deceive people. This is how this game is played not only by Greece but by countries all over the world. Greeks have never been afraid or ashamed of lying before so why should they start now?
But how do Macedonians see all this?
Now allow me to put it the way we Macedonians see it! The way we see it, you Greeks invaded and occupied our country Macedonia in 1912 and, in 1913, you divided it with your partners the Serbians and Bulgarians illegally taking 51% of our country for yourselves.
After attempting and failing to liberate ourselves from the Ottoman Empire in 1903, you lied to us by telling us that you would send your armies to Macedonia to assist us in our liberation. Then when you did send your armies and together we drove the Ottomans out, you changed your mind and told us that you are now here to stay. You told us that Macedonia was no longer ours, but yours! You told us we Macedonians do not exist and now that Macedonia is yours we are all Greeks! Accept it or get out of our country.
Those of us who protested you permanently exiled or outright killed. Then you imposed your rules and fake Greek language on us and banned our Macedonian language. If that was not enough you then proceeded to change all our personal and place names so that to a stranger they would sound Greek. You then destroyed everything that was Macedonian including the gravestones of our ancestors; removing every trace of our existence. Then you proudly proclaimed that "Macedonia is Greek" and has always been Greek since ancient times. This is what you have done to us!
As if that was not enough, and even though you yourselves claimed Macedonians did not exist, you continued to abuse us by any means possible including treating us like animals, denying us education, convincing us that we are inferior to you and incapable of higher learning. You took our ancestral lands and gave them to your colonists that you brought from Asia Minor and other parts of the world and made them our overlords. The poverty and abuse that you brought upon us drove many of us to become permanent refugees, to live on foreign lands forever. But being away from you we discovered that we were intelligent and compassionate human beings after all and that you were racists and criminals of the worst kind!
Don´t let me forget to mention what you have done to the tens of thousands of Macedonians you jailed, tortured and tormented over the years, whose bones you left scattered in unmarked graves or on the surface of dry sand on your desolate islands to be picked on by wild beasts, simply because they were Macedonians.
So, after what you have done to us do you expect us to forget everything and forgive you so that you can continue to torment us and treat them like vermin?
The Turkish colonists you brought to Macedonia in the 1920´s today you call Macedonians and on top of that you claim that "they" and not us are the rightful heirs of the Macedonian heritage. The indigenous Macedonians you found in Macedonia in 1912 when your armies arrived there, whose lands today you possess, you publicly call, when under duress, "Slavophone Greeks". But to their faces you call them "Slavs", "Bulgars", "Gypsies", "Skopjans" and every other derogatory term that comes to your mind! While every minority in the world enjoys its human rights, we the indigenous Macedonians of Greek occupied Macedonia have absolutely no rights, not even the most basic human rights!
And now you have the nerve to question my motives as to why I am so negative towards Greece? If you want to know the truth, I have not yet begun speaking negatively about Greece because none of you fake Greeks will open your minds and realize the damage you have done to us. So what would be the point! As long as you remain the racists that you are, you will never understand never mind admit to the injustices you perpetrated against the Macedonians. As racists you lack the capacity to see us as people and to understand our plight and pain. As racists you still see us as vermin to be eradicated by any means possible.
You don´t have to go any further than to look at how Greece is treating the Republic of Macedonia today! The Republic of Macedonia has done everything, outside of committing ethnic suicide, to please Greece but Greece remains displeased and relentless with its abuse and aims to destroy us to the last one.
The Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian people, given their circumstances, did not have to do anything to please Greece. In fact they could have demanded that the Greeks "get out" of Macedonian territories. They had reason to because Macedonia belongs to the Macedonian people and not to colonial Greece! The Republic of Macedonia could have taken the offensive and exposed Greece´s lies and deception. At the very least, the Republic of Macedonia could have demanded of Greece to immediately recognize the Macedonians living in Greece.
But no, the Republic of Macedonia did not do any of those things, yet Greece remains relentless in its endeavours to see it destroyed!
I will take one step further here and say that, the way I see it, Macedonians have done the Greeks many big favours in the past. Because, in spite of what the Greeks had done to them, the Macedonians never raised arms against them, even when they were in power to do so. They never expressed themselves to tell the world how they felt about what the Greeks had done to them. In fact the Macedonians all these years have kept their pain and troubles to themselves. Even though many were driven out of Greece and lived in free countries in the Diaspora, they kept to themselves and for years lived in silence. But I will guarantee you that that will not be the case in the future.
Macedonians have had enough of Greek abuse and someday soon they will wake up and start making noise, a lot of noise, and as it happened not so long ago in South Africa, another racist country like Greece, the world will hear the Macedonian side of the story and it will not be pretty.
I would have been content and kept silent had I been recognized as a Macedonian from Greece and in public been able to say so without being challenged and ridiculed. I would have been even happier had Greece had the capacity to grant every living Macedonian their right to call themselves Macedonians in Greece. But no, Greece has done none of those things!
I would have been content and would not have said anything negative about Greece had I been able to freely speak my Macedonian language, call myself by my Macedonian name, call my friends and neighbours by their Macedonian names and call my village by its Macedonian name! I would have been happy if Greece would have allowed the exiled Macedonians to go back home and visit their place of birth. But no, Greece would not allow this either!
These are things that Greece and the Greeks can easily grant the Macedonians and it will cost them nothing. But Greece does not want that, it prefers to be racist and belligerent.
Many Macedonians would be content and grateful today had Greece accepted and recognized the Republic of Macedonia in 1991. In fact I will go a step further and say had that happened, instead of the belligerence we have witnessed, Greece today would find a best friend in the Republic of Macedonia. But Greece prefers to remain racist instead of democratic or compassionate!
To those who are constantly at me demanding to know "why I do this", I hope I have given you some insight. Whether you accept it or not is your prerogative, but this will help you understand why I to do what I have do. I must also warn you that what I have said so far about Greece and the Greeks is only a mild description of what Greece and the Greeks have done to the Macedonians.
It is my hope that some day soon more Macedonians, who have the stomach for it, will pick up the torch and carry it to its fullest, for the sake of those who have suffered and died at the hands of the Greeks, Serbians, Bulgarians and Albanians. I hope they will pick up from where I left off and expose all atrocities these Balkan belligerents have committed over the years against the peaceful Macedonian people. I believe the Macedonian story has yet to be told!
Other articles by Risto Stefov:
http://www.maknews.com/html/articles.html#stefov
http://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/3446
You can contact the author at rstefov@hotmail.com
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