Voskopoulos: Greece Must Outgrow Democratic Deficit
A reform to the so-called Greek nationalism is necessary, says Pavlos Voskopoulos, leader of the RAINBOW Party in his interview to Dimitar Culev in Florina (Greece)
Q.: How do you interpret the latest statement of Greek Foreign Ministry’s spokesman in which he called the question concerning the existence of Macedonian minority in Greece “non-existing and ungrounded”?
A.: Kumutzakos’s statement depicts the continual policy of the Greek state against the Macedonian minority since 1912 up-to-date. I would say “ungrounded” and “non-existing” is the claim that Greece is a democratic state.
Greece has a legislative, that is to say a Law from 1981 concerning the repatriation of the “political refugees” of the 1946-1948 Civil War which decisively says who belongs to the “Greeks by origin” category. Why do the state and the Ministry of the Interior mention “Greeks by origin”? Does it mean that the other citizens are not “Greeks by origin”? Does not the state indirectly recognize the existing minority from this Law by mentioning the “non-existing” minority? If Greece clearly declares the expelled Macedonians during the Civil War in Greece as “non-Greeks by origin”, does this mean that their relatives in Greece do not exist? Why does Greece take away the citizenship of members of the “non-existing” minority and forbids the economic emigrants-Macedonians living overseas to enter the villages in which they were born? Today it takes away the Greek citizenship on the base of the Law paragraph 1 g because our co-citizens declare their Macedonian identity in Australia or in Canada, for example. By mentioning the “non-existing” minority, the Greek state sends a message to the Macedonians, and even to their relatives living in northern Greece. The aim of the modern “sophisticated terrorism” is to intimidate the Macedonians from declaring their Macedonian spirit not only in Australia and Canada but also of their relatives in Greece. Why does not the “self-loving” Greek policy implement a census of the population asking about their identity and language in relation to the “non-existing” minority? Is perhaps the continual denial an expression of fear from the “existing” Macedonians?
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