IT IS TIME FOR PHILANTHROPY AND NOT FOR THREATS

IT IS TIME FOR PHILANTHROPY AND NOT FOR THREATS

Dear President of Greece,

We cannot remain silent before the terrible racism all around us. Here is why: Based on decision 106.841 / 5-1-83 made by the Greek Ministry of the Interior, only Greeks by birth are allowed to return to Greece from all the political refugees that had left Greece in the past.

Mr. Prokopis Pavlopoulos, you are the President of Greece today and you and all the people in the world know that not all Greeks are Greek by birth!? The entire world also knows that Greek governments over the years have expelled more than two hundred thousand Macedonians from Greece. But the most painful thing of all is that we, the Macedonians, had more than 25,000 young people killed in the Greek Civil War, which is more than Greece lost during the Turkish-Greek and Italian-Greek wars combined, yet nothing is said or known about these Macedonians.

But you seem to be tormented by a more frightening inhumanity. You want to change our name and thereby break down the pillar on which the Macedonian state lies - the homeland of the Macedonian people, and do to them what past Greek governments did to the Macedonians in the Greek occupied part of Macedonia, which since 1913, to this day has been under Greek rule!

The whole world is watching you kissing the icons of saints and giving the impression that you are a child of God and, on the other hand, you are constantly threatening to never allow or want us together with you in Europe!? BUT!?

So, just for us, for the Macedonians you are not philanthropists, not even before God? So to destroy us, now you don’t deploy napalm bombs and rockets, you simply isolate us by forcing a name change on us, while telling the world that we do not exist, and thus making yourselves the honorary citizen of our towns and cities from which you exiled us. But there is more. There is no question that you did expel and exile us Macedonians from our homeland and don’t want us back, right? So then under what conditions did you expropriate our homes and lands that belonged to our ancestors, which rightfully and legally belong to us now? It seems to me that you Greeks make the rules as you go along, rules that support only your interests regardless of logic or fairness.

This is an open question, Mr. Pavlopoulos, full of problems which depend on you to solve and not on the Greek people...

Let’s talk about the humanity that suits us all. Let us not forget the most elementary thing: that we are first and foremost human beings with our own dignity! Over the years I have felt that people in the Balkans were forbidden from speaking about topics that were intriguingly politicized.

Allow me to remind you: On August 10, 2003, 55 years after the Greek government exiled our people from their homeland it decided to allow some to visit the places where they and their ancestors were born. To make this happen the Greek government issued so-called “HUMANITARIAN PASSPORTS”, that did not require people to declare where they were born, but to only say they were born in Greece. So, many who made it inside Greece, especially those who were too young to remember things, began to ask: “Where is my birthplace? Where are the graves of my parents, my grandfather and grandmother, what names should I be looking for? Where are the images of my childhood, my home, my village, the river, the forest from which we used to collect wood, the birds that woke me up in the morning…?”

Those who did remember what things looked like were in shock. The beautiful places they remembered were gone. Their beautiful villages and homes were in ruins and desolate. It was very sad for them and devastating.

It was an unprecedented trampling on human dignity. They all felt like they were foreigners in their own country. After they wandered around the world for over half a century they came back to find everything in ruins. They walked through their idyllic villages looking for cemeteries, looking for the graves of their dead relatives but could find nothing… absolutely nothing. That was their horror,

Mr. Prokopis Pavlopoulos… The flowers they brought to place on the tombstones wilted in their hands… The candles they brought to light did not burn... This was our cruel experience!

Well, it has been over 70 years now since we were exiled and you are still calling for BARBARISM and BLOODSHED!

Isn’t it about time, Mr. Pavlopoulos that you turn to compassion instead of pursuing barbarism!? Tell the Greek citizen the truth about what happened. Only then you will be completely free from your torment from this frightening inhumanity that your predecessors committed against us. If you don’t tell them then you, my ex-compatriot Pavlopoulos, are no better than your predecessors. And please, refrain from saying that you feel like a Macedonian because you live in Macedonia. You are a Greek who lives in Greek occupied Macedonia, on my ancestral lands which you Greeks stole from us.

* * *

- Allow me to quote Kocha Popovich who said: “I am against any nationalism, because nationalism is the lowest form of social consciousness. This is scary! This is scary! It’s scary to have such intellectuals among the people! You are already nationalists if such thoughts exist in your society. Such thoughts ruled and completely dominated Yugoslavia (SFRY). You are doomed; you are destined to be a lower form of being! Every so-called social consciousness that practices and inherits a certain ideology: nationalism, communism, etc., has its own pathology when it strays from the right path...” (The author is a writer)