From: lb@cs.man.ac.uk (Luben Boyanov)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.greek,soc.rights.human
Subject: Re: Greek Macedonian writes about "Macedonia".
Date: 3 Sep 92 15:44:30 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.


In article <9224720.5429@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> sachz@montebello.ecom.unimelb.EDU.AU (SAS) writes:
 
>   Firstly, Macedonians are not: Greek, Bulgarian, Serbia or
>Albanian. No, we are none of these things, we are simply Macedonians.

True. Macedonians are Macedonians because they feel so. This is a matter of
national consciousness. However, there was no such ethnic group before WWI
and nobody from these years had a "Macedonian" national consciousness. You
and anybody else can find this for himself by opening ANY book (or
encyclopaedia) published before 1920. Quite an easy task. In case your
curiosity is a real one, I can post a list of books with which you can
start and read them carefully. But notice that I speak about the years before
1920 and not about 1992. Now there are people who have Macedonian national
consciousness and they have the right to do so. However, NO SUCH
NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS (i.e. Macedonian) EXISTED 70 years ago.
 
>their views on their own past and destiny. Even worse you made no
>attempt to interview ethnic Macedonians that live within the
>borders of Greece, Bulgaria and Albania who would have left the
>viewer in no doubt that we are a seperate and distinct ethnic
>group who have been spiritually and physically divided by the
>tragic partitioning of our fatherland at the treaty of Bucharest
>10th of August 1913.

It may be you who never made an attempt to find what Macedonians in
other countries feel for themselves. Even more - there is a very interesting
question to be asked: 'What happened with all Bulgarians (according
to the International treaties, from Macedonia, after 1913? It's the place
to mention that in no treaty one can find an ethnic "Macedonian" neither
can one find such entry in any census before WWI. Are they all killed?
Vanished? Why they disappeared? What happened to the Bulgarian churches
and schools, which existed from the time of the Ottoman Empire in the land
of Macedonia? Have you ever read a declaration from a Macedonian
organization about the human rights violations abroad during the years
before WWII? The obvious answer to this question is NO, but it's unclear WHY.

>   In recent months the term "ethnic cleansing" has been bandied
>about by the media to describe atrocities committed in Bosnia-
>Hercegovina in the name of creating ethnically pure areas.
>This concept is not new. In 1925 a vicious program carried out by
>the Greeks destroyed the town of Sorovich forcing the survivors
>to flee. Over the next five years virtually the entire
>south-eastern area of Macedonia was depopulated of ethnic
>Macedonians who were forced at gun point to abandon their homes,

There was no such ethnic group in 1925. Check it for yourself and then
think what and how to write articles.

However, for those who are curious to see data from the League of Nations,
for the next year in question - 1925 - here it is:

[Source: League of Nations, 'Greek Refugee Settlement', Geneva 1926]

     Greeks        1,341,000   88.8 
     Bulgarians       77,000    5.1
     Moslems           2,000    0.1
     Miscellaneous    91,000    6.0 (Serbs,Jews,Armenians,Vlachs,etc.)


>livestock, businesses and assets by the Greek government and
>forced to flee to Bulgaria where they were persecuted for
>declaring themselves "Macedonians" by the Bulgarian authorities.

100% rubbish. Bulgaria was the only country where Macedonians could go
feeling "at home" for the simple reason that they felt as being Bulgarians.
Your ignorance can be translated like this: "during the fleeing of East Germans
to West Germany, the Federal government persecuted the East Germans for
declaring themselves East Germans ...".

You haven't read single document issued by a Macedonian organization (or
individual) who were in or outside Bulgaria from that time. You don't even
have a remote idea what nationality considered themselves the Miladinovi
brothers, Gligor Purlichev, Gotse Delchev, Yane Sandanski, Dame Gruev ... 

>(Edessa) which is why during the "Greek civil war" Macedonians
>allied themselves with the communists when they were promised an
>autonomous state 

The idea for Macedonian autonomous and independent state was much older.
Why don't you (at least) try to read few books on the history of Macedonia?

[about Macedonians in Greece]
>themselves Macedonian or dare speak their native language in a

which according to people who have been in the region is pure Bulgarian ...

>                                       Also equally distressing was that
>the documentary also ignored the fact that the 1 million ethnic
>Macedonians living in Bulgaria have no basic human rights as
>well, 

You must be living in an alternative Universe. Can you read? Then - try
this:

---------------------------------------------------------------------

                    HUMAN RIGHTS

			1992

                European Ratings focusing
                         on 
		former Communist Countries

The following is abstracted from the Freedom Review's 22nd annual
survey of "Human Freedom Around the World".


*************************************************************
	FREE countries of the former communist block
-------------------------------------------------------------
Name		Political	Civil		Purchasing
		Rights		Liberties	Power Parity
-------------------------------------------------------------
Bulgaria	2		3		Not Available
[moved UP from last year]

Czechoslovakia	2		2		N/A

...
[deleted]
...

Poland		2		2		$ 4,190

***************end of free countries************************
....
[deleted]
....
	NOT FREE countries of the former communist block
--------------------------------------------------------------
Yugoslavia	6		5		$ 4,680
[note: Yugoslavia was rated PR=4, CL=4 at the begining of the
year] 
************end of NOT FREE countries************************

-------------------------------------------------------------------

>   In closing, I feel that it would be far more prudent if in
>future when compiling a documentary for public exhibition on the
>topic of "Macedonia", that the researchers and reporters are
>German, English, Dutch, etc as opposed to Albanian, Greek,
>Bulgarian and Serbian who would not be objective and attenmpt to
>obfuscate the truth on behalf of their governments. 

Maybe others have obfuscated many more truths and at present, the lack of
knowledge makes you sound ridiculous? Maybe you also mean that some commisions
must investigate the rights of the Albanians in Macedonia and why all
Bulgarians suddenly "disappeared" from Macedonia?

>LALOR

Luben

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let us not allow splits and splintering to frighten us. It is, indeed, a
pity, but what can we do, since we are Bulgarians and all suffer from one
common disease"
				Gotse Delchev
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xref: sparky soc.culture.yugoslavia:8299 soc.culture.greek:8171 soc.culture.europe:7876 eunet.politics:1135 talk.politics.misc:42599 talk.politics.theory:3912 soc.culture.bulgaria:1245 soc.culture.turkish:9479