Discussion regarding the accession of Macedonia into the European Union was postponed until June 2010. Two countries have delayed this process, the first of course being Greece which cannot accept Macedonia being a member of the EU. Neither can it accept the name ‘Macedonia’ nor the Macedonian idenity or language. In other words, everything that has any connotation to ‘Macedonia’ and ‘Macedonian’ is unacceptable to Greece.

The other country that opposes Macedonia by supporting Greece in this endeavour is France.

Why is France doing this?

Perhaps because Greece has signed a contract to purchase military supplies from France or perhaps because, similar to Greece, France does not recognize minorities in its own territory.

What about indigenous minorities like the Alsatians, Basques, Bretons, Catalans, Corsicans and Occitans (Provencals) who today exist in France? Unfortunately all of these national minorities, and the languages they speak, are not formally recognized by France.

France, like Greece, has “specialized” in signing but not ratifying resolutions for the protection of minorities and their languages. If there is any doubt as to the existence of minority languages in France, let me remind you that all manifestos written just before and after the great French Revolution of 1789-1799 were written in these so-called local languages.

After the Revolution was over authorities withdrew from this linguistic pluralism and took advantage of a single obligatory language and that was ‘French’. The methods used to discourage the use of local languages was to make fun of adults and young children who spoke them, a similar method was used by Greece against the Macedonians.

Greek State-Promoted Terror and Persecutions

In addition to making fun of people, Greek authorities also employed terror tacticts, beatings, imprisonment and expulsion to prevent Macedonians from speaking their native language even on their own native Macedonian territories.

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This is why these two so-called ‘democratic’ countries allied themselves to block Macedonia’s accession into the European Union. Thus the paradox; if other countries are willing to accept Macedonia into the Union they cannot because current EU law allows any single member country to veto and block the other 26. This shows how fragile and abnormal the foundation of this Union is.

Can this be called democracy? No, definitely not!

This is a dictate of one, or in this case, of two countries dictating to the rest. Also there is little logic in this. In this situation we cannot say all countries are treated equally.

This is nothing more than a European circus.

The European Union, which does not hesitate to mentor and teach others about democracy and human rights, harbours two countries which care nothing about human rights or democracy, worse, they can’t even be punished for this. New countries with aspirations of joining the European Union and have fulfilled all requirements put before them, for ’some reason’ are being blocked while ‘old’ European Union countries, like France and Greece, which have broken every minority law, are not only allowed in, but are treated like the proverbial ‘holy cows’.

Macedonia

Macedonia, the only ex-Yugoslav country in the Balkans able to meet all European standards since 1991, has not been allowed entry into the EU. Macedonia comparing to other Western Balkan’s countries is ahead of reforms . Even today, attempt after attempt to gain entry has been obstructed by Greece and all obstructions have been accepted without question by the EU.

Where have we ever seen or heard of a situation where a paranoid country like Greece ‘forcibly imposed’ a name on a normal country like Macedonia? How is it possible for the majority of democratic European countries to accept and come to terms with such dictates from a small economically and morally bankrupt country like Greece?

The Merciless Persecution of Macedonians in Greece

A country which after its unlawful seizure of Macedonian territories in 1913 has issued a number of racist laws against its own citizens. A country which after its Civil War in 1949 exiled both Greeks and Macedonians and in 1982 and 1985 allowed only Greeks by birth to return. How long will the EU allow Greece, which does not recognize the 250 thousand strong Macedonian minority living on its territory, a minority already recognized by international organizations, to break European and international laws? When will the fools of Brussels move their heavy bottom and go to Northern Greece and see and hear for themselves the Macedonians living there?

When will decision-makers from the EU understand that it is not Macedonia but Greece that is a destabilizing factor in the Balkans? It is not Macedonian but Greek nationalism and the Greek Orthodox Church that inflames other Balkan nationalisms.

Fake “Greek History”

Another idiotic idea that inflames hatred and nationalism is Greece’s claims of having 4000 years of cultural continuity and being ethnically pure, which are nothing more than a myth. The Greek nation is an artificial creation invented in the XIX century by the Philhellenic English and German fans of Classical Greece. The Greek language is also an artificial creation which survived only because it was a language of Eastern Christianity and not the language spoken by the Greek people.

In the XIX century the language spoken in Athens, a small Ottoman village, was Albanian, called Arnautian or Arvanitika. The Greek language was revived by academics and taught in schools and in this way it became the official language of the Greek state. These facts are not taught in school.

The so-called ‘Greek studies’ offered to students are no more than fictional concepts promoting an invented continuity and an invented language. It is enough to read the 19 century memoirs of scientists and travelers in order to learn that they were not able to communicate with the people of Greece in Greek. Macedonia was incorporated into Greece in 1913 against the will of the Macedonian nation which dwelt in these territories from times immemorial.

EU support to Turkey’s Kurds – but not to Greece’s Macedonians

Turkey is constantly being accused by the EU for not respecting minority rights, particularly those of the Kurdish people.

•   Why has no one in the EU accused Greece of doing the same with regards to the Turkish and Macedonian minorities living there?

•   Why isn’t criticism directed at Greece?

Why this anti-Turkish obsession, not justified by the way, because racism is present in the EU and nobody in Brussels is asking questions about that?

There are more liberties for minorities in Turkey than in Greece.

It is a result of the very nature of Turkey which was an empire and was comprised of many nations and religions. While Turkey left all Christian Churches intact in its territory, Greece on the other hand after 1915 destroyed all Turkish minarets in the Greek territory.

Do Turks from Thrace have guaranteed rights as a minority? No, they, as well as the Macedonians have no minority rights and are discriminated against to no end in Greece. But do you see anyone writing about this, particularly in Europe? No, not at all! And why is Turkey presented in such bad light and not Greece?

Greeks living in Istanbul enjoy full religious freedom but not Turks living in Thrace.

These people are called Muslims because Greece forbids them to call themselves Turks. This says a lot about how the EU operates and how much member nations like Greece respect the rights of their citizens who cannot call themselves what they are but need to be called as deigned by governments!

If we are to speak frankly, Turkey, not Greece, is a stabilizing factor in the Balkans even though a small part of Turkey exists in the Balkans.

It seems that political correctness has taken European politicians away from common sense. They look at one thing and call it something else. The EU has taken a dogmatic approach to things like an aparatchik and preposterously dictates instead of using sound logic and reasoning. In theory a EU is a sound idea but it does not practice what it preaches. Instead of being a union governed by citizens, the EU is a union run by nonchalant bureaucrats.

Accepting countries like France and Greece which have committed serious human rights violations and imposing unjust conditions on countries like Macedonia will cause that the EU sooner or later, will get the hiccups which it deserves. It is not a union of equal nations. It seems that some are more equal than others in the EU and that is not right.

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by Risto Karajkov

Twenty years after the fall of the Wall, the controversial lustration process – the epuration of those who cooperated with the police of Communist regimes – is still in deep waters. And many wonder whether rummaging archives still makes sense.

As the summer ended, the Macedonian lustration commission finally opened its doors for politicians who rushed in to submit their statements swearing they had not collaborated with the communist secret services. The commission, the chief instrument created to implement the law on lustration, has to verify these statements against the old secret police files.

A year and half after the Macedonian lustration law was passed, and 18 years since the beginning of transition, lustration has finally commenced.

Time is still needed to see the actual effect on Macedonian society. Some experts argued that a loud bang is out of the question; perhaps even a hushed whimper would be too much to expect. Some believe that after all these years the powerful politicians have found ways to get their names out of the dusty files.

Even the initial steps, however, hinge on the constitutional court’s assessment of the lustration law. The court recently agreed to review several petitions made by citizens and NGOs that challenged the legitimacy of parts of the legislation. Some people would be surprised if the court finds the law to be in accord with the constitution. Throughout eastern Europe, constitutional courts have regularly reviewed lustration laws.

The start of lustration makes Macedonia a leader in the western Balkans region. Albania’s lustration law adopted in early 2009 was repealed by the Albanian constitutional court just months later. The court’s decision was preceded by strong criticism by the international community, which found the bill to be a potentially serious threat to human rights in the country.

Lustration laws regularly have difficulties withstanding constitutional scrutiny. Some of their features, such as retroactive effect, broad and ill-defined categories of offenders; and problems in differentiating between the public and the private sphere, have provided reasons for constitutional courts to repeal the law. In Bulgaria, the constitutional court annulled an early lustration attempts in 1992. (Sofia enacted its last lustration instrument at the very end of 2006, two weeks before it joined the European Union. Similarly, the constitutional court in the former Czechoslovakia ruled in November 1992 to reduce the scope of the law by restricting the category of “lustrati“. More recently (May 2007), the constitutional court in Poland rescinded most key provisions of the Kaczynski brothers’ mega-lustration bill. The Polish court had also reacted similarly with the bill in 2000, which expanded the scope of previous phases of lustration.

In view of this history, the Macedonian constitutional court may also follow suit. The Macedonian law is also broad in scope, both in categories of “lustrati”, as well as the period it covers.

However, Albania and Macedonia are not the only countries in the Balkans finding it difficult to start their lustrations.

The first country in the region to actually adopt lustration legislation was Serbia. Belgrade passed its law back in 2003. However, lustration has still not effectively begun, nor is there indication that it would begin anywhere in the near future. The 2003 legislation was “born dead”. The commission that was supposed to begin work by lustrating candidates for the 2003 snap elections, never started working, and later it simply dissolved. Commentators say the lustration law had no power because supplementary legislation on opening of secret police files, which was supposed to ensue within two months, never took place.

The other countries in the region are even further behind in the process. Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina do not even have legislation.

Croatia had several attempts to enact lustration legislation. Lustration bills were on the agenda of parliament in 1998 and 1999, and they were voted down both times. Neither Montenegro nor Bosnia has a law, although Podgorica at least has a draft bill.

Twenty years after the end of communism, lustration is still an issue, and it has not even effectively commenced. Perhaps countries in the Balkans should really rethink if they want to “forgive and forget”. In 2000, Adam Michnik advocated the abandoning of lustration in Poland and said that states cannot move forward without having reconciled with the past, but that the challenge is how to achieve this and maintain balance between justice and stability. In 2007, Serbian President Boris Tadic said it was too late for lustration in Serbia. He probably (and rightfully) feared it would further antagonise the already polarised country.

In the Balkans, the overall problem is the delay. If 18 years after the beginning of transition, countries have not even started the lustration, when will they be able to complete it? The experience of the central and east European countries has shown that immediate and quick lustration was the best and least painful way. Subsequent waves of late lustration tended to broaden, protract, and become overly politicised processes. Both the theoretical and the expert community share the consensus that timeliness was a primary factor of effectiveness in the lustration process.

How meaningful can lustration be almost two decades later? Some answers to this dilemma should perhaps be expected from the Macedonian lustration commission members. As small, busy mice, they will be sniffing the dusty police files during the coming winter.

Osservatorio Balcani
www.osservatoriobalcani.org

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By Risto Karajkov

A “historic day,” the “fall of the wall,” the “end of visas” — these were some of the headlines in the Balkan media in response to the European Commission (E.C.) proposing visa liberalization for Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro. The visa-free travel could ideally be possible by the beginning of January 2010. Macedonia has already fulfilled all the technical conditions, while some benchmarks still remain to be met by Serbia and Montenegro.

The E.C. proposal would next be discussed in the European Parliament, and the final decision would be made by the European Council later in the year. “I trust that this proposal should be adopted by the E.U. member states by the end of this year after we have also consulted the European Parliament,” Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said at the announcement of the Commission’s proposal yesterday in Brussels. Visa liberalization will bring an end to a costly, unpleasant, and sometimes humiliating ritual for people who need to travel abroad. “For the citizens of the Western Balkans, visa-free travel means no more queuing at embassies, no more visa fees, and no more collecting of supporting documents such as invitation letters, tickets and paying for their translation,” Rehn said. “In a nutshell,” he added, “this will mean a further Europeanization of the civil societies in the Western Balkans and it is an example that European integration is not only a matter of integrating nations, but also peoples and citizens.” The news was greeted with undivided enthusiasm in the three countries.

The issue of painful visa regime has made headlines and topped political agendas for some years. “Our citizens deserved this, and this is success of the European idea in Macedonia,” said Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, welcoming the news in Skopje. Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic received the news in Kotor where he was in a meeting with E.U.’s H.F.S.P. chief Javier Solana. Djukanovic said that Montenegro will meet the remaining conditions by October and expressed confidence that his country will be visa free on January 1, 2010. “We have fulfilled most of the conditions from the roadmap for visa liberalization and now we have a few more things to do,” Djukanovic said. “There is no doubt that our partners will be satisfied with our results.”

In response to the motion from Brussels, Serbian President Boris Tadic said that the Commission’s recommendation is an important thing for the citizens of Serbia. He added it was good that other countries in the region would also be visa free because that would improve the quality of life in the region overall. “Serbia is not responsible only for itself, but also for the cooperation in the region, given that it is the central country in Southeast Europe,” President Tadic said. Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic added that visa liberalization would restore people’s dignity. “From January 1, the citizens of Serbia will be able to travel without visas to Europe, and this will give them back their dignity,” Cvetkovic said. Serbian Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Bozidar Djelic also welcomed the move but underscored that work had to continue. “The visa darkness has been lifted from the citizens of Serbia, but there is no time for relaxation. We have to continue the reforms.” Djelic was cited by Serbian media comparing the fall of the visa barrier with the national holiday celebrated by the French, the fall of the Bastille in 1789.

Some of the reactions in Serbia expressed concern over the fact that the visa liberalization will divide Serbs in Serbia from Serbs living in Kosovo. The visa-free travel will be a possibility for Serbian citizens with biometric passports, but because of security concerns, even with new biometric passports, residents of Kosovo will still need visas. Kosovo authorities accepted the decision as a further recognition of their separate independent status from Serbia. In addition to Kosovo, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Albania were excluded from the recommendation because they did not make sufficient progress with the needed reforms. Mr. Rehn, however, left the door open. “The ‘roadmaps’ that the E.U. gave them last year are still valid, and they are still perfectly doable if the authorities in these two countries put their full will into delivering now,” Rehn said. “If Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina keep up the pace of reforms and thus meet the conditions, the Commission could envisage making a new proposal by mid-2010.” Bosnia greeted the news with expected disappointment, but Minister of Civilian Affairs Sredoje Novic said that the government could start issuing new biometric passports by mid-October. B.I.H. officials hope that could allow the country to join the first three countries by mid-2010.

Reactions in Albania also showed optimism. Albanian Interior Minister Bujar Nishani said that Albania needs only to meet a few technical conditions in to join the visa liberalization process, and that the country would come on target by the end of 2009. After a longer period of time, Brussels sent an encouraging message to the Balkans. For most people in the Balkans the European idea is by and large associated with the freedom of movement. This article was originally published at www.osservatoriobalcani.org

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By Sam Vaknin — Author of “Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited“

   Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
The propensity to extrapolate from past events to future trends is especially unfortunate in the discipline of History. Thus, the existence hitherto of a thriving multicultural polity does not presage the preponderance of a functioning multiculturalism in its future.

On the very contrary: in an open, tolerant multicultural society, the traits, skills, and capacities of members of different collectives converge. This gives rise to a Narcissism of Small Differences http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissismsmall.html: a hatred of the “nearly-we”, the resentment we harbor towards those who emulate us, adopt our values system, and imitate our traits and behavior patterns.

In heterogeneous societies, its components (religious communities; socio-economic classes; ethnic groups) strike implicit deals with each other. These deals adhere to an organizing or regulatory principle, the most common of which, at least since the late 19 century, is the State (most often, the Nation-State).

These implicit deals revolve around the allocation of resources, mainly of economic nature. They assume that the growth of the economy ought to be translated into individual prosperity, irrespective of the allegiance or affiliation of the individual.

There are two mechanisms that ensure such transmission of national wealth to the component-collectives and thence to the individuals they are comprised of:

(i) Allocative prosperity achieved through distributive justice http://samvak.tripod.com/justice.html (usually obtained via progressive taxation http://samvak.tripod.com/nm015.html and transfers). This depends on maintaining overall economic growth http://samvak.tripod.com/pp164.html. Only when the economy’s cake grows bigger can the poor and disenfranchised enjoy social mobility and join the middle-class.

(ii) Imported prosperity (export http://samvak.tripod.com/nm068.html proceeds, foreign direct investment http://samvak.tripod.com/foreigndirectinvestment-fdi.html (FDI), remittances, mercantilism, colonialism http://samvak.tripod.com/democracy.html ). In contemporary settings, these flows of foreign capital depend upon the country’s membership in various geopolitical and economic “clubs”.

When the political elite of the country fails to guarantee and engender individual prosperity either via economic growth (and, thus, allocative prosperity) or via imported prosperity, the organizing principle invariably comes under attack and very often mutates: empires disintegrate; uniform states go federated or confederated, etc. The process can be peaceful or fraught with conflict or bloodshed. It is commonly called: “history”.

TWO CASE STUDIES

The Case of the Balkans

I have a Roma (gypsy) cleaning lady. She cleans my house every fortnight. She is nice and well spoken. She values education and good manners. She is spotless, obsessively purgatory, compulsively tidy. And she hates “shiptars” (the derogatory name assigned to Macedonian Albanians). They are dirty, she says, and criminal and they have too many children. They don’t respect their women. She is afraid of them. Her eyes glow with the gratification of the underdog turned top dog, if only verbally, if only for a while, if only while cleansing my house. This is the way it is, a chain of abuse, a torrent of prejudice, an iron curtain of malice and stereotyping. Czechs portray “their” gypsies with the same lingual brushstrokes, the same venomous palette, a canvass of derision and atavistic, reflexive hatred.

In the Balkans reigns supreme the Law of the MinMaj. It is simple and it was invariably manifested throughout history. It is this: “Wars erupt whenever and wherever a country has a minority of the same ethnicity as the majority in its neighbouring country.”

Consider Israel – surrounded by Arab countries, it has an Arab minority of its own, having expelled (ethnically cleansed) hundreds of thousands more. It has fought 6 wars with its neighbours and (good intentions notwithstanding) looks set to fight more. It is subjugated to the Law of the MinMaj, enslaved by its steady and nefarious domination.

Or take Nazi Germany. World War Two was the ultimate manifestation of the MinMaj Law. German minorities throughout Europe were either used by Germany – or actively collaborated with it – to justify one Anschluss after another. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Russia – a parade of Big Brotherly intervention by Germany on behalf of allegedly suppressed kinfolk. Lebensraum and Volksdeutsch were twin pillars of Nazi ideology.

And, of course, there is Yugoslavia, its charred remnants agonizingly writhing in a post Kosovo world. Serbia fought Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo to protect besieged and hysterical local Serbs. Croats fought Serbs and Bosnians to defend dilapidated Croat settlements. Albanians fought the Serbs through the good services of Kosovars in order to protect Kosovars. And the fighting is still on. This dismembered organism, once a flourishing country, dazed and scorched, still attempts to blindly strike its former members, inebriated by its own blood. Such is the power of the MinMaj.

There are three ways out from the blind alley to which the MinMaj Rule inevitably and invariably leads its adherents. One exit is through ethnic cleansing, the other via self determination, the third is in establishing a community, a majority of minorities.

Ethnic cleansing is the safest route. It is final, irreversible, just, fast, easy to carry out and preventive as much as curative. It need not be strewn with mass graves and smouldering villages. It can be done peacefully, by consent or with the use of minimal force. It can be part of a unilateral transfer or of a bilateral exchange of population. There are many precedents – Germans in the Ukraine and in Czechoslovakia, Turks in Bulgaria, Jews in the Arab countries. None of them left willingly or voluntarily. All were the victims of pathological nostalgia, deep, disconsolate grieving and the post traumatic shock of being uprooted and objectified. But they emigrated, throngs of millions of people, planeloads, trainloads, cartloads and carloads of them and they reached their destinations alive and able to start all over again – which is more than can be said about thousands of Kosovar Albanians. Ethnic cleansing has many faces, brutality is not its integrated feature.

The Wilsonian ideal of self determination is rarely feasible or possible – though, when it is, it is far superior to any other resolution of intractable ethnic conflicts. It does tend to produce political and economic stillborns, though. Ultimately, these offspring of noble principle merge again with their erstwhile foes within customs unions, free trade agreements, currency unions. They are subsumed in other economic, political, or military alliances and gladly surrender part of that elusive golden braid, their sovereignty. Thus, becoming an independent political entity is, to most, a rite of passage, an adolescence, heralding the onset of political adulthood and geopolitical and economic maturity.

The USA and, to a lesser degree, the UK, France and Germany are fine examples of the third way. A majority of minorities united by common rules, beliefs and aspirations. Those are tension filled structures sustained by greed or vision or fear or hope and sometimes by the very tensions that they generate. No longer utopian, it is a realistic model to emulate.

It is only when ethnic cleansing is combined with self determination that a fracturing of the solutions occurs. Atrocities are the vile daughters of ideals. Armed with stereotypes – those narcissistic defence mechanisms which endow their propagators with a fleeting sense of superiority – an ethnic group defines itself negatively, in opposition to another. Self determination is employed to facilitate ethnic cleansing rather than to prevent it. Actually, it is the very act of ethnic cleansing which validates the common identity, which forms the myth and the ethos that is national history, which perpetrates itself by conferring resilience upon the newly determined and by offering a common cause and the means to feel efficient, functional and victorious in carrying it out.

There are many variants of this malignant, brutal, condemnable, criminal and inefficient form of ethnic cleansing. Bred by manic and hysterical nationalists, fed by demagogues, nourished by the hitherto deprived and humiliated – this cancerous mix of definition by negation wears many guises. It is often clad in legal attire. Israel has a Law of Return which makes an instant citizen out of every spouse of every Russian Jew while denying this privilege to Arabs born on its soil. South Africa had apartheid. Nazi Germany had the Nuremberg Laws. The Czech Republic had the infamous Benes Decrees. But ethnic cleansing can be economic (ask the Chinese in Asia and the Indians in Africa). It can be physical (Croatia, Kosovo). It has a myriad facets.

The West is to blame for this confusion. By offering all three solutions as mutually inclusive rather than mutually exclusive – it has been responsible for a lot of strife and misery. But, to its credit, it has learned its lesson. In Kosovo it defended the right of the indigent and (not so indigent but) resident Albanians to live in peace and plough their land in peace and bring forth children in peace and die in peace. But it has not protected their right to self determination. It has not mixed the signals. As a result the message came through loud and clear. And, for the first time in many years, people tuned in and listened. And this, by far, is the most important achievement of Operation Allied Force.

Minorities or Immigrants? The Kven and Sami Peoples of Norway

The phrase “minority rights” conjures abhorrent images of Palestinians tortured in Israeli prisons; Aegean Macedonians expelled from Greece or incarcerated on remote islands, there to perish; and Native-Americans confined to wasteland “reservations“, having been decimated for decades. But, the sad truth is that minorities are welcome nowhere and that every single nation harbors embarrassing skeletons in its historical closet.

Consider Norway, by far the least plausible candidate for the role of perpetrators of genocide, physical or cultural. This remote Scandinavian polity has repeatedly won every conceivable prize for upholding and cherishing human rights. Yet, it, too, has a dark chapter that ended only recently.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, many Finns – destitute farmers and fishermen – emigrated from their homeland and from Sweden and settled in the inhospitable northern reaches of Norway. They joined the original inhabitants of that area, Finns known as Sami. The new arrivals came to be known as Kvener (in Norwegian), Kvenee (in their own Finnish dialect), or simply Kven, by everyone else.

Fully one quarter of the population in the north identified themselves as Kven in the census of 1875 – yet, it took their adopted country two centuries (and a parliamentary investigative committee) to recognize them a minority (in 1996) and to accept their right to use their language (in 2005) within the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Yet, this may have been too little, too late. In the intervening period, the word “Kven” was used as a pejorative by the Kvens’ upstanding “ethnically pure” compatriots. Kven and Sami culture and languages were considered backward and inferior (with racist undertones). Across the border, in Sweden, Samis were compulsorily sterilized.

In Norway, the Kven and Sami were re-labeled “The Foreign Nations” (non-Nordic, of Mongol roots) and “The Original Immigrants” (a falsification of history, as the Norwegians were the immigrants, not the Sami).

The mandate of the “Finn Fund“, established in the 19th century by the National Assembly, called on it to “civilize” the Kven and the Sami. Even after World War II, as Norway sought to “modernize” itself, Kven and Sami civilizations were cast as outdated and primitive.

Consequently, many Kvens now claim counterfactually to be Norwegians (or merely Norwegian Finns) and consider the Kven language to be a dialect of Finnish.

Inevitably, in a nationalistic backlash, some Kven now insist that they are the aborigines of northern Europe and that once, in the 11th century, they ran an empire that covered most of northern Scandinavia. Groups of opportunistic Swedish Finns support these theories in an attempt to leverage the ILO 169 Convention about the Rights of Indigenous People and apply it to Sweden’s Kvens.

Be that as it may, the truth is that Norway had made it exceedingly difficult for Kvens (and other Finns, such as the Sami people) to obtain citizenship or maintain it and literally impossible to buy real estate – unless they agreed to change their names, give up their language and culture and, later, move away from sensitive border areas (they were considered pro-Russian, then pro-German and, therefore, a security risk). Additionally, lands in the public domain (in truth, owned by the Sami and Kven) were declared to be state property and confiscated without compensation.

This discriminatory policy was known as fornorskningspolitikken (Norwegianization).

Thus, for instance, well into the 1950s, it was forbidden to teach the Sami language in schools (with a few exceptions in the 1930s and 1940s). The very existence of the Sami nation (as a minority) was acknowledged only in 1989, after massive demonstrations in 1979 (ostensibly against the construction of an environmentally-disruptive dam, but actually to air Sami grievances).

Only in the 1990s were some of the wrongs righted: the Sami language was declared a “national treasure” (and a second official language in Norway), a Sami parliament was established, and lands appropriated by the state were returned to the Sami people.

The Kven are envious of the Samis’ achievements. Well into the 1990s, they were still being labeled “immigrants” (and not a minority) by the Norwegian state.

In 1987, they established The Norwegian Kven Organization. Its aims are both political and cultural: the ultimate compilation of a government report about the Kven population; liaising with the Norwegian media; to push for the establishment of a State Secretary for Kven issues; to further the knowledge of the Kven language, from the kindergarten level onwards, using the proceeds of a Kven culture fund and income from museums and culture centers. The Kven also demand bilingual signage and place names.

Yet, only after Norway ratified, in 1999, the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, did it reluctantly alter the Kvens’ status and accept that they are a “national minority“: a minority with a historical presence (longer than 100 years) in a given territory. Now, only Norway and Canada maintain a three-tiered hierarchy of “nations“: indigenous, minority, and immigrants.

Even so, Norway is light years ahead of countries such as Israel and Greece who completely deny the existence of their minorities. Israel has insisted until quite recently that the Palestinian “nation” is an invention and the Greeks refuse to accept the existence of Macedonians on Greek soil.
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Read More

•    The Narcissism of Differences Big and Small http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissismsmall.html

•    A Dialog about Anti-Semitism http://samvak.tripod.com/jews.html

•    The Merits of Stereotypes http://samvak.tripod.com/stereotype.html

•    Herzl’s Butlers http://samvak.tripod.com/pp27.html

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By: Risto Karajkov
World Politics Review, 14 May 2009

SKOPJE, Macedonia — On May 1, the European Union celebrated the fifth anniversary of its “big bang,” the massive wave of enlargement in 2004 that saw it accept 10 new members — eight former communist countries from Eastern Europe, plus Malta and Cyprus. When Romania and Bulgaria joined two and a half years later, in 2007, the EU counted 27 member states, almost half a billion people and 30 percent of the world’s GDP.

In the years since, the EU’s enlargement policy has been considered an unequivocal success. It has brought jobs and growth to the new member states, and provided new markets for the old ones. It has spread stability and democracy, while creating an unprecedented area of free movement of people, capital, and ideas on the European mainland.

For the troubled Balkans, the EU enlargement policy has also been considered the principal instrument for maintaining stability and keeping the countries of the region on course for democratic reform. If these countries have made efforts to keep nationalists at bay, it has been in large part due to the endlessly repeated promise that one day, they, too, would join the club.

As recently as last November, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said that 2009 could potentially be a great year for the countries in the Western Balkans. Croatia was expected to complete negotiations, which meant formally joining the Union in 2010. Macedonia was supposed to get a date for the start of talks, advancing it to a higher level in the accession process. Serbia was to get candidate status, the level preceding the start of the negotiations phase.

Enter the global economic crisis. Five years after the “big bang,” the prospects for the enlargement process have never seemed gloomier, with some of the major EU member states expressing clear reservations about new accessions. In late March, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested “a consolidation phase” for enlargement, following Croatia’s formal accession. Similarly, France has been insisting that no new accessions take place until the Lisbon Treaty — the new EU constitution which should make decision-making in the Union more effective — has been ratified.

More concretely, Germany asked the European Commission (EC) — currently the EU executive — to delay its opinion on Montenegro’s membership application, which the government in Podgorica submitted in December 2008.

Meanwhile, Croatia whose accession seemed a foregone conclusion, has found itself blocked by neighboring Slovenia over a territorial dispute. (See Phil Cain’s WPR Briefing.) As an EU member state, Slovenia can exercise what amounts to a veto on new accessions. While neither the other EU member states nor the EC approve, there is little they can do outside of grumbling and trying to mediate the dispute. Croatia, which could have entered by next year, might now have to wait until 2012, and even that depends on resolving the dispute with Slovenia.

Most of the recent reservations regarding enlargement have to do with the economic crisis. As rich European countries shed jobs and their economies plunge, fears and animosity toward migrants — including workers from new member states — rise. That, in turn, puts pressure on politicians to respond to such fears, especially when elections are near, as they are in Germany, as well as in the European Union itself (the campaign for the EU parliament officially begins next month). Some experts explain recent German moves vis-à-vis enlargement in this light.

Fears and Animosity Toward Migrants, European Immigration, Migrants, Immigration, Economic Recession, Macedonia, Serbia, NATO, Serbs in Kosovo, Croats, Bosnia, Dayton Peace Deal,

That puts member states at odds with the EC, which has been tirelessly repeating to Western Balkan countries that progress on enlargement is entirely up to them, depending only on how well they do with reforms designed to harmonize national governance and policy with EU standards.

Voices have been raised against the anti-enlargement bandwagon. Enlargement Commissioner Rehn recently exhorted the European Parliament not to “make enlargement the scapegoat of economic recession.” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who in the past has played an active role in the Balkan crises, has also argued that the Western Balkan countries should “not be punished” in order to please the voters in some countries.

But given member states’ behavior, that now looks increasingly like empty talk.

Another casualty of the economic crisis may be the eagerly awaited visa liberalization that the Western Balkans, including Macedonia and Serbia, had been hoping would take place in 2009. With actual membership a distant prospect, the dropping of visas is the next best thing, and the Balkans has been desperate for it for quite some time. The EC is expected to recommend it over the next couple of months, after which the interior ministers of the EU member states could make a final decision towards the end of the year. But even on this count, the commission had to go against the will of some member states. Diplomatic activity is under way, and the final outcome is still not known.

The prospect of enlargement has played a stabilizing role in the Balkans, making its sudden removal a cause for concern. The timing is particularly unfavorable too. In Macedonia, nationalism is on the rise, in part due to obstacles to international integration, such as the Greek veto on entry to NATO last year. Serbs in Kosovo are increasingly anxious, Croats are increasingly embittered and Bosnia is, by many accounts, in the worst shape it has been in since the Dayton peace deal that ended the war in 1995.

The economic crisis threatens to push the Balkans into recession, but economies can rebound. And besides, poorly performing economies are business as usual in the region. Should the crisis also kill the region’s shiniest political hope, it could have a far deeper and more lasting impact.

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