By Risto Karajkov, Osservatorio sui Balcani, Rovereto, Italy, August 13, 2008

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the exodus of the “refugee children” from Aegean Macedonia (Northern Greece). The “children,” who are now elderly, gathered from all over the world in Skopje in July to commemorate.

Their story is a sad one. They fled their homes amid a raging civil war and grew up separated from parents and siblings. When they became adults, they could not return to their native Greece or claim their land. For the first time ever, their demands were endorsed by the Macedonian government this year.

Some 25,000-30,000 children were exiled from Northern Greece in the later phase of its civil war, which raged 1945-1949. Most of them, according to Macedonian historians, were of Macedonian ethnic origin, whereas several thousand were Greek. They were evacuated by the Greek Communist Party, which was one of the sides in the conflict, and were sent to “democratic” communist countries in the Eastern bloc. Many of the children stayed in Macedonia and the other republics in former Yugoslavia. Others went to Hungary, Romania, Poland, and other communist countries.

The motive was essentially humanitarian in nature, to have the children safe from war, and by doing that to ease the mobilization of their parents as combatants.

Some historians yet claim otherwise—that even in that humanitarian operation there was an ulterior motive of ethnic cleansing.

After having been exiled from Greece, some of these children were brought back in the last phases of the war—as child soldiers. They were taken from their dorms in the allied communist countries, trained in camps in former Yugoslavia, and sent to the front. Poland was the only country that did not allow the recruitment of children it hosted.

Once they became a little older, many of the refugee children scattered in the migrant-friendly lands of America, Canada, and Australia.

When they fled they were told they would return shortly, immediately after the victory. Alas, they never did.

In the post-war years, their Greek citizenship had been revoked and their properties in Greece confiscated. For half a century they could not enter Greece. Those who attempted were returned from the border. In the 1980’s Greece passed legislation allowing the return only of those who are “Greek by origin.” Several years ago Athens made a concession allowing the entry of those who would not have the Macedonian toponym of their village of birth written in their passports.

For all of these years the “refugee children” have demanded the right to go back and the restitution of their property.

“We call upon the Greek government, in the name of historic justice and human rights as universal value, to face the unsustainable policy of the past. We want to be able to return to our homeland and we want abolition of the discriminatory laws which deny our rights,” said the refugees in a statement from their meeting in Skopje in July.

Several thousand refugees gathered from all over the world in the newly built Boris Trajkovski Hall. The event was greeted by the president of the Macedonian Parliament, Trajko Veljanovski.

This is the first time that any official endorsement was given by the Macedonian government to the refugees. At the same time, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski wrote letters to Greek Prime Minister Konstantin Karamanlis and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso asking for recognition of the unrecognized Macedonian minority in Greece.

There has been a lot of debate in the Macedonian press recently over the possibility of legal action for the restitution of refugee property in Greece.

The Association of Refugee Children from Aegean Macedonia has recently filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Apart from that, no individual petitions for property restitution have been reported. Some news reports operate with a number of around 4,000 claims that have allegedly already been received by a coordination initiative run from Skopje. Yet, experts claim that carrying such an initiative through Greek courts could prove a challenge. Some suggest exploring the possibility of taking legal action in courts in other countries. Legal experts further indicate that the provision in Greek law that only “Greeks by origin” are entitled to restitution of property is not in accordance with international standards.

“The Nuremberg principles [adopted in 1946] which are now legislation in more than 80 countries,” says Sam Vaknin, an economist, “are not concerned with the ethnicity or the ‘origin’ of the refugees. If their property was seized, it is not important if they were listed as Bulgarian or even if they were or were not Greek citizens.”

An Israeli citizen who lives in Skopje, Vaknin makes comparisons to the Jewish experience in obtaining compensation for the suffering during the World War II. According to him it is important that “Macedonia becomes the home state of the refugees [to give citizenship to those who do not have it], and to become their legal protector.” That is to say, the government should get involved and stand behind these legal proceedings.

This is something all Macedonian governments have been shying away from since independence. Under Greek pressure in the early 1990’s, Macedonia changed the provision in its constitution committing to care for its kin in neighboring states. With all the complexity of the name issue and Greek consistent claims of Macedonian irredentism, it is clear why subsequent governments in Macedonia have chosen not to get involved. It would have been the ultimate shortcut for worsening relations with Greece.

After the signing of the interim accord in 1995, which ended the Greek embargo, for 13 subsequent years relations between the two countries have been improving, Greek investment followed, and the name issue was stashed under the carpet. A perfect way to resolve it, many thought. All until the beginning of this year and the NATO summit, when Greece vetoed Macedonia’s entry over the name issue.

For years after their exile there had been consistent attempts to reunite refugee children, scattered the world over with their families. Some succeeded. Some never did. In some cases it took decades for a brother and sister to meet.

The Macedonians in Greece were manipulated by Tito and the Yugoslav leadership at the time, says historian Todor Cepreganov, director of the Institute of National History in Skopje. “They entered the war deceived by promises of ‘Macedonian unification’ made by the Yugoslav leadership, which also had its eyes on Trieste and Istria.”

Cepreganov says that Tito and Tempo (Svetozar Vukmanovic) were promising “unification” to the Macedonians as a mode for achieving their idea of domination in the Balkans. In this way they simply manipulated them for Stalin’s global and Tito’s regional interests.

From Osservatorio sui Balcani.

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By Ali Mazrui

Prof. Ali Mazrui
In January 1808, the US Congress abolished the slave trade. The British had abolished it the previous year. What neither legislature has done 200 years later is pass legislation to compensate Blacks for hundreds of years of enslavement and degradation.

Earlier this week, the US Supreme Court ruled that apartheid victims could sue multinational corporations that facilitated violation of their human rights.

Is this a new chapter in Black emancipation process?

While the abolitionist movement in the 18th and 19th centuries was mainly inspired by benevolent changes in the Western world, the new reparationist movement in the 20th and 21st centuries has been inspired by malevolent continuities in the Black world.

The benevolent changes that favoured the abolitionist movement were partly technological and partly socio-normative. Innovations like the cotton gin made slave labour superfluous to capitalism. The abolitionist movement found a more responsive political establishment as slave-labour became technologically more anachronistic.

Additionally, Western values were getting more liberalised in other areas such as the extension of the franchise to the working classes in the 19th Century, and the beginnings of agitations for women’s rights. More efficient technology and more liberal ideology converged to boost the abolitionist movement in Europe and the Americas.

These were the benevolent changes in the West whose cumulative impact favoured the abolition of slave trade and subsequently slavery itself. Even the political emancipation of Roman Catholics in Britain was a cause that William Wilberforce championed a decade prior to conversion to the more drastic cause of seeking abolition of slave trade and slavery.

But the consequences of enslavement and colonisation are not merely research topics for scholars. They are also the genesis of horrendous civil wars and normative collapse in contemporary places like Liberia, Angola, and even Somalia. Such are the malevolent continuities of colonialism.

The consequences of enslavement and colonisation are not merely themes for plenary sessions at African Studies conventions; they are subjects of malfunctioning post-colonial economies in Africa, and the distorted socio-economic relations in the African Diaspora. These are the malevolent continuities of both colonialism and racism.

The inspiration behind the on-going reparations movement was not from change but continuity. It was from the persistent deprivation and anguish in the Black world arising out of the legacies of slavery and colonialism. The consequences of enslavement and colonisation are not chapters in history books; they are pangs of pain in the poorer parts of Harlem, Washington, DC, and the anti-Black police batons in the streets of Detroit, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Paris. These are some of the malevolent continuities of racism.

The consequences of enslavement and colonisation are not dusty documents in historical archives, but the figures of Black infant mortality in Haiti, Washington DC, and Uganda. Here once more are the malevolent continuities of racism.

While the most historically visible heroes of the abolitionist movement were disproportionately White, the emerging visible heroes of the reparationist movement are overwhelmingly Black.

White historically visible abolitionists in Great Britain included William Wilberforce (1759-1833). The historically visible abolitionists in the US included the martyred John Brown (1800-1859) and, in a special sense of abolitionism, martyred Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). William Lloyd Garrison (1833-1870) founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, was for a while among the best known American abolitionists.

This is quite apart from Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851), arguably the most important female abolitionist influence in the early history of the movement in the United States, alongside Lydia Maria Child.

There were of course also Black abolitionists including such towering and brilliant activists as Frederick Douglass (1817-1895). But by the very nature of the power-structure of the period, Black abolitionists had less influence on their own than did either slave rebellions, on one side, or white abolitionists, on the other.

Wing of Black global opinion

Black slave rebellions sought to challenge the power of the slave system; white abolitionists sought to challenge the legitimacy of the slave system. Black abolitionists attempted to be allies of both, but they were weaker than either. Yet, even in their lonely isolation, Black abolitionists displayed remarkable courage and heroism.

While the older abolitionist movement was disproportionately led by liberal members of the Western Establishment, contemporary reparationist movement has been disproportionately advanced and steered by the nationalist wing of Black global opinion.

While 2004 marked the 200th anniversary of the Haitian revolution, 2004 also marked the 100th anniversary of the Maji Maji war against the Germans in Tanganyika. The Maji Maji war was inspired by an East African version of voodoo.

The warrior’s immersion into water was supposed to provide a magical shield against German bullets. Those beliefs were successful in mobilising the masses with next to no training or organization. In reality the African warriors’ baptism was no match for German bullets.

The Maji Maji war lasted from 1904 to 1906, a much shorter period than the Haitian wars. The Maji Maji war was brutally suppressed by the Germans. In the short run, the Haitian revolution had a happier outcome.

In addition to marking both 200th anniversary of the Haitian revolution and the 100th anniversary of the Maji Maji war, the year 2004 also marked approximately the 50th anniversary of the Mau Mau war against the British in Kenya.

The Mau Mau, like Maji Maji, also invoked a version of East African voodoo. But Mau Mau, unlike Maji Maji, did not emphasise the protective qualities of baptism by water. It invoked ritual use of menstrual blood and worked out elaborate oaths of allegiance for warriors stripped naked for the ceremonies. The warriors fought bravely in spite of the military odds.

Unlike Maji Maji, the Mau Mau did defeat the British politically though not militarily. The Mau Mau warriors fought from 1952 to about 1960. They convinced the British that it was time to pull out of Kenya as an imperial power. The British colonial exit occurred in 1963.

Some Blacks reformers believe that those companies that benefited from Apartheid should pay a price for it. They are on course.

About The Author(s): Prof. Ali Mazrui is Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Kenya. | More Articles By Ali Mazrui |

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By: Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu

Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights advocate — Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu

When we were struggling in South Africa against the vicious racist policies of apartheid, it was exhilarating to proclaim to our people that our God was encountered first not in the peaceful quiet of a sanctuary. No, our God was out there in the rough and tumble of the politics of the day. Our God revealed Himself in the utterly vulgar world of setting a fractious rabble of slaves free. Our God was/is the great liberator God of the Exodus – the paradigmatic event that helped to define God as the God who is never unbiased, but is always biased in favor of the oppressed, the marginalized, the down and outs.

This God in Jesus Christ continued to demonstrate this bias – Jesus companied not with the high and mighty, Archbishops, Presidents, and such like, but with the scum of society, prostitutes, sinners, the despised. This was the God who had an extraordinary identification with the little people – inasmuch as you have done this(clothed the naked,fed the hungry,etc.) staggeringly you have done it as to God. Wow. Our God did not give good advice from a safe distance. No, our God entered the fiery furnace to be there as Immanuel, God with us in our anguish and agony. Our God was not deaf, but heard our cries, was not blind but saw our suffering and would as of old come down to deliver us from our bondage too, so that we would enjoy the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Jeremiah Wright has said really no more than this which falls squarely in the ambit of black theology, black religion to answer the anguished questions of black people suffering under the brutality of white racism. It ultimately seeks reconciliation, but you cannot be reconciled with one who has his boot on your neck to keep you in the gutter. To be reconciled you must stand up right to look the other in the eye.

Black theology and religion seek the liberation of all, oppressor and oppressed, black and white together – as we accomplished it in South Africa for freedom is indivisible. Whites won’t be truly free until blacks are free. Listen to Condeleeza Rice in the Washington Times. Obama is a person of courageous integrity. He could have ingratiated himself to white Americans by repudiating his pastor completely. He did nothing of the sort. That speaks volumes for the man. America will not find peace with itself until you really deal with your history. You need something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help you come to terms with your past.

Another Jeremiah, the prophet of old shocked his compatriots when Jerusalem was being besieged by the Chaldeans. He urged his compatriots to desert and join the enemy. What price patriotism.

About The Author: Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the cause of racial justice in South Africa. He served as the first black African archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996.

Prior to this role as spiritual leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Tutu served as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches from 1978 to 1985. It was in this position that he became an international voice for the anti-apartheid movement and received the Nobel Prize.

In 1995, South African President Nelson Mandela appointed Archbishop Tutu Chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the body set up to investigate human rights violations under that country’s apartheid governments from 1960 to 1994. Tutu retired from in 1996 and was given the honorary title of Archbishop Emeritus.

Since then, Archbishop Tutu served as a visiting professor and scholar at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. He has received numerous awards and has authored two books, No Future Without Forgiveness and God has a Dream.

Tutu continues to write, lecture, and travel the world as an advocate of human rights and social justice. He is currently involved with a number of non-profit organizations working for peace and equality, meeting the needs of disadvantaged children and fighting HIV/AIDS.

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 By: Dr. Megalommatis Muhammad
Shamsaddin (Pictured Below)
Worse than the Soviet archetypes, the African Gulag is identified with the vast cemetery of peoples – ‘Ethiopia’; false state from name to education, and from A to Z, ‘Ethiopia’ is a monstrous Neo-Nazi fabrication of the racist Amhara and Tigray Abyssinian elites who have subjugated and, due to Western tolerance and/or indifference, tyrannized for more than a century numerous nations. Read the full story

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When the rich meet: Jay Z and Prince Charles in London

Going forward in life is not just the amount of money in our pockets.

No doubt, opportunities to earn make a big difference.

But what may be more important is the Human Right to have a healthy childhood in which to create, be shaped and molded, to find one’s potential.

Outside of the West, but inside too, the future of youth is not seriously being considered.

I’ve conversed with and actively been able to listen, learn and lend some life experiences to those under 25 years old. The startling brilliance of these youth is a constant inspiration. But they are calling out for help: the older ones of this world population are not in step with them. Admission of the coming crisis in the numbers-Iran to the US Virgin Islands, youngsters are often a third to three quarters of the total residents. In five dozen African nations, orphans from 1990s wars, (cornucopia of guns from France, China, USA and UK) malaria and HIV AIDS are coming of age.

Born in Ghana, Canada, or Germany or Palestine, youth have been telling me that they cannot trust most adults, even their parents. Rage simmers and explodes in violence via the gun or firm adherence to the fundamentalism of an ideology. Some turn to narcotizing themselves with purchasing mobile phones that cost a week’s wages-whether they have a job or not. Sweden has a least 20 billion kronor in welfare payments wrongly paid out each year. Degrading low wage work for corporations and governments await even the most serious of school graduates in almost any country globally. If the generations previously took what they could and got away with it, why shouldn’t they?

Others don’t bathe, or even eat, find their salvation in drugs ignited by a flame, snorted or drunk from a bottle. Infants born to the parents in the glow of consumption of burned dreams fall into a further crevice of pain and numb loss.

In Oslo, Norway or Honiaga, Solomon Islands, the strain to get some human respect for themselves or from the society is deathly. In one nation, oil wealth and beautiful natural expanses cannot keep a massive Nordic heroin addiction at bay.

In a Pacific island world of tropic splendor, the highest suicide rates in the world combine with forced assimilation to produce more drug related casualties.

In Liberia, Congo and though disputed, the USA, child soldiers have put their bloodstained tatoos on the recent past. Murdering for governments or street organizations, the social despair and drugs markets have been expanded.

In Colombia, Mexico and the drug superstore the USA, gunshot wounds and the prison door have become status symbols.

In America’s sprawling system of incarceration, as in places such as Yemen, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, youth are caged with adults in prisons.

Some will argue the mantra of “work hard, study hard…” keeps a new age group achieving success.

If the youth can be seen as a “demographic” what do they gain?

Is pain a product for sale?

And, if there is a hole in the soul, what is the cure?

A revolution, the reach for life instead of an existence has to be made.

18 November 2007
From Exile,
Bankole
www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

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