June 2009

I have translated this June 4th article from the newspaper Dnevnik about the attack on my professor’s dictionary promotion in Greece. It provides more information, including the fact that a journalist was injured during the attack and that other professors were threatened besides Prof. Friedman.

Also noteworthy is that the promotion was held in a building right next to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and yet the police were very late in arriving, to the extent that was a serious risk more people were going to be hurt. My scholarship counselor in the United States, who grew up in Greece, pointed out to me while I was there that police response time in Greece is generally very poor. Nonetheless, it seems inconceivable that there was no presence of security at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that could have quickly acted to break up the attack.

To me, this indicates police complicity, or at least indifference, to the attack. It is a shameful reflection on the Greek government. Its inadequate response to this act of violence against ethnic minority human rights and linguistic scholarship should be thoroughly investigated.

My translation of the article below:

Fascists Eclipse Dictionary

June 4th, 2009
Shouts of “traitors,” “this is Greece,” “everyone out,” “Vaskopulos, leave,” threats, and circulation of propaganda material from the Greek ultra-nationalists of the organization “Golden Dawn” obstructed the promotion of a Greek-Macedonian dictionary in Athens the night before last. Some ten minutes after the beginning of the presentation at the International Press Center, located next to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Greece, dozens of members of this fascist organization stormed the hall, threatening the participants.

During the incident, a journalist from the Greek newspaper “Proto Thema” who was attacked by the hooligans was injured, but a bigger incident was prevented when the police arrived. The impression is nonetheless that they were late in their reaction. The most critical moment was when one of the attackers swung a black motorcycle helmet toward the head of the famous Macedonian language scholar, the American linguist Victor Friedman. The assault was prevented at the last moment when the leader of the group that constantly interrupts gatherings that Vinozhito organizes caught the attacker by the hand which was holding the helmet. Vinozhito, or “Rainbow,” is a party of the unrecognized Macedonian minority in Greece.

The promotion of the first Greek-Macedonian dictionary, whose author is Vasko Karadža, nonetheless took place, since the attendants did not leave during the course of the incident. “This is a signal that members of the Greek government are beginning to fear the Macedonian community in Greece. The incident is a great shame for Greece that cannot be hidden from the European public. The promotion of the dictionary for us is yet another reason to continue our fight for the protection of the Macedonian community, for recognition of the Macedonian minority and for the democratization of Greek society,” announced Pavle Vaskopuls, leader of Rainbow.

“If Greece is the cradle of democracy, then the cradle is broken,” announced the promoter of the dictionary, Victor Friedman. A target of the hooligans’ threat was also the professor Riki Van Boeschoten, a Dutch woman who teaches ethnology at the University of Thessaly and is a major supporter of the recognition of Macedonian human rights in Greece. One of the attackers threatened to beat her, though the threat did not result in a physical attack.

Other Greek journalists from a few television and print media were following the promotion of the dictionary. The attackers withdrew when they received information that the police were approaching the press center. The members of “Chrysi Avyi” have long been registered as a political party, and up to now have been closely associated with the parliamentary nationalist party LAOS, of Georgios Karatzaferis. The incident occurred a few days before the European parliament elections, which will be held in Greece this week. Pavle Vaskopulos announced that their party was facing enormous pressure.

“For Rainbow there are no democratic conditions for fair participation in the elections whatsoever. The party is completely excluded and boycotted by the Greek media. Only one television station was willing to broadcast our political spot, at six in the morning. That says more than enough about their attitude towards us, in relation to our activities they only see the Greek chickens,” Baskopulos announced.

The first Greek-Macedonian dictionary, which contained 15,000 words, printed by the publishing house “Dawn,” will have a 2000 copy print run, according to Rainbow. This is the result of the work of the distinguished intellectual Vasko Karadža, who comes from the village Dămbeni, Kostursko. The dictionary was cited in his will with the request that it be promoted in Greece when the the conditions were right. The word, besides being for the members of the Macedonian minority, is also intended for any modern Greek citizen.

My professor, Victor Friedman, was in Athens to help promote the publication of a new Macedonian-Greek dictionary.

The conference was stormed by a group of about twenty Greek nationalists, some wearing masks. They disrupted the proceedings, screamed nationalist slogans, harrassed the presenters, stole promotional material, damaged cameras, and physically threatened my professor. Balkan Insight has an article about the attack.

The attackers appear to have been associated with the Greek organization Golden Dawn, originally a neo-Nazi outfit that has rebranded itself as a defender of Greek national identity and religion and capitalized on a swell of anti-immigrant feelings.

Golden Dawn does not have representation in parliament as far as I’m aware, but they are closely connected with another nationalist, right-wing party called Popular Orthodox Rally that does have representation. A key point shared between these two parties and the current conservative Greek government is that a Macedonian-speaking minority in Greece does not exist, that the Macedonian language has never been spoken on Greek territory, and that any claim to the contrary represents a threat to Greek national security.

Prof. Friedman and his colleagues were promoting a dictionary. A list of corresponding words that allows someone to translate from Greek into Macedonian or vice versa. Merely making translation possible was enough to provoke the violent rage of these nationalists, who insist that not only does no one within Greek borders speak Macedonian, but that the Macedonian language itself does not even exist. The current government itself refuses to even accept that its neighboring state has an official language, instead referring to Macedonian as “a Slavic idiom.”

The attack was a revolting act of violence by a group of self-deluded extremists. But they function within a mainstream that tacitly endorses their provocations.

I expect that the Greek government, if it responds to the attack, the destruction of property, and the threats against my professor and his colleagues at all, will disavow everything and insist that it is not responsible for the misconduct of individual Greeks. This is true, but it also remains true that the position of the Greek government itself concerning the Macedonian language, the rights of its ethnic minority citizens, and the rights of Macedonian citizens to its north is not only unjust, but creates an environment in which nationalist sentiment can boil over into violence.

And they are responsible for that environment.

I want to say that you cannot eradicate a language with violence, because a language is an abstract system, a complex interrelated network of ideas. But individual people are the essential vessel for a language, and people can be intimidated, injured, murdered. Violence can crack the vessel and let the language spill away.

Which is one of many, many reasons why such instances of violence as this, however small, must be protested furiously. We must not allow even a step down that road.