MILS NEWS 03/05/96

From: "M.I.L.S." <[email protected]>

Macedonian Information Liaison Service Directory

CONTENTS

MILS

Skopje, 03 May 1996

MILS SUPPLEMENT

[01] 'What Exactly Are We Talking About?'

('Nova Makedonija', 30 April 1996)

The fact that Macedonian Foreign Affairs Minister Ljubomir Frchkovski talked about this matter in front of the Parliamentary Foreign Policy Commission several days ago shows that Macedonian diplomacy is determined to carry out the proposal to its realisation.

At least ten good reasons could be numbered showing why Macedonia is so much interested in having the World Organisation engaged in such a study. And it is not immodest to say that our country had gone far ahead not only of its neighbours (which was not so difficult regarding the situation there), but even of the international standards in many aspects. That quality of the Macedonian politics had been stressed by the international community thousands times, as an example that a tolerance between ethnic groups could be achieved in the Balkans, despite the bloody conflicts near by.

There is, however, hardly a foreign representative who had left Macedonia without stressing its 'multiculture' and without expressing concern for the latent danger from conflicts between the ethnic groups, and for the rights of the most numerous Albanian minority. And they almost always advise Macedonia what it should do to satisfy the (eternal) dissatisfaction of the Albanian minority and to strengthen its internal stability. Although we suppose those are well-intentioned pieces of advice, at least three remarks could be made to them: first - most often suggested measures have not been checked in the international practice, which is why they look like experiments with living people; second - they seem to forget that Macedonian people as majority also exist, and that they also have their rights; and third - they make our 'multicultural' country an exclusion, although the situation is the same on the whole territory of the Balkans.

Although certain Balkan countries, such as Greece, Bulgaria and Albania, do not admit the existence of the minorities within their borders (by making the census forms without graphs for the minorities, by making pressure on them and forcing them to declare themselves what they are not, by a long-term assimilation policy, that had wiped out whole ethnic groups), they are still not ethnically homogenate. In his latest book 'The Macedonian Conflict', the American anthropologist Loring Danford cites a Macedonian man descending from the Aegean Part of Macedonia, presently living in Australia: 'The nation is like the tobacco seed. It will be still for 40 drought years, but it will grow up again after the first rain.'

A study made by famous international researchers, based on the examples of 132 countries, gave the following results: only 12 countries could be considered ethnically 'clean'; 25 countries have a 90% majority ethnic group; another 25 countries have the majority nation of 75-80%; 31 countries have the majority nation of 50-75% ; and there are 39 countries with only 50% nation that is a majority.

None of the Balkan countries belongs to the first two groups, maybe even not to the third one, i.e. to the group where 75-80% of the population are of one ethnic group.

However, the official Bulgarian statistics claims that 85.5% of its population are Bulgarian. These figures are even higher in Albania - 95%. And there are only Greeks living in Greece, if they could believe it themselves, with exception of the recognised 'strange' group of 80,000 people, 'pure' Greeks, who 'just' speak Turkish and are Moslem.

Therefore, in case the UN, i.e. Elisabeth Rehn, decide to make a parallel study of the status of national minorities in the Balkan countries, they would not be able to do that by comparing the official statistics only. They would, first of all, have to provide the basic right of the minorities - the right to freely declare their nationality at a census monitored by the international community (as it was in Macedonia). And then they should check whether and how much are the other right of the minorities respected (freedom of speaking and educating in their own language, freedom of caring for their own culture, tradition, and religion).

Republic of Macedonia is interested in such a study neither to be praised as the 'good guy' among all the bad ones, nor to be able to deprive its national minorities from some of their rights. Our country's interest is based on the attempts to prevent further 'erasing' of the Macedonian minority in the neighbouring countries on one hand, and to have the discussions about the rights and the status of the minorities in Macedonia seized to a normal level, on the other hand. To understand, finally, what we are talking about. The fact that Macedonia is a 'multicultural' country had never been denied by anybody.

But it does not mean that it should be used as an additional argument for extorting a higher status than the one of a national minority.

Taking into account all the specifics of the Republic of Macedonia, that sometimes require different solutions for the inter-ethnic relations, it would be good to remind of the standards set by the international documents and by the practice of the most democratic countries in the world. According to them, the state is obliged to recognize the existence of the different ethnic groups on its territory, and must not prevent their right to free declaring and cherishing of those differences. The state is also obliged to pay for the things it had proclaimed obligatory for the minorities, such as the primary education. The state has to allow everything anticipated by the minorities' rights package, and not regulated by laws, but is not obliged to provide it. That refers to the higher education levels, to the publishing of newspapers and literature in the minorities' languages, as well as to the TV and radio programmes in those languages.

There are examples in the world of different solutions for these rights, when two countries have obliged themselves to something by bilateral agreements. The Agreement between Denmark and Germany from 1955 is one of them, referring to the protection of the Danish minority in Germany. Similar agreements have been signed between Poland and Czechia, Poland and Belorussia, Romania and Hungary. All of them are characterized by a reciprocity: the first party provides as much rights for the minority of the second, as the second provides for the first one.

(end)

mils news 03 May, 1996