Respect for and Desecration of Flags in the Southern Balkans
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 97 10:50:24 -0500
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: Respect for and Desecration of Flags in the Southern Balkans
From: MINELRES moderator \ Internet: ([email protected])
Original sender: Panayote Elias Dimitras \ Internet: (helsinki@compulink
.gr)
Respect for and Desecration of Flags in the Southern Balkans
(From the moderator: this essay was received several weeks ago. I believe it
is quite interesting for many subscribers, not only in the Southern Balkans.
I am sorry for delaying to post it. I wonder what the situation with
nationals flags looks like in other Central Eastern European countries.
Boris)
Respect for and Desecration of Flags in the Southern Balkans
Panayote Dimitras, Mariana Lenkova
Greek Helsinki Monitor and Minority Rights - Greece
(18/9/1997, prepared for the AIM network)
What was the thing which the first man on the Moon did as soon as he reached
the far away place? He simply hoisted the flag of his country. The message
was clear enough - the flag "marked the territory" and "boasted" the
superiority of this country among all others. However it is here - in our
everyday lives on the Earth - that flags acquire their enormous inherent
power. Most people admire and identify with them; others sometimes use them
as symbols for their political struggle or protest.
The best example of such an identification with flags can be seen during the
numerous sports events, the Olympics being the prime example. There, whole
states are represented by just one flag and a few sportsmen. The flag,
together with the national anthem, brings tears in people's eyes whenever
their representatives win a competition. Nobody thinks that they have not
contributed to this victory in any way.
Undoubtedly the popular perception of the flag is that it stands for the
history and culture, for everything which has to do with a certain nation.
However, these are just secondary perceptions. The primary and official one
is that it is a state symbol. When one sees the "Stars and Stripes", they do
not think of the different ethnic groups, but rather of the political unit
which integrates all of them - the USA.
This should hold true even more in ethnocentric states like the Balkan ones.
The Greek flag should be the flag of the Greek state and of all the citizens
of the latter - ethnic and non-ethnic Greeks alike. At the same time,
however , the minorities which live in adjacent countries (Albania and
Turkey for the Greeks) appropriate the same flag and turn it into an ethnic
symbol. This attitude, which some would find politically wrong, has been
going on for quite some time. It has even got some legal ground in the 1973
Law on the Usage of the Flags in the then Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia. Art. 6 of this Law in its version for the Socialist Republic of
Macedonia stated that "the people belonging to the Albanian, Turkish or any
other national or ethnic group, as well as the citizens of the other peoples
within the Federation may use [their flags]" during (Art.4) "the state
holidays of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia and of the SFRY () and
during private celebrations of the citizens."
Although the implementation of the law has been uneven, and although it
states that the minority flags must always be accompanied by that of the
Federation, the law is a historical fact which once legitimized a foreign
state flag (e.g. of Albania) as an ethnic one (of the Albanian minority in
Macedonia). Perhaps this is why the Albanians who live in present day
Macedonia (and who are as much Macedonian citizens as the Macedonian
majority themselves) feel that they have lost a right which they used to
have. They feel more justified in their demands than the Turks in Bulgaria
and the Greeks in Albania, who have never enjoyed such a status. It should
be mentioned to the credit of the Tirana authorities that the latter have
tolerated many times the hoisting of the Greek flag by the minority there.
As for the Republic of Macedonia, even its newly adopted laws provide for
the different ethnic groups which live there to hoist their flags on the
Macedonian national days (Art. 140 of the Statute on the Usage of National
Flags). Thus a foreign state flag is again identified with an ethnic group,
but the restriction which is imposed by the law prompts the minorities to
fight for their right to use their flags whenever they please.
The Macedonian Constitutional Court, with its May 21, 1997 decision,
practically banned the regular usage of the national flags. However, the
Mayor of Gostivar, Rufi Osmani, and the Chair of the Communal Assembly,
Refik Dauti, refused to take down the Albanian and the Turkish flags which
they had hoisted together with the Macedonian one. The latter act of
political insubordination to the decision of the supreme judicial body in
the Republic was not punished in a regular procedure. On the contrary, the
Mayor was held in prison for 90 days like a ruthless habitual offender or a
potential fugitive, while special police forces were used to get the
situation in Gostivar back to normal. However, what they did was marked by
unnecessary violence and bloodshed and was perceived as a punitive action
against the whole Albanian population. One action, which left three dead and
hundreds of wounded people. Worst, on September 17, 1997, after an
apparently occasionally flawed trial, the court sentenced Osmani to 13 years
in prison and Dauti to 3 years in prison, sentences that are reminiscent of
the old totalitarian justice system.
The minorities which wish to identify themselves with the "mother nation"
should nevertheless use a different flag. It may be a derivative of the
respective state flag and may preserve its specific symbols. In the case of
the Albanian minority this could be the two-headed eagle, which has a
historical meaning. However, the eagle used in Skanderberg's flags is rather
different from the one in the flag of contemporary Albania. A flag which
incorporates this symbol would promote the sense of belonging of the
minority. On the other side, an exact copy of the flag of a foreign state
may be perceived as a declaration of the minority's desire for secession.
The use of flags as means of national identification has been persecuted in
the Balkans. Their other use - as powerful political weapons - has not been
left without any problems either. On the one hand people who think of the
flags as mere "pieces of cloth" should be free to express themselves, namely
their disrespect of and even hostility to a state and the political goals it
pursues. On the other hand, however, there are all those people who love
their country and who take their flag as something really sacred, so they
feel personally offended by such an act of disrespect. The collision between
these two positions is unavoidable and states find it difficult to resolve
it easily.
That is why most countries which have some kind of an authoritarian
tradition regard the desecration of the flag not as an inappropriate and
stupid act, but as a provocative crime. Democracies, on the other hand,
allow their citizens to express themselves freely. This could be seen in
Texas v. Johnson (Supreme Court of the United States, 1989 491 U.S. 397,109
S. CT. 2533, 105 L.Ed.2d 342), which deals with the case of Gregory Johnson
who participated in a political demonstration to protest the policies of the
Reagan administration during the 1984 Republican National Convention in
Dallas. After a march through the city streets he burned an American flag
while the protesters chanted. No one was physically injured but a few
bystanders were quite offended by the flag burning. Johnson was subsequently
convicted of intentionally desecrating a venerated object (defined by
statute to include "a public monument", "a place of worship" or "a national
or state flag"), a misdemeanor under Texas law. The state appellate court
confirmed the conviction; this judgment was reversed by a divided vote of
the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which held that the flag burning was
expressive behavior protected by the First Amendment of the American
Constitution. In response to the state's petition, the U.S. Supreme Court -
by a bare majority - struck down a state law punishing flag burning.
A similar thing happened this year at the official Ilinden celebrations in
Krushevo (Macedonia). A group of VMRO activists challenged the new state
flag by stepping on it and hoisting its older version. Icho Gavrilov, a
member of this group, was convicted and was given the maximum possible 3-
year penalty. Here too, the harsh sentence is indicative of a certain lack
of liberal democratic traditions in Macedonia.
However, there are quite a few Greek cases which point out that a supposedly
European country may also fail to obey the democratic standards in these
matters. Two years ago on November 17, a group of students showed their
protest by burning a Greek flag. The act provoked numerous negative
responses by the public. On a TV show an actor and a political science
professor tried to explain the behavior of the students, without siding with
the latter. Consequently, the professor was convicted at the first instance
court level for "apology of crime."
This year, on the eve of the National Day of Greece (March 25) a group of
social anthropology students from the island of Lesbos hoisted the Greek and
the Turkish flags, with the idea of promoting friendship between the two
peoples. After the media blew up the case, the students were charged with
"provocation of the national symbol." However, only a year ago the then New
Democracy leader Evert did the same "criminal act" during his election
campaign at the Greek-Turkish border and nobody took it as a provocation.
This double standard may be explained by the fact that a political figure
which belongs to the establishment can afford doing something which is
considered "provocative" when carried out by "marginal" students.
A really democratic state, however, must offer all its citizens the right to
express themselves freely even in the cases when this symbolic expression
may be offensive to others. This seems even more necessary when one thinks
of the fact that oftentimes flags are abused for commercial reasons but
nobody's feelings are hurt. Is it not more offensive to see your sacred flag
sported on underwear or a pair of socks? The mere thought of "selling the
flag" sounds repulsive to many people but the consumer society tames their
sensitivity when it comes to enjoying their buying capacity.
All this shows that what states sometimes consider as unacceptable and
unwise is democratic, while their corresponding acceptable norms are
undemocratic. Where is the balance? Perhaps in the recognition that if most
citizens want to see the flags only hoisted in superiority, there are others
who should be allowed to see "The Dark Side of the Moon."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Panayote Elias Dimitras
AIM - Greece
(Alternative Information Media)
P.O. Box 51393
GR-145 10 Kifisia
Greece
tel: +30-1-620.01.20
fax: +30-1-807.57.67
e-mail: [email protected]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
==========================================================================
MINELRES - a forum for discussion on minorities in Central&Eastern Europe
Submissions: [email protected]
Subscription/inquiries: [email protected]
List archive: http://www.riga.lv/minelres/archive.htm
==========================================================================