| To: Yaacov who wrote (17760) | 12/24/2004 4:31:41 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | new internationalist
issue 229 - March 1992
They stole my name
Imagine your government demands that you change your name, speak in a different language and forgo your centuries-old traditions. An absurd idea? All this happened to the Turks in Bulgaria - until the country did a rapid about-turn. Hugh Poulton explains.
Ismail Hasamov brandishes a newspaper produced by the Rights and Freedom Party (DPS), the main political grouping for Bulgaria’s ethnic Turks, and smiles as he talks about the future. ‘Now we have our own political party and our own newspaper in Turkish. We have our names back. We can go freely to the mosque’ - he gestures towards the minaret in the town centre. ‘Such things were unthinkable only a few years ago,’ he says, and falls silent a moment remembering the horrors of the recent past.
Things have changed dramatically in Bulgaria. The ‘rebirth process’ began on Christmas Eve in 1984 in the peaceful village of Gorski Izvor on the Greek border, which is inhabited by members of Bulgaria’s largest minority, the ethnic Turks. The villagers were asleep when police with dogs, and armed troops with tanks surrounded the village and went from house to house, dragging people from their beds, and giving them identity cards with new Bulgarian names to replace their Turkish Islamic ones. The forced assimilation had begun as Bulgaria embarked on its goal - to become a ‘unified socialist nation’ with officially no minorities except small Jewish and Armenian ones.
Within three months the country’s entire ethnic Turkish minority, numbering at least 900,000 and comprising some 10 per cent of the total population, had been forcibly renamed. At gun point, Ismail Hasamov became Ivan Asenov.
All Turkish publications ceased. Spoken Turkish was banned, on pain of a fine or worse. Many mosques were shut (the Turks are predominantly Muslims, while the Bulgarian Slavs are Eastern Orthodox Christians). Islamic practices like circumcision of male children became an imprisonable offence, both for the parents and those performing the operation. Women were forbidden to wear veils or shalvari (traditional Turkish trousers). Even Turkish music was forbidden. Hundreds were arrested or imprisoned. Many were killed outright, including members of other minorities, like the Roma (Gypsies) and Pomaks (Islamicized Slavs) who had been subject to the process of forcible assimilation before.
‘We were unarmed, but they had guns and tanks and shot us down, even women and children,’ says Ismail. The brutal repression forced a sullen token acceptance of the new order, punctuated by sporadic protest. ‘We heard of a few who managed to escape, like three families who dug a hole under the electrified fence on the Greek border and ran to freedom. But Bulgaria was guarded like a prison camp. And then there was Belene...’ Ismail shakes his head slowly at the name of the notorious prison camp where hundreds of protesting Turks were imprisoned.
The assimilation campaign was disrupted when mass peaceful protests erupted in May 1989 throughout the north-east and southern regions of the country where Turks predominated. ‘We heard from foreign radio stations about huge secret organizations of Turks in Bulgaria, like the “Democratic League” and the “Association for the Support of Vienna, 1989”,’ says Ismail. Through the radio he and other Turks were able to find out the movements of various protest groups around the country and to co-ordinate hunger strikes and marches.
‘The authorities beat and shot us again,’ says Ismail. ‘In May, troops came to my village and a soldier with rifle and bayonet was put outside each door. Anybody who left was beaten. We heard of people shot in the streets, and in Dzhedel soldiers went from house to house beating everybody. It was terrible. But we would not give in, so they began throwing us out of the country.
Faced with organized countrywide protests on a scale which in Communist Europe was only comparable with Solidarity in Poland, the authorities panicked and began mass expulsions. They picked up anybody whom they thought was involved with the protests and expelled them to Turkey. Many were given only one hour to get ready and had to leave in the clothes they were wearing. They considered themselves lucky to get out, even though their ancestors had lived in Bulgaria for five centuries.
After the expulsion, the authorities allowed mass emigration and an exodus followed. By late August over 300,000, out of a total population of less than one million, had fled to Turkey. The loss of the Turks shook Bulgaria’s agricultural economy and threw the country into chaos.
But throughout all these events Ismail remained: ‘I thought about going, and talked to my wife about it often, but our home is here’.
Then suddenly events took a turn for the better. On 10 November 1989, while the world was transfixed by events in Berlin and Central Europe, the Bulgarian leader responsible for instigating the mass assimilation campaign, Todor Zhivkov, was ousted in a palace coup led by his erstwhile foreign minister.
Immediately the assimilation policies were relaxed. A series of amnesties began which eventually released all Turks imprisoned for non-violent opposition to the assimilation. Among them was Ahmed Dogan, a former research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy in Sophia, who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for leading a group opposed to the assimilation campaign.
On his release he formed the DPS and led a concerted campaign to enable Turkish people to reinstate their old names. Within a year, after a series of heated debates it was eventually successful. That was not the only change. The mosques were reopened and people were free to worship. Turkish was allowed to be spoken openly. There were no more restrictions on Muslim dress. And a bi-monthly Turkish-language newspaper called Muslim had started publishing.
The DPS has gone from strength to strength, openly contesting both general elections held since Zhivkov’s death. In the most recent it won over 20 seats in Parliament, with about seven to eight per cent of the vote. This is despite the fact that ethnic or religious-based parties are still banned under the new constitution, a provision which is used to deny the Roma - 550,000 strong and constantly subject to racism - a voice in Parliament.
Things may be better for the Turks but of course the scars will take time to heal. Ethnic tensions continue to run high in many parts of the country. A ‘Bulgarian Republic’ has been declared in the city of Razgrad, which has a 75-per-cent Slav population. And a Government proposal to allow schools in the appropriate areas to teach four classes a week in Turkish was met with threats of boycotts and civil disobedience from Bulgarian nationalists - the implementation of full minority education rights has been postponed as a result.
Despite these hitches, the situation for minorities in Bulgaria has dramatically improved in the last two years. And the country must be commended for reversing oppressive policies so quickly, while more or less keeping the peace.
Hugh Poulton was formerly East European Researcher for Amnesty International, and is currently a postgraduate in Modem Turkish Studies. He is author of The Balkans: Minority States in Conflict (Minority Rights Group, London, 1991).
newint.org |
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| To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (17761) | 1/27/2005 4:27:50 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Time running out to stop Kosovo's descent in violence
Simon Tisdall
Thursday January 27, 2005
The Guardian
Kosovo is fast becoming "the black hole of Europe" and could descend into renewed violence within weeks unless the EU takes urgent action, senior diplomats and international experts warned in Brussels this week.
But continuing EU indecision over the breakaway province's demand for independence from Serbia, coupled with the ethnic Albanian majority's failure to embrace reform and respect Serb minority rights, are paralysing plans to launch "final status" talks this year.
Five years after Nato ejected Serbian forces and imposed an international administration, the UN and the US are still lacking an exit strategy. Serbia, meanwhile, wants its territory back.
In an attempt to show willing, Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner, met Kosovan leaders in Pristina this week. Mr Rehn said the EU would raise the issue when President George Bush visits Europe next month. But according to Erhard Busek, who heads the international stability pact set up after the 1990s Balkan wars to promote democracy and development in south-east Europe, the EU must take the lead.
"Kosovo is a European issue and we Europeans have to get our act together," Mr Busek said. "If Kosovo goes wrong, we in Europe will be first to face the consequences of migration and organised crime."
With unemployment approaching 60%, a disastrous lack of foreign investment, and with 50% of the population aged 25 or under, "there is a huge social problem - a timebomb in the making".
Chris Patten, the former EU external relations commissioner, said economic stagnation, interethnic tension, and the potential for violence were linked and threatened the entire region.
"There has been considerable progress in south-east Europe since 1999, but there is a danger of the whole process unravelling in Kosovo unless we grasp some nettles," Lord Patten said.
"Time is running out," said Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister and president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent conflict prevention organisation. A timetable leading to independence next year had to be rapidly set in train, he said.
An ICG report published this week said alternatives to independence such as Kosovo's reabsorption into Serbia and Montenegro, partition, or unification within a "greater Albania" would only increase regional instability. Pointing to last March's surge in violence, it said too much time had already been wasted.
"The political capital of the UN mission in Kosovo is all but exhausted. Reintroduction of violence into the equation has raised the very real possibility the process may be decided by brute force rather than peaceful negotiation," it said.
"The Kosovo Albanian political establishment cannot be relied upon to act as a moderating force if, by mid-2005, the international community does not begin a process which clearly appears to be leading to some form of independence."
Yet unless ethnic Albanians make a genuine commitment to reform and overcome their "victim mentality", an independent Kosovo could become just another failed state.
Serbia's military and police have "contingency plans" to exploit new violence against Kosovo's Serbs by intervening in support of partition or unilateral secession, the ICG report warned.
Lord Patten observed that Kosovo and Serbia's hopes of Nato and EU membership were "intimately related". EU financial carrots were on offer if Belgrade cooperated, he said.
But Misa Djurkovic, political adviser to the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, said Serbia was not trying to delay final status talks and opposed partition.
"Serbia is strongly committed to a multiethnic Kosovo and to EU integration, but attempts to blackmail it are unacceptable," Mr Djurkovic said.
While they all oppose independence, Serbia's leaders, like their EU counterparts, are divided about what to do next.
And an explosion could come within weeks if, as is widely predicted, Kosovo's prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander, is indicted by The Hague war crimes tribunal.
If charged, Mr Haradinaj has promised to go peacefully. His supporters are unlikely to follow suit.
guardian.co.uk |
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| To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (17766) | 9/16/2005 8:42:15 AM | | From: Tom Clarke | | | | Bruce Lee a symbol of unity in divided town
Mon Sep 12, 2:23 PM ET
The ethnically divided Bosnian city of Mostar has agreed to erect a new symbol of unity -- a statue of kung fu legend Bruce Lee, worshipped by Muslims, Serbs and Croats.
A group of enthusiasts came up with the idea of honoring the childhood hero of the city's ethnic groups in 2003, on the 30th anniversary of his death. They launched the project, found donors and waited a year for the city's approval.
"We plan to erect the statue in November in the center of the city," Veselin Gatalo, a member of the Urban Movement organization, told Reuters by telephone Monday.
"This will be a monument to universal justice that Mostar needs more than any other city I know."
He said Mostar, scene of fighting between Muslims and Croats in 1993-1994, needed a symbol of justice, mastery and honesty -- virtues upheld by the late Chinese-American actor.
Born in San Francisco, Lee starred in several kung fu movies, including 1973's "Enter the Dragon." He died at the age of 32 from swelling on the brain.
A German organization agreed last year to sponsor the project with a 5,000 euro grant.
The statue, cast in bronze and showing the martial arts master in a typical fighting pose, will be designed by a local sculptor and put up in central Mostar.
Lee's widow Linda will be invited to attend the ceremony.
For years, reconciliation in post-war Mostar was slower than anywhere else in Bosnia. But the reconstruction of the city's Old Bridge last year has helped reunite Muslim and Croat communities separated by the river.
news.yahoo.com |
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| To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (17768) | 6/24/2006 4:09:29 PM | | From: Yaacov | | | | | George, I fully agree. Sooner or later they would had to get rid of him. Look at all the people who he had to deal with that are still in power. I am sure you know so I don't name names. |
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