[ALBSA-Info] "The misery of beeing Greek"

[Kreshnik Bejko]

>From: "Olsi " <kosova at MAILCITY.COM>
>Reply-To: alb-club at alb-net.com
>To: alb-club at alb-net.com
>Subject: [Alb-club] Fwd:  The ayatollah replaces Zorba
>Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 00:57:42 -0000
>
>                   *** Alb-Club Discussion List ***
>
>
>
>General by Helena Smith 21st August 2000
>
>
>
>A row over identity cards is giving the powerful Orthodox priests of
>Greece a
>chance to exploit a dangerous nationalism, reports Helena Smith
>
>Strange things are going on in Greece. The country is wrestling with
>an
>identity crisis and the Eastern Orthodox Church, feeling wronged,
>appears to
>have gone mad.
>
>Where you think you spot a priest, you invariably discover an
>activist - men
>in black with stovepipe hats denouncing the "dark forces" behind
>Athens's
>unusually progressive government. The enlightened call them Orthodox
>ayatollahs.
>
>It's worrying stuff, the sort of thing that might make Pericles
>really writhe
>in his grave. The cause of such rancour? The removal of any reference
>to
>religion on civilian identity cards. For a country in which 97 per
>cent of the
>population is Christian and Eastern Orthodox, it would seem an
>innocuous enough
>move. But in Greece - the European Union's only Orthodox state - it
>has had an
>unexpectedly explosive effect: all at once, Hellenes have had to ask
>themselves
>who, and what, they want to be. And they are doing it in a way that
>is not
>showing them in the best of lights.
>
>Greece's spiritual leaders - the self-styled protectors of Hellenism
>through
>400 years of Ottoman rule - retain an influence on civil life unknown
>in any
>other part of the west: they officiate at the swearing-in of
>governments, the
>inauguration of public and private projects and the blessing of
>private homes.
>In recognition of those close ties, clerics receive state salaries.
>In their
>view, the Greeks are caught up in their toughest fight yet to remain
>a cut
>above the rest; to preserve their Christian Byzantine roots from the
>"meat
>grinder" that is the EU.
>
>Drop religious affiliation from identity cards - originally
>introduced by a
>military dictatorship in the late 1930s - and, the clerics argue, you
>sound
>the death knell of a single nation state.
>
>The Greek prime minister, Costas Simitis, has tried to counter all
>this by
>insisting that the reform brings Greece into line with its European
>partners,
>and that "the declaration of one's religious affiliation is not only
>discriminatory, but offensive. It insults the right of every
>individual to
>privacy and religious freedom."
>
>The Church, however, remains adamant. Greece's bearded clerics regard
>the "identity crisis" as the sort of thing that could drag the nation
>into "civil war". In June, more than a million Greeks (one-tenth of
>the
>population) flocked to hear Archbishop Christodoulos, the Church
>Primate,
>denounce the measure as the first step in a sinister plot to
>de-Hellenise
>Greece. "Our faith is the foundation of our identity. If you abolish
>one, you
>abolish the other," the archbishop thundered, as the crowd of
>rumbustious flag-
>wavers cheered. The scenes were reminiscent of the fundamentalist
>fervour that
>once ran riot in Iran.
>
>Increasingly, human rights groups have begun to wonder whether Greece
>is a nice
>place, after all. Over the past ten years, Athens has been repeatedly
>condemned
>by the European Court of Human Rights for violations involving all of
>its
>religious minorities. Away from the warm, taverna-terraced beaches,
>fun-loving
>Zorbas and tourist-trampled temples, Greeks treat those who dare to
>be
>different with red-hot contempt.
>
>Try being a Jew, Catholic, Muslim or Protestant, and you will not get
>far - as
>the ranks of the Civil Service, diplomatic corps and army so amply
>prove. Try
>being an immigrant, and you are viewed as the reason for unemployment
>and
>crime. Try mentioning ethnic minorities - officially, they do not
>exist, bar
>communities of Muslims and Roma - and you may be labelled "sick in
>the mind",
>to quote Theodore Pangalos, the country's feisty former foreign
>minister. Try
>taking a different tack in public on the country's so-called
>"national
>issues", the ones involving Turkey and other neighbours, and it is
>likely that
>you will be branded a traitor.
>
>"Modern Greece is an ethno-nationalist state par excellence," writes
>the
>commentator Takis Michas in his forthcoming book, Ethnic
>Totalitarianism. "'Others' are viewed as a source of potential danger
>to the
>national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Greece."
>
>Twenty-six years after the collapse of the colonels, the fracas over
>the
>identity cards smacks of "the Greece of Christian Greeks", the
>rebarbative
>slogan that those petty officers used to give their rotten regime an
>acceptable
>allure. It also proves that liberty and equality, the values that
>drive
>democracy, are still in short supply in this, the birthplace of
>democracy.
>
>I write this with a heavy heart. I am not a "mishellene", a
>Greek-hater,
>although I know I will be cast as one when this comes out. I have
>happily lived
>in and reported from Greece for the past 14 years. I think I can say
>that it is
>a magical place with some magical people.
>
>The problem is that there are two Greeces: one that is western,
>modern, open,
>reform-minded, civic, competitive, risk-taking and international; and
>one that
>is eastern, traditional, parochial, phobic, unskilled and
>introverted.
>
>The country, mercifully, is now in the hands of the former. But they
>are a
>minority - a "group of angels in a sea of devils", as one wry
>observer
>recently put it. The political spectrum is replete with members of
>the "other"
>Greece, who see civic society, with all its talk of fundamental
>freedoms, as
>reeking of anti-nationalism.
>
>The present identity crisis has shown how far there is to go if the
>twain are
>to meet. Greece's troublesome priests show no sign of backing down
>soon.
>Archbishop Christodoulos may say he does not want to turn his flock
>into "fanatics", but he has seen that demagoguery works. Indeed, his
>fighting
>spirit has sent shivers down the spine of the governing Socialists.
>
>The "eastern" Greeks, who support the archbishop's stand, can still
>relate to
>the notorious declaration of the Byzantine commander Loukas Notaras
>(uttered
>days before the sacking of Constantinople in 1453) that it would be
>better to
>see the Turkish turban in the city than the Roman cardinal's mitre.
>For these
>people, civic society is still a dirty word. They believe that they
>have
>nothing to gain from globalisation, least of all the punishing
>reforms required
>to take the nation into Euroland's new economic order. Passions are
>clearly on
>the rise. In the Church, the easterners see the embodiment of
>Greece's
>defensive national identity, the only bulwark left against the
>creation of a
>threatening, multi- cultural, open society.
>
>"There is a very big underdog coalition from which the Church can
>draw its
>strength - Greeks who feel very insecure about the phenomenal pace of
>change
>in this country," says Professor Nikiforos Diamantouros, Greece's
>ombudsman and
>a political scientist.
>
>Many Greeks are now praying that the identity crisis will eventually
>lead to a
>full separation of the secular and ecclesiastical spheres. "This, I
>hope, will
>be the beginning of the formal separation of church and state," says
>Nikos
>Dimou, the author of the bestselling book The Misery of Being Greek.
>"The
>Church is the wealthiest institution in this country, and it has far
>too much
>control. Greeks vote according to church dioceses, the constitution
>is in the
>name of the Holy Trinity and, even if they want to, they cannot die
>without it
>because the Church has ensured that civil burials don't exist."
>
>There have already been calls by bishops for civil disobedience. As
>the
>government prepares to print the new ID cards, the Orthodox Church,
>clearly
>girding its loins for battle, says it will encourage people not to
>take
>possession of them.
>
>Come 1 September, churchmen will begin collecting millions of
>signatures for
>an "informal referendum" on the issue.
>
>Every European state is afflicted to some degree by the twin evils of
>populism
>and racism. As the only country in the EU not to border another
>member state,
>Greece differs only in the way that it perceives its own watertight
>identity.
>It remains the EU's poorest member, badly in need of crucial economic
>and
>social reforms. Within the 15-nation bloc, Greece still has the
>biggest labour
>force of civil servants and small-time self-employed.
>
>The Greeks have experienced more years of authoritarian, right-wing
>rule than
>perhaps any other nation on the Continent. The generation born since
>the
>restoration of real liberty in 1974 is the first never to have
>experienced war,
>civil strife or major economic convulsions. Understandably, it feels
>more
>secure - as the unprecedented enthusiasm for recent rapprochement
>between
>Athens and Ankara has shown.
>
>Now that the identity crisis is out in the open, and with this new
>generation
>in mind, it is hoped that the Greeks will finally be able to accept
>the idea
>that their own homogeneity is a myth. Already, taboos have been
>lifted, not
>least around the once sacred subject of the role of their Church.
>
>There are few who are saying such things aloud. But, one way or
>another, good
>may come of the madness.
>
>Helena Smith has been awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard
>University for her
>coverage of Greece and the Balkans as the Athens-based correspondent
>for the
>Guardian and the Observer
>--- End forwarded message ---
>
>

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