AIM GREECE - 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=92s eyes whenever their representatives win a competition. Nobody thinks that they have not contributed to this victory in any way.=20

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 (=85) 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=92s 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=92s desire for secession.= =20

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.=20

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=92s 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=92s 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."=20