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I thought this deserves a thread of its own. All Macedonians should give their support to this victim.
The Persecution Continues
Some people believe that times have changed and that the Greek authorities no longer persecute Macedonians in their daily lives, especially in relation to their employment. These people are most definitely mistaken. Presently the harassment continues, though the state and its numerous branches carry this out in a more covert and sophisticated manner, but, as always, it is done in the name of “Democracy” and “the national interest”.
The covert manner ensures that the public rarely hears about it and even if there is some public scrutiny the maltreatment is usually disguised as something other than ethnic bigotry. Thus it is often the case that even the victims remain unaware of the true reasons for their plight. Moreover, in the cases where the victims do become aware, they rarely pursue the course of publicising their plight via the lodgement of an official complaint, for fear of even sterner reprisals.
Recently the editorial board of Nova Zora was made aware of a case of workplace victimisation by a Macedonian who found he could no longer tolerate the discrimination against him and decided to inform our newspaper about it.
His name and title are Archimandrite Panteleimon Skenderis (Skenderov) and he hails from the village of Popozhani, Lerin
County. He is 47 years old and has served for nearly 20 years in the church of St. Varvara in Salonika. His “error” was threefold; firstly he refused to forget his Macedonian ethnic origin, secondly, he refused to stop speaking the Macedonian language and thirdly, he refused to allow any frivolous expenditure of the church funds raised from the congregation. As a result, the infamous Metropolitan of Salonika, Anthimos and his servants, declared an unscrupulous war against Skenderis.
They relocated him to another smaller church (St. Teodora) in Salonika and applied various unseemly forms of pressure in an attempt to compel his resignation from the church. Eventually this caused Skenderis so much distress, that he sought psychiatric aid and hospitalised himself.
Shortly thereafter, he returned to active service, but the abuse from
Anthimos continued. In an effort to alleviate this, Skenderis applied to be returned to his old church or to be relocated for service in Lerin County. In response, Anthimos declared him to be “mentally ill” and revealed that he has documents in his possession, proving this to be the case.
This is of course, totally unlawful. The laws of the land forbid the public distribution of such information and absolutely guard the confidentiality of such documents. So how did the papers find their way into the hands of Anthimos? There is indeed reason to wonder if the Greek Church constitutes a state within a state?!
“All of this is happening to me because of my [ethnic] origin and because of my refusal to disavow it. My presence ‘dirties’ the Metropolitan’s ‘pure’ flock. Through the pressure and slander, their aim is to make my life so intolerable that I resign”, Skenderis asserted to Nova Zora. We now need to ask: which of the Gospels or Holy Scriptures
is concerned with ethnic discrimination and the banning of languages? This needs to be answered so that we can understand how the House of God was converted into a place for such activities....
Dimitri Jovanov, editor of Nova Zora monthly proMacedonian newspaper distributed throughout Aegean Macedonia and beyond: http://novazora.gr/
Translated from Macedonian to English by George
Vlahov of the AMHRC.
The Persecution Continues
Some people believe that times have changed and that the Greek authorities no longer persecute Macedonians in their daily lives, especially in relation to their employment. These people are most definitely mistaken. Presently the harassment continues, though the state and its numerous branches carry this out in a more covert and sophisticated manner, but, as always, it is done in the name of “Democracy” and “the national interest”.
The covert manner ensures that the public rarely hears about it and even if there is some public scrutiny the maltreatment is usually disguised as something other than ethnic bigotry. Thus it is often the case that even the victims remain unaware of the true reasons for their plight. Moreover, in the cases where the victims do become aware, they rarely pursue the course of publicising their plight via the lodgement of an official complaint, for fear of even sterner reprisals.
Recently the editorial board of Nova Zora was made aware of a case of workplace victimisation by a Macedonian who found he could no longer tolerate the discrimination against him and decided to inform our newspaper about it.
His name and title are Archimandrite Panteleimon Skenderis (Skenderov) and he hails from the village of Popozhani, Lerin
County. He is 47 years old and has served for nearly 20 years in the church of St. Varvara in Salonika. His “error” was threefold; firstly he refused to forget his Macedonian ethnic origin, secondly, he refused to stop speaking the Macedonian language and thirdly, he refused to allow any frivolous expenditure of the church funds raised from the congregation. As a result, the infamous Metropolitan of Salonika, Anthimos and his servants, declared an unscrupulous war against Skenderis.
They relocated him to another smaller church (St. Teodora) in Salonika and applied various unseemly forms of pressure in an attempt to compel his resignation from the church. Eventually this caused Skenderis so much distress, that he sought psychiatric aid and hospitalised himself.
Shortly thereafter, he returned to active service, but the abuse from
Anthimos continued. In an effort to alleviate this, Skenderis applied to be returned to his old church or to be relocated for service in Lerin County. In response, Anthimos declared him to be “mentally ill” and revealed that he has documents in his possession, proving this to be the case.
This is of course, totally unlawful. The laws of the land forbid the public distribution of such information and absolutely guard the confidentiality of such documents. So how did the papers find their way into the hands of Anthimos? There is indeed reason to wonder if the Greek Church constitutes a state within a state?!
“All of this is happening to me because of my [ethnic] origin and because of my refusal to disavow it. My presence ‘dirties’ the Metropolitan’s ‘pure’ flock. Through the pressure and slander, their aim is to make my life so intolerable that I resign”, Skenderis asserted to Nova Zora. We now need to ask: which of the Gospels or Holy Scriptures
is concerned with ethnic discrimination and the banning of languages? This needs to be answered so that we can understand how the House of God was converted into a place for such activities....
Dimitri Jovanov, editor of Nova Zora monthly proMacedonian newspaper distributed throughout Aegean Macedonia and beyond: http://novazora.gr/
Translated from Macedonian to English by George
Vlahov of the AMHRC.
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