Anyone here from the Australian Macedonian Human Rights Committee?

Your website:

http://www.macedonianhr.org.au

advises that "the primary focus of the AMHRC and the MHRCMV has been a legal campaign to overturn the discriminatory and offensive decision of 14 March 1994 of the former ALP Federal Government to rename Macedonians in this country “Slav-Macedonians”.

A few questions for AMHRC and MHRCMV:

1. Can I have more information about this 'legal campaign' mentioned above?

2. In the past 10 years and excluding the “Macedonian (Slavonic)” case, how has your organisation/s helped the Australian Macedonian community?

3. Are the domestic human rights of the Australian Macedonian community, part of an 'active' role in your organisations?

4. Some young Macedonian boy from Victoria recently advised, on this very forum, that he got spat on and racially abused by the majority ethnic Greek kids at his school. This sort of thing did not happen in the early 90's when i was at school. What is your organisation doing to curb this spread of hatred by some of the Greek community in Australia?

5. Over the past few years the campaign of publishing racist material in Australia has intensified, in particular via the AMAC site - macedonian.com.au. What are your organisations doing to combat this racism? (see reference below)

Reference: Holocaust revisionist Fredrick Toben has been found guilty of criminal contempt after defying orders to stop publishing racist material on his Adelaide Institute website.

See: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-na ... -a8gz.html

No one from the AMHRC is a member of this forum, however my good friends at the AMHRC have asked me to post the reply to Machorot's questions as they felt that further clarification of their activities was needed.

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Response from the Australian Macedonian Human Rights Committee

http://www.macedonianhr.org.au

Thank you for your e-mail, we are always pleased to hear from anybody interested in Macedonian human rights.

You have raised a number of questions, which, I will try to reply using your numbering.

1. It is correct that one of our primary concerns is a legal campaign to overturn the discriminatory prefix “Slav” – imposed on the Macedonian Community in Australia by the Federal Government in 1994, but maintained by successive Australian Government’s ever since. Incredibly, the term “Slav” applies to people who come from or originate from the Republic of Macedonia, whereas for Macedonians who come from or originate from outside the Republic (ie: Aegean, Pirin Macedonia etc…) the qualifier imposed on them is “individuals associated to Slav Macedonians”!! So they don’t even have an “ethnicity” in Australia as they are mere “associates”.

As you might imagine, this has been a rather lengthy process. For your information, the mechanics of the legal case has been prepared, in terms of the legal analysis, evidence prepared, interviews/affidavits gathered (including primary witnesses and “expert” witnesses), counsel has been formally engaged and instructed (the same counsel that we used for the ‘Language’ case) and various communications have been made with Government. Parallel to this, we have also been undertaking “quiet” diplomacy with the (relatively) new ALP Government, where we have met with the Attorney-General and the Minister for Immigration, in aid of negotiating the removal of the prefix without recourse to litigation. Of course, legal action remains firmly on the table and certainly the Government understands this.

It is important to note that the “prefix” matter cannot be entirely separated from the previous “language” case, as the premise used for the introduction of the language suffix was the “Slav” prefix. The actual language case took over 7 years of legal action in various jurisdictions followed by a 14 months political campaign against the Victorian Government. In any event, the natural corollary of this exercise has been the evolution of the action against the “Slav” prefix. The two are interrelated. Of course, we have the benefit now of substantive common law on the relevant provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act and a pretty good precedent!

2. In relation to your second question, there has been many issues that we have been involved with over the last decade in Australia (as opposed to overseas – where we have been very busy supporting our partner organisations in Greece, Bulgaria and Albania, not to mention the numerous reports and submissions that we have made to forums such as the UN World Congress on Racism, ECRI Report 2004, Council of Europe, OSCE gatherings every year, to the ECHRs in relation to both Greek and Bulgarian violations of human rights and many others etc…). Some of the activities we have been involved with, both here and overseas you will be able to find within our webpage as you go through the relevant years. Others you will not find in the webpage, for example, the numerous representations made to the Australian government about Australian citizens being denied entry into Greece or being harassed at the border, we have undertaken other action on behalf of people being discriminated against because they are ‘Macedonian’ (sometimes helping them in the Equal Opportunity Commission), discrimination faced in hospitals, immigration issues, being discriminated against in the provision of different government services – such as unemployment services, education, interpreting services, aged care facilities, responding to television and radio programs that allowed derogatory transmission in relation to the Macedonian community, newspaper reporting, supported Macedonian backed soccer clubs in various actions, supported the establishment of Macedonian language branches of mainstream political parties (!!) through various submissions, even people discriminated against by private industry companies. We have also contributed to all the different multicultural policy settings across the country through submissions and presentations, to the different human rights consultation processes taking place, to various pro bono legal facilities, we negotiated the inclusion of “Macedonian” as an ‘ancestry’ in the last two Australian (ABS) Census’ (in terms of ‘reporting’), participated in various academic forums through conference papers and presentations (although, this has been mostly in Melbourne only) etc… Really, you cannot imagine just how much there is to do!!

But, perhaps just to highlight a couple of current things that come to mind, currently we are in negotiation with NAATI, which is a federal body that oversees the accreditation of translation and interpreting services in the Australia. Unjustifiably, they ceased testing (and therefore accrediting) Macedonian language translation and interpreting services, despite their own data telling them that this was a high demand area. Nevertheless, in the last six months we have undergone quite a “robust” negotiation with them and we think, hopefully, that they will resume Macedonian testing in the new financial year.

Also, one area where we are focused on at the moment is assisting the ‘Child Refugees’ (Detsa Begaltsi) who are citizens or residents in Australia, in the legal action that is being undertaken against the Government in Greece. We are helping to prepare their evidence, submissions etc…

3. In relation to your question 3, the answer is quite emphatically “yes”!

4. The story you relay about the boy in Victoria being “spat” on, essentially for being Macedonian, is very disturbing. As you can appreciate, we are a volunteer organisation, therefore we cannot be everywhere all of the time. But, if these events occur, we would absolutely want to know about them so that we can try and address what has happened. Unfortunately, (and quite simply) to my knowledge, we have not been made aware of this incident. Of course, having said all that, from what you describe, this is something that, in the first instance, and at the very least, the boy’s school should have dealt with in any regard. Moreover, any racial abuse or hatred, by anyone, or any group, first and foremost is the principal responsibility of the Australian authorities, as it threatens Australian society generally. Of course, we can play a role in all of this, but, this is clearly what governments should be addressing – and as taxpayers in this country we should be demanding they do so.

5. Again, see above. I will just add that when we do witness egregious racist sentiments and behavior, we do in fact respond as vigorously as we can. If I can relay one example to you, about four years ago, the Minister for Multicultural Affairs in Victoria (John Pandazopoulous) went on radio and proceeded to defame the Macedonian Community by making derogatory (and racist) references such as “Skopian community” who speak a “Skopian language” and have a “Skopian culture”!!! Well, we took legal action against him, we sued him for spreading racial hatred etc… - the end result being that his own political party (the ALP) ended up demoted him from the Cabinet and left him squandering on the backbench. Moreover, we have made some quite robust representations to various “Greek” outlets, including the Neos Cosmos, Greek radio programs (ie: SBS and 3XY - in Melbourne) and other forums.

More broadly, our organisation has undertaken various legal activity against various different people and/or individuals over the years, quite frankly, far too much to mention in this short e-mail. You must also understand that some of our other work cannot be made public for obvious reasons – although, I’m sure if you ask some of our members they can probably tell you!!

To cover some of your other statements, we too would like to see our children and young people grow up in Australia without having to confront racism. This is a scourge that is not welcomed anywhere. As volunteers for the cause of Macedonian human rights, we try to do the best we can, and as an organisation that has survived over 25 years, sometimes in the face of strong attack from the long arm of the Greek government, I believe that this organisation has been remarkably successful.

We would be happy to receive help and support from anybody that is interested in Macedonian human rights, whether these be threatened overseas or in Australia. We would pleased to hear more from you about your interest to get involved (even if just as a member) or just generally any suggestions you might have about furthering the Macedonian human rights cause.

Thanks again for your e-mail.

Regards

Vasko Nastevski
Secretary

Bravo Vasko!

A true champ.

I don't think there is any other organisation or group of individuals in Australia who have done as much as reported in that email, let alone the numerous things left unmentioned.

I take my hat off to the AMHRC, as I said earlier, they are doing some really great work!

I have them on Makedonska Kafana, I have you as well.



Rogi. you should add the suggestion link to that website.

You guys are doing a great job Vasko!

This is why, I pledged to donate $5000 to AMHRC. It may seem like a substantial amount to many, but i would like to put it to all Macedonian Australians and/or anyone who believes in principles of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Macedonian community in Australia, to donate as much as they can afford. Even a $20 donation from as much people will help.

Machorot, don't overdo it. That's a lot of bananas.

People should give what they can reasonably afford. And there are many different ways that you can help the AMHRC that don't necessarily involve money.

I floated an idea about 16 years ago which I think would be easier to put together today in teh internet age.

The idea I had back then was to get 2,000 Macedonians to pledge $20 per month via direct debit.

Collecting the money via direct debit takes all the work out of collecting each month.

2,000 x $20 = $40,000 per calendar month.

$40,000 x 12 months = $480,000 per year.

With that kind of money, our brethren in the Hellenic Republic can fund court cases, pay for lobbyists and in general get their message across to the masses both in Greece and the rest of the world.

The idea would be to contact every patriotic Macedonian out there to gauge their interest to such a small commitment.

Once you have two thousand people commited, then and only then does the direct debiting start.

Those that are "share holders" in this enterprise (ie: the 2000 contributors) will recieve quarterly online news letters and an annual report on how the money has been spent. This annual report can be sent as a PDF to those that are PC literate or by snail mail to the older generations.

I floated this idea to the Egeysko Drushtvo all those year ago, and they loved the idea...the only problem was, they had no idea how to even get it started.

In this internet age, we have the people with the expertise and perfect medium that can make it all reality.

If the AMHRC is interested in making this happen - I am happy to sign on as the first of "the 2000".

It's a great idea Orel and the AMHRC is more than worthy of the support.

I'd like to see all of you get more active in this group and give it a helping hand.

Kosturski Orel - I would join you.

On behalf of the board of management of the AMHRC we would like to thank Mak News and Osiris for posting our clarification, and to all those who have responded subsequently for their kind words of support and encouragement.

In particular we would like to acknowledge Machorot for his generous donation which will support the very important work that we carry out here in Australia.

As you would appreciate much of the work that we do is behind the scenes in lobbying various groups, including politicians, academics, and other institutions. Normally we would not have divulged the level of detail of our negotiations with the Australian government to the extent that we did in our response to Machorot's question. To be honest, these negotiations have reached a critical point and it is often very important that we keep our activities at this level as quiet as possible. However, on this occasion we felt it was appropriate to share with the readers of Mak News as much detail as we could, and probably a little more that we should have!!!

As for this suggestion made by Kosturski Orel, it should be generally known that the AMHRC established the "Macedonian Minorities Support Fund"(MMSF), some 5 years ago.

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The details of how to make donations to this fund can be found on our web site at http://www.macedonianhr.org.au.
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And just to remind the public once more you can join this fund for an annual fee of $120, or $60 for pensioners, students and the unemployed.

The MMSF has been generously supporting Macedonian activists in the Balkans on a regular systematic basis for the last 5 years. This is the equivalent of ONLY $10 per month, however most members choose to pay a lump sum each June.

The AMHRC due to the existing banking regulations in Australia does not currently have a capability to directly debit an individuals account. For those individuals that do have access to internet banking, PayPal, etc, there is nothing stopping them from setting up a periodic, say monthly, EFT(electronic Transfer of Funds) to the Macedonian Minorities Support Fund bank account.

Again the details of which are on our web site, which also has further information on the most recent visit to Australia of activists from Vinozhito and OMO "Ilinden" Pirin, organised by the AMHRC in partnership with MHRMI (perhaps Mak New would like to post this on its latest news section?).

We would like to once again sincerely thank Mak News and all those who have posted messages of support.

Regards

Jason Kambovski

George Vlahov

Bravo, Machorot, I'm so proud of you, you really stepped up to the plate. Your donation to the AMHRC will make a positive difference in the lives of oppressed Macedonians.

Thanks to all of you who support the AMHRC, I urge you to help this wonderful group of people as much as you reasonably can, they are titans of human rights and they work themselves to the bone. Many other Macedonian groups do as well, and I don't want to play favourites, but right now the AMHRC needs our support.

I see Chris Popov in your picture, hi Chris, imash golem pozdrav od mene tuka vo Kanada.

The AMHRC doesn't need to thank me for anything. All of us here are honoured by the great work you do for the wider Macedonian Community - and you've been doing it for a long time. You deserve the recognition and we must stop taking you for granted.

Let us know whenever we can help you for anything.