Sign below the damaged window of Rainbow's office in Florina announces
"Rainbow - European Movement" in Greek, Macedonian and English

Lerin / Florina -- On the afternoon of Thursday, July 25, 2002, the Rainbow Party erected a sign outside their office in Florina. The sign contained the text “Rainbow – European Movement” in Greek, Macedonian and English.

That morning, Pavle Voskopoulos, a member of the Political Secretariat of Rainbow, visited the public prosecutor with a written statement informing him of Rainbow's intention to hang the sign. Rainbow also informed the local police as well as the Ministry of Public Order. There was good reason for all this caution.

The Rainbow Party first erected a bilingual sign (in Macedonian and Greek) on September 6, 1995. At that time the public prosecutor immediately announced the indictment of the Rainbow leaders for having “incited discord among citizens” (Article 192 of the Greek Penal Code) through the use of the Macedonian language. The police were also ordered to remove the sign.

On the night of September 13, 1995, a mob, led by the mayor of Florina, attacked the Rainbow office and destroyed it. No member of the mob was ever charged while four members of Rainbow were forced to stand trial. Their crime, according to Greek authorities, was that the public use of their mother tongue (Macedonian on their signage) had provoked the local citizenry to use violence.

Greek authorities often intimidate minorities to prevent them from speaking publicly about the discrimination they endure. Official Greek policy denies the existence of any minorities and promotes Greece as an "ethnically pure" state. Rainbow's use of Macedonian on their sign contradicted that policy -- "that in Greece there are only Greeks."

After three years of legal limbo the "Rainbow Four" were acquitted of the crime of writing their organization's name in Macedonian -- their mother tongue. This positive outcome was due in part to the huge publicity the case had attracted outside Greece and the negative effect it was having on Greece's reputation.

Now, seven years after authorities incited a mob to destroy the office of the Rainbow Party we shall see whether using one's mother tongue is still a prosecutable offence in Greece.

Click here for background on Greece's reaction to
Rainbow's inclusion of Macedonian in their first sign

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