N. Lygeros
Translated
from the Greek by Evi Charitidou
Rarely
do we know whether a struggle is worthy during our passing life. We are used to
fight out of a need, without knowing whether there actually is an evaluative
element proving the rationality of our stance in an objective way. Recognition
of genocide belongs to these rare cases in which humanness touches humanity
directly. This struggle is valuable regardless of the fighters giving it. When
a whole people became victim of inhumanity, humanity itself was the one to have
been hurt. The same holds for the genocide of the Greeks of Pontus. This is not
only a local problem concerning a minority.
Pontus as a Greek element and as an
acritic entity of our civilization constitutes one of the singularities
characterizing our multiplicity. Consequently, we shouldn't isolate the Pontiac
cause neither as a historic fact nor as a strategic goal. On the contrary, we
have to integrate the know-how we possess in the human rights domain. The
example of the genocide of the Armenians recognition is both indicative and
efficient; because intermediate targets were not attained by state
institutions, but by lobbies. When the European Union recognized the genocide
of the Armenians in 1987, Armenia was not an independent state yet. Thus, the
framework of a state is not indispensable, and consequently this is not an
excuse for inertia. The example of the 2004 European Union report on the Imvros
issue is spectacular, because many Greeks had been considering that Imvros was
one of the ‘lost homelands’ and just that. However, the most efficient example
at personal level is the recent Cypriot struggle in the domain of the massive
appeals against Turkey. For, at this level each refugee contributes to the
indirect liberation of his country, by transforming a moral and humane problem
into one to be characterized as economic and strategic. Through the human
rights strategy, the Cypriots proved that economy can be interpreted as the
dynamics of ethics. In total, all these historic examples substantially
constitute the basic elements of a strategic mix, which in coordinated moves
proves that it is a powerful weapon in the human rights domain; especially as regards to the recognition issue of the Greeks of Pontus. The Greeks of Pontus
are not alone in this struggle for recognition, because other peoples, too,
have suffered and are still suffering by the Turkeys’ diachronic military
regime. However, they have both experiences and successes in difficult cases
and it’s those that we have to use dynamically within a strategic framework in
which the sentimental and traditional elements do not suffice. This struggle
should be organized through appeals at an individual level, but also through
specialized lobbies at a group level, too.