Who's backing the colonels?

GREECE•

HELEN VLACHOS

Mrs Helen V lachos is the proprietor and distinguished political columnist of the two leading Greek conservative daily newspapers Kathimerini and Messemvrini, which suspended publication after the colonels' coup last year. She was under house arrest in Athens on charges of insulting the authorities and disobeying martial law until her escape to London six weeks ago.

The Greek colonels could have left me alone. A non-publishing publisher would inevitably be forgotten, sooner or later, in and out of Greece.

That they have not done so is the only debt to them that I recognise. But I must confess that I feel only the deepest ingratitude for their latest offering of a so-called amnesty. While Greece is still under martial law and a state of siege (after ten months of what the regime calls peace and tranquillity) any .`liberation' or 'amnesty' is merely a precarious period of freedom that can at any time be ended without either the need for justification or the existence of any formal charges. And the only reason why the Crown Prosecutor of the Athens court martial decided to dismiss the previous charges against rue is that these charges and the impending trial presented an awkward problem to the military government.

In a moment of recklessness, they had pounced upon a gossipy Italian interview where I was quoted as having called Mr Pattakos a 'clown' and charged me with insulting the authorities. It is not difficult to imagine the spectacle that a public trial would have made: severe judges in military uniform allowing the defence and the prosecution to discuss at length whether a top junta member is or is not a clown, whether he looks like a clown or behaves like a clown.. For a while I believed that the trial would in fact take° place. I was given specific dates-25 October, then 7 November, then 27 November, and I had a field day preparing my defence. At last I learned that they had decided, after all, not to risk the loss of face, and that the whole charge had been quietly shelved.

Yet this dismissal is now presented to the world as a gesture of benevolence, directed to- wards all people of good will who may say to themselves, 'these poor soldiers can't be so bad after all. Look how forgiving and forgetting they are with people who have said and written so many nasty things about them.'

Nothing in reality has been forgotten or for- given and nothing at all has been offered. If the colonels were really progressing towards a more democratic state of mind their first obligation and duty would be to give freedom back to the press, not to Helen Vlachos. But, meanwhile, they are getting away with these clever and well- timed gestures, which cost them nothing, they are getting away with lies and bluffs and unkept promises, and they are finding among the free democratic countries, if not friends and allies, some extremely untroublesome enemies. For a period, towards the end of last year, there were some encouraging signs of western political and diplomatic pressure on the Greek junta. And not so long ago—to be precise on 2 January of this year—you could read in those newspapers of the free world that took an interest in international affairs the following news item from Athens: 'The Greek govern- ment suffered an international rebuff when the representatives of all the foreign states boy- cotted the New Year's Day mass at the Athens Cathedral. The ambassadors had not been invited so as to spare them the embarrassment of declining, but the military attaches had all been invited; and, with the sole exception of the Formosan defence attache, not one attended the ceremony . .

This intermezzo of non-recognition raised the hopes of the opponents of the regime. It is extremely difficult to understand why this massive foreign cold shoulder turned towards the junta just one month ago should now suddenly develop into an embrace—not a warm one, maybe, but an embrace just the same.

What had happened during this lapse of time? Had anything changed for the better? Were there any signs of promises been kept, of steps which could justify a show of international acceptance?

Between the beginning of January, when the western powers did not allow even their defence attaches to attend a religious ceremony, and the end of the same month when they sent their ambassadors to queue outside the Greek Foreign Minister's office, waiting in line to offer

'We have resumed normal diplomatic contacts.'

recognition, the Athens military regime had notched up the following achievements: it had taken back its promise to release 2,500 political prisoners, a promise solemnly given during Christmas by the Prime Minister, and instead freed a number not exceeding 300; it had pro- ceeded, while pretending to keep up the royal image, and crying 'Long live the King!' at different ceremonies, to dismiss all loyal sup- porters in and out of the army, regardless of whether or not they had taken any part in the fiasco of the December counter-coup. Out went hundreds of right wing officers, the two top directors of the most important Greek banks (one of them the former Prime Minister Mr Paraskevopoulos), followed by more then twenty members of the diplomatic corps and fifty professors of the Universities of Athens and Salonika. All had one link in common: their supposed allegiance to King Constantine or to the Greek Royal Family.

The venerable seventy-year-old Bishop Panteleimon of Salonika was placed under house arrest, and the Greek ambassador in Rome was ordered to leave his embassy and remove all his furniture, so that what remained for King Constantine to live in was an empty and deserted villa. And all this time the colonels were protesting their loyalty to the King and sending messengers to Rome to explain to him that they were preparing 'a safer climate for his return.' Meanwhile, in a crescendo of in- solent indifference to both Greek and-overseas public opinion, they announced that a new constitution would be presented to the people, sometime between April and September, to be humbly accepted without having ever been dis- cussed either in a free assembly or by a free press.

All this, it seems, has led to the mass recogni- tion of the regime, conveniently timed to influence the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, already somewhat tired by a few months' fight- ing for human rights.

Now we have to accept the faits accomplis and in all fairness believe that well-worn cliche that 'recognition is not approval.' But• it can hardly be looked on as active disapproval, nor can it be ignored as an encouraging factor for the Greek government, to which recognition is giving a semblance of respectability. These re- newed diplomatic bonds, offered with what seems an unjustified generosity, this unexpected 'I'm backing the colonels' campaign, has pro- voked in many Greek circles a feeling of deep bitterness and disappointment.

The only ray of hope, sliding through this melancholy darkness, is that the resumption of relations will give the foreign powers the possibility—or, better, the right—to start an active, untiring, demanding nagging campaign. They have again made an 'honest government' of what could be easily considered a govern- ment of military tramps. They can now, in a perfectly respectable way, proceed to show their concern about Greek affairs and their worry for the country's future. They can nag about the constitution, about the illegally appointed 'regent,' General Zoitakis, the hypocritical treat- ment of King Constantine, the continuing muzzling of the press, the constant brain- washing of the Greek public by radio and television, the hounding of all even mildly anti- junta artists, writers and actors, the appoint- ment of all the relatives of the military government in important and lucrative posts.

The list of subjects that could justify at least some overseas concern with the affairs of Greece is endless. If there is a will . . .