Organizers of recent pro-FYROM rallies in Australia could find themselves in court as a Greek-Australian organization mulls legal action over flag burning and other anti-Greek outbursts.
Less than a week after anti-Greek banners were hung from highway overpasses in Melbourne, piles of Greek flags were burned during a protest in the city over the ‘Macedonia’ name dispute.
The incident took place on Sunday when FYROM-Australians took to the streets of Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne, protesting against any name change for the former Yugoslav republic.
Now the Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies (AIMS) is reportedly considering a lawsuit against rally organizers.
According to an AIMS statement carried in the Neos Kosmos newspaper, those behind Sunday’s flag burning had been overcome by “racial and national hatred against Greeks”.
Organizers also “derailed their protest far from any moral or political basis and resorted to insults and defamation of the Greek people in general, as well as anyone related to or descending from Greece,” AIMS said.
Other Greek community groups have issued statements condemning insulting and provocative banners carried by some pro-FYROM demonstrators.
Meanwhile, images have also emerged of anti-FYROM graffiti and slurs daubed on church property in Preston, Victoria.