ABSTRACT
In this chapter I explore how the increasing prominence of both ‘culture’ and ‘rights’ on the international stage has resulted in a reframing of political struggles. I focus upon two political events in post-1989 south-east Europe: one in the Republic of Macedonia in 1997, a second in the Macedonian region of northern Greece in 1995. These events involved the public display of collective symbols – an Albanian flag, and a sign that included the Cyrillic script of the Macedonian ‘mother tongue’ – by individuals who define themselves as belonging to non-dominant groups and who perceive themselves to be oppressed by the state in which they live. In the two cases I present, activists’ deployment of symbols of their ‘otherness’ elicited controversy and resulted in violence. Human rights NGOs, along with the individuals and organizations involved, subsequently represented these incidents by drawing on an imagery of the repressive state violating the rights of a victimized minority to legitimate cultural expression.
