THESSALONIKI, GREECE (AFP) – Masked nationalists claiming affiliation to Greek extremist group Golden Dawn on Thursday said they had disrupted a municipal exhibition of artworks by a North Macedonia painter in Thessaloniki.
In a video posted on YouTube, the Golden Dawn Youth Front said it had “banned” the exhibition by artist Sergej Andreevski in the Thessaloniki suburb of Kalamaria.
The video apparently shot on Wednesday shows several masked and hooded men marching into the municipal gallery to confront Andreevski, whom they accused of posting irridentist material online and “casting doubt on the Greekness of our homeland”.
“You have no right to be here,” one of the men said in the video.
“We have relatives and grandfathers who sacrificed their lives for the Greekness of Macedonia,” he added.
In a statement to reporters on Thursday, Kalamaria Mayor Ioannis Dardamanelis said a group of 10 people had disrupted the exhibition “on its final day”.
He called the protesters “irredentist hotheads” seeking publicity ahead of next month’s national elections.
North Macedonia changed its name from Macedonia – the name of a historic Greek region dating to antiquity – in a 2018 bilateral deal with Athens.
The agreement, which ended a 27-year diplomatic wrangle, was strongly opposed by conservatives and nationalists in both countries.
Andreevsky is a “renowned” artist who had also been invited to exhibit his art in Greece in 2002 and 2004, the mayor said, adding that the Greek foreign ministry had also approved the display.
A local police source told AFP officers were called to the scene, but the protesters had left and no arrests were made.
The artist and North Macedonia embassy in Athens could not immediately be reached for comment.
