Emeritus Professor of Greek History and researcher Anastasios Tamis from Melbourne, Australia, spoke about the story of property reparations of Greeks in China, which has not yet been completed, on “Our Global Voice” with Petros Diplas and Dimitris Kontogiannis.
Mr. Tamis referred to the forced, mass exodus of 3.5 thousand Greeks from China which began in 1951 and was completed in 1955. The communist regime forced them to take only two suitcases with them and leave their parents’ graves, causing many to head to Japan and other countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and Greece. In November 1972, when Western contacts with China began, Greece was the second Western country to establish an embassy in China and those in exile in Greece founded an association. In a letter signed by 65 people in 1979, the exiled asked then-Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis and Foreign Minister Georgios Rallis to make representations for asking reparations from China, pointed out Mr Tamis. The issue of reparations was raised again in 1984 in a letter from the then Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou presented by the Minister of Culture Melina Merkouri to the Chinese authorities during her visit to Beijing. Over the next decade, the Chinese initially offered compensation of $80,000 that gradually rose to $500,000 dollars until 2004. However, the amount was not given because one of the applicants refused.