Banichotov Georgi (Perikli)

Georgi Banichotov was born in the village Boreshtnica, Lerin region. At the time of the German occupation, he was a youth. In 1942 he became a member of the CPG and worked to propagate the party line among the people of the village where he was born. He fought against the foreign propaganda, against the efforts of the Greater Bulgarian fascism to arm the village and to create a battle of brother against brother. In 1944 Georgi was elected a member of the Banica regional committee of CPG and now, under the pseudonym "Pericles" worked with great enthusiasm in the development of the people's liberation movement of the region. He fought with party fervour against every type of chauvinism and nationalism, against those who would sever the popular battle and he invited the Macedonian people to strengthen their unity with the Greek people as the only guarantee for the liberation of the Macedonian people.

After Varkiza, Georgi continued along the party road, despite the dreadful conditions. The terrorist fascist bands who were carrying out a terrorist campaign in Lerin hounded him from village to village.

From 1945 to 1947 Georgi was arrested and imprisoned in the Lerin and other prisons many times. He became even more determined and after each release he would throw himself with renewed strength into party operations against the surveillance by the police and the fascist bands, to achieve the party's aims.

In 1946 when the United Nations investigative commission arrived in Lerin, many people's commissions were organized which took the lead, along with the Lerin regional EAN commission, to protest before the United Natons investigative commission against the terrorist activities of the government forces and to seek an end to the abnormal situation. They also sought the recognition of the equal national rights of the Macedonian people.

After the departure of the commission, there were mass arrests in the Lerin region. Hundreds of Macedonian and Greek democrats were imprisoned and were sent to exile. The fascist forces, with particular brutality, threw themselves at the brave cadres of the CPG and EAM, who had sought equal national rights and exposed the fascist terror campaign to the Macedonian people before the United Nations investigative commission.

It was at that time the mass military courts began. Eftimios Ioanidis, a veteran fighter of the CPG and the secretary of the Lerin regional commission of EAM, Georgi Banichitov and about 10 other Macedonian and Greek patriots were summonsed to the military court with a charge of 'betrayal of the motherland'. The Greek reactionary forces regarded the pursuit of human rights for the Macedonian people to live freely in their own place of birth, to enjoy equal rights with the Greek people, rights which all people have, every person in his own place on earth, as amounting to 'betrayal of the motherland'.

Before the military court the Macedonian and Greek communists bravely denounced the anti peoples, anti national politics of the government and bravely defended the policies of the CPG, the policy of democracy and pursuit of the aims of the partty, the policies of ethnic equality of the Macedonian people.

The court's ruling was an order for execution. And on 2 June 1947, in Lerin, along with Dr Ioanidis 20 Macedonian and Greek patriots were executed. On 25 June of the same year, again in the town of Lerin, 20 other patriots were executed; among them Georgi Banichotov.

The blood of the Macedonian and Greek fighters, which flowed in the same trench, commands us to treat the unity of struggle of the two brother peoples as the "apple of our eyes".

From: For Sacred National Freedom: Portraits Of Fallen Freedom Fighters

© 2009

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