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Rigas (Ρήγας) Velestinlis or Rigas Feraios
(около 1757—1798)

Rigas Velestinlis or Rigas Feraios was born in 1757 near the ancient Greek village of Feres after which he is named. He is remembered as a Greek national hero, the forerunner and first martyr of the Greek uprising against the Ottoman Turks, as well as a visionary of the creation of a Balkan confederation, under the principles of humanism.

In the above context, Rigas edited in Vienna a Greek-language newspaper, "Ephemeris" and created and published a proposed political map of Great Greece which included Constantinople. He printed pamphlets based on the principles of the French Revolution, including "Declaration of the Rights of Man" and a "New Politic al Constitution of the Inhabitants of Rumeli, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Aegean, and the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia". He intended to distribute them in an effort to stimulate a Pan-Balkan uprising against the Ottomans.

Rigas was arrested at Trieste by the Austrian authorities. He was handed over to the Ottoman Turkish governor at Belgrade where he was imprisoned and tortured. From Belgrade, he was to be sent to Constantinople to be sentenced by the Turkish sultan. While in transit, he was strangled on the night of 13 June 1798. His body was thrown into the Danube river.

Rigas' death did not end his influence on Greeks and other leaders, which finally led the Greeks into revolution, beginning the Greek War of Independence in 1821.

Greece, 1930, Rigas Velestinlis

Greece, 1997, Rigas Velestinlis

Greece, 2007, Rigas Velestinlis