66 Jahre Genozid an Cam-Albanern

[Jehona_e_Rahovecit]

Den Text haste doch selbst net gelesen...

Dann kannst du ihn ja lesen und mir nachher erklären was darin so geschrieben steht.
Bist doch an dem Thema Cameria im 2.WK sehr interessiert oder?

 

[Jehona_e_Rahovecit]

The Chams are the ethnic Albanian, and predominantly Muslim, population from
the area of north western Greece known to Greeks as Threspotia and to Albanians
as Chameria. The region, which is centred around the Tsamis river, extends from
Butrint and the mouth of the Acheron River to Lake Prespa in the north, eastward
to the Pindus mountains and south as far as Preveza and the Gulf of Arta.
Nineteenth century British travellers such as Lord Byron and his companion John
Hobhouse noted the preponderance of Albanian-speakers in these regions. While
there is much comment focused on the position of the Greek minority in Albania,
there is very little information about the Albanian minority which remained in
Greece after the founding of the Albanian state. Most of these Albanians were
originally Christian Orthodox by religion, but converted to Islam during the latter
years of the Ottoman occupation. According to a Boston-based web-site which
Albanians use to exchange ideas on current affairs, "the Albanians in Greece are
divided into two distinct categories: Albanians who live on Albanian territory but
who have remained outside the unjust borders which were drawn up by the
Ambassadorial Conference (London, 1913), and those Albanians who departed
Albanian territory during the first diaspora in the 14th and 15 centuries".

1 These Albanians fled their homeland during the battles against the invading Ottoman
Turk and many settled on the island of Euboea. Others went to Italy.
The Cham conflict arose as a result of the delineation of the border between Greece
and Albania at the end of the Balkan Wars. In 1912 the London Ambassador's
Conference allotted the Chameria region to Greece, so today only seven Cham
villages, centred on the village of Konispol, are in Albania itself. There were three
distinct phases of emigration of the Cham population from northern Greece. The
first occurred during the Balkan Wars 1912-1914, the second following the signing
of the Turkish-Greek Convention at Lausanne in January 1923, and the third
occurred at the end of the Second World War, in the period from June 1944 to
March 1945, during which an estimated 5,000 men, women and children were
killed. The rest of Chameria's Albanian Muslim population fled over the border to
Albania where they have lived in exile ever since.
The Chams are demanding the recognition of about 4,000 Chams who disappeared
as a result of those conflicts, and the property rights of about 150,000 others.3 The
Chams are also building charges against Greece at the international courts, arguing
that they were stripped of around US$340m-worth of properties which are worth
roughly US$2.5bn at current market prices. The Greeks, however, see the Cham
question as a "non existent issue".4
The forced movement of the entire Albanian Muslim population from Greece has left
a lingering sense of injustice amongst Albanians in general. This has contributed in
part to poor bilateral relations between Albania and Greece. The controversial
Cham issue has lain dormant in recent years and none of the post-war Albanian
governments, whether communist, democratic or socialist, have ventured to try to
make it a key issue in relations with Greece. In May 2001, at the height of last
year's ethnic Albanian insurrection in FYROM, a headline appeared on the wires of
a Belgrade news agency, which ran: "New Albanian (Cham) Liberation Army on the
March in Greece."5 The purpose of this paper is to highlight the crucial historical
and political issues that have led to such alarmist headlines, and to gauge the
extent of Cham grievances, the support they elicit, and the degree to which their
political agenda has changed since they arrived in Albania in 1945.

Historical Background
The name 'Chameria' comes from the ancient Illyrian name for the Tsamis River,
which traversed the territory of the ancient Illyrian tribe of Thesprotes. Chameria
was part of the Roman Empire before being conquered by the Byzantines, and in
the thirteenth century it became part of the Epirus despotate. In the second half of
the fourteenth century it was included in the Albanian despotate of Arta. After the
Ottoman invasion in the 15th century it was firstly in the sanjak (municipality) of
Delvina, then in that of Janina. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
mostly Albanian population of northern Chameria - from Konispol to the Gliqi river
- was forcibly converted to Islam, whilst those living south of the Gliqi down to
Preveza Bay remained Orthodox Christians. The Muslim Albanians of Epirus were
eternally feuding with their Christian neighbours and, favoured by their Turkish coreligionists,
had gained the best land, whilst Christians had been forced onto less
fertile soil. Historically the Epirus region has had a very blurred ethnicity. As one
late nineteenth century visitor noted: The whole of the Tosk6 country has been
strongly influenced by Greece, or rather it would be difficult to say whether Epirus
is Greek or north-western Greece is Albanian. Though the southern dialect of
Albanian is used for conversation, Greek is universally understood.7
After the defeat of the Ottoman forces during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), the
future of Albanian-inhabited areas was discussed at the hastily convened
Conference of Ambassadors held in London in December 1912-January 1913,
where it was agreed in principle to support the establishment of Albania as a new
political entity.
Greece had emerged from the Balkan Wars with a heightened sense of achievement,
and a determination to try to secure southern Albania for Greece. The emphasis
was not on territory that was ethnically strictly Greek, but rather on lands in which
Hellenic civilisation was believed to be predominant.8 In October 1913 the Epirote
insurrection broke out, as Greek volunteers raided southern Albania, terrorising its
inhabitants by burning their villages. The Greek objective was to set up an
autonomous Vorio Epirus (Northern Epirus), in an attempt to sabotage the
international discussions then being held in Florence on the future status of the
region. Finally in December 1913, the Powers agreed on the terms of the Protocol of
Florence, whereby, in return for Serbia's retreat from Albanian territory, Austria
reluctantly agreed that the Albanian districts in what is now Kosovo and Macedonia
should be formerly ceded to Serbia, whilst Greece received the large southern region
of Chameria. The Albanian state was thus reduced to the central regions together
with the town of Shkoder and its surrounding territory.
Following the establishment of the Florence Line, some Greek troops began to
withdraw from Chameria. Greek terrorist bands, however, remained as active as
ever. As the majority of Chams were Muslim, they were treated with the same
contempt as ethnic Turks living in Greece. On 23 February 1913, 72 people were
killed in the village of Proi I Selanit near Paramithia. This marked the beginning of
attacks on Albanian Muslim civilian targets, which were designed to instil fear into
the population and thus prompt them to leave their homes. Throughout the next
decade, the property of Albanian Muslims was systematically looted and many
young men were deported to internal exile on the Aegean islands. Thousands of
hectares of Cham-owned land were expropriated without compensation, their
harvests were requisitioned, and they were prohibited from sowing their corn, or
from selling or letting their property to forestall its expropriation. It was thus
rendered impossible for many families to remain in Greece - forcing them to flee
northwards to Albanian in search of land.9 In an effort to settle the Cham issue,
the Athens government had tried to gain Ankara's approval for encouraging some
Chams to migrate to Turkey, in the hope that the rest would follow. Initially Ankara
had been unwilling to allow the settlement of Albanian Muslims on Turkish soil, but
following intense diplomatic efforts by Athens, the Turkish government agreed to
allow the settlement of some 5,000 Chams.
Meanwhile, in 1923, the position regarding the 20,000 or so Muslim Albanians still
remaining in northern Greece was being hotly debated at a special session of the
Council of the League of Nations. The convention that made possible the exchange
of Greek and Turkish populations had been signed at the Lausanne Conference on
30 January 1923. The Albanian government had then insisted, via telegrams and
delegations to the League, that the Greek authorities were forcing the Chams to
leave their homes and move to Turkey, and that their lands were being settled by
Greek immigrants from Asia Minor. The Greeks countered these accusations by
arguing that the term 'Albanian' could only be applied to those who were born in
Albania, thereby excluding from consideration the Greek-born Albanian Muslims,
who were equated with Turks. The League responded to the Albanian allegations by
establishing a Mixed Commission to examine the question in detail.
In March 1924, the Commission decided that Greek subjects who were Muslims
and of Albanian origin, and more specifically those residing in Epirus, had to be
excluded from the compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and
Turkey.10 For the Albanian Chams, however, the issue centred around their claims
to belong to the Albanian nation. The Council of the League discussed this matter
during its thirtieth session (29 August-3 October): the Albanian position maintained
that the Greek authorities were encouraging the 'Albanians of Epirus' to consider
mass migration by calling them 'Greeks of Turkish origin' and convincing them to
adopt the second identity in their public pronouncements. The Council finally
decided to appoint neutral members of the Mixed Commission as its 'mandatories'
charged with the responsibility of protecting the 'Muslim minority of Albanian
origin' residing in Greece.11 Meanwhile, the Athens government settled Greek
immigrants from Asia Minor in Chameria in order to populate it with Orthodox
Christians, and to put further pressure on the remaining Albanian Muslims to
emigrate. Throughout the 1920s entire villages, such as Petrovica and Shendellinja
were emptied of their Albanian inhabitants. Whole families left for Albania, Turkey
and America.
In March 1926, the Greek government declared that the process of population
exchange was over and that the Chams would henceforth have the same rights as
those enjoyed by other Greek citizens, However, these "rights" remained highly
selective. No Albanian-language schools were permitted and the speaking of
Albanian was discouraged outside the home. The signing of the Italian-Albanian
pact in November 1926 caused some anxiety in Athens and focused Greek attention
on the still unresolved question of the Chams, which was leading to increased
tensions between Greece and Albania. The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs had
serious reservations about the pact because it was feared that the interests of the
Albanians for their "brothers" in Epirus now had the backing of an important
power, whose territorial ambitions in the Balkans could benefit from the existence
of the Cham minority which favoured Italy and was hostile to the Greek state. Italy
could also use the Chams as a counterweight to Greek ambitions in southern
Albania.
Albanian charges directed against Greece concerning the Muslims of Chameria
gradually increased and reached their climax during the first half of 1928. In
March, the Albanian Foreign Ministry delivered a memorandum to the Greek chargé
d'affaires in Tirana, which highlighted Tirana's concern over the 'austere measures'
exercised by the local authorities against the Chams, and expressed a formal
protest that the Greek government did not recognise them as a 'national minority'.
The Greek side argued that 'the Albanian government had no right to get involved in
the domestic affairs of another country: the Chams were Greek citizens and the
projection of Albania as a protector state constituted disregard of the basic elements
of Greek sovereign rights.'12 With the coming to power of the Ioannis Metaxas
fascist government in 1936, the situation of the Albanian population of Chameria
became even more difficult. The colonisation of the area by Greeks intensified,
confiscation of Cham property was stepped up and the names of places inhabited
by Albanians were replaced by Greek place names.13 In the meantime, the League
of Nations continued to note the Albanian protests over the treatment of the Chams,
but by then more important issues were now emerging concerning other minorities
in Europe.
The Second World War
The outbreak of the Second World War brought about a brief union (1941-1943) of
Kosovo with Albania, and the possibility of the remaining Albanian-inhabited
regions of the Balkans being united. In August 1940 Italy invaded Greece. In an
effort to rally the Albanian people to her cause, Italy had promised the Albanians
their national unity. The German-Italian agreement of 1941 stipulated the
formation of a 'Greater Albania', to include the large Albanian-inhabited areas of
Yugoslavia and, to a lesser extent, Greece. The Italians were able to exploit
Albanian irredentist sentiment by insisting that the unification of all Albanian
inhabited lands was conditional upon an Axis victory. The Chams were
subsequently armed by the Italians and co-operated with them against Greek
villages controlled by Greek resistance fighters. During this period, atrocities were
committed by a minority of Chams against Greek civilians, thousands of whom were
forced to flee from their homes. The majority of Chams, however, were merely
passive collaborators, distrusting the Italians as much as they did the Greek
Royalist guerrilla force of Napoleon Zervas. In little over a year, Greek forces were
able to push the Italians back over the Albanian border. There was widespread
alarm amongst the Chams when the hoped-for Axis victory turned to defeat. Near
the village of Vrina in southern Albania, in June 1940, the headless body of the
Cham leader Daut Hoxa was discovered. It was alleged by the Italian-controlled
government in Tirana that he had been murdered by Greek secret agents. Hoxha
was a military leader of the Cham struggle during the inter-war years. The Greek
government claimed he was merely a bandit.14 In October 1944 when the Germans
began withdrawing from Greece, many hundreds of Chams also fled with them into
Albania. Henceforth, the remaining Muslim Albanians in Greece were regarded by
the Greeks as the enemy within.
In an attempt to establish an ethnically pure border region, the Chams were evicted
from northern Greece by guerrilla forces under the command of General Napoleon
Zervas acting under the instructions of allied officers. In the light of recent
research, wartime documents show that Greek actions against the Chams were
supported and authorised by the British. These actions resulted in around 35,000
Chams fleeing to Albania and others to Turkey. Colonel Chris Woodhouse, head of
the British Military Mission in Greece reported that: "Encouraged by the Allied
Mission I headed, Zervas drove the Chams out of their homes in 1944. The
majority fled to find shelter in Albania. Their eviction from Greece was carried out
with large-scale bloodshed. Zervas's work was followed in March 1945 with a largescale
massacre of the Filiates Chams that cannot be excused. The result was the
eviction of the undesirable Albanian population from their land."15
The most infamous massacre of Albanian Muslims by Greek irregulars occurred on
27 June 1944 in the district of Paramithia, when forces of General Zervas's National
Republican Greek League (EDES) entered the town and killed approximately 600
Albanian Muslims, men women and children - many having been raped and
tortured before death. According to eyewitness accounts, the following day, another
EDES battalion marched into Parga where 52 more Albanians were killed. On 23
September 1944, the town of Spatar was looted and 157 people died. Young women
and girls were raped and those men who were still alive were rounded up and
deported to the Aegean islands.16 According to statistics provided by the Chameria
Association in Tirana, in total 2,771 Albanian civilians were killed during the1944-
1945 attacks on their villages. The breakdown is as follows: in Filiates and suburbs
1,286, in Igoumenitsa and suburbs 192, in Paramithia and suburbs 673 and Parga
620. Sixty-eight villages with 5,800 houses were looted and then burnt. A detailed
list of material losses includes 110,000 sheep, 2,400 cattle, 21,000 quintals of
wheat and 80,000 quintals of edible oil, amounting to 11,000,000 kilograms of
grain and 3,000,000 kilograms of edible oil.17
As a result of these assaults, an estimated 28,000 Chams fled to Albania where
they settled on the outskirts of Vlore, Durres and Tirana. Several hundred Chams
moved into properties along the Himara coast left by families who had been wiped
out during the vicious fighting firstly against the Axis occupiers, and secondly in
1944 between the Greek nationalist Northern Epirus Liberation Front and the
Albanian nationalist Balli Kombetar partisan fighters. Some Chams moved into
existing villages along the coast such as Borsh which were traditionally Muslim,
thus augmenting the non-Hellenic character of the region. Other Chams
established entirely new villages, such as Vrina, near the Greek border.
International observers noted the brutality of the Cham evictions. Joseph Jacobs,
Head of the US Mission in Albania (1945-1946) wrote: "In March 1945 units of
Zervas's dissolved forces carried out a massacre of Chams in the Filiates area, and
practically cleared the district of the Albanian minority. According to all the
information I have been able to gather on the Cham issue, in the fall of 1944 and
during the first months of 1945, the authorities in north-western Greece
perpetrated savage brutality by evicting some 25,000 Chams - residents of
Chameria - from their homes. They were chased across the border after having
been robbed of their land and property. Hundreds of male Chams from the ages of
15 to 70 were interned on the islands of the Aegean Sea. In total 102 mosques were
burnt down."18 The Greek authorities then approved a law sanctioning the
expropriation of Cham property, citing the collaboration of their community with
the occupying Axis forces as a main reason for the decision.
For those Chams of the Orthodox faith who remained in Greece after 1945, their
Albanian identity was suppressed as a deeply repressive policy of assimilation
ensued and, as before World War II, the Albanian language was not allowed to be
spoken in public, nor taught in the schools. The demographic structure of
northwest Greece was altered by the introduction of settlers from other parts of
Greece. Vlachs in particular were encouraged to settle in abandoned Cham villages
without the legal right of ownership.19 Greece wanted the demographic structure of
the province changed because it did not trust the rest of the Albanian population
who remained there, even though they were of the Christian Orthodox faith. As the
speaking of Albanian was prohibited in public, the assimilation of Orthodox
Albanians gathered momentum and they have struggled ever since to maintain
their identity.20
Attempts to Internationalise the Cham Question
Following their expulsion from Greece to Albania, the Cham refugees who had
Greek citizenship but Albanian nationality were placed under the direction of the
Cham Anti-Fascist Committee (CAFC). The new post-war Communist government
of Albania took the Cham issue to the Paris Peace Conference (1946) to demand the
repatriation of the Chams and the return of their property. At the end of September
1944, the first Cham Congress was held in the village of Konispol in southern
Albania. The following month a delegation of the CAFC was sent to Athens to lodge
a protest with the government of George Papandreou against the continuing Greek
atrocities in Chameria. The Cham delegation also delivered protest notes to the
Greek National Union, the Mediterranean General Command, the missions of the
allied governments and the Central Committee of the National Liberation Front
(EAM). The Commission was completely ignored by the Greek authorities. At the
same time, the Cham National Liberation Committee made several attempts to
internationalise the question and to secure the support of the Allied Powers. They
sent telegrams of protest to the Soviet, British, American and French military
missions, and the Yugoslav Legation in Tirana. Memorandums explaining the
plight of the Cham refugees were also sent to the Allied Foreign Ministers'
Conference in London (3 September 1945) and to the United Nations Assembly in
New York (25 October 1946). Each included a plea for recognition of their plight:
`Despite protests we have made and the rights we are entitled to, we continue to be
in exile, whereas the Greek government has gone all out to establish aliens in our
Chameria in order to prevent us from returning home.'21
The Memorandum ends with a note of optimism and faith in the international
justice system. It reads: "On behalf of our Cham population, we lodge a protest and
bring to the attention of the Investigation Commission of the United Nations
Security Council the tragedy played out in Chameria and the act carried out to
exterminate our population. We stress the need for an urgent settlement of the
Cham problem, confident that our following demands will be met:
1. Adoption of immediate measures to halt the settlement of aliens in our native
land.
2. Repatriation of all the Chams.
3. Restitution of our property and remuneration of damage in liquid and fixed
capital.
4. Assistance to rebuild our homes and resettlement.
5. Safeguards and guarantees emanating from the international treaties and
mandates, such as guaranteed civil, political, cultural rights and personal
safety.
6. Trial and condemnation of all those who are responsible for the crimes they have
perpetrated.22
These demands were never answered. The UN Assembly in New York did, however,
acknowledge the humanitarian crisis facing the refugees. From September 1945 to
the spring of 1947, Albania received a total of US$26 million of assorted goods,
materials and equipment from the UN Relief Programme, UNRRA (United Nation's
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration). Of this approximately US$1.2 million
was allocated specifically for refugees from northern Greece. It was mainly due to
this aid programme that Albania escaped a major famine.
On 23 September 1945, the Second Cham Congress was held in the Albanian
Adriatic port of Vlore, where an increasing number of Chams were beginning to
settle. As a result, yet more memorandums were despatched to the London Peace
Conference and to various Allied Military Missions in Albania, requesting the Cham
issue be discussed. Until 1947, the Chams struggled to internationalise their plight
by informing virtually every international agency and mission that they could reach.
After 1947, however, Albania and Greece fell into two separate political camps and
the Cham issue lay dormant until the collapse of communism in Albania in 1991.
Then throughout Albania, all those who felt dispossessed as a result of the wartime
period or persecution under the Communists immediately formed organisations to
seek recognition and compensation.
The Current Situation
In January 1991, as the one-party state in Albania was disintegrating, the
Chameria National Political Association (Chameria Shoqeria Politike Atdhetare,
CSPA) was founded as a political lobby to "express and defend" the interests of the
people of Chameria. Since then the CSPA has overseen the establishment of Cham
cultural events and the Cham newspaper Vatra Amtare Chameria (The Motherland
of Chameria), as well as issuing a series of demands for the return of Cham
property and financial compensation. The then Greek foreign minister, Karolas
Papoulias, said in the summer of 1991 that these demands should be settled by a
bilateral commission. The chances of forming one, however, are non-existent
because under current Greek law there is no legal means of challenging requisition
(or expropriation) of land by the Greek state. In the meantime, the issue has been
taken by the Tirana government to the World Court of Justice, in an effort to secure
financial compensation for lost Cham property. There has been little progress to
date. According to the official Greek stand, the Muslim Chams will not be allowed
to return to Greece "because they have collaborated with the Italian-German
invaders during the Second World War, and as such they are war criminals and are
punished according to Greek laws".23
In post-communist Albania, the Democratic and other right-wing political parties
have been far more supportive of the Chams than have either the Socialist Party,
which has always been indirectly supported by Greece or middle ground parties
such as the Democratic Alliance and Social Democrats. The Democratic Party (DP),
which came to power in March 1992 (until 1997), gave much vocal support for
"those Albanians whose voices were silenced under the (communist) dictatorship".
Indeed, under the DP government in June 1994 a new law was passed, which
proclaimed 27 June as "The Day of Greek Chauvinist Genocide Against the
Albanians of Chameria" and set up a memorial to the Chams in the southern village
of Konispol.24
Every time a Greek minister makes an official visit to Tirana, the Chams are out in
protest. In August 1999, the CSPA - by now more commonly known as the
Chameria Political Association (CPA) - in Tirana delivered a petition to the Albanian
government and international organisations in the Albanian capital, during the visit
to Albania of the Greek Prime Minister, Kostas Simitis. The document read: "We
protest energetically against the stand of the Greek government to the Cham
problem; to the denial of our legitimate right to return to our native land after the
expulsion from Chameria at the end of the Second World War, and to the denial of
our property right. We therefore demand:
1. That the Albanian government requests the Greek government to allow the
return of the Cham population to their native land;
2. The return of their legal and legitimate properties, which have been stolen and
are being exploited arbitrarily by the Greek state;
3. The compensation of the income derived from the 55-year exploitation of our
properties;
4. Recognition and respect of the human rights sanctioned by international acts,
rights which have been violated by the Greek state in our case;
5. That the Albanian state intervene more actively in international organisations to
make the Cham problem better known, and to use their authority to provide a
solution to this problem."
The petition ended rather ominously with the phrase: "We are convinced that unless
the Cham problem is solved, there will not be friendly and quiet relations between
Albania and Greece, nor peace in the Balkans."25
In November 1999, the CPA organised a fringe meeting entitled `The Cham Issue -
In Search of a Solution' during the unrelated OSCE summit in Istanbul. Foreign
delegations attending the OSCE conference were invited to attend the meeting
where the Chairman of the CPA, Hilmi Saqe, gave a lengthy speech. He spoke
about the main historical developments in Chameria, and especially about the
atrocities committed during the 1944-45 Greek offensive. Saqe unfortunately
equated the deaths of around 5,000 Chams with those of 6 million Jews during the
World War II. He claimed that "these massacres were almost at the same level as
those of the Holocaust on the Hebrews".26 Such exaggeration does the Cham cause
an injustice by raising scepticism amongst outside observers as to the true nature
and extent of the human rights abuses committed against the Chams. Saqe's
speech included yet another list of demands:
1. The implementation of basic human rights on the part of the Greek state;
2. The recognition of Cam assets restitution and any other rights which derive from
it. These assets have been forcefully captured by the Greek state.
3. Recognition of the right of the Cham population to return to its autochthonous
lands;
4. Recognition and protection of the Cham problem from the international
community.
5. The same rights that the Greek minority in Albania enjoys.
This last request was aimed specifically at cultural issues, such as the right to
attend primary, secondary and higher education in Albanian language classes.
Hilmi Saqe ended his speech on an angry note: "In today's world it is difficult to
believe that the Greek government, which has signed and ratified international
conventions and agreements, could be so hostile towards the Cham people. If one
of us has managed to get a Greek visa at the Greek embassy in Tirana, their
passports are torn at any border point with Greece upon entering Greek territory.
We have appealed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tirana to discuss the matter
with their Greek counterparts in order to allow members of our Association, who
were born in Chameria, to visit their houses. But the Greek authorities do not
allow any Cham people to set foot in Greece."27 Anyone who has witnessed the
undignified process outside the Greek embassy in Tirana or the consulate in
Gjirokaster, whereby daily hundreds of Albanians desperately queue for Greek
visas, will verify the difficulty of obtaining a much-valued Greek visa.
The current Socialist-led government in Tirana has done little to address the
Chams' demands since coming to power in 1997. If anything it has evaded
questions on an issue which causes embarrassment to a government that is closely
aligned with Greece - Albania's second most important trading partner. The Cham
issue did, however, arise during a visit to Athens of Albanian Premier Ilir Meta at
the end of 1999, though it was not on the agenda of talks with his Greek
counterpart Costas Simitis. Simitis said that the Greek government considered the
Cham issue as a closed chapter. The Greek Premier's statement prompted a reply
from Meta for home consumption to Albanian journalists covering his visit. He said
that Albania expected the Greek government to solve the issue of Cham properties
according to the European conventions by which Greece abides.28 Perhaps the only
Albanian politician to speak out publicly for the Chams is Sabri Godo, a right-wing
republican, who has always pressed Greece to tackle the Cham issue. Godo
believes that "Greece needs firstly to lift the state of war law against Albania, which
would create the basis for discussion,"29 and that the issue could be solved
"diplomatically with meetings of the personalities of the two countries".30
In January 2000, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Sali Berisha, on a
tour of southern Albania demanded more rights for the Cham minority in Greece,
saying relations between Albania and Greece might suffer if mutual problems were
not solved. Berisha demanded more cultural rights for Albanians living in Greece,
such as the opening of an Albanian-language school in the northern Greek town of
Filiates, and a solution to the property issue of the Cham population.31 On 27 June
2000 a ceremony took place in Tirana where local officials renamed a street
"Chameria", which had been settled by Cham refugees in 1945. The street's first
informal name was the Bazaar of the Chams. The Communists renamed it after a
nearby school. The Albania-Greek Commission, which was set up in 1999 to
discuss the Cham property and assets issue, has not yet functioned. A troubling
issue is the law approved by the Greek parliament (No 2664, dated 3 December
1998) on the registration of assets, which jeopardises the Cham issue and
endangers their case. The deadline to register property was just one year. After the
end of 1999 there was no more legal right to claim property. Those who missed the
opportunity to register have now to go through a lengthy and costly court
procedure.
Every year on the anniversary of the June 1944 massacres at Paramithia, the Cham
Association organises a demonstration or rally in Tirana, which usually attracts
more media attention than actual physical support. On average between 500-900
people attend, which given a Cham population in Albania of around 200,000, is not
a strong show of support. Nevertheless, the demonstrations are highly vocal and
well publicised. On 27 June 2001, to commemorate the 57th anniversary of the
expulsion of Muslim Albanians from Greece, a group of around 500 Cham
demonstrators marched through Tirana to the Greek embassy, calling on Athens to
restore their confiscated properties in northern Greece, and to allow them to return
to their homes. At a press briefing following the demonstration, a Greek foreign
ministry spokesman said irritably: "There is no Cham issue, and certain quarters
wished to contribute to the destabilisation of the region by raising such nonexistent
issues. Such matters have been dealt with by history."32
Today one can see numerous ruined Cham settlements scattered throughout north
western Greece, especially in the region between Paramithia and Filiates. An
estimated 40,000 Christian Orthodox Albanians still live in the Threspotia region.
Although the majority are of original Cham decent, a significant minority migrated
to the region after the collapse of communism in Albania in 1991. The process of
assimilation is only gradual and as yet does not threaten their Albanian identity.
Although their children go to Greek schools and Greek is spoken everywhere
outside the home, inside the houses Albanian is spoken by all familiy members,
and events in Albania are keenly followed. One traveller in the late 1970s noted
that: "There are still many Greek Orthodox villagers in Threspotia who speak
Albanian among themselves. They are scattered north from Paramithia to the
Kalamas River and beyond, and westward to the Margariti Plain. Some of the older
people can only speak Albanian, nor is the language dying out. As more and more
couples in early married life travel away to Athens or Germany for work, their
children remain at home and are brought up by their Albania-speaking
grandparents".33 Meanwhile, in Albania itself, the Muslim Cham villages around
the area of Konispol are noticeably impoverished in comparison with other non-
Cham villages in that part of southern Albania. Those Chams who settled in urban
areas of Albania appear to have fared far better economically.
There is a long-term political aspect to the current situation in Threspotia, because
the demographic balance is gradually changing in the region. Albanians are quietly
re-establishing themselves in long-abandoned property, which has been handed
down from generation to generation. This is happening despite the region being
effectively under a form of military occupation. The former Cham capital Filiates is
now a major military garrison town, and all along the Albanian border are off-limits
army controlled zones. Many in the Greek foreign office believe that the local police
are in the pay of the Albanians, and thus turn a blind eye to the Cham returnees.
This seems highly probable given the amount of illegal activity in and around the
Greek-Albanian border, and in the port area of the town of Igoumenitsa, where
Greeks and Albanians openly operate in the smuggling of illegal immigrants to Italy.
Regional Response to the Cham Issue
The Chams are not the only group interested in keeping their cause in the public
eye. A number of other regional elements, most notably nationalist groups from
Serbia, FYROM, Greece and Turkey, also have a vested interest in making sure the
world is alerted to the issue. The first three are at pains to broadcast all reports
relating to the existence of a "Cham Liberation Army", thereby exposing the "real
threat to regional security of pan-Albanian expansionism". Turkey, meanwhile, is
finding the Cham dispute a useful tool with which to draw international attention to
the plight of the Turkish minority in Greece.
During the conflict in FYROM in 2001, some Serbian, Slav Macedonian and Greek
media reports told of a new "Liberation Army of Chameria". These alarmist
accounts warned of a logical continuation of a pan-Albanian initiative to create a
"Liberation Army" in all the "occupied territories" with the eventual aim of creating a
Greater Albania. At the height of the fighting in FYROM, a report over the internet
by a news agency in FYROM published comments ostensibly made by a spokesman
from the NLA to Australian radio. The NLA's political representative, Ali Ahmeti,
apparently spoke of the existence of a Chameria Liberation Army in north western
Greece, which is ready to "defend" the rights of Albanians living in that region.34
Ahmeti later denied he had made such statements, in an interview with the BBC.
Another Serbian agency reported the same statement "by a representative of the
Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA), Ali Ahmeti", which said "the Albanian
Liberation Army of Chameria will soon be ready for action as the legitimate
representative of Albanians in defence of their rights".35
Although such reports in the Greek media are dismissed by Greek government
officials, this is purely because acknowledging the existence of any Cham military
organisation would mean also having to address the cause of why such a
"Liberation Army" exists at all. The claims highlight what appears to be a growing
agitation movement over the internet, where Albanian groups appear to have
launched an "information campaign" to put pressure on Greece over an issue that
Greece says does not exist. The Greek authorities reacted angrily to the supposed
statement by Ahmeti. "The sick imagination of certain terrorist elements, who
attempt to present non-existent issues, seems to have no bounds," said Greek
Foreign Ministry spokesman Panayotis Beglitis.36
The contemporary Greek press has also published accounts about the clandestine
activities of a "Chameria Liberation Front". The first of these appeared almost a
year before Ahmeti's supposed statement, when a report by the newspaper Tipos tis
Kiriakis (9 July 2000) claimed that a new Liberation Army of Chameria (UCC -
Ushtria Clirimtare Chameria) had been formed in Albania, and had already finished
two large manoeuvres. The article described the UCC as an offshoot of the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA), and a logical extension of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla
groups that had sprung up in southern Serbia - the Liberation Army of Preshevo,
Medveje and Bujanovac (UCPMB) and the National Liberation Army (NLA) in
FYROM. The article claimed that the UCC's plans for Greece were decided in
November 1999, at a conference held in the Gjakova district of southern Kosovo, at
which it was decided to set up the first brigade of the 'Chameria Liberation Army'.
The operational base of the brigade will be in Janina, which will also be the hub of
the liberated region.37
The article highlights quite specific details of the activities of the UCC. Apparently
on 26 February 2000, the first armed group participated in manoeuvres called
'Freedom and Unity' (Clirim dhe Bahskim) held in a remote area of northern
Albania, ten kilometres north of Bajram Curri. Weapons used for these exercises, it
is claimed, came from an Albanian army depot, while others were new, especially
anti-tank missiles purchased from Hungary. An estimated 40-60 fighters formed
the nucleus of the first 'Chameria Brigade', which was controlled by a Commander
Remi.38 Such specific and confidently announced details are difficult to
substantiate. One allegation, however, does appear plausible. The article states:
"Most of the organisers behind the UCC belong to the right-wing, formerly fascist
Albanian organisations, that co-operated with various NATO services to oppose
Enver Hoxha's communist dictatorship in Albania."39 This would place the
embryonic UCC within the umbrella organisation now known as the All Albanian
National Army (AKSh), which is a loosely-knit group of right-wing nationalist
activists in opposition to the Socialist-led government in Tirana and to the
Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) in Pristina.40
Given the current military and political situation in the southern Balkans, the
scenario proposed by this article appears fairly improbable. At present and for the
foreseeable future, NATO is firmly entrenched in Kosovo, and with a significant
presence in Albania and FYROM. This factor, in conjunction with Greece being a
member of NATO, means it would be extremely difficult for such a small group of
Albanians, who lack the local support base provided for other ethnic Albanian
insurgent groups in the Preshevo Valley and FYROM, to launch a military-style
campaign in northern Greece. At the time, however, back in November 1999, when
the Tipos tis Kiriakis article claims the first UCC brigade was set up, Kosovo was in
a very volatile situation. Just four months after the end of the conflict with Serbia,
the Kosovars were euphoric with the scale of their victory. This mood was highly
infectious. Other Albanian elements with unresolved national demands were
confident that the international community would be receptive to their plight,
following the shocking revelations about the treatment meted out to the Kosovo
Albanians by the Serb security forces in the spring of 1999. It was against this
background that the Chams, along with Albanians in the Preshevo Valley and
FYROM, began to discuss moves in which to publicise their long-held grievances.
Publicly therefore, the Greek government has played down such media reports
saying that the UCC does not exist, but privately there is concern. The AKSh is
now active in FYROM and numerous arms caches are known to be hidden in
locations just over the Greek border in Albania. The Greek authorities are believed
to have an informal list of banned Cham activists, who are refused entry into
Greece. However, it is not just political and military issues surrounding the Cham
dispute which are causing tensions. Socio-economic issues also play a part in
exacerbating the debate. In southern Albania, particularly in the border districts
with Greece, there has developed considerable tension over the legitimacy of
property ownership since the collapse of communism. This has placed the Chams
in a difficult position since they represent non-traditional inhabitants. The growing
number of disputes over land ownership has led many Chams to seek ways in
which to recover their pre-war property assets in northern Greece. The pre-war
Cham population was split into two distinct socio-economic groups: the first
comprised wealthy, predominantly urban Beys, who owned vast tracts of land,
whilst the second group were mainly poor, rural peasants, who grazed livestock in
the more hilly regions, or worked on the Beys' estates.
The Greek authorities are less concerned about the latter group, as their claims are
void because they owned no land and their grazing rights were based upon old
Ottoman laws, which have no meaning under contemporary Greek law. However,
there is real concern that the Beys do have substantial land claims. It is difficult to
assess the exact differentiation between the descendants of the landed or landless
Chams in contemparary Albania. Although many Beys and their older sons were
liquidated when they went up to join the nationalist organisation Balli Kombetar in
1942-1943 to fight the communists, many other relatives survived in their
traditionally large families. These people remained landless and without power
during the 47 years of communist rule in Albania. Since the collapse of the oneparty
state in 1991, they have joined forces with representatives of landless Chams
to fight to regain not only their land, but also their privileged social status as
wealthy property owners.
Another regional player that is more than ready to exploit the Cham issue is
Turkey. Turkey wants to pressure Greece on the minority issue to gain formal
recognition of the Muslim minority in eastern Thrace as Turkish. Turkey also
wishes to highlight the overall Greek failure to provide educational, religious and
cultural rights for all minorities in Greece to comply with EU standards. Greece
refuses to acknowledge virtually any ethnic minority in the country unless forced
to, as in the case of the Florina Slavs in 1997.
Tirana's taboo subject was publicised recently by Turkey's Foreign Ministry in a
statement which called the "Cham tragedy one of the most painful tragedies of the
European continent".41 It went on to criticise the Greek authorities "for sticking to
the concept of absolute denial over the existence of ethnic groups on Greek territory
… and as history has recorded, Greece has committed genocide against Albanians
of the Muslim faith".42 The Turkish authorities have urged the Greek government to
participate in an international conference on the Cham dispute at which the
Albanian government would also be present. Athens was also asked to
acknowledge the Albanian nationality of Albanian-speaking Orthodox Christians in
the same area, to compensate the displaced Chams for the property they have lost,
to provide an Albanian Orthodox Church for Albanian Christians, to repatriate the
Cham minority and to provide them with Greek citizenship.
It is important here to mention an aspect of this debate, which goes to the very core
of the problem. In their historiography the Greeks avoid the use of the term
Albanian when referring to Albanian-speaking people residing in Greece. Instead
they use the term 'Arvanites', which denotes an Albanian-speaking Christian. This
is an ideological construct designed to reinforce Greek national self-definition as a
purely Christian state. In other words, the Cham Muslims were never 'real Greeks',
unlike their Christian brothers, and as such have no claim to Greek citizenship.
The State of War
One significant factor that directly affects the ability of the Chams to effectively
challenge the Greek government is that technically a state of war may still exist
between Greece and Albania. The law in question, adopted in 1940 when Greece
was invaded by Italian troops through Albania, was repealed by the Greek
government in 1987 but was never ratified by Greece's parliament. Albanian
officials maintain that the law prevents Albanians from claiming property they
owned in Greece prior to the Second World War. Greek officials, however, counter
that the state of war cannot be said to exist because it was lifted automatically in
accordance with international law in 1987.43
Albania's President Rexhep Meidani has called on Greece to cancel the law. "It is
unacceptable that the law of the state of war is still valid. It hinders investments,
exchanges between the two countries and integration processes," Meidani told
Greek Defence Minister Akis Tsohatopoulos during the latter's visit to Tirana in
July 2000.44 Two months later the President again raised the matter to an
international audience. In his speech to the United Nation's General Assembly's
Millennium Summit in September 2000, Meidani obliquely criticised Greece for
maintaining a legal state of war with Albania. "We must ask ourselves," he said,
"can we arrive at an acceptable definition of good governance while members of the
United Nations maintain a de jure declaration of war with other members?
Certainly not."45 The Albanian authorities want the matter officially and legally
closed. Why, they ask, was this issue never settled during Greece's negotiations to
join the European Union?46 This is clearly a matter that needs to be clarified in the
interests of Albanian-Greek relations.
Conclusion
The expulsion of the Muslim Chams from Greece during the period 1912-1945 can
be seen as merely a continuation of the bitter inter-ethnic feuding that
characterised the southern Balkans from the time of the Balkan Wars through to
the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949. This period witnessed the settling of old
scores against those minorities unfortunate enough to find themselves on the wrong
side of their own ethnic borders. In the case of the Chams, their particular
situation is very much a product of Greece's entire historical perception of her
northern border. Greece has never really had a concept of a fixed northern border,
where prior to the settlement of Greeks from Asia Minor in 1922, very few Greeks
had ever lived.47 After the Greek Civil War, right-wing Greeks from areas like the
Piraeus port district of Athens were settled in towns and villages in the Cham and
Slav minority areas, in order to reinforce the "loyal" Greek element in the region,
and to inform Athens of the activities of the local non-Greek inhabitants. This is
still very much the case today. The idea of Greek expansion northwards, which was
embodied in the 19th century national programme known as the Megali Idea,48 has
never really been abandoned by the Greek Church or nationalist elements within
the Greek establishment. This, combined with the state of war law, causes Albania
still to regard Greece as a security threat.
There are indeed militant ethnic Albanian groups dedicated to changing borders in
south eastern Europe to create an "Ethnic Albania".49 Others wish to see a "Greater
Kosovo".50 But these groups represent a minute percentage of the Albanian
population of the Balkans as a whole, with an equally tiny support base amongst
the radical fringe of the diaspora. The Cham population in Albania is far less
radical than is believed in Athens. Those families who have relatively prospered
tend to be far more philosophical about the entire Cham question. Even those who
believe they have land claims in Threspotia are prepared to wait until Albania
becomes a full member of the European Union, when they believe they will
"automatically" be able to cross freely into Greece and either reoccupy their former
homes or negotiate compensation from the Greek authorities through normal legal
channels.51 Poorer Chams, on the other hand, tend to be angrier and less patient.
These are more likely to join the Cham Association and to demonstrate on the
streets. Yet even these people draw the line at violence, believing instead in the
power of "European institutions" to give them justice. "We don't want or need an
intifada," said one Tirana Cham activist. "We are Europeans and we have European
institutions, such as the international courts in which to present our case."52
Although the Albanian government has officially avoided addressing the Cham
issue, prominent Albanian individuals such as President Meidani and Sabri Godo
have raised the subject publicly on a number of occasions. Currently, a number of
Albanian parliamentarians are meeting members of the Cham community to
discuss mounting a legal suit against Greece. This is something the Greek
authorities could avoid by agreeing a financial compensation settlement with the
Chams before the matter reaches the international courts. If a legal suit is
eventually mounted against Greece, it could prove prohibitively expensive for the
Greek exchequer because it would open a floodgate of claims from people, other
than Chams, who also lost their property in the aftermath of the Second World War.
These include supporters of the Greek left and members of the Slav minority, who
were strongly represented amongst the left-wing forces that lost in the Greek Civil
War. Many Slavs, like the Chams, were forced to flee from Greece in 1949, either to
Yugoslavia or to Australia. A few even went into political exile in Albania.
As long as it remains unresolved, the Cham issue is prone to exploitation by
elements wanting to discredit Albanians in general, regardless of where they live
and their political and national stance. Nationalist elements in Serbia, FYROM and
Greece have spared no effort to "inform" the international community of the
existence of a "Cham Liberation Army", which is poised to attack Greece in pursuit
of a "Greater Albania". This negative outlook on behalf of small but vociferous
groups amongst the neighbours of Albanians is highly detrimental to the
development of regional security and peaceful co-operation in the southern
Balkans. Turkey is also able to manipulate the Cham issue by attacking Greek
policy over its own ethnic minority issues in Greece, thereby undermining the Greek
case over Cyprus.
In many respects, the Cham issue is the most easily resolved of the many unsettled
questions regarding Albanians in the Balkans. If the issue was handled sensitively,
it could benefit both Albanians and Greeks. Given that the Chams do not believe
they will ever be allowed to resettle in Greece, they are concentrating their efforts on
gaining financial compensation. Yet, if families were able to return to their old
properties, the economy of the Threspotia region would improve remarkably. Over
the past thirty years, the north west of Greece has become seriously depopulated as
people move out of the villages to the larger towns and cities. Vast swathes of once
heavily grazed hillsides have reverted to dense forest, much as they were in
Ottoman times.53 Albanians would probably be only too willing to graze the land
once more with flocks of sheep, and thus provide the Greek yoghurt industry with
the raw material it so badly needs. Although the Greek government has sometimes
expressed some sort of readiness to discuss issues relating to property and asset
compensation, it categorically does not recognise the right of the Chams to Greek
citizenship, which is referred to as "historical". Many Chams, however, desire
Greek citizenship above all else. This would release them from the humiliation of
going through the degrading visa application process in Tirana, and provide an
opportunity to escape the dire poverty and unemployment in Albania. Despite their
general assimilation, the Chams have never really felt welcome in Albania. In fact,
many non-Cham Albanians, especially in Tirana, use the term 'Cham' in a
derogatory sense to denote an untrustworthy person.
This matter needs to be addressed before the year 2004, which will see the Olympic
games held in Athens, and which will also mark the 60th anniversary of the
massacres at Paramithia in 1944. There are plans to commemorate this event with
large-scale demonstrations and perhaps the further recruitment of a minority Cham
activists into military-style groups. There is the risk of a greater radicalisation of
Albanians in general as they become more aware about the Cham issue and the
"historical injustices" suffered by their nation at the hand of their neighbours.
During recent years, a new breed of young historians are bringing the matter to the
attention of a new generation of Albanians. The new pan-Albanian school textbooks
now include whole passages on the history of the Chams.54 In the interests of
Albanian-Greek relations, the state of war should be officially nullified by the Greek
government. Otherwise Albania will continue to see Greece as a security threat.
What is needed is to get EU standards on this and other minority issues actually
enshrined in Greek law and properly enforced. Despite the Greek authorities
declaring that there is no Cham issue, the "issue" itself remains a very tangible
evidence of how far minority issues in the Balkans have yet to progress in order to
comply with even the most rudimentary minority policies within the European
Union. The matter reflects badly upon Greece, which despite a veneer of EU
respectability, remains very much a Balkan country still deeply entrenched in the
mind-set of Ottoman times, when a "nation" was deemed as such by its religious
affiliation rather than by the main determinants of ethnicity such as language and
culture.
ENDNOTES
1 Frosina Information Network, Error!. Other
websites which deal with Cham issues are: http://www.albanian.com/main/other/cameria,
and Alba & Bel [Indeksi i Përgjithshëm / Generale Index / General Index].
2 Miranda Vickers & James Pettifer, Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity, C
Hurst & Co, 1997, pxii.
3 For detailed historical and documentary accounts of the Chams and Chameria see:
Albert Kotini, Tre Guret e zes ne Preveza, Fllad, Tirana, 2000; Albert Kotini, Chameria
Denoncon, Fllad, Tirana, 1999; Fatos Mero Rrapaj, Fjalori Onomastik I Epirit, Eurolindja,
Tirana, 1995; Drejtoria e Pergjithshme e Arkivave - Documente per Chemerine, 1912-1939.
Dituria, Tirana, 1999.
4 Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Panayiotis Beglitis, Kathimerini (Athens), 2-3
June 2001.
5 INET (Belgrade), 30 May 2001, 11:15.
6 The term Tosk refers to Albanians who live south of the Shkumbi River. They speak
a different dialect, and have different cultural traditions, from the Gheg Albanians who live
north of the Shkumbi.
7 Odysseus, Turkey in Europe, London, 1900, p401.
8 Jelavic, Charles and Barbara, The Establishment of the Balkan National States 1804-
1920, Washington, 1970, p77.
9 A similar pattern was emerging in the Kosovo region of southern Serbia, whereby
Albanians were being encouraged to leave their lands for Turkey, and Serb and Montenegrin
colonists were brought in to settle on the vacated Albanian land.
10 Michalopoulos, D, 'The Moslems of Chamouria and the Exchange of Populations
Between Greece and Turkey', Balkan Studies, Vol 27, No 2, 1986, pp305-6.
11 Michalopolous, pp306-7.
12 Michalopolous, p310.
13 For a list of the most important changes in place names from Albanian into Greek,
see James Pettifer, The Blue Guide to Albania and Kosovo, third edition, London, 2000, p57.
14 James Pettifer, The Blue Guide to Albania and Kosovo, third edition, London, 2000,
p439.
15 British Foreign Office PRO/FO No.371/48094/544/R8 564.
16 Eyewitness accounts of the attacks on the Cham districts of Paramithia, Parga and
Spatar, Memorandum of the Anti-Fascist Committee of Cham Emigrants in Albania, Tirana,
1947, p4, hereafter 'Memorandum'. It should also be noted that most of the influential
books in English on the region have been written from the viewpoint of the Greek Royalist
Right, from Henry Baerlein's 'Under the Acroceraunian Mountains', Rene Puaux's 'Sorrow of
Epirus' and Pyrrus Ruches' 'Albania's Captives', to modern polemical works such as 'Eleni'
by Nicholas Gage. For a pro-Cham viewpoint, see 'British Imperialism and Ethnic
Cleansing' by N Zanga, Tirana, 1997.
17 Memorandum, p6.
18 Documents of the US Department of State, No. 84/3, Tirana Mission, 1945-1946, 6-
646.
19 Vlachs are semi-nomadic pastoralists who speak a language akin to Romanian and
live in south-east Albania, north-west Greece and southern FYROM.
20 For useful information on the tensions between Albania and Greece over the
Chameria/Epirus dispute, see: Border and Territorial Disputes, 3rd edition, Albania-Greece
(Northern Epirus), Longman, Harlow, 1992.
21 Memorandum, p8.
22 Memorandum, p9.
23 Statement of Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis on the occasion of his visit to
Tirana, May 1992.
24 Republic of Albania - Law No: 7839, passed in Tirana, 30 June 1994. The Cham
monument was erected in Konispol in 1995.
25 Petition to the Albanian government and international organisations, the Chameria
Political Association, Tirana, 24 August 1999.
26 Speech by Hilmi Saqe, OSCE Istanbul Summit, fringe meeting, 18 November 1999.
27 Ibid.
28 Albania Daily News, 1226, 18 January 2000.
29 Godo was referring to the law that Greece imposed on Albania in 1940, which was de
facto lifted in 1987, but which still has to go through a final parliamentary approval.
30 Albania Daily News, 1571, 29 May 2001.
31 Albania Daily News, 1226, 18 January 2000.
32 Albania Daily News, Tirana, 1 July 2001.
33 Arthur Foss, Epirus, London, 1978, p173.
34 Kathimerini, 2-3 June 2001.
35 INET (Belgrade), 30 May 2001, 11:15.
36 Albania Daily News, 31 May 2001.
37 Albanian Nationalist Army Seen Claiming Greek Territories, Tipos tis Kiriakis, 9 July
2000.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 During the late 1940s, the British and Americans devised a complicated and risky
plot to overthrow Hoxha's regime. The plan was to equip and train an anti-Communist force
recruited from hundreds of right-wing Zogist and Ballist refugees who had fled from Albania
after the war. For a fuller account of these events see Miranda Vickers, The Albanians, a
Modern History, London: 1999, Chapter eight, & Nicholas Bethel, The Great Betrayal
(London: 1984).
41 The Republic Of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupa/ac/ack/03.htm, 6 June 2001.
42 The Republic Of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupa/ac/ack/03.htm, 6 June 2001.
43 Interview with Greek officials, Tirana, March 2001.
44 Reuters, Tirana, 1 August 2000.
45 RFE/RL, 9 November 2000.
46 Interview with Albanian officials, Tirana, April 2001.
47 In Ottoman times what is now northern Greece was largely inhabited by Turks,
Albanians, Slavs, Vlachs and Roma.
48 The Megali Idea was a plan of expansion which would include all Greeks within a
single Greek state, as well as entailing the revival of the Byantine Empire. The lands to be
adjoined to this empire included Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, the Agean islands,
Crete, Cyprus, the west coast of Asia Minor, and the territory between the Balkan and
Rhodope Mountains.
49 Extreme nationalist Albanian rhetoric for a Greater Albania.
50 The union of Kosovo with western FYROM.
51 Interview with Cham families in Vlore and Tirana, May 2001.
52 Interview with members of the Cham association, Tirana, September 2001.
53 In marked contrast to to the decline in the human habitation of Epirus, the wolf
population has increased over the past three decades and is now on a par with wolf
numbers in Ottoman times.
54 An example of the new presentation of the Cham issue can be found in the book 'The
Political Philosophy of the Albanian Question', Pristina, 1997, by the young Kosovo Albanian
historian Ushkim Hoti.
Appendix
Cham population settlement in the Republic of Albania according to the 1991
registration of Chams by the Chameria Political Association.
Place Persons
Shkoder 1,150
Kruje-Lac-Fushekruje 720
Lezhe 35
Tirana (District) 29,700
Durres-Shijak-Sukth 35,000
Kavaje-Golem-Gose-Rrogozhine 10,500
Peqin 1,400
Elbasan-Cerrik 12,650
Lushnje-Zhame-Dushk 8,300
Berat-Kucove 6,900
Fier-Patos-Rreth 39,800
Vlore (District) 42,300
Sarande (District) 12,100
Delvine (District) 2,900
Total 204,255

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[Jehona_e_Rahovecit]

The Chams are the ethnic Albanian, and predominantly Muslim, population from
the area of north western Greece known to Greeks as Threspotia and to Albanians
as Chameria. The region, which is centred around the Tsamis river, extends from
Butrint and the mouth of the Acheron River to Lake Prespa in the north, eastward
to the Pindus mountains and south as far as Preveza and the Gulf of Arta.
Nineteenth century British travellers such as Lord Byron and his companion John
Hobhouse noted the preponderance of Albanian-speakers in these regions. While
there is much comment focused on the position of the Greek minority in Albania,
there is very little information about the Albanian minority which remained in
Greece after the founding of the Albanian state. Most of these Albanians were
originally Christian Orthodox by religion, but converted to Islam during the latter
years of the Ottoman occupation. According to a Boston-based web-site which
Albanians use to exchange ideas on current affairs, "the Albanians in Greece are
divided into two distinct categories: Albanians who live on Albanian territory but
who have remained outside the unjust borders which were drawn up by the
Ambassadorial Conference (London, 1913), and those Albanians who departed
Albanian territory during the first diaspora in the 14th and 15 centuries".

1 These Albanians fled their homeland during the battles against the invading Ottoman
Turk and many settled on the island of Euboea. Others went to Italy.
The Cham conflict arose as a result of the delineation of the border between Greece
and Albania at the end of the Balkan Wars. In 1912 the London Ambassador's
Conference allotted the Chameria region to Greece, so today only seven Cham
villages, centred on the village of Konispol, are in Albania itself. There were three
distinct phases of emigration of the Cham population from northern Greece. The
first occurred during the Balkan Wars 1912-1914, the second following the signing
of the Turkish-Greek Convention at Lausanne in January 1923, and the third
occurred at the end of the Second World War, in the period from June 1944 to
March 1945, during which an estimated 5,000 men, women and children were
killed. The rest of Chameria's Albanian Muslim population fled over the border to
Albania where they have lived in exile ever since.
The Chams are demanding the recognition of about 4,000 Chams who disappeared
as a result of those conflicts, and the property rights of about 150,000 others.3 The
Chams are also building charges against Greece at the international courts, arguing
that they were stripped of around US$340m-worth of properties which are worth
roughly US$2.5bn at current market prices. The Greeks, however, see the Cham
question as a "non existent issue".4
The forced movement of the entire Albanian Muslim population from Greece has left
a lingering sense of injustice amongst Albanians in general. This has contributed in
part to poor bilateral relations between Albania and Greece. The controversial
Cham issue has lain dormant in recent years and none of the post-war Albanian
governments, whether communist, democratic or socialist, have ventured to try to
make it a key issue in relations with Greece. In May 2001, at the height of last
year's ethnic Albanian insurrection in FYROM, a headline appeared on the wires of
a Belgrade news agency, which ran: "New Albanian (Cham) Liberation Army on the
March in Greece."5 The purpose of this paper is to highlight the crucial historical
and political issues that have led to such alarmist headlines, and to gauge the
extent of Cham grievances, the support they elicit, and the degree to which their
political agenda has changed since they arrived in Albania in 1945.

Historical Background
The name 'Chameria' comes from the ancient Illyrian name for the Tsamis River,
which traversed the territory of the ancient Illyrian tribe of Thesprotes. Chameria
was part of the Roman Empire before being conquered by the Byzantines, and in
the thirteenth century it became part of the Epirus despotate. In the second half of
the fourteenth century it was included in the Albanian despotate of Arta. After the
Ottoman invasion in the 15th century it was firstly in the sanjak (municipality) of
Delvina, then in that of Janina. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
mostly Albanian population of northern Chameria - from Konispol to the Gliqi river
- was forcibly converted to Islam, whilst those living south of the Gliqi down to
Preveza Bay remained Orthodox Christians. The Muslim Albanians of Epirus were
eternally feuding with their Christian neighbours and, favoured by their Turkish coreligionists,
had gained the best land, whilst Christians had been forced onto less
fertile soil. Historically the Epirus region has had a very blurred ethnicity. As one
late nineteenth century visitor noted: The whole of the Tosk6 country has been
strongly influenced by Greece, or rather it would be difficult to say whether Epirus
is Greek or north-western Greece is Albanian. Though the southern dialect of
Albanian is used for conversation, Greek is universally understood.7
After the defeat of the Ottoman forces during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), the
future of Albanian-inhabited areas was discussed at the hastily convened
Conference of Ambassadors held in London in December 1912-January 1913,
where it was agreed in principle to support the establishment of Albania as a new
political entity.
Greece had emerged from the Balkan Wars with a heightened sense of achievement,
and a determination to try to secure southern Albania for Greece. The emphasis
was not on territory that was ethnically strictly Greek, but rather on lands in which
Hellenic civilisation was believed to be predominant.8 In October 1913 the Epirote
insurrection broke out, as Greek volunteers raided southern Albania, terrorising its
inhabitants by burning their villages. The Greek objective was to set up an
autonomous Vorio Epirus (Northern Epirus), in an attempt to sabotage the
international discussions then being held in Florence on the future status of the
region. Finally in December 1913, the Powers agreed on the terms of the Protocol of
Florence, whereby, in return for Serbia's retreat from Albanian territory, Austria
reluctantly agreed that the Albanian districts in what is now Kosovo and Macedonia
should be formerly ceded to Serbia, whilst Greece received the large southern region
of Chameria. The Albanian state was thus reduced to the central regions together
with the town of Shkoder and its surrounding territory.
Following the establishment of the Florence Line, some Greek troops began to
withdraw from Chameria. Greek terrorist bands, however, remained as active as
ever. As the majority of Chams were Muslim, they were treated with the same
contempt as ethnic Turks living in Greece. On 23 February 1913, 72 people were
killed in the village of Proi I Selanit near Paramithia. This marked the beginning of
attacks on Albanian Muslim civilian targets, which were designed to instil fear into
the population and thus prompt them to leave their homes. Throughout the next
decade, the property of Albanian Muslims was systematically looted and many
young men were deported to internal exile on the Aegean islands. Thousands of
hectares of Cham-owned land were expropriated without compensation, their
harvests were requisitioned, and they were prohibited from sowing their corn, or
from selling or letting their property to forestall its expropriation. It was thus
rendered impossible for many families to remain in Greece - forcing them to flee
northwards to Albanian in search of land.9 In an effort to settle the Cham issue,
the Athens government had tried to gain Ankara's approval for encouraging some
Chams to migrate to Turkey, in the hope that the rest would follow. Initially Ankara
had been unwilling to allow the settlement of Albanian Muslims on Turkish soil, but
following intense diplomatic efforts by Athens, the Turkish government agreed to
allow the settlement of some 5,000 Chams.
Meanwhile, in 1923, the position regarding the 20,000 or so Muslim Albanians still
remaining in northern Greece was being hotly debated at a special session of the
Council of the League of Nations. The convention that made possible the exchange
of Greek and Turkish populations had been signed at the Lausanne Conference on
30 January 1923. The Albanian government had then insisted, via telegrams and
delegations to the League, that the Greek authorities were forcing the Chams to
leave their homes and move to Turkey, and that their lands were being settled by
Greek immigrants from Asia Minor. The Greeks countered these accusations by
arguing that the term 'Albanian' could only be applied to those who were born in
Albania, thereby excluding from consideration the Greek-born Albanian Muslims,
who were equated with Turks. The League responded to the Albanian allegations by
establishing a Mixed Commission to examine the question in detail.
In March 1924, the Commission decided that Greek subjects who were Muslims
and of Albanian origin, and more specifically those residing in Epirus, had to be
excluded from the compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and
Turkey.10 For the Albanian Chams, however, the issue centred around their claims
to belong to the Albanian nation. The Council of the League discussed this matter
during its thirtieth session (29 August-3 October): the Albanian position maintained
that the Greek authorities were encouraging the 'Albanians of Epirus' to consider
mass migration by calling them 'Greeks of Turkish origin' and convincing them to
adopt the second identity in their public pronouncements. The Council finally
decided to appoint neutral members of the Mixed Commission as its 'mandatories'
charged with the responsibility of protecting the 'Muslim minority of Albanian
origin' residing in Greece.11 Meanwhile, the Athens government settled Greek
immigrants from Asia Minor in Chameria in order to populate it with Orthodox
Christians, and to put further pressure on the remaining Albanian Muslims to
emigrate. Throughout the 1920s entire villages, such as Petrovica and Shendellinja
were emptied of their Albanian inhabitants. Whole families left for Albania, Turkey
and America.
In March 1926, the Greek government declared that the process of population
exchange was over and that the Chams would henceforth have the same rights as
those enjoyed by other Greek citizens, However, these "rights" remained highly
selective. No Albanian-language schools were permitted and the speaking of
Albanian was discouraged outside the home. The signing of the Italian-Albanian
pact in November 1926 caused some anxiety in Athens and focused Greek attention
on the still unresolved question of the Chams, which was leading to increased
tensions between Greece and Albania. The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs had
serious reservations about the pact because it was feared that the interests of the
Albanians for their "brothers" in Epirus now had the backing of an important
power, whose territorial ambitions in the Balkans could benefit from the existence
of the Cham minority which favoured Italy and was hostile to the Greek state. Italy
could also use the Chams as a counterweight to Greek ambitions in southern
Albania.
Albanian charges directed against Greece concerning the Muslims of Chameria
gradually increased and reached their climax during the first half of 1928. In
March, the Albanian Foreign Ministry delivered a memorandum to the Greek chargé
d'affaires in Tirana, which highlighted Tirana's concern over the 'austere measures'
exercised by the local authorities against the Chams, and expressed a formal
protest that the Greek government did not recognise them as a 'national minority'.
The Greek side argued that 'the Albanian government had no right to get involved in
the domestic affairs of another country: the Chams were Greek citizens and the
projection of Albania as a protector state constituted disregard of the basic elements
of Greek sovereign rights.'12 With the coming to power of the Ioannis Metaxas
fascist government in 1936, the situation of the Albanian population of Chameria
became even more difficult. The colonisation of the area by Greeks intensified,
confiscation of Cham property was stepped up and the names of places inhabited
by Albanians were replaced by Greek place names.13 In the meantime, the League
of Nations continued to note the Albanian protests over the treatment of the Chams,
but by then more important issues were now emerging concerning other minorities
in Europe.
The Second World War
The outbreak of the Second World War brought about a brief union (1941-1943) of
Kosovo with Albania, and the possibility of the remaining Albanian-inhabited
regions of the Balkans being united. In August 1940 Italy invaded Greece. In an
effort to rally the Albanian people to her cause, Italy had promised the Albanians
their national unity. The German-Italian agreement of 1941 stipulated the
formation of a 'Greater Albania', to include the large Albanian-inhabited areas of
Yugoslavia and, to a lesser extent, Greece. The Italians were able to exploit
Albanian irredentist sentiment by insisting that the unification of all Albanian
inhabited lands was conditional upon an Axis victory. The Chams were
subsequently armed by the Italians and co-operated with them against Greek
villages controlled by Greek resistance fighters. During this period, atrocities were
committed by a minority of Chams against Greek civilians, thousands of whom were
forced to flee from their homes. The majority of Chams, however, were merely
passive collaborators, distrusting the Italians as much as they did the Greek
Royalist guerrilla force of Napoleon Zervas. In little over a year, Greek forces were
able to push the Italians back over the Albanian border. There was widespread
alarm amongst the Chams when the hoped-for Axis victory turned to defeat. Near
the village of Vrina in southern Albania, in June 1940, the headless body of the
Cham leader Daut Hoxa was discovered. It was alleged by the Italian-controlled
government in Tirana that he had been murdered by Greek secret agents. Hoxha
was a military leader of the Cham struggle during the inter-war years. The Greek
government claimed he was merely a bandit.14 In October 1944 when the Germans
began withdrawing from Greece, many hundreds of Chams also fled with them into
Albania. Henceforth, the remaining Muslim Albanians in Greece were regarded by
the Greeks as the enemy within.
In an attempt to establish an ethnically pure border region, the Chams were evicted
from northern Greece by guerrilla forces under the command of General Napoleon
Zervas acting under the instructions of allied officers. In the light of recent
research, wartime documents show that Greek actions against the Chams were
supported and authorised by the British. These actions resulted in around 35,000
Chams fleeing to Albania and others to Turkey. Colonel Chris Woodhouse, head of
the British Military Mission in Greece reported that: "Encouraged by the Allied
Mission I headed, Zervas drove the Chams out of their homes in 1944. The
majority fled to find shelter in Albania. Their eviction from Greece was carried out
with large-scale bloodshed. Zervas's work was followed in March 1945 with a largescale
massacre of the Filiates Chams that cannot be excused. The result was the
eviction of the undesirable Albanian population from their land."15
The most infamous massacre of Albanian Muslims by Greek irregulars occurred on
27 June 1944 in the district of Paramithia, when forces of General Zervas's National
Republican Greek League (EDES) entered the town and killed approximately 600
Albanian Muslims, men women and children - many having been raped and
tortured before death. According to eyewitness accounts, the following day, another
EDES battalion marched into Parga where 52 more Albanians were killed. On 23
September 1944, the town of Spatar was looted and 157 people died. Young women
and girls were raped and those men who were still alive were rounded up and
deported to the Aegean islands.16 According to statistics provided by the Chameria
Association in Tirana, in total 2,771 Albanian civilians were killed during the1944-
1945 attacks on their villages. The breakdown is as follows: in Filiates and suburbs
1,286, in Igoumenitsa and suburbs 192, in Paramithia and suburbs 673 and Parga
620. Sixty-eight villages with 5,800 houses were looted and then burnt. A detailed
list of material losses includes 110,000 sheep, 2,400 cattle, 21,000 quintals of
wheat and 80,000 quintals of edible oil, amounting to 11,000,000 kilograms of
grain and 3,000,000 kilograms of edible oil.17
As a result of these assaults, an estimated 28,000 Chams fled to Albania where
they settled on the outskirts of Vlore, Durres and Tirana. Several hundred Chams
moved into properties along the Himara coast left by families who had been wiped
out during the vicious fighting firstly against the Axis occupiers, and secondly in
1944 between the Greek nationalist Northern Epirus Liberation Front and the
Albanian nationalist Balli Kombetar partisan fighters. Some Chams moved into
existing villages along the coast such as Borsh which were traditionally Muslim,
thus augmenting the non-Hellenic character of the region. Other Chams
established entirely new villages, such as Vrina, near the Greek border.
International observers noted the brutality of the Cham evictions. Joseph Jacobs,
Head of the US Mission in Albania (1945-1946) wrote: "In March 1945 units of
Zervas's dissolved forces carried out a massacre of Chams in the Filiates area, and
practically cleared the district of the Albanian minority. According to all the
information I have been able to gather on the Cham issue, in the fall of 1944 and
during the first months of 1945, the authorities in north-western Greece
perpetrated savage brutality by evicting some 25,000 Chams - residents of
Chameria - from their homes. They were chased across the border after having
been robbed of their land and property. Hundreds of male Chams from the ages of
15 to 70 were interned on the islands of the Aegean Sea. In total 102 mosques were
burnt down."18 The Greek authorities then approved a law sanctioning the
expropriation of Cham property, citing the collaboration of their community with
the occupying Axis forces as a main reason for the decision.
For those Chams of the Orthodox faith who remained in Greece after 1945, their
Albanian identity was suppressed as a deeply repressive policy of assimilation
ensued and, as before World War II, the Albanian language was not allowed to be
spoken in public, nor taught in the schools. The demographic structure of
northwest Greece was altered by the introduction of settlers from other parts of
Greece. Vlachs in particular were encouraged to settle in abandoned Cham villages
without the legal right of ownership.19 Greece wanted the demographic structure of
the province changed because it did not trust the rest of the Albanian population
who remained there, even though they were of the Christian Orthodox faith. As the
speaking of Albanian was prohibited in public, the assimilation of Orthodox
Albanians gathered momentum and they have struggled ever since to maintain
their identity.20
Attempts to Internationalise the Cham Question
Following their expulsion from Greece to Albania, the Cham refugees who had
Greek citizenship but Albanian nationality were placed under the direction of the
Cham Anti-Fascist Committee (CAFC). The new post-war Communist government
of Albania took the Cham issue to the Paris Peace Conference (1946) to demand the
repatriation of the Chams and the return of their property. At the end of September
1944, the first Cham Congress was held in the village of Konispol in southern
Albania. The following month a delegation of the CAFC was sent to Athens to lodge
a protest with the government of George Papandreou against the continuing Greek
atrocities in Chameria. The Cham delegation also delivered protest notes to the
Greek National Union, the Mediterranean General Command, the missions of the
allied governments and the Central Committee of the National Liberation Front
(EAM). The Commission was completely ignored by the Greek authorities. At the
same time, the Cham National Liberation Committee made several attempts to
internationalise the question and to secure the support of the Allied Powers. They
sent telegrams of protest to the Soviet, British, American and French military
missions, and the Yugoslav Legation in Tirana. Memorandums explaining the
plight of the Cham refugees were also sent to the Allied Foreign Ministers'
Conference in London (3 September 1945) and to the United Nations Assembly in
New York (25 October 1946). Each included a plea for recognition of their plight:
`Despite protests we have made and the rights we are entitled to, we continue to be
in exile, whereas the Greek government has gone all out to establish aliens in our
Chameria in order to prevent us from returning home.'21
The Memorandum ends with a note of optimism and faith in the international
justice system. It reads: "On behalf of our Cham population, we lodge a protest and
bring to the attention of the Investigation Commission of the United Nations
Security Council the tragedy played out in Chameria and the act carried out to
exterminate our population. We stress the need for an urgent settlement of the
Cham problem, confident that our following demands will be met:
1. Adoption of immediate measures to halt the settlement of aliens in our native
land.
2. Repatriation of all the Chams.
3. Restitution of our property and remuneration of damage in liquid and fixed
capital.
4. Assistance to rebuild our homes and resettlement.
5. Safeguards and guarantees emanating from the international treaties and
mandates, such as guaranteed civil, political, cultural rights and personal
safety.
6. Trial and condemnation of all those who are responsible for the crimes they have
perpetrated.22
These demands were never answered. The UN Assembly in New York did, however,
acknowledge the humanitarian crisis facing the refugees. From September 1945 to
the spring of 1947, Albania received a total of US$26 million of assorted goods,
materials and equipment from the UN Relief Programme, UNRRA (United Nation's
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration). Of this approximately US$1.2 million
was allocated specifically for refugees from northern Greece. It was mainly due to
this aid programme that Albania escaped a major famine.
On 23 September 1945, the Second Cham Congress was held in the Albanian
Adriatic port of Vlore, where an increasing number of Chams were beginning to
settle. As a result, yet more memorandums were despatched to the London Peace
Conference and to various Allied Military Missions in Albania, requesting the Cham
issue be discussed. Until 1947, the Chams struggled to internationalise their plight
by informing virtually every international agency and mission that they could reach.
After 1947, however, Albania and Greece fell into two separate political camps and
the Cham issue lay dormant until the collapse of communism in Albania in 1991.
Then throughout Albania, all those who felt dispossessed as a result of the wartime
period or persecution under the Communists immediately formed organisations to
seek recognition and compensation.
The Current Situation
In January 1991, as the one-party state in Albania was disintegrating, the
Chameria National Political Association (Chameria Shoqeria Politike Atdhetare,
CSPA) was founded as a political lobby to "express and defend" the interests of the
people of Chameria. Since then the CSPA has overseen the establishment of Cham
cultural events and the Cham newspaper Vatra Amtare Chameria (The Motherland
of Chameria), as well as issuing a series of demands for the return of Cham
property and financial compensation. The then Greek foreign minister, Karolas
Papoulias, said in the summer of 1991 that these demands should be settled by a
bilateral commission. The chances of forming one, however, are non-existent
because under current Greek law there is no legal means of challenging requisition
(or expropriation) of land by the Greek state. In the meantime, the issue has been
taken by the Tirana government to the World Court of Justice, in an effort to secure
financial compensation for lost Cham property. There has been little progress to
date. According to the official Greek stand, the Muslim Chams will not be allowed
to return to Greece "because they have collaborated with the Italian-German
invaders during the Second World War, and as such they are war criminals and are
punished according to Greek laws".23
In post-communist Albania, the Democratic and other right-wing political parties
have been far more supportive of the Chams than have either the Socialist Party,
which has always been indirectly supported by Greece or middle ground parties
such as the Democratic Alliance and Social Democrats. The Democratic Party (DP),
which came to power in March 1992 (until 1997), gave much vocal support for
"those Albanians whose voices were silenced under the (communist) dictatorship".
Indeed, under the DP government in June 1994 a new law was passed, which
proclaimed 27 June as "The Day of Greek Chauvinist Genocide Against the
Albanians of Chameria" and set up a memorial to the Chams in the southern village
of Konispol.24
Every time a Greek minister makes an official visit to Tirana, the Chams are out in
protest. In August 1999, the CSPA - by now more commonly known as the
Chameria Political Association (CPA) - in Tirana delivered a petition to the Albanian
government and international organisations in the Albanian capital, during the visit
to Albania of the Greek Prime Minister, Kostas Simitis. The document read: "We
protest energetically against the stand of the Greek government to the Cham
problem; to the denial of our legitimate right to return to our native land after the
expulsion from Chameria at the end of the Second World War, and to the denial of
our property right. We therefore demand:
1. That the Albanian government requests the Greek government to allow the
return of the Cham population to their native land;
2. The return of their legal and legitimate properties, which have been stolen and
are being exploited arbitrarily by the Greek state;
3. The compensation of the income derived from the 55-year exploitation of our
properties;
4. Recognition and respect of the human rights sanctioned by international acts,
rights which have been violated by the Greek state in our case;
5. That the Albanian state intervene more actively in international organisations to
make the Cham problem better known, and to use their authority to provide a
solution to this problem."
The petition ended rather ominously with the phrase: "We are convinced that unless
the Cham problem is solved, there will not be friendly and quiet relations between
Albania and Greece, nor peace in the Balkans."25
In November 1999, the CPA organised a fringe meeting entitled `The Cham Issue -
In Search of a Solution' during the unrelated OSCE summit in Istanbul. Foreign
delegations attending the OSCE conference were invited to attend the meeting
where the Chairman of the CPA, Hilmi Saqe, gave a lengthy speech. He spoke
about the main historical developments in Chameria, and especially about the
atrocities committed during the 1944-45 Greek offensive. Saqe unfortunately
equated the deaths of around 5,000 Chams with those of 6 million Jews during the
World War II. He claimed that "these massacres were almost at the same level as
those of the Holocaust on the Hebrews".26 Such exaggeration does the Cham cause
an injustice by raising scepticism amongst outside observers as to the true nature
and extent of the human rights abuses committed against the Chams. Saqe's
speech included yet another list of demands:
1. The implementation of basic human rights on the part of the Greek state;
2. The recognition of Cam assets restitution and any other rights which derive from
it. These assets have been forcefully captured by the Greek state.
3. Recognition of the right of the Cham population to return to its autochthonous
lands;
4. Recognition and protection of the Cham problem from the international
community.
5. The same rights that the Greek minority in Albania enjoys.
This last request was aimed specifically at cultural issues, such as the right to
attend primary, secondary and higher education in Albanian language classes.
Hilmi Saqe ended his speech on an angry note: "In today's world it is difficult to
believe that the Greek government, which has signed and ratified international
conventions and agreements, could be so hostile towards the Cham people. If one
of us has managed to get a Greek visa at the Greek embassy in Tirana, their
passports are torn at any border point with Greece upon entering Greek territory.
We have appealed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tirana to discuss the matter
with their Greek counterparts in order to allow members of our Association, who
were born in Chameria, to visit their houses. But the Greek authorities do not
allow any Cham people to set foot in Greece."27 Anyone who has witnessed the
undignified process outside the Greek embassy in Tirana or the consulate in
Gjirokaster, whereby daily hundreds of Albanians desperately queue for Greek
visas, will verify the difficulty of obtaining a much-valued Greek visa.
The current Socialist-led government in Tirana has done little to address the
Chams' demands since coming to power in 1997. If anything it has evaded
questions on an issue which causes embarrassment to a government that is closely
aligned with Greece - Albania's second most important trading partner. The Cham
issue did, however, arise during a visit to Athens of Albanian Premier Ilir Meta at
the end of 1999, though it was not on the agenda of talks with his Greek
counterpart Costas Simitis. Simitis said that the Greek government considered the
Cham issue as a closed chapter. The Greek Premier's statement prompted a reply
from Meta for home consumption to Albanian journalists covering his visit. He said
that Albania expected the Greek government to solve the issue of Cham properties
according to the European conventions by which Greece abides.28 Perhaps the only
Albanian politician to speak out publicly for the Chams is Sabri Godo, a right-wing
republican, who has always pressed Greece to tackle the Cham issue. Godo
believes that "Greece needs firstly to lift the state of war law against Albania, which
would create the basis for discussion,"29 and that the issue could be solved
"diplomatically with meetings of the personalities of the two countries".30
In January 2000, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Sali Berisha, on a
tour of southern Albania demanded more rights for the Cham minority in Greece,
saying relations between Albania and Greece might suffer if mutual problems were
not solved. Berisha demanded more cultural rights for Albanians living in Greece,
such as the opening of an Albanian-language school in the northern Greek town of
Filiates, and a solution to the property issue of the Cham population.31 On 27 June
2000 a ceremony took place in Tirana where local officials renamed a street
"Chameria", which had been settled by Cham refugees in 1945. The street's first
informal name was the Bazaar of the Chams. The Communists renamed it after a
nearby school. The Albania-Greek Commission, which was set up in 1999 to
discuss the Cham property and assets issue, has not yet functioned. A troubling
issue is the law approved by the Greek parliament (No 2664, dated 3 December
1998) on the registration of assets, which jeopardises the Cham issue and
endangers their case. The deadline to register property was just one year. After the
end of 1999 there was no more legal right to claim property. Those who missed the
opportunity to register have now to go through a lengthy and costly court
procedure.
Every year on the anniversary of the June 1944 massacres at Paramithia, the Cham
Association organises a demonstration or rally in Tirana, which usually attracts
more media attention than actual physical support. On average between 500-900
people attend, which given a Cham population in Albania of around 200,000, is not
a strong show of support. Nevertheless, the demonstrations are highly vocal and
well publicised. On 27 June 2001, to commemorate the 57th anniversary of the
expulsion of Muslim Albanians from Greece, a group of around 500 Cham
demonstrators marched through Tirana to the Greek embassy, calling on Athens to
restore their confiscated properties in northern Greece, and to allow them to return
to their homes. At a press briefing following the demonstration, a Greek foreign
ministry spokesman said irritably: "There is no Cham issue, and certain quarters
wished to contribute to the destabilisation of the region by raising such nonexistent
issues. Such matters have been dealt with by history."32
Today one can see numerous ruined Cham settlements scattered throughout north
western Greece, especially in the region between Paramithia and Filiates. An
estimated 40,000 Christian Orthodox Albanians still live in the Threspotia region.
Although the majority are of original Cham decent, a significant minority migrated
to the region after the collapse of communism in Albania in 1991. The process of
assimilation is only gradual and as yet does not threaten their Albanian identity.
Although their children go to Greek schools and Greek is spoken everywhere
outside the home, inside the houses Albanian is spoken by all familiy members,
and events in Albania are keenly followed. One traveller in the late 1970s noted
that: "There are still many Greek Orthodox villagers in Threspotia who speak
Albanian among themselves. They are scattered north from Paramithia to the
Kalamas River and beyond, and westward to the Margariti Plain. Some of the older
people can only speak Albanian, nor is the language dying out. As more and more
couples in early married life travel away to Athens or Germany for work, their
children remain at home and are brought up by their Albania-speaking
grandparents".33 Meanwhile, in Albania itself, the Muslim Cham villages around
the area of Konispol are noticeably impoverished in comparison with other non-
Cham villages in that part of southern Albania. Those Chams who settled in urban
areas of Albania appear to have fared far better economically.
There is a long-term political aspect to the current situation in Threspotia, because
the demographic balance is gradually changing in the region. Albanians are quietly
re-establishing themselves in long-abandoned property, which has been handed
down from generation to generation. This is happening despite the region being
effectively under a form of military occupation. The former Cham capital Filiates is
now a major military garrison town, and all along the Albanian border are off-limits
army controlled zones. Many in the Greek foreign office believe that the local police
are in the pay of the Albanians, and thus turn a blind eye to the Cham returnees.
This seems highly probable given the amount of illegal activity in and around the
Greek-Albanian border, and in the port area of the town of Igoumenitsa, where
Greeks and Albanians openly operate in the smuggling of illegal immigrants to Italy.
Regional Response to the Cham Issue
The Chams are not the only group interested in keeping their cause in the public
eye. A number of other regional elements, most notably nationalist groups from
Serbia, FYROM, Greece and Turkey, also have a vested interest in making sure the
world is alerted to the issue. The first three are at pains to broadcast all reports
relating to the existence of a "Cham Liberation Army", thereby exposing the "real
threat to regional security of pan-Albanian expansionism". Turkey, meanwhile, is
finding the Cham dispute a useful tool with which to draw international attention to
the plight of the Turkish minority in Greece.
During the conflict in FYROM in 2001, some Serbian, Slav Macedonian and Greek
media reports told of a new "Liberation Army of Chameria". These alarmist
accounts warned of a logical continuation of a pan-Albanian initiative to create a
"Liberation Army" in all the "occupied territories" with the eventual aim of creating a
Greater Albania. At the height of the fighting in FYROM, a report over the internet
by a news agency in FYROM published comments ostensibly made by a spokesman
from the NLA to Australian radio. The NLA's political representative, Ali Ahmeti,
apparently spoke of the existence of a Chameria Liberation Army in north western
Greece, which is ready to "defend" the rights of Albanians living in that region.34
Ahmeti later denied he had made such statements, in an interview with the BBC.
Another Serbian agency reported the same statement "by a representative of the
Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA), Ali Ahmeti", which said "the Albanian
Liberation Army of Chameria will soon be ready for action as the legitimate
representative of Albanians in defence of their rights".35
Although such reports in the Greek media are dismissed by Greek government
officials, this is purely because acknowledging the existence of any Cham military
organisation would mean also having to address the cause of why such a
"Liberation Army" exists at all. The claims highlight what appears to be a growing
agitation movement over the internet, where Albanian groups appear to have
launched an "information campaign" to put pressure on Greece over an issue that
Greece says does not exist. The Greek authorities reacted angrily to the supposed
statement by Ahmeti. "The sick imagination of certain terrorist elements, who
attempt to present non-existent issues, seems to have no bounds," said Greek
Foreign Ministry spokesman Panayotis Beglitis.36
The contemporary Greek press has also published accounts about the clandestine
activities of a "Chameria Liberation Front". The first of these appeared almost a
year before Ahmeti's supposed statement, when a report by the newspaper Tipos tis
Kiriakis (9 July 2000) claimed that a new Liberation Army of Chameria (UCC -
Ushtria Clirimtare Chameria) had been formed in Albania, and had already finished
two large manoeuvres. The article described the UCC as an offshoot of the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA), and a logical extension of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla
groups that had sprung up in southern Serbia - the Liberation Army of Preshevo,
Medveje and Bujanovac (UCPMB) and the National Liberation Army (NLA) in
FYROM. The article claimed that the UCC's plans for Greece were decided in
November 1999, at a conference held in the Gjakova district of southern Kosovo, at
which it was decided to set up the first brigade of the 'Chameria Liberation Army'.
The operational base of the brigade will be in Janina, which will also be the hub of
the liberated region.37
The article highlights quite specific details of the activities of the UCC. Apparently
on 26 February 2000, the first armed group participated in manoeuvres called
'Freedom and Unity' (Clirim dhe Bahskim) held in a remote area of northern
Albania, ten kilometres north of Bajram Curri. Weapons used for these exercises, it
is claimed, came from an Albanian army depot, while others were new, especially
anti-tank missiles purchased from Hungary. An estimated 40-60 fighters formed
the nucleus of the first 'Chameria Brigade', which was controlled by a Commander
Remi.38 Such specific and confidently announced details are difficult to
substantiate. One allegation, however, does appear plausible. The article states:
"Most of the organisers behind the UCC belong to the right-wing, formerly fascist
Albanian organisations, that co-operated with various NATO services to oppose
Enver Hoxha's communist dictatorship in Albania."39 This would place the
embryonic UCC within the umbrella organisation now known as the All Albanian
National Army (AKSh), which is a loosely-knit group of right-wing nationalist
activists in opposition to the Socialist-led government in Tirana and to the
Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) in Pristina.40
Given the current military and political situation in the southern Balkans, the
scenario proposed by this article appears fairly improbable. At present and for the
foreseeable future, NATO is firmly entrenched in Kosovo, and with a significant
presence in Albania and FYROM. This factor, in conjunction with Greece being a
member of NATO, means it would be extremely difficult for such a small group of
Albanians, who lack the local support base provided for other ethnic Albanian
insurgent groups in the Preshevo Valley and FYROM, to launch a military-style
campaign in northern Greece. At the time, however, back in November 1999, when
the Tipos tis Kiriakis article claims the first UCC brigade was set up, Kosovo was in
a very volatile situation. Just four months after the end of the conflict with Serbia,
the Kosovars were euphoric with the scale of their victory. This mood was highly
infectious. Other Albanian elements with unresolved national demands were
confident that the international community would be receptive to their plight,
following the shocking revelations about the treatment meted out to the Kosovo
Albanians by the Serb security forces in the spring of 1999. It was against this
background that the Chams, along with Albanians in the Preshevo Valley and
FYROM, began to discuss moves in which to publicise their long-held grievances.
Publicly therefore, the Greek government has played down such media reports
saying that the UCC does not exist, but privately there is concern. The AKSh is
now active in FYROM and numerous arms caches are known to be hidden in
locations just over the Greek border in Albania. The Greek authorities are believed
to have an informal list of banned Cham activists, who are refused entry into
Greece. However, it is not just political and military issues surrounding the Cham
dispute which are causing tensions. Socio-economic issues also play a part in
exacerbating the debate. In southern Albania, particularly in the border districts
with Greece, there has developed considerable tension over the legitimacy of
property ownership since the collapse of communism. This has placed the Chams
in a difficult position since they represent non-traditional inhabitants. The growing
number of disputes over land ownership has led many Chams to seek ways in
which to recover their pre-war property assets in northern Greece. The pre-war
Cham population was split into two distinct socio-economic groups: the first
comprised wealthy, predominantly urban Beys, who owned vast tracts of land,
whilst the second group were mainly poor, rural peasants, who grazed livestock in
the more hilly regions, or worked on the Beys' estates.
The Greek authorities are less concerned about the latter group, as their claims are
void because they owned no land and their grazing rights were based upon old
Ottoman laws, which have no meaning under contemporary Greek law. However,
there is real concern that the Beys do have substantial land claims. It is difficult to
assess the exact differentiation between the descendants of the landed or landless
Chams in contemparary Albania. Although many Beys and their older sons were
liquidated when they went up to join the nationalist organisation Balli Kombetar in
1942-1943 to fight the communists, many other relatives survived in their
traditionally large families. These people remained landless and without power
during the 47 years of communist rule in Albania. Since the collapse of the oneparty
state in 1991, they have joined forces with representatives of landless Chams
to fight to regain not only their land, but also their privileged social status as
wealthy property owners.
Another regional player that is more than ready to exploit the Cham issue is
Turkey. Turkey wants to pressure Greece on the minority issue to gain formal
recognition of the Muslim minority in eastern Thrace as Turkish. Turkey also
wishes to highlight the overall Greek failure to provide educational, religious and
cultural rights for all minorities in Greece to comply with EU standards. Greece
refuses to acknowledge virtually any ethnic minority in the country unless forced
to, as in the case of the Florina Slavs in 1997.
Tirana's taboo subject was publicised recently by Turkey's Foreign Ministry in a
statement which called the "Cham tragedy one of the most painful tragedies of the
European continent".41 It went on to criticise the Greek authorities "for sticking to
the concept of absolute denial over the existence of ethnic groups on Greek territory
… and as history has recorded, Greece has committed genocide against Albanians
of the Muslim faith".42 The Turkish authorities have urged the Greek government to
participate in an international conference on the Cham dispute at which the
Albanian government would also be present. Athens was also asked to
acknowledge the Albanian nationality of Albanian-speaking Orthodox Christians in
the same area, to compensate the displaced Chams for the property they have lost,
to provide an Albanian Orthodox Church for Albanian Christians, to repatriate the
Cham minority and to provide them with Greek citizenship.
It is important here to mention an aspect of this debate, which goes to the very core
of the problem. In their historiography the Greeks avoid the use of the term
Albanian when referring to Albanian-speaking people residing in Greece. Instead
they use the term 'Arvanites', which denotes an Albanian-speaking Christian. This
is an ideological construct designed to reinforce Greek national self-definition as a
purely Christian state. In other words, the Cham Muslims were never 'real Greeks',
unlike their Christian brothers, and as such have no claim to Greek citizenship.
The State of War
One significant factor that directly affects the ability of the Chams to effectively
challenge the Greek government is that technically a state of war may still exist
between Greece and Albania. The law in question, adopted in 1940 when Greece
was invaded by Italian troops through Albania, was repealed by the Greek
government in 1987 but was never ratified by Greece's parliament. Albanian
officials maintain that the law prevents Albanians from claiming property they
owned in Greece prior to the Second World War. Greek officials, however, counter
that the state of war cannot be said to exist because it was lifted automatically in
accordance with international law in 1987.43
Albania's President Rexhep Meidani has called on Greece to cancel the law. "It is
unacceptable that the law of the state of war is still valid. It hinders investments,
exchanges between the two countries and integration processes," Meidani told
Greek Defence Minister Akis Tsohatopoulos during the latter's visit to Tirana in
July 2000.44 Two months later the President again raised the matter to an
international audience. In his speech to the United Nation's General Assembly's
Millennium Summit in September 2000, Meidani obliquely criticised Greece for
maintaining a legal state of war with Albania. "We must ask ourselves," he said,
"can we arrive at an acceptable definition of good governance while members of the
United Nations maintain a de jure declaration of war with other members?
Certainly not."45 The Albanian authorities want the matter officially and legally
closed. Why, they ask, was this issue never settled during Greece's negotiations to
join the European Union?46 This is clearly a matter that needs to be clarified in the
interests of Albanian-Greek relations.
Conclusion
The expulsion of the Muslim Chams from Greece during the period 1912-1945 can
be seen as merely a continuation of the bitter inter-ethnic feuding that
characterised the southern Balkans from the time of the Balkan Wars through to
the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949. This period witnessed the settling of old
scores against those minorities unfortunate enough to find themselves on the wrong
side of their own ethnic borders. In the case of the Chams, their particular
situation is very much a product of Greece's entire historical perception of her
northern border. Greece has never really had a concept of a fixed northern border,
where prior to the settlement of Greeks from Asia Minor in 1922, very few Greeks
had ever lived.47 After the Greek Civil War, right-wing Greeks from areas like the
Piraeus port district of Athens were settled in towns and villages in the Cham and
Slav minority areas, in order to reinforce the "loyal" Greek element in the region,
and to inform Athens of the activities of the local non-Greek inhabitants. This is
still very much the case today. The idea of Greek expansion northwards, which was
embodied in the 19th century national programme known as the Megali Idea,48 has
never really been abandoned by the Greek Church or nationalist elements within
the Greek establishment. This, combined with the state of war law, causes Albania
still to regard Greece as a security threat.
There are indeed militant ethnic Albanian groups dedicated to changing borders in
south eastern Europe to create an "Ethnic Albania".49 Others wish to see a "Greater
Kosovo".50 But these groups represent a minute percentage of the Albanian
population of the Balkans as a whole, with an equally tiny support base amongst
the radical fringe of the diaspora. The Cham population in Albania is far less
radical than is believed in Athens. Those families who have relatively prospered
tend to be far more philosophical about the entire Cham question. Even those who
believe they have land claims in Threspotia are prepared to wait until Albania
becomes a full member of the European Union, when they believe they will
"automatically" be able to cross freely into Greece and either reoccupy their former
homes or negotiate compensation from the Greek authorities through normal legal
channels.51 Poorer Chams, on the other hand, tend to be angrier and less patient.
These are more likely to join the Cham Association and to demonstrate on the
streets. Yet even these people draw the line at violence, believing instead in the
power of "European institutions" to give them justice. "We don't want or need an
intifada," said one Tirana Cham activist. "We are Europeans and we have European
institutions, such as the international courts in which to present our case."52
Although the Albanian government has officially avoided addressing the Cham
issue, prominent Albanian individuals such as President Meidani and Sabri Godo
have raised the subject publicly on a number of occasions. Currently, a number of
Albanian parliamentarians are meeting members of the Cham community to
discuss mounting a legal suit against Greece. This is something the Greek
authorities could avoid by agreeing a financial compensation settlement with the
Chams before the matter reaches the international courts. If a legal suit is
eventually mounted against Greece, it could prove prohibitively expensive for the
Greek exchequer because it would open a floodgate of claims from people, other
than Chams, who also lost their property in the aftermath of the Second World War.
These include supporters of the Greek left and members of the Slav minority, who
were strongly represented amongst the left-wing forces that lost in the Greek Civil
War. Many Slavs, like the Chams, were forced to flee from Greece in 1949, either to
Yugoslavia or to Australia. A few even went into political exile in Albania.
As long as it remains unresolved, the Cham issue is prone to exploitation by
elements wanting to discredit Albanians in general, regardless of where they live
and their political and national stance. Nationalist elements in Serbia, FYROM and
Greece have spared no effort to "inform" the international community of the
existence of a "Cham Liberation Army", which is poised to attack Greece in pursuit
of a "Greater Albania". This negative outlook on behalf of small but vociferous
groups amongst the neighbours of Albanians is highly detrimental to the
development of regional security and peaceful co-operation in the southern
Balkans. Turkey is also able to manipulate the Cham issue by attacking Greek
policy over its own ethnic minority issues in Greece, thereby undermining the Greek
case over Cyprus.
In many respects, the Cham issue is the most easily resolved of the many unsettled
questions regarding Albanians in the Balkans. If the issue was handled sensitively,
it could benefit both Albanians and Greeks. Given that the Chams do not believe
they will ever be allowed to resettle in Greece, they are concentrating their efforts on
gaining financial compensation. Yet, if families were able to return to their old
properties, the economy of the Threspotia region would improve remarkably. Over
the past thirty years, the north west of Greece has become seriously depopulated as
people move out of the villages to the larger towns and cities. Vast swathes of once
heavily grazed hillsides have reverted to dense forest, much as they were in
Ottoman times.53 Albanians would probably be only too willing to graze the land
once more with flocks of sheep, and thus provide the Greek yoghurt industry with
the raw material it so badly needs. Although the Greek government has sometimes
expressed some sort of readiness to discuss issues relating to property and asset
compensation, it categorically does not recognise the right of the Chams to Greek
citizenship, which is referred to as "historical". Many Chams, however, desire
Greek citizenship above all else. This would release them from the humiliation of
going through the degrading visa application process in Tirana, and provide an
opportunity to escape the dire poverty and unemployment in Albania. Despite their
general assimilation, the Chams have never really felt welcome in Albania. In fact,
many non-Cham Albanians, especially in Tirana, use the term 'Cham' in a
derogatory sense to denote an untrustworthy person.
This matter needs to be addressed before the year 2004, which will see the Olympic
games held in Athens, and which will also mark the 60th anniversary of the
massacres at Paramithia in 1944. There are plans to commemorate this event with
large-scale demonstrations and perhaps the further recruitment of a minority Cham
activists into military-style groups. There is the risk of a greater radicalisation of
Albanians in general as they become more aware about the Cham issue and the
"historical injustices" suffered by their nation at the hand of their neighbours.
During recent years, a new breed of young historians are bringing the matter to the
attention of a new generation of Albanians. The new pan-Albanian school textbooks
now include whole passages on the history of the Chams.54 In the interests of
Albanian-Greek relations, the state of war should be officially nullified by the Greek
government. Otherwise Albania will continue to see Greece as a security threat.
What is needed is to get EU standards on this and other minority issues actually
enshrined in Greek law and properly enforced. Despite the Greek authorities
declaring that there is no Cham issue, the "issue" itself remains a very tangible
evidence of how far minority issues in the Balkans have yet to progress in order to
comply with even the most rudimentary minority policies within the European
Union. The matter reflects badly upon Greece, which despite a veneer of EU
respectability, remains very much a Balkan country still deeply entrenched in the
mind-set of Ottoman times, when a "nation" was deemed as such by its religious
affiliation rather than by the main determinants of ethnicity such as language and
culture.
ENDNOTES
1 Frosina Information Network, Error!. Other
websites which deal with Cham issues are: http://www.albanian.com/main/other/cameria,
and Alba & Bel [Indeksi i Përgjithshëm / Generale Index / General Index].
2 Miranda Vickers & James Pettifer, Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity, C
Hurst & Co, 1997, pxii.
3 For detailed historical and documentary accounts of the Chams and Chameria see:
Albert Kotini, Tre Guret e zes ne Preveza, Fllad, Tirana, 2000; Albert Kotini, Chameria
Denoncon, Fllad, Tirana, 1999; Fatos Mero Rrapaj, Fjalori Onomastik I Epirit, Eurolindja,
Tirana, 1995; Drejtoria e Pergjithshme e Arkivave - Documente per Chemerine, 1912-1939.
Dituria, Tirana, 1999.
4 Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Panayiotis Beglitis, Kathimerini (Athens), 2-3
June 2001.
5 INET (Belgrade), 30 May 2001, 11:15.
6 The term Tosk refers to Albanians who live south of the Shkumbi River. They speak
a different dialect, and have different cultural traditions, from the Gheg Albanians who live
north of the Shkumbi.
7 Odysseus, Turkey in Europe, London, 1900, p401.
8 Jelavic, Charles and Barbara, The Establishment of the Balkan National States 1804-
1920, Washington, 1970, p77.
9 A similar pattern was emerging in the Kosovo region of southern Serbia, whereby
Albanians were being encouraged to leave their lands for Turkey, and Serb and Montenegrin
colonists were brought in to settle on the vacated Albanian land.
10 Michalopoulos, D, 'The Moslems of Chamouria and the Exchange of Populations
Between Greece and Turkey', Balkan Studies, Vol 27, No 2, 1986, pp305-6.
11 Michalopolous, pp306-7.
12 Michalopolous, p310.
13 For a list of the most important changes in place names from Albanian into Greek,
see James Pettifer, The Blue Guide to Albania and Kosovo, third edition, London, 2000, p57.
14 James Pettifer, The Blue Guide to Albania and Kosovo, third edition, London, 2000,
p439.
15 British Foreign Office PRO/FO No.371/48094/544/R8 564.
16 Eyewitness accounts of the attacks on the Cham districts of Paramithia, Parga and
Spatar, Memorandum of the Anti-Fascist Committee of Cham Emigrants in Albania, Tirana,
1947, p4, hereafter 'Memorandum'. It should also be noted that most of the influential
books in English on the region have been written from the viewpoint of the Greek Royalist
Right, from Henry Baerlein's 'Under the Acroceraunian Mountains', Rene Puaux's 'Sorrow of
Epirus' and Pyrrus Ruches' 'Albania's Captives', to modern polemical works such as 'Eleni'
by Nicholas Gage. For a pro-Cham viewpoint, see 'British Imperialism and Ethnic
Cleansing' by N Zanga, Tirana, 1997.
17 Memorandum, p6.
18 Documents of the US Department of State, No. 84/3, Tirana Mission, 1945-1946, 6-
646.
19 Vlachs are semi-nomadic pastoralists who speak a language akin to Romanian and
live in south-east Albania, north-west Greece and southern FYROM.
20 For useful information on the tensions between Albania and Greece over the
Chameria/Epirus dispute, see: Border and Territorial Disputes, 3rd edition, Albania-Greece
(Northern Epirus), Longman, Harlow, 1992.
21 Memorandum, p8.
22 Memorandum, p9.
23 Statement of Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis on the occasion of his visit to
Tirana, May 1992.
24 Republic of Albania - Law No: 7839, passed in Tirana, 30 June 1994. The Cham
monument was erected in Konispol in 1995.
25 Petition to the Albanian government and international organisations, the Chameria
Political Association, Tirana, 24 August 1999.
26 Speech by Hilmi Saqe, OSCE Istanbul Summit, fringe meeting, 18 November 1999.
27 Ibid.
28 Albania Daily News, 1226, 18 January 2000.
29 Godo was referring to the law that Greece imposed on Albania in 1940, which was de
facto lifted in 1987, but which still has to go through a final parliamentary approval.
30 Albania Daily News, 1571, 29 May 2001.
31 Albania Daily News, 1226, 18 January 2000.
32 Albania Daily News, Tirana, 1 July 2001.
33 Arthur Foss, Epirus, London, 1978, p173.
34 Kathimerini, 2-3 June 2001.
35 INET (Belgrade), 30 May 2001, 11:15.
36 Albania Daily News, 31 May 2001.
37 Albanian Nationalist Army Seen Claiming Greek Territories, Tipos tis Kiriakis, 9 July
2000.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 During the late 1940s, the British and Americans devised a complicated and risky
plot to overthrow Hoxha's regime. The plan was to equip and train an anti-Communist force
recruited from hundreds of right-wing Zogist and Ballist refugees who had fled from Albania
after the war. For a fuller account of these events see Miranda Vickers, The Albanians, a
Modern History, London: 1999, Chapter eight, & Nicholas Bethel, The Great Betrayal
(London: 1984).
41 The Republic Of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupa/ac/ack/03.htm, 6 June 2001.
42 The Republic Of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupa/ac/ack/03.htm, 6 June 2001.
43 Interview with Greek officials, Tirana, March 2001.
44 Reuters, Tirana, 1 August 2000.
45 RFE/RL, 9 November 2000.
46 Interview with Albanian officials, Tirana, April 2001.
47 In Ottoman times what is now northern Greece was largely inhabited by Turks,
Albanians, Slavs, Vlachs and Roma.
48 The Megali Idea was a plan of expansion which would include all Greeks within a
single Greek state, as well as entailing the revival of the Byantine Empire. The lands to be
adjoined to this empire included Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, the Agean islands,
Crete, Cyprus, the west coast of Asia Minor, and the territory between the Balkan and
Rhodope Mountains.
49 Extreme nationalist Albanian rhetoric for a Greater Albania.
50 The union of Kosovo with western FYROM.
51 Interview with Cham families in Vlore and Tirana, May 2001.
52 Interview with members of the Cham association, Tirana, September 2001.
53 In marked contrast to to the decline in the human habitation of Epirus, the wolf
population has increased over the past three decades and is now on a par with wolf
numbers in Ottoman times.
54 An example of the new presentation of the Cham issue can be found in the book 'The
Political Philosophy of the Albanian Question', Pristina, 1997, by the young Kosovo Albanian
historian Ushkim Hoti.
Appendix
Cham population settlement in the Republic of Albania according to the 1991
registration of Chams by the Chameria Political Association.
Place Persons
Shkoder 1,150
Kruje-Lac-Fushekruje 720
Lezhe 35
Tirana (District) 29,700
Durres-Shijak-Sukth 35,000
Kavaje-Golem-Gose-Rrogozhine 10,500
Peqin 1,400
Elbasan-Cerrik 12,650
Lushnje-Zhame-Dushk 8,300
Berat-Kucove 6,900
Fier-Patos-Rreth 39,800
Vlore (District) 42,300
Sarande (District) 12,100
Delvine (District) 2,900
Total 204,255

Published By:
The Conflict Studies Research
Centre
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Camberley Telephone : (44) 1276 412346
Surrey Or 412375
GU15 4PQ Fax : (44) 1276 686880
England E-mail: csrc@gtnet.gov.uk
http://www.csrc.ac.uk

 

[Jehona_e_Rahovecit]

Im Jahr 1991 fand in Albanien eine Volkszählung bei der die Zahl der Camen in Albanien registriert worden ist und dies kam dabei heraus:

Shkoder 1,150
Kruje-Lac-Fushekruje 720
Lezhe 35
Tirana (District) 29,700
Durres-Shijak-Sukth 35,000
Kavaje-Golem-Gose-Rrogozhine 10,500
Peqin 1,400
Elbasan-Cerrik 12,650
Lushnje-Zhame-Dushk 8,300
Berat-Kucove 6,900
Fier-Patos-Rreth 39,800
Vlore (District) 42,300
Sarande (District) 12,100
Delvine (District) 2,900
Total 204,255

Aus dieser Volkszählung geht hervor dass die Camen 204,255 Menschen in Albanien ausmachen und über das gesamte Land verteilt worden sind.
Ihr Hauptsiedlungsgebiet befindet sich nachwievor in Epirus(Südalbanien).Sie haben sich in diesem Gebiet angesiedelt in der Hoffnung in ihrer angestammten Heimat wieder zurückzukehren.
Leider verweigert ihnen unbegründet der griechische Staat die Rückkehr.

 

[BlackJack]

Du fängst an zu beleidigen weil du nicht weisst dir anders zu helfen.
Billiger gehts nimmer aber so kennt es man von den Nazis.
Nur weil dir dein Großvater etwas vorgegaukelt hat, heisst dies nicht dass es stimmen muss.

jetzt hör sich mal jemand diesen hetzerischen Idioten an, schreibt vorher

Jeder Grieche hier, der behauptet dass das griechische Verbrechen an den Camen kein Genozid war, kann mir ein blasen und dann das Maul halten. Aber zuvor sollten sie ihr Maul mit Desinfektionsmittel reinigen, damit sie meinen Sschwanz beschmutzen.

aber wirft dem anderen Beleidigung vor ... halt selektive Wahrnehmung

 

[Thrakian]

Dann kannst du ihn ja lesen und mir nachher erklären was darin so geschrieben steht.
Bist doch an dem Thema Cameria im 2.WK sehr interessiert oder?

Also keine komitees und aehnliches.

Die resoluzion will ich sehen.

 

[CrazyDardanian]

Hier ein Paradebeispiel für Unwissenheit aber trotzdem meinen mitreden zu können.

Auch dir rate ich dich über die Camen Organisation Këshilla die von den Dino Brüdern geleitet wurde zu infomieren.

auch wenn einnige albaner mit den nazis zusammengearbeitet haben rechtferitgt das noch lange nicht das man wahrlose die unschuldige camen bevölkerung angreifft du arschloch zeig mitgefühl es wurden 2700 nur in einer nacht getötet familien wurden von der heimat vertrieben es wurden gezielt nur camen getötet also war es ein genozid

 

[Thrakian]

Following the Italian invasion of Albania, the Albanian Kingdom became a protectorate of the Kingdom of Italy. The Italians, especially governor Francesco Jacomoni, used the Cham issue as a means to rally Albanian support. Although in the event, Albanian enthusiasm for the "liberation of Chameria" was muted, Jacomoni sent repeated over-optimistic reports to Rome on Albanian support. As the possibility of an Italian attack on Greece drew nearer, he began arming Albanian irregular bands to use against Greece.[9]
As the final excuse for the start of the Greco-Italian War, Jacomoni used the killing of a Cham Albanian leader Daut Hoxha, whose headless body was discovered near the village of Vrina in June 1940. It was alleged by the Italian-controlled government in Tirana that he had been murdered by Greek secret agents. Daut Hoxha was a notorious bandit killed in a fight over some sheep with two shepherds. According to some other specific works Hoxha was a military leader of the Cham struggle during the inter-war years, leading to him branded as a bandit by the Greek government.[10]
From June of that same year up to the eve of the war, due to the instigation of Albanian and Italian propaganda, many Chams had secretly crossed the borders in order to compose armed groups, which were to side with the Italians. Their numbers are estimated of about 2,000 to 3,000 men. Adding to them in the following months the Italians urgently started organizing several thousand local Albanians volunteers to participate on the "liberation of Chamuria" creating an army equivalent to a full division of 9 battalions (4 blackshirt battalions -Tirana, Korçë, Vlorë, Shkodër-, 2 infantry battalions -Gramos and Dajti-, 2 volunteer battalions -Tomori and Barabosi-, one battery corps -Drin-[11]). All of them eventually took part in the invasion to Greece at October 28, 1940 (see Greco-Italian War) under the XXV Italian Army Corps which after the incorporation of the Albanian units renamed to “Chamuria Army Corps” under General C. Rossi, although with poor performance [12].
The Greco-Italian War started with the Italian military forces launching an invasion of Greece from Albanian territory. The invasion force included several hundred native Albanian and Chams in blackshirt battalions attached to the Italian army. Their performance however was distinctly lackluster, as most Albanians, poorly motivated, either deserted or defected. Indeed, the Italian commanders, including Mussolini, would later use the Albanians as scapegoats for the Italian failure.[9]
These two Albanian battalions, namely, battalion Tomorri and Gramshi, were formed in the Italian army only three months before the invasion, and during the Greco-Italian War, the majority of them crossed to the Greek Army. The leader of these two battalions, Spiro Moisiu, would become the general in chief of the Albanian Anti-Fascist Army, and eventually a head of the Albanian Army after the war.[13]


wiki kann ich auch posten, schau mall

 

[Jehona_e_Rahovecit]

jetzt hör sich mal jemand diesen hetzerischen Idioten an, schreibt vorher

Idiot?
Du bist du einer der größten in diesem Forum.
Schreibst überall etwas und hast gar keine Ahnung was du da geschrieben hast.
Hast wohl nichts anderes zu tun.
Bist ziemlich arm, versuchst aber reciher zu werden in dem du auf fast jedem meiner Beiträge mit Idiot oder Hetzer antworten musst.
Verkriech in deine Ecke wenn du vom Thema keine Ahnung hast.

aber wirft dem anderen Beleidigung vor ... halt selektive Wahrnehmung

Auf die Beleidigung habe ich reagiert weil er sich auf alle Albaner bezog.
Hätte er nur mir geschrieben bzw. mich beleidigt wäre mir dies am Arsch vorbeigegangen.

 

[Thrakian]

Xhemil Dino - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Xhemil Bey Dino (born 1894, Madrid, Spain date of death 02.07.1972) was an Albanian diplomat.
He was a delegate from Albania to the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Assembly of the League of Nations (1925–1927).
He became ambassador of Albania to the United Kingdom in 1932
During the Italian occupation, he was the Foreign Minister of Albania in Shefqet Verlaci's government from April 12, 1939, until the Ministry was abolished and the foreign affairs were taken over by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 3, 1939. Dino was then given the rank of an ambassador in the Italian service.
When Greece was occupied by the Axis forces (1941-1944), Dino was appointed the High Commissioner of Thesprotia (Cameria) and actively collaborated with the Italian and German forces.