It was anything but a warm welcome. Hundreds of Chams Albanian had gathered outside the Foreign Ministry in Tirana to protest the visit of Greek Foreign minister Nikos Kotzias. Holding banners and chanting slogans “Chameria, our mother, wait for us,” and “get rid of the belligerent,” the protesters reportedly even tried to prevent Kotzias from entering the Foreign Ministry in order to meet his Albanian counterpart Dimitri Bushati.
Nikos Kotzias
Cham protesters
The protest was close to escalate, when police was ordered to remove them from outside the ministry. According to some media, Bushati came out and spoke with the leader of the Cham party PDIU who had organized the protest. Only the intervention of Bushati made the visit possible.
However, protesters moved just a couple of meters away and kept chanting anti-Greek slogans until the meeting of the two foreign ministers was over.
The Cham community is an Albanian speaking and Muslim minority, that was expelled from the region of Epirus in northwestern Greece during the WW II after Athens claimed they had collaborated with the Nazis who had occupied Greece.
“Following the Italian occupation of Albania in 1939, the Chams became a prominent propaganda tool for the Italians and irredentist elements among them became more vocal. As a result, on the eve of the Greco-Italian War, Greek authorities deported the adult male Cham population to internment camps. After the occupation of Greece, large parts of the Muslim Cham population collaborated with Italian and German forces. This fueled resentment among the local Greek population and in the aftermath of World War II the entire Muslim Cham population had to flee to Albania. Most Chams settled in Albania, while others formed émigré communities in Turkey and the United States, and today their descendants continue to live in these countries.
Since the fall of Communism in Albania, Chams have campaigned for right of return to Greece and restoration of confiscated properties.” (via wikipedia)
The Chams’ claims over their confiscated properties is one of the issues souring the bilateral relations and another important issue being the Greek claims of discrimination towards the Greek ethnic minority in Albania. According to recent reports, Albanian authorities have deliberately removed 123 property ownership titles from 123 Greek families in Drymades village and have demolished houses and shops claiming they were built without permission. The area in the east of Chimara is to be turned into an Albanian Riviera to attract tourists.
Another issue between Greece and Albania is the technical state of war still in place since then-fascist Italy attacked Greece through Albania in 1940.
Speaking at a congress organized by the Chams’ party PDIU on Saturday, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said that Albania did not believe Greece’s claim that the Cham community were Nazi collaborators” and said that Athens should scrap the war law against Albania.
“A war law with a country we have a friendship treaty?” Rama asked. “If it is useless, what does it cost to scrap it?!”
The next day, the Greek Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying “Albania must understand that its European course depends on faithful implementation” of European Union standards such as respecting court decisions, “particularly when these concern war crimes,” and protecting the rights of the ethnic Greek minority.
More on the Cham Albanians here.
The WP article is nothing other than Greek propaganda. There is quite a bit of scholarship on the Cham issue, which is even-handed in its attribution of blame for the bad situation. The Chams were a mix of Orthodox and Muslims, with many speaking Greek as well as their own dialect. They were badly treated by the Greek state in the 1920s – being deported to Turkey and called “Turks”; and in the1930s dictatorships — for refusing to drop their identity and become Greeks. This is also the time when the region was renamed from Chameria to Thesprotia, denying them a regional homeland. When the Italians came along in 1940 some (but not all) of the Cham sided with the Italians in revenge for their treatment by the Greeks.
Subsequently,in 1943/4, the Greek irregular forces EDES engaged in systematic torture, rape and murder of thousands of Cham children, women and men — crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Cham fled across the border into Albania. The Greek state has never investigated or accepted the well-documented facts concerning the horrors perpetrated against Cham. The vacated villages near the border with Albania were left empty for all the decades after 1944 — until Albanian immigrants came over in the 1990s and found entire streets and villages of empty houses. These are the houses that the Cham demand compensation for, or the right to live in.
no moderator at 2 am
Ah, the post did get through. It’s my computer, perhaps. Can you delete ll but my first post?
it’s the moderation issue. at 2 am moderator either sleeps or watches tv