Written by Musa Tartari. Translated by Petrit Latifi
When did Greek barbarism against the Cham population begin? How did Greek policy regard the Cham population? What was the reaction of the great powers when Greece expelled over 80 thousand Albanians from Albanian lands, sending some to Turkey, and scattering others across the islands of death, denying itself along with the Albanian name, which the Albanian Chams had resisted for four savage empires? The 1926 treaty between Albania and Greece did not lead to the protection of the rights and freedoms of the Cham population by Greece.
With the coming to power of the fascists in Greece in 1936, the Metaxas clique further worsened the position of the Chams. What was the excuse of the Greeks towards Albania regarding the fascist occupation? The massacre of the famous Greek general on Chams.
How did international organizations react to the continuous demand of the Committee for the Liberation of Chams for purges in Greece?
Greek chauvinism, which had as its ideology of devouring the megaloid ideology of the adventurer Yannis Katalisis, in the construction of a neighborhood policy would prove both disloyal and ungrateful towards the role of the Albanians from the south. Greek ingratitude would turn into hatred, the savagery of which would manifest itself from the victory of the revolution in 1821.
The Albanians, especially those Chams who were closer, put at the head of the war for the liberation of Greece from the Ottoman invaders, the immortal leaders Zguraj and Vranaj and Vranajat, Bukharaj and Pranajat, Bujatrodet, Alisa Peleteu and Mitesh, Manol Bloshi and Andriuzio, Andrea Verushi, and even Ali Pasha, but they would be called worthless, or they would be assimilated as Greek warriors.
Although this happened, the fact is that the Albanians of central Albania and the Albanians of Cham, increasingly inflamed the liberation war of Greece and Albanian heroism shone, where out of 100 heroes born of the Greek revolution, 90 were Albanians, who fought as friends of the Greek people, because they were oppressed by oppression and for the example of the freedom of a people they would soon become equal in the scales. But the Greeks, towards the Albanian heroism for the liberation of Greece, never showed friendship, gratitude.
By denying the blood of the Albanians, which was shed on Greek soil, chauvinism was preparing to devour the ethnic Albanian territories, where for countless centuries they had known their language, clothing, faith and pride.
Barbaric savagery, the most merciless of the Hellenes, would pour out on the helpless Albanian population of Chameria. Then in all territories inhabited by ethnic Albanians. From 1830-1838, the first victim was the Albanian population, who lived in the Ionian Islands, where Russia, England, France forced Turkey to cede all the Ionian Islands to Greece. Later, in 1863, in 1913, other lands inhabited by Albanians were seized, including Ambrakine, Kostur, Pindus, Konitsa, which is the second victim of the Albanians from the barbarism of Greek chauvinism.
Meanwhile, in 1913, the Greeks occupied all of Chameria and turned it into a fief of Andarta. Chameria is the third victim of Greek barbarism and, to some extent, more than half of the Megaloides plan was fulfilled. Greece, when it conquered Chameria and placed it within the borders set by the great, turned the Chams into slaves, without any rights. But chauvinism was still not at peace.
It called the Cham population a slow-exploding mine. Because Greece was not so afraid of the Cham population; almost 120 thousand, out of three million Albanian Arvanites, whom it had long denied rights, freedom, language, Albanian education and Albanian nationality. Medieval Greek Orthodox chauvinism had made plans for total ethnic cleansing. Not a single Muslim was to remain in Greece, expelling them to Turkey and Albania, while sending the rest to the Aegean islands. Those who remained would change both their religion and nationality.
From 1913-1922, when Albania, divided into five states, lacked a consolidated state, Greece continued to carry out ethnic cleansing of Albanians. The great powers remained silent when Greece expelled over 80,000 Albanians from Albanian lands, sending some to Turkey and scattering others on the islands of death, denying itself along with the Albanian name, which the Albanian Chams had resisted against four savage empires.
With the creation and consolidation of the Albanian state, which represented the territory that the great powers and chauvinists had ceded to Albania, that is, 28 thousand square kilometers out of a total of 96 thousand square kilometers, nevertheless, the Albanian population outside the borders did not find itself abandoned by our state. As early as 1926, the Albanian government issued a statement: “The process s of population exchange has ended. From now on, the Chams will have the rights that Greek citizens enjoy!”. This contradicted the policy of Greek chauvinist orthodoxy.
The Albania-Greece Treaty of 1926 did not lead to the protection of the rights and freedoms of the Cham population by Greece. In March 1928, the Albanian Foreign Ministry, through a memorandum addressed to the Greek chargé d’affaires in Tirana, factually expressed Tirana’s concern about the injustices and oppression inflicted on the Albanian population of Chameria by the Greek government authorities themselves, which did not grant them any rights as a national minority.
The Greek government not only rejected the Albanian protest, but also accused the Albanian government of interfering in internal affairs and that the Chams, according to the Greeks, were Greek citizens on Greek soil and that Albania was disregarding the sovereign rights of Greece.
With the coming of the fascists to power in Greece, in 1936, the Metaxas clique worsened the situation of the Chams even more. By order of Metaxas himself, the Cham area was colonized. Many large Cham properties were confiscated. The massacre of the Chams began with savagery and did not stop. The League of Nations, the “democratic” states knew about the oppression that was being done to the Chams in their homes, but no one was concerned.
The Chams were not collaborators.
The attack of fascist Italy on Greece was used as a pretext against the Albanians and they, the first victim of fascism, would be called “aggressors” against Greece?! Greek ferocity was not ignited against the aggressor himself, but against the Albanians, who were attacked. After this war, Greece would have both the stone and the walnut. It would establish the law of war and it would be said: “Greece was attacked by Albania and not by Italy”. This deceitful and unreasonable law would also impose another condition: “The law would stand for as long as the Cham issue was forgotten and the border of Northern Epirus was established at Shkumbi!”.
During the occupation of Albania by fascist Italy, an agreement was signed between the Albanian government (regency), the Germans and the Italians for the ethnic unification of Albania. This agreement was a contradiction in the diplomacy of the Germans and the Italians towards France and England, because “they had made the decision to dismember Albania” and to pull it behind Albania.
Regardless of the conditions and with whom the agreement was concluded, Italy and Germany were superpowers of the war and the dream of the Albanians was realized. The ethnic unification of the entire nation took place, from 1941-1944 the Albanian administration was created, in all Albanian lands in the Balkans. Albania did not receive any more fragmentation than the Chauvinists had received.
The Germans and the Italians, despite being opponents of the coalition, gave the Albanians what had been unjustly taken from them. The truth is that even after this, the Chams united with the government of Tirana (the Regency), which accepted ethnic unity and opposed the Italian occupation, but the Cham Albanians did not really believe in the Regency, in this unity.
The Chams were not collaborators in the service of the common enemy, the Nazi-fascist invaders, but the Greek chauvinist leaders were collaborators. There are historical facts for this, which cannot be hidden from the Greeks. The chauvinist Greeks, who accuse the Cham Albanians of being collaborators of the invaders, collaborators, do not stand. It is a low slander of the Greek collaborators themselves, who have documented their being such.
In May 1941, in occupied Greece, the first quisling government was created, headed by General Çollakogli. This general, after taking over the leadership of the occupying forces; immediately issued a circular calling on the demobilized crowds to go to the barracks, dress, arm themselves and stand alongside the German forces. These truths about the collaborationists were also written in the newspapers “Vima” and “Proia”.
After a year, in May 1942, in order to further strengthen the collaboration with the German occupier, a government was formed with Ralli as its chairman. This government reached an agreement with the Germans and immediately created the armed forces, consisting of three divisions, with a strength exceeding 30 thousand. These troops were commanded by the collaborationist generals: Bakos, Kocimitos, Llogothetopoulos, Raftis, Zerva, etc.
Meanwhile, these generals had reached an agreement to, together with the Germans, extinguish any spark for freedom and democracy. The ferocity of these generals was fueled by the ideas of the Chauvinist priests: Saint Cosmo, Kotoko, Evlogji, Kurilla, etc., and inspired by those who led Orthodoxy: Sarafim, Sebastiano, Janullatos, etc., a ferocity which would be unleashed upon the progressive democratic forces, represented by EAM, and upon the defenseless Cham Albanians.
With these facts, the accusations and slanders of Hellenic and other Andrian generals that the Chams were collaborators with the German invaders are dismissed.
The Greek general’s massacre of the Chams
This was the testament of the monstrous chauvinist towards the Albanians, the collaborationist general Japolan Zerves. On his deathbed, the furious anti-Albanian said: “I die peacefully because I did what I wanted. After I left streams of blood, smoke, soot, and ashes; the screams of children, naked brides and women, who were put into burning ovens, so that no more Albanians would be killed… men hanged, pierced with bayonets, the Albanian language will no longer be spoken on Greek soil. This pleases me, just as it pleases all Greek souls!”.
Zerva and the other generals were unleashed like beasts on the defenseless Cham Albanians. Both the collaborationist governments, and those that continued after the generals’ departure, and those ministers and generals, offspring of Chauvinist orthodoxy, had received orders to annihilate the Cham population of 30-35 thousand inhabitants.
Among the Allied representatives, Colonel Chris Woodhanse, head of the Allied military mission, declared: “With the encouragement of the Allied military mission, which I led, Zerva expelled the Chams from their homes!”
The savage Greek genocide began on June 27, 1944. Zerva’s soldiers destroyed everything they found in front of them… the population of Parathimia was caught by surprise and could not find any means of defense. Zerva’s barbarians entered the city at night and killed 673 men, women, and children, in Filat 1286, in Igoumenitsa 192, in Prague 620. The Zervas razed over 5,800 houses in 68 villages. Hundreds of other villages were devastated. The owners of livestock were robbed of 120,000 sheep, 24,000 one-hoofed animals, and 18,000 horses. 250,000 bushels of wheat, etc., were stolen from the barns of wealthy Cham villagers…
After the plunder and genocide, the Allied mission seemed to “feel sorry” for the tragedy of the Cham Albanians. And this “regret” was ignited when the Chams from the age of 15-70, who were left here and there, were captured by the Greeks and interned on the Aegean islands and massacred. When the head of the American mission in Albania, 1945-1946, saw these barbarities, he said: “In March 1945, units of Zervas’s scattered forces carried out a massacre against the Chams in the Filati area and practically cleansed it of the Cham Albanians!”
In addition to the expulsion from the homes of the former, it would shake the Cham culture to its foundations, denying history and the Muslim religious faith. And immediately the order was given to burn 102 mosques, 28 tekkes, thousands of tübs and waqfs. When they were sure that the last leg of the Chams had been expelled, the Hellenic barbarity would issue an absurd law.
According to this law, the Chams would never return and their properties would be divided among the settlers. While against the Chams remaining in Greece, both Orthodox and Muslim, the inhumane law of 1945 denied them their Albanian national identity. From being Albanians, they would turn into Greeks and “accept” the Hellenic nationality.
Greece definitely needed to change the demographic composition of the northwestern Cham regions, because it feared many Arvanites and many Chams who remained or had converted to Orthodoxy and “Greek” by force.
The arrival of Cham Albanians in Albania and the silence of the international community.
The Cham Albanians, who escaped Greek barbarity, most of them came to their homeland. The Albanians opened their homes to the victims of barbarity. The doors of the schools were also opened to the lost children. In order to recognize the great injustice, the Cham leaders and governments, including the Albanian one, denounced Greek barbarity and made it known to international organizations.
The injustice against the Chams was also raised at the Peace Conference in Paris, in 1946. But it was not possible to accept the great human crime: the Greek genocide against the Cham population. It turned out that many of the friendly states of Greece, which had forcibly seized 23 thousand square kilometers of Albania and given it to the Greeks, at first withdrew as if their hearts were breaking from the pain for the martyred Chams and, in order not to appear as open defenders of the injustices that the Greeks had committed.
They raised their hands and said in a low voice: “Let the expelled Chams return to their land!” But this was only demagogy. For the Chams to return to their former lands, for the plundered wealth to be returned, would mean indicting their friend for the barbaric crimes. To admit the savagery she had shown and to answer for the nearly 3,000 massacres, the damage caused, the incalculable kidnappings. But from the day after the conference, political demagogy was evident.
The big states that raised their hands forgot what they said, because they did not insist on implementing the decision they made and on rejecting the lies of the Greek collaborators who accused the Chams as such.
Although the Paris Conference failed and avoided the punishment of Greek injustice, the Chams did not throw down their arms, to find supporters and to internationalize the tragedy played out against them. They had not lost hope of returning to the thresholds of the former.
To intensify the internationalization of the Cham issue in the fall of 1944, the first Cham congress was organized in Konispol, which addressed representatives of the Allied missions, neutral states, and the Soviet Union to help the Albanian people of Chameria and to recognize the injustice done to them. Not long after this congress, a group of Chams went to Athens to oppose the collective genocide against the Albanians of Chameria and to find a language that would be based on reason.
However, the government that came to power under George Papandreou did not take any measures against the genocide, even though the Cham representatives told him to stop the Greek violence, recognize the rights of the Chams, and order all the exiles to return to their homes. It turned out that the terrorism was not organized by a crazy general, but was part of a chauvinist plan, led and directed by the Greek Orthodox Church.
Since this attempt also failed, the Chams in Albania did not stop their fight for freedom and rights, although the help of the communist government, which depended on the Slavs, was not so complete. A letter was sent to the Greek National Union, the Allied Command in the Mediterranean and the Central Committee of the FKC (EAM).
Neither the delegation that went to Athens nor the letters were taken into consideration. Even in the verbal meeting and in the letter of response, wisdom was not displayed, but arrogance, Greek humiliation.
The Cham Liberation Committee repeated the letters and resent them to the military missions of the UN, Great Britain, the USA, France, and the Yugoslav legation in Tirana. This committee, which was burdened with responsibility towards its fellow citizens, did not leave the conference of foreign ministers of the Allied powers in London in 1945, nor the UN General Assembly of October 25, 1946, in peace. In their requests, the Chams explained that they were the most persecuted population of the 20th century, even of the Second World War.
“We are seeing that even the United Nations is not listening to our voice, it is not listening to our requests.” And indeed, under the pressure of Orthodoxy, where the Greek Orthodoxy was great, it was not putting its power into motion, and forcing a state to stop the barbarism and accept to recognize the rights of the population it had persecuted.
Addressing the high international organizations again, the Chameria Committee emphasizes: “We protest and bring to the attention of the UN Commission of Inquiry, the tragedy played out in Chameria, as well as the activity of the chauvinists, which aims at the disappearance of the Albanian people of Chameria. We emphasize an urgent solution to the Cham problem, as can be accepted.
1. To stop the settlement of settlers in our indigenous lands.
2. To repatriate all Chams.
3. To return our lands, assessing the damage first.
4. To provide assistance to rebuild destroyed houses.
5. The protection and guarantee of the population that flows from international treaties.
6. To judge and punish all those responsible for the crime that they have committed against the Chams!”
Since the bigwigs in the UN did not want to spoil their comfort, they gave up the fight for the return of the Chams to their lands, consoling them with some aid. Thus, from 1945-1947, Albania received 26 million dollars in aid for the Chams. The aid was in goods, materials and equipment.
While only 1.2 million dollars were given directly to the refugees. But the fight they waged for the internationalization of Chameria cooled down. The Albanian and Greek states were part of two opposing camps. Communist propaganda said many untrue things, and even managed to “argue” that the bourgeoisie did not protect the interests, freedoms and rights of the peoples.
Now even the Cham leaders were put under the pressure of communist propaganda. They had to do as the Albanian bosses told them. The communist leaders threatened the Chams and told them that the two camps were at war and the Cham issue was almost closed for both the bourgeois and communist camps. In fact, the tension between the two states had worsened when Greece suppressed the EAM forces and the Albanian communists provided them with weapons and food, forgetting about Chameria.
Albanian citizenship gave Cham Albanians the power to remain silent forever.
After 1953, when Hoxha abolished Greek citizenship and gave the Chams Albanian citizenship, the Chams were silenced. They were told not to speak, not to demand, because they would anger the Greeks, and their affairs from then on were in the hands of the party. When the PP would deny the Cham Albanians Greek citizenship and, against their will, would grant them Albanian citizenship and they, as well as the Albanians, would lose all freedom, Hoxha’s infamous decree was issued: “Decree number 1654, dated April 19, 1953 on the granting of Albanian citizenship to the Chams residing in the Republic of Albania!”. The name Albanian was not mentioned, which meant that they were not even such and what nationality they had. The communist decree did not mention anything from the past.
Many questions have been asked about the removal of Greek citizenship from Cham Albanians and the granting of Albanian citizenship. Albanian citizenship was granted out of fear that there would be no more diplomatic contact with the Greeks. Cham Albanians, by taking Albanian citizenship, were forced to shut their mouths and remain silent forever.
Secondly, the communists could do whatever they wanted with the interests of the Albanians, because they were irresponsible towards the nation. They had denied Albanian patriotism, replacing it with conquering internationalism, submission to the ideology of dictatorship.
Only the democratic state demanded that the Cham Albanians return to their properties. The first Albanian President, the democrat Sali Berisha, issued a decree and commemorated the tragedy of the Cham Albanians, calling them the most despised refugees by Albanian communism, but also by the greats of the world. The decree of President Sali Berisha, no. 7835, dated 26.06.1994 states: “I decree the proclamation of June 27 on the national calendar, the day of the genocide against the Albanians of Chameria by Greek chauvinism and the erection of a memorial in Konispol!”.
Reference
Balkan Academia 