Petrit Latifi
“Tirana, 19. – After the war of 1912, as the Albanian newspaper “Tomori” explains – after that war in which the Greeks shone through their strategic retreats “following the English model” and through their military incompetence, 80,000 Albanians from the Ciamura were incorporated into Hellenic territory. With English support and against all rights, Greece acquired this territory, which, as a watershed and in other geographical respects, indisputably belongs to Albania, as a simple glance at the map shows.
The assimilation of these 80,000 Albanians immediately proved to be a difficult task for the Greek authorities. It is well known that the Greek people have no aptitude for exploiting racially alien elements. They are an arrogant people, skilled at trade because they are accustomed to fraud, not warlike and therefore alien to that straightforwardness and higher way of thinking that distinguish the true fighter, sophisticated in underhanded cunning and violence.
1913: Greeks banned the teaching of the Albanian language
First, in 1913, the Greeks banned the teaching of the Albanian language, and then they began a systematic oppression of the Albanians in order to force them to emigrate. But here they encountered bitter resistance, for of all the Balkan peoples, the Albanian is the most strongly attached to his homeland and family traditions.
Even the poorest Albanian will not allow himself to be driven from his field and his home. The silent struggle between the Greeks and the Albanians lasted for almost ten years, but only a few families allowed themselves to be driven away by the attacks and harassment of the Greek authorities.
The great mass remained and was determined not to show any sign of weakness. When the Greeks saw that this was not achieving their goal, they hatched a new, insidious plan Meanwhile, the Greco-Turkish War of 1922 had begun, fought in Asia Minor, in which the Greek army gave new proof of its skill.
Balkan retreat maneuvers; at a speed of 600 km per day, it fled before the victorious troops of Kemal Pasha.
The Greeks, who had relied on Lloyd George’s assurances and guarantees, remained alone in the fight against the Turks; they were defeated and thrown into the sea in a few weeks. The English fleet had not even come to pick up the defeated troops in the roadstead of Smyrna; in their fury, the Greeks knew nothing better than to set fire to the beautiful, large city, so that the victor, Kemal Pasha, found a single, enormous blaze upon his entry on September 9, 1922
After this lost campaign, the Greeks had to accept the conditions of Kemal Pasha, who demanded a population exchange: Greece had to take back all the Greeks who had lived on the coasts of Asia Minor for many years. Here, Greece’s treachery became apparent; the government demanded that the Muslim population of the Ciamura be resettled in Turkey, arguing that they had belonged to the old Ottoman Empire and were therefore Turkish.
Replacing Albanians of Caëria with exiled Greeks settlers from Asia minor in 1922
In this way, the Albanian population would finally be removed from the Ciamura and replaced by the exiled Greek settlers expelled from Asia Minor, as had already been achieved with the Macedonians from the area of Salonica and Cavala. Kemal Pasha, however, did not accept this offer, as the injustice was all too obvious. The Albanians of the Ciamura, in fact, have only religion in common with the Turks, while race, language, tradition, and history are quite different. For this reason, Albania had always rebelled against the Turks.
Blood, deceit, impoverishment, and oppression.
After the failure of this insidious attempt, Tomori concludes, Greece decided to exterminate the noble Albanian population by all means: blood, deceit, impoverishment, and oppression.
Reference
Balkan Academia 