CHAMERIA: WHERE WE STAND IN 2002
by Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi
Chameria, which is home to approximately 80,000 Albanians, 50,000 of which are Orthodox Christian and 30,000 Muslim, was annexed to Greece in 1913 after the Balkan Wars that ended five hundred years of Ottoman Turkish rule. The new border, drawn up at the 1912 Conference of Ambassadors in London, when the socalled Great Powers decided to support the creation of Albania as a new republic, left only seven Cham villages inside Albania in the vicinity of the town of Konispol. Known as “Chams,” this ethnic Albanian population suffered successive waves of expulsion and ethnic cleansing, culminating in the massacre of more than 5,000 men, women, and children, the forcible expulsion to Albania and Turkey of 35,000 more, the confiscation of thousands of acres of Cham-owned land, and the looting and burning of 68 Albanian villages and towns and a hundred mosques from June 1944 to March 1945. Most of the Chams who were brutally evicted from their homes and forced off their land fled to Albania. For decades the survivors and their descendants have petitioned the Greek government unsuccessfully to recognize their right to return to their land and to receive recompense for their destroyed and stolen assets, involving approximately 150,000 people and property valued at more than two billion dollars in today’s market. The Greek government, which condoned the seizure of Cham property in law at the end of World War II, has denied the survivors and their descendants even the right to visit their ancestral lands.
In spite of the fact that Greece is a member of NATO and the European Union and has signed all international covenants on human rights, the Greek government officially denies the existence of Chamerians and all other ethnic minorities in Greece. It is illustrative that Greece has not yet ratified the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Greek citizens of Albanian, Turkish, Macedonian, Vlach, and Roma descent do not enjoy fair and equitable treatment under the law and face enormous obstacles in preserving their culture and exercising their right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion. The Albanians of Chameria, as well as the approximately 500,000 Albanians living in Greece today as temporary workers, seek equal protection under the law, freedom from forced assimilation and governmental repression, and opportunities for public employment and education in their own language. The Chamerians are not requesting autonomy for their territory, but simply recognition of their ethnicity, the restoration of their human and civil rights, the right to use the Albanian language, the restitution of their assets, and the right of return.
They seek the same rights that the Greek minority enjoys in Albania.
Given the West’s insistence on establishing multicultural societies in the Balkans, the inattention to the denial of minority rights in Greece, as well as Greece’s history of mass expulsion and extermination of the Chams, is a glaring contradiction. The Albanian American Civic League is committed to confronting the Bush administration about this contradiction in the near future. But this will be only a first step in an inevitably lengthy process that Albanians must be prepared to undertake. To successfully resolve the Cham problem, Albanians, especially in the U.S. and European diasporas, need to educate the West about Chameria and to create a strategy for “internationalizing” the Cham problem. This will not be easy, because the Greek lobby is one of the largest contributors to House and Senate reelection races in the United States, and Western Europe is reluctant to take on any issue that can potentially destabilize its neighbors to the south. But the diplomatic path must be taken and played out in 21st century terms if justice, so long denied to Chameria, is finally to be achieved.
http://blog.aacl.com/the-albanian-natio ... nchameria/
The following chronicles the methods employed by Greece in its effort to eradicate the centuries old Macedonian ethnic presence in the Aegean Macedonia in the name of Greek territorial expansion. Specific laws and decrees are presented against the backdrop of relevant historical events affecting Macedonians in the Aegean Macedonia.
The chronology begins with the year 1912 when Greece, for the first time ever, comes into possession of Macedonian territory by force of arms. Almost a decade had passed since the 1903 Ilinden (St. Ilija Day) Uprising lead by the IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) in a failed effort to free Macedonia from the Ottoman yoke.
The ominous prophecy of Harilaos Trikoupis, Greek Prime Minister from 1882 to 1895, foretold what the neighboring Greek state had in mind for Macedonia and its people:
"When the great war comes, Macedonia will become Greek or Bulgarian, according to who wins. If it is taken by the Bulgarians, they will take the population Slavs. If we take it, we will make all of them Greeks".
1912 Balkan Wars
Irredentist Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro drive a crumbling Ottoman Empire out of the Balkans and pursue territorial expansion into Macedonia. Greek army enters Aegean Macedonia ostensibly to "liberate" Macedonia from the Ottoman.
1913
Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian alliance breaks down over competing claims for Macedonia. Bulgaria miscalculates and attacks Serbia and Greek armies. Ottoman forces rejoin war against Bulgaria. Bulgaria defeated, loses territorial gains in Macedonia.
From "liberation to tyranny", Greek army commences savage and bloody "ethnic cleansing" of the towns of Kukush, Doiran, Demir-Hisar and Serres in the Aegean Macedonia.
160 Macedonian villages burned, and atrocities committed. Mass exodus of refugees.
Treaty of Bucharest (Aug. 10, 1913). Ends War and partitions Macedonia.
Greece refers to conquered Macedonian lands as the "new territories" under "military administration". Not yet officially incorporated into the Kingdom of Greece.
Military occupation augmented by influx of administrators, educators; police brought from Greece.
Professor R.A. Reiss reports to the Greek government: "Those whom you would call Bulgarian speakers I would simply call Macedonians...Macedonian is not the language they speak in Sofia...I repeat the mass of inhabitants there (Macedonia) remain simply Macedonians."
1917
LAW 1051 Greece inaugurates new administrative jurisdictions for governing newly acquired lands in the Aegean Macedonia.
1919 Treaty of Versailles (Paris)
England and France ratify the principles of the Bucharest Treaty and endorse the partitioning of Macedonia.
Greece pursues forced expulsion and denationalization of Macedonians and begins a colonization by transplanting Greeks into the Aegean Macedonia.
Article 51 of Treaty of Versailles espouses equality of civil rights, education, language, and religion for all national minorities which Greece violates and ignores.
Neuilly Convention and forced exchange of populations. About 70,000 Macedonians expelled from the Aegean Macedonia to Bulgaria and 25,000 Greeks transplanted from Bulgaria to Aegean Macedonia.
Greek Commission On Toponyms issues instructions for choosing Hellenized names for Macedonian places in the Aegean Macedonia.
1920
Greek Ministry Of Internal Affairs publishes booklet: "Advice On The Change Of The Names Of Municipalities And Villages" in Aegean Macedonia.
1925
76 names of Macedonian villages and towns in the Aegean Macedonia Hellenized since 1918 by Greek authorities.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS pressures Greece to extend rights to Macedonian minority.
ABECEDAR Primer printed in Athens for use by Macedonian school children in the Aegean Macedonia. Written in Latin alphabet and reflect the Macedonian spoken in Lerin district in western Aegean Macedonia.
Serbs and Bulgarians protest to League of Nations. Primer undermines their claim that Macedonians are Serbs and Bulgarians respectively.
Greece counters with last minute cable to League: "the population.....knows neither the Serbian nor the Bulgarian language and speaks nothing but a Slav-Macedonian idiom."
Greece "retreats" so as to preserve Balkan alliances. Primer is destroyed after League of Nations delegates leave Solun.
Thereafter, Greece denies existence of Macedonians. Refers to Macedonians as "Slavophone Greeks", "Old Bulgarians" and many other appellations but not as Macedonians.
1926
Legislative Orders in Government Gazette #331 orders Macedonian names of towns, villages, mountains changed to Greek names.
1927
Cyrillic inscriptions destroyed or overwritten from churches, tombstones, and icons. Church services in the Macedonian language are outlawed.
Macedonians Ordered To Abandon Personal Names And Under Duress Adopt Greek Names Assigned To Them By The Greek State.
1928
1,497 Macedonian place-names in the Aegean Macedonia Hellenized since 1926.
English Journalist V. Hild reveals, "The Greeks do not only persecute living Slavs (Macedonians)..., but they even persecute dead ones. They do not leave them in peace even in the graves. They erase the Slavonic inscriptions on the headstones, remove the bones and burn them."
1929
Greek government enacts law where any demands for national rights by Macedonians are regarded as high treason.
LAW 4096 directive on renaming Macedonian place-names.
1936
Reign of terror by fascist dictator General Metaxas, 1936-40. Macedonians suffer state terrorism and pogroms.
Thousands of Macedonians jailed, sent to internal exile (EXORIA) on arid, inhospitable Greek islands, where many perish. Their crime? Being ethnic Macedonian by birth.
LAW 6429 reinforces Law 4096 on Hellenization of toponyms.
DECREE 87 accelerates denationalization of Macedonians.
Greek ministry of Education sends "Specially trained" instructors to accelerate conversion to Greek language.
1938
LAW 23666 bans the use of the Macedonian language and strives to erase every trace of the Macedonian identity.
Macedonians fined, beaten, jailed for speaking Macedonian. Adults and school children further humiliated by being forced to drink castor oil when caught speaking Macedonian.
LAW 1418 reinforces previous laws on renamings.
1940
39 more place-names Hellenized since 1929.
1945
LAW 697 more regulations on renaming toponyms in the Aegean Macedonia.
1947
LAW L-2 citizens suspected of opposing Greek government in civil War stripped of their citizenship, including relatives, arbitrarily and without due process.
1948
LAW M properties confiscated from citizens who fought against government and those accused of assisting.
28,000 Child Refugees, mostly Macedonians, from areas of heavy fighting evacuated to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Greece denies their right of return to this day.
RESOLUTION 193C(III) United Nations Resolution calls for repatriation to Greece of Child Refugees.
U.N. UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ARTICLE 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive an impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
DECREE 504 continues property confiscations of exiles and colonization of the Aegean Macedonia with people from Turkey, Egypt and other parts of Greece. Parcels of land given to colonists along with financial incentives. 1959.
LAW 3958 allows confiscation of property of those who left Greece and did not return within five years.
Several villages in the Aegean Macedonia forced to swear "LANGUAGE OATHS" to speak only Greek and renounce their mother tongue (MACEDONIAN).
1962
DECREE 4234 reinforces past laws regarding confiscated properties of political exiles and denies them right to return.
1968
EUROPEAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS accuses Greece of human rights abuses.
1969
COUNCIL OF EUROPE declares Greece "undemocratic, illiberal, authoritarian, and oppressive". Greece forced to resign from Council of Europe under threat of expulsion.
Military Junta continues the policy of colonizing the confiscated lands in the Aegean Macedonia. Land handled over to persons with a "proven patriotism" for Greece.
EUROPEAN CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS signed by Greece states: ARTICLE 10(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
1976
DECREE 233 suspends about 150 past decrees, government decisions and laws since 1913. Regulations for the confiscation of properties belonging to Macedonian political exiles not affected.
1979
135 places renamed in the Aegean Macedonia since 1940. The Greek vigil regarding names is an indicator of the Macedonian ethnic identity in the Aegean Macedonia.
1982
Greek internal security police urges intensive campaign to wipe out remaining Macedonian language and consciousness in the Aegean Macedonia.
LAW 106841 political exiles who fled during the Civil War and were stripped of their citizenship are allowed to return providing they are "Greek by ethnic origin". The same rights are denied to Macedonian political exiles born in the Aegean Macedonia.
U.N. UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ARTICLE 17, No one can be deprived of his own property against his will.
1985
DECREE 1540, Political exiles who fled during Civil War allowed to reclaim confiscated lands provided they are "Greeks by ethnic origin". Same rights denied to Macedonian exiles born in the Aegean Macedonia.
U.N. UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ARTICLE 13. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, as well as to return to his own country.
1986
International writers' organization, PEN, condemns Greece's denial of the existence of Macedonians and their language.
Greece escalates climate of fear in the Aegean Macedonia.
Greece officially calls the Republic of Macedonia as the Republic of "Skopje", after the name of its capital city; and Macedonians are called "Skopjeans".
The term "Skopjeans" used to label Greek citizens who declare themselves as ethnic Macedonians. "Skopeans" laced with hatred, and racism. It connotes a traitor to Hellenism.
1990
CSCE COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE ON THE HUMAN DIMENSION, to which Greece is a signatory, states in ARTICLE 32: "Persons belonging to national minorities have the right freely to express, preserve, and develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or religious identity and to maintain and develop their culture in all its aspects, free of any attempts as assimilation against their will". ARTICLE 33: "Participating states will protest the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of national minorities...and create conditions for the promotion of that identity".
GREEK HIGH COURT DECISION 19, refuses registration of "CENTER FOR MACEDONIAN CULTURE" in Florina. Appeal is turned down by High Appeals Court, in Salonika. Further appeal dismissed by Supreme Administrative Council of Greece in Athens.
1991
CSCE MEETING ON NATIONAL MINORITIES IN GENEVA, in which Greece participated states: "Issues concerning national minorities...are matters of legitimate international concern and consequently do not constitute exclusively an internal affair of the respective State...Participating States reaffirm, and will not hinder the exercise of, the right of persons belonging to national minorities to establish and maintain their own educational, cultural and religious institutions, organizations and associations".
Belligerent anti-Macedonian propaganda incites Greek population into a state of chauvinistic hysteria.
Translation from Greek: "Hang the Skopje Gypsies"
1992
Greece and Serbia conspire to overthrow and partition the Republic of Macedonia.
1993
Macedonian human rights activists Hristos Sideropoulos and Tasos Boulis were prosecuted under Greek Panel Code: Article 36, Para 191; disseminating false information; Para 192; inciting citizens to disturb the peace. Their crime? Declaring themselves as Macedonians in interview for Greek magazine ENA.
Macedonian human rights activist and priest Nikodimos Tsarknias derobed and expelled by Greek Orthodox Church because of his human rights activities. Tsarknias refused a Greek bribe which would have elevated him to bishop in 1989. Threatened with death.
1994
Extremists in Australia's Greek Community burn two Macedonian churches, after Australian recognition of Macedonia.
Greece continues to deny the existence of Macedonians in the Aegean Macedonia despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Greece continues repressive and unrelenting policies against Macedonians in the Aegean Macedonia despite objections by international human rights organizations.
http://www.makedonija.info/aegean-chrono.html
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Let's hear the opinions of GreekForumer abt these issues and examine whether he is knowledged and sesnsitive abt the human rights of ethnic groups in Greece as much as he is knowledged and sensitive abt human rights of ethnic groups in Turkey...
