Troubling Video on Epirus

[olvios]

You belong above the epidamnus line.

Epirus was ours since the beggining.

[TirAlb]

Originally Posted by Truth Bearer

A comment from a skopjian....Makes interesting reading read carefully..

From Jankovska a confused slav..
Just thought I shock you all a little bit. I went to Albania for New Years, it sort of happened and it was a chance for me to learn more about the country( see I am not that evil).
Anyway I spend 4 days in Drac and the beach is lovley. Drac actually has a big ethnic Macedonian community and the museums are full of Macedonian things. It was lovley to see parts of our history somewhere else, it sort of made me feel even more patriotic.
The beach is lovley but that is the only part that is beautiful about Albania. Otherwise is very backward and very very dirty.
Very hardly you can see women on the streets in the towns, everything is very old and you can still see a lot of things left form Hodga's time.
Hospitality is still zero but I must say that Albania especially this part is moving forward and in few years time it will be very modern and nice. A lot investments go to this part, Italian investments especially.
I visited Skanderbeg's fortress but there wasn't much to see, the museums were closed.
Tirana is a nice city but again very dirty and a bit different from Drac, people were more friendly in Drac than Tirana.
The annoying bit was that everytime we were asked where we were from and I'd say Makedonija they will say Skopians and it pissed me off alot, very hardly anyone refered to us as Macedonians.
I also met this woman who heared us speaking in Macedonian and spoke back so I asked her if she was Macedonian but she said no. She said she is Albanian but lives near the border which really didn't explain to me if she was or not. Her Macedonian was extremly good.
All in all I will not visit again, didn't leave a huge impression on me, the country is still in a bit of a chaos and when crossing the border into Macedonia it felt good, even the air was cleaner.
I will upload pictures for all of you to see, few interesting bits and peaces.
_________________
Anderson is now known as Jankovska!!!!

There are ignorants everywere!This writing is full of crap.That maknews forum has the higher percentage of dull minded people i have ever seen.btw who cares,they are showing just their face,a ugly one though.
And she liked drack(i gues is durres),the albanian worst beach.I can't start commenting the bullshits writed there because,because ill not finish.From the large fyrom minority,the mac stuff at the museum,alb lack of hospitality ect.

[Paulos Melas]

Well it seems the forecoming years will be extremely interesting.
The Western Balkan Enclave is a great puzzle anyway, source of all troubles in Europe. It wouldn t surprise me if things with EU and NATO move slower or not even move at all till all disputes and tensions are fully resolved.

[TirAlb]

Originally Posted by Paulos Melas

Well TirAlb its good to hear that Albanians are pretentious, an impossing threat to the balkans, I never agreed more. That makes the need for the Albanian repatriation even more urgent.
As for our dying minority is good to have someone actually admitting the poor conditions the North Epirotes are living so that further action should be taken to ensure their wellfare by bringing North Epirus back to mother Greece.
So long my dear Shqiptarët I leave you in your dreams of a greater Albania.
Be careful though as dreams sometines turn to nightmares, as history proves that at the end the strong prevail and the pawns fall - after have completed their trivial part in the big game.

and by the way with dying minority i mean old not maltreated.

[gmellos]

Originally Posted by TirAlb

Man you didn't get my point again!Its not about greater Albania,South epirus is already gone.None is dreaming about that.But we have 150'000 chams in north epir waiting to have their lands back.There are special lists in the greek ambassy in order to negate visas to these people.But for how long this will last.Soon they will return there as eu citizines and...and they will try to have back whats theirs in the international ang greek courts,its just a matter of time.Again NE is gone as well,it wasn't never yours indeed,and do you know what your politicis there are the no1 cause of the rising of the hate toward greeks.Its not good when you see Bollano(an albanian from the 100% alb village of progonat,his family moved to himara anout 150 years ago,and the same goes to Dhimas),asking for independence and at the same time trying to stumble kosovas.
and time of "Broom" actions is gone,we are not in the caotic 90s any more!

Im sorry those Chams LOST their right to live in Greece when they betrayed Greece in WW2! Don't worry after this Administration leaves Kosovo will go bacvk to status qou! Eiprus has been a home the Hellenes since the time of Homer, We have every right to live there.

[TirAlb]

Originally Posted by gmellos

Im sorry those Chams LOST their right to live in Greece when they betrayed Greece in WW2! Don't worry after this Administration leaves Kosovo will go bacvk to status qou! Eiprus has been a home the Hellenes since the time of Homer, We have every right to live there.

I don't think any greek still believes to the fairy tale of the cham betrayal,greeks are not that naive.Of course greeks have all the right to live in epir as slavs have all the right to live in illyria an macedonia today.

[gmellos]

Originally Posted by TirAlb

I don't think any greek still believes to the fairy tale of the cham betrayal,greeks are not that naive.Of course greeks have all the right to live in epir as slavs have all the right to live in illyria an macedonia today.

OH please educate this poor naive Greek about how the Chams are so innocent the accusation of betraying the Greeks in WWII

[Flipper]

Originally Posted by TirAlb

I don't think any greek still believes to the fairy tale of the cham betrayal,greeks are not that naive.Of course greeks have all the right to live in epir as slavs have all the right to live in illyria an macedonia today.

Buddy, It is hard to draw a definite conclusion of what happened the previous century by Chams and Greeks...However, the Chams are known to have done many things in the past against both Greeks and Albanians. Remember they were the most favoured group in the balkans by the turks...Who controlled the lands in Epirus and Illyricum? Was it christian albanians and Greeks? No...Not at all...

I come from a village in upper Macedonia which is of mixed population. Makedones and Epirotes. The turkish records of the early 17th century report a mass migration of people from Northern Epirus/Southern Albania (No offence but that's how it is reported) to upper Macedonia because of oppression by the Arbesh Tsifliqars.

In other words, we're not just talking about the last century...How come so many christian people from Albania migrated to the southern Helladic area during the same time? Have you thought about that? You don't leave your country that easily. Who pushed them away?

[gmellos]

Question how does 5000 deaths constitute genocide when the total population is at least 10-700 (when you include total # of Albanians!) times that number????

from wikipedia

The Chameria issue is an issue which has been raised by Albania since the 1990s over the expulsion of Cham Albanians from the Greek province of Epirus between 1944–1945, during the World War II. The Greek government considers the issue closed and refuses to negotiate.

Following the defeat of Ottoman forces in the region and the Balkan Wars of 1913, an international boundary commission awarded the northern part of the region of Epirus to Albania, and the southern part to Greece. Almost all Cham-populated territories were incorporated into Greece, except for a few Cham villages assigned to Albania. Considerable numbers of Chams were forced to leave, and other were expelled to Turkey under the treaty of Lausanne in 1923.[1]

Muslims were subjected to severe pressure, that increased under the rule of Ioannis Metaxas. Tensions exacerbated at the time of World War II. Italy captured Albania in 1939, and in 1940 Greece fell to invading Italian and Germans forces, striking from Albania and Yugoslavia. Italians recruited a number of Muslim civilians to assist in the occupation.

A large number of Chams collaborated with the Italians after occupation, as these favored them due to fierce Greek resistance to the Axis forces.[2] A number of Chams were responsible of atrocities against Greeks, but the majority were only passive collaborators, distrusting both Italians and Greeks. After the Italians left the Axis, and the Germans took over control of Epirus, Cham units comprised the main occupation force, committing a number of atrocities, including the round-up of the Jews of Ioannina at the orders of the German command[3]. As the Germans and their allies began to lose ground to the anti-Nazi militias in 1944, and started retiring in Albania, many hundreds of Chams followed them.[4]

Beginning on June 27, 1944, while Greece was still under German occupation, and continuing through March 1945, EDES resistance fighters, operating under British orders to estabilish a mono-ethnic border and to expel and punish the Nazi collaborators, launched a series of attacks on Muslim Cham villages in Epirus, killing 5,000 Chams and causing 35,000 to flee to Albania or Turkey.[5]

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.
A large number of the predominantly Muslim refugees settled in villages of southern Albania, where today they number about 200,000.[6] The Greek government refuses to allow them to resettle in Greece considering them to have lost their citizenship for collaboration with the enemy and/or having left Greece as non-ethnic Greeks (either on the part of them personally or their ancestors from whom they would ordinarily have acquired it). The Greek government also refuses to negotiate over the properties formerly belonging to the Chams considering them lawfully confiscated for the same reasons.

Legally, according to the Greek view, their status is not different from that of Czech and Polish citizens of German ethnicity who were evicted from their homes after WWII as the result of their association with Nazi Germany. The European Court of Human Rights has the authority to render a verdict on the matter of the properties of evicted Chams, but no relevant case has ever been brought before it.

Notes
[1]^ Gage, Nicholas, Eleni 1996.
[2]^ Ibid.
[3]^ M. Mazower, Inside Hitler's Greece
[4]^ M. Mazower (ed.), After the War Was Over; Reconstructing the Family, Nation, State in Greece, 1943-1960, (2000), p. 25; M. Vickers, ibid.
[5]^ M. Mazower (ed.), Ibid.; M. Vickers, Ibid.
[6]^ M. Vickers, ibid

[Lakonian]

I have great respect for Albania, and believe it to be developing fast.

Political decisions unfortunately influence all our judgement on the identity of a person, be it religion or historical background.