UNPO UNPOGA4/1995/12
UNREPRESENTED NATIONS AND PEOPLES ORGANIZATION

RESOLUTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF UNPO

FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Fifth Session
The Hague, 20-26 January, 1995
General Assembly Resolution 12

RELATING TO THE RIGHT SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEMS OF THE CHAMS

The General Assembly,

RECOGNISING that the Cham people have been forcefully expelled from their homeland at the end of Second World War by special Greek forces;

WHEREAS the Chams are over 150,000 people in Albania alone, who demand to return to their lands, to possess their properties again which are currently being unjustly exploited by others, and to enjoy all of the internationally proteced human rights;

WHEREAS until now the Greek government has not agreed to enter into a dialogue about the Cham problem with the legitimate representatives of the people of Chameria;

WHEREAS the Greek government does not permit expelled Chams to visit Chameria and their brothers there to express their identity;

DEMANDS that the Greek government recognise the historical reality of the Chams' problem and work seriously to give it a right and full solution.

SUPPORTS the legitimate demands of the Chams and their activity which tends to resolve their problem in a democratic way.

APPELAS to the international community to recognise the rights of Cham people, including:

1. Repatriation of Cham people to their own homeland;

2. The right of the Cham people to regain their properties;

3. All the interenational rights which derive from international charters and documents.

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Subject : Albania: Situation of Cams

From : The Centre for Documentation on Refugees, UNHCR, Geneva

Keywords:Albania; Greece; Ethnic and national groups; Moslems

There are very few references to the Cams in the published sources available to the Centre for Documentation on Refugees. In the section on foreign relations in its General Briefing on Albania, the Eastern Europe Newsletter says,

Tirana wants Greece to rehabilitate the Muslim Albanian Cams who were expelled from Greece after [World War II] for collaborating with the Italian occupation, and to give back land in northern Greece which was expropriated from the Cams. Athens says there is nothing to discuss. [Furthermore] . . . Albanian misgivings over Greek intentions are reinforced by Greek high-handedness -- such as on 2 August [1992] when the Greek Orthodox Church hierarchy unilaterally foisted upon the Albanian Orthodox Autocephalus Church a Greek priest as its archbishop . . . [an appointment] promptly "annulled" [by the Albanians] (10 August 1992, 3).

In its chapter on ethnic minorities in Greece, the Minority Rights Group refers to the Cams as follows:

While there is much comment focused on the position of the Greek minority in Albania, there is very little information about the Albanian minority which remained in Greece after the founding of the Albanian state in 1913. Most of these Albanians were Orthodox by religion although there were Muslim Albanian Cams in northern Greece up till immediately after World War II. During the war attempts were made by the Italian occupiers to harness them against the Greeks and as a result there was a backlash against them after the war with many being driven into Albania and mosques burnt (The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict, 1991, 189).

In a telephone interview, a spokesman for the Eastern Europe Newsletter stated that, as ethnic Albanian and Moslems, the Cams are not in conflict with the Albanian government or the country's Moslem majority. If any difficulties were to arise, they might occur as a result of a Cam's conversion to the Greek Orthodox Church, which would then place them in the bigger context of the "ethnic Greeks in Albania" issue between Albania and Greece (15 December 1993). Please see recent articles on this subject from the RFE/RL Research Report and The Guardian Weekly.

For background information on the on-going tensions between the two countries, please see attached "Albania-Greece (Northern Epirus)" section from Border and Territorial Disputes (1992, pp. 3-7). We are also attaching the sections, Greece and its Minorities and Albania and its Minorities from the Minority Rights Group book.

REFERENCES

Border and Territorial Disputes, 3rd edition, Albania-Greece (Northern Epirus), Longman, Harlow, 1992

Eastern Europe Newsletter, Albania: A General Briefing, 10 August 1992

Eastern Europe Newsletter, telephone interview with spokesman, 15 December 1993

The Guardian Weekly, Albanian's ethnic melting pot threatens to boil over", 11 July 1993

Minority Rights Group, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict, London, 1991

RFE/RL Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 33, Albanian-Greek Relations: The Confrontation Continues, 10 August 1993.