Subject: Re: Three articles on Albania and the Southern Balkans
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 97 13:45:13 AEST
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From: "N. Tsolak" <9246101t-AT-udcf.gla.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Three articles on Albania and the Southern Balkans
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Date: 21 Mar 1997 19:04:24 GMT
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GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR
(Greek National Committee of the International Helsinki
Federation)
& MINORITY RIGHTS GROUP - GREECE
(Greek Affiliate of Minority Rights Group International)
P.O. Box 51393, GR-14510 Kifisia, Greece
Tel. 30-1-620.01.20; Fax: 30-1-807.57.67; E-mail:
helsinki-AT-compulink.gr
_____________________________________________________________________
WE ARE DISTRIBUTING THREE ARTICLES BY OUR SPOKESPERSON PUBLISHED IN WAR
REPORT OR IN -THE WAR REPORT ET AL. CO-SPONSORED SPECIAL ENGLISH ISSUE OF
THE ALBANIAN NEWSPAPER- KOHA JONE.
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IMMIGRANTS FOR HIRE, OR EXPULSION
Greece needs immigrant labour, but refuses to adopt a consistent policy
By Panayote Elias Dimitras
[This article was published in the October 1996 issue of War Report]
This August the Greek authorities expelled more than 7,000 illegal
immigrants, mainly Albanians. Some were picked up at their homes or
workplaces and abused by police. Although this news was available in Athens,
hardly any of the media chose to mention it; They were all too busy
covering, sometimes at length, the expulsion of some 300 African immigrants
>from St. Bernard's church in Paris. This media silence persisted, even after
Tirana had officially protested to Athens, after the Greek and Albanian
Helsinki committees had denounced the mass expulsions, and after an
embarrassed Greek government spokesperson had refused to comment.
In the 1990s, according to official estimates, the number of mainly
Albanian, but also Polish, Filipino, Egyptian, and other illegal immigrants
in Greece has risen to 500,000-700,000 in a legally resident population of
10.5 million. The police regularly expel such foreigners, but the only mass
expulsions have been of Albanians, and these were never related to the
legality of their residential status in the country, but to strains in
Greek-Albanian relations.
In the summer of 1993, after the expulsion of a Greek priest from the
southern Albanian city of Gjirokastra, Greek authorities reacted by
expelling around 20,000 Albanians. The following year, in response to the
trial of five Greek minority leaders in Tirana, the Greek government
expelled more than 100,000 Albanians. In both incidents, many immigrants
were abused by police and deported straight from work without even being
allowed to take their personal belongings or other members of their families
with them. Many were denounced to the authorities by their employers, who
besides thus carrying out the "national duty", were able to pocket the pay
cheques.
However, the 1996 wave of expulsions was a surprise. There was no strain
between the two countries. On the contrary, it happened on the eve of a
visit to Southern Albania by the Greek foreign minister, Theodore Pangalos,
the first foreign official to visit the country since the dubious elections
of May 1996. The Greek government has been reluctant to condemn the fraud.
It appears to have traded its silence, and the participation of Greek
minority party Omonia in the equally unfair "replacement" elections of July
1996, for the opening of Greek language classes in southern Albania. The
Greek minority party was the only opposition party to participate in the
July elections.
Moreover, on the eve of the May elections, the Greek government had
announced an agreement with its Albanian counterpart to legalize a very
large number of Albanian seasonal workers in Greece. This is why many
suspect that the latest expulsions were motivated by intra-Greece
disagreements over the Greek-Albanian rapprochement, and that some state
agencies thought that in this way they could undermine Pangalos' visit and
the new law still going through Parliament.
The Albanian government is desperate for international contacts and the
pragmatic Pangalos reflects the realism and modernism of Prime Minister
Konstantinos Simitis. So, luckily for the Albanian immigrant community in
Greece, both governments managed to forget the incident and Pangalos'
one-day visit ran smoothly. He announced that the new law would grant
residence permits to some 90, 000-100,000 Albanians. He also said that
Greece was contemplating a special status for Albanians living near the
border to commute to work on the Greek side.
Pangalos even said that he encourages Greeks to speak Albanian and Albanians
to speak Greek, as they did from the medieval times of Skanderberg and the
Greek Revolution (in the 1820s) when they fought together against the
Ottomans. This is heresy by authorised Greek historiographic standards. Not
surprisingly, the Greek media censored all these statements; only Foni tis
Omonoias, the newspaper of the Greek minority in Albania reported them.
All NGOs and left-wing opposition parties, and many socialist PASOK
government members, support this long-awaited normalisation of the status of
Albanian and other immigrants in Greece. However, it is increasingly opposed
by the right-wing opposition and their supporting media, which blame
immigrants for rising unemployment and criminality, although they have no
data to support their arguments.
Indeed, in the recent election campaign in Greece, denounced by human-rights
NGOs as "the most nationalist and intolerant if not racist" since the 1974
return to democratic rule, conservative New Democracy leader Milpiadis Evert
repeatedly made such allegations. He even stated that immigrants take jobs
away from university graduates, when in reality they work in the most
difficult blue-collar or service jobs that hardly any Greek will accept any
more.
The fact that so many foreign immigrants have been in Greece for many years
indicates that the Greek economy today, just like other western economies in
the past, needs such a labour force. But Greece has so far refused to admit
that reality and adopt a relevant and consistent policy on the matter.
The present situation leads to the worst kind of exploitation of these
workers by their employers and gives leverage to the Greek authorities in
Greek-Albanian relations. On the other hand, in the case of Albania, not
only families back home but the whole country depends on the income the
migrants remit home from Greece. Indeed, should Greece close her border with
Albania, the "land of the eagles" would suffocate. In fact, some observers
explain the massive "no" vote of the Albanian South in the 1994
constitutional referendum by the discontent with the mass expulsions of
Albanians that autumn, following Albanian President Sali Berisha's
disastrous decision to try the "Omonia five". This is his only electoral
defeat to date.
The legalization of migrant labor in Greece would also affect an increasing
number of Bulgarians who seek refuge from their country's failing economy in
the Greek labor market. Thus legalization would help both the Greek economy
and the bilateral relations of the Balkans' only supposedly western country
with her neighbors. The Simitis government should, and apparently does, hope
to change that course for the country's and the region's benefit. All those
who have been too often disillusioned by
Greece's foreign policy in recent years can only be cautiously optimistic.
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Southern Discomfort
Majorities despise minorities, and the hatred is often mutual
By Panayote Elias Dimitras
[This article was published in the January/February 1997 issue of War Report]
In the 1990s, the conflicts in former Yugoslavia led to an explosion of
interest in the Balkan region. Moreover, as Romania was thought to be the
only Balkan country that had not rid itself of communism, it too caught
world attention. Books, seminars, missions, research programmes and support
to NGOs proliferated for these countries; much of that was directly or
indirectly related to the minority problems which triggered the Yugoslav
wars and brought Romanian-Hungarian relations to a dangerous impasse.
But there was little concern from outside for the southern half of the
peninsula, which was generally perceived as stable, notwithstanding some
apparent problems. This lack of interest reflected the fact that the Balkan
south-Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, and European Turkey-remained
misunderstood outside, and sometimes even within, the region. The general
impression was that these countries either lacked significant minorities or,
where minorities existed, they were treated in a satisfactory way. Such
groups as Albanians in Macedonia and Turks in Bulgaria, for example, were
seen to be participating directly in, or giving crucial indirect support to,
the governments.
Apart from the minorities themselves, only a few genuine (i.e., not
government-manipulated) NGOs were aware of the far more complex situation of
minorities in the southern Balkans. Thanks to the work of NGOs, the real and
unfortunately more disturbing news has slowly come to international
attention. At times, governments have aided this process through
ill-conceived actions that made some minority problems, if not the
minorities themselves, known beyond their borders. Such was the effect of
the trials of Greek minority leaders in Albania and of Macedonian minority
leaders in Greece.
Hidden Minorities. More than a score of minorities are present in the
region. There are ethno-national minorities (i.e., those who identify with
the dominant nation of an adjacent nation state), like the more or less
officially admitted and by now widely known Greeks in Albania and European
Turkey, Turks in Bulgaria and Greece, and Albanians in Macedonia. There are
also ethno-linguistic minorities, those with a distinct identity but no
affiliation to a cross-border "mother nations", such as the Roma (Gypsies)
everywhere, the Aromanians (Vlachs) in all countries but Turkey, and the
Arvanites (Albanian-speakers) in Greece. Finally, there are religious
minorities: a multitude of historically rooted or recently established
non-Orthodox Christian communities in Bulgaria, Greece, and Macedonia; and
non-Sunni Muslim communities in Albania and Turkey.
However, a problem probably unique to the area is the presence of "hidden
minorities". In some cases, the state vehemently denies their existence:
Macedonians in Bulgaria and Greece; and Bulgarians in Macedonia, for
example. In Bulgaria, admitting the presence of Macedonians would challenge
the national myth that no separate Macedonian nation exists anywhere, let
alone in Bulgaria's own territory. In Macedonia, the presence of Bulgarians
is considered incompatible with the notion that Macedonians "cannot" be
Bulgarians. In Greece, former Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis admitted
that the recent acrimonious dispute with Macedonia was motivated mainly by
Greece's fear of the "emergence of a second minority problem, in [the Greek
region of] Western Macedonia."
Then there are minorities whose existence is recognised only within
territorial limits: this applies to Greeks and Macedonians in Albania, whose
existence the state recognises only in the south. As a result, official
censuses underestimate their actual numbers, while the rights the state
grants to minorities, especially in education, can be enjoyed only in
southern Albania.
Sometimes, a minority is acknowledged but with a name different from the one
it wishes to use. In Greece, there are no Turks but only Muslims.
Conversely, in Turkey there are no Greeks (Ynanli) but only Christian
Orthodox (Rum). In Bulgaria, Pomaks are usually referred to as Bulgarian
Muslims. In that way, states pretend to accept the minorities' existence but
define them as religious rather than ethnic.
Finally, decades of repression and assimilation have instilled in other
minorities feelings of inferiority which have seriously weakened the
assertion of their identity. Even if a scurpulously fair census could be
carried out in the region-in itself a virtual impossibility-of the half a
million Aromanians, fewer than 10 per cent would declare their ethnic
identity; the same goes for many of the more than 1 million Roma; and for
the nearly quarter-million Arvanites in Greece. In addition, most religious
minorities, but also some ethnic ones, seem to loathe the term "minority"
fearing that it automatically diminishes their social status and opportunities.
Intolerance and the National Consensus. History may help explain why
minorities throughout the Balkans have suffered so much. Until the borders
of Balkan states became final, after World War II, ethno-national minorities
were perceived, sometimes with justification, as "Trojan horses" of their
"mother nations", and vehicles of irredentism. Moreover, the construction of
solid national identities almost always followed the creation of the states,
and turned out to be much more complicated. The resulting emphasis on
national homogeneity and conformity made "otherness" undesirable even for
supposedly non-threatening religious minorities or the Roma. Minorities that
were not cleansed or expelled in the 150 years of Balkan nationalist wars
were doomed to oppression.
Today, however, history cannot and should not be accepted as an excuse for
intolerance towards minorities. When all Balkan countries dream of joining
the multicultural entity that is the European Union, their societies, and
more precisely their dominant nations, should be more open and more
confident in accepting "otherness" as a potential wealth rather than a
necessary evil.
Table 1. Feelings of Southern Balkan peoples for minorities
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Sympathy Indifference Aversion
% % %
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1. Feelings for Aromanians (Vlachs in the question) from:
Albanians of Albania 15 29 52
Albanians of Macedonia 11 30 44
Macedonians 22 32 44
2. Feelings for Bulgarian Muslims (Pomaks) from:
Bulgarians 22 42 15
3. Feelings for Jews from:
Albanians of Macedonia 2 8 91
Macedonians 7 20 60
Bulgarians 24 34 6
Greeks 15 21 57
4. Feelings for Western Thrace Muslims from:
Greeks 11 16 62
5. Feelings for Roma from:
Albanians of Albania 6 19 73
Albanians of Macedonia 12 22 65
Macedonians 12 28 59
Bulgarians 12 31 51
Greeks 20 21 55
___________________________________________________________________
Source: Surveys conducted by Opinion for the Lambrakis Research Foundation
(1,200 interviews 20/1-20/2/1993) in Greece; by Marketing Consult (1,161
interviews in Bulgaria) and BBSS (906 interviews in Albania, 1,002 in
Macedonia) for the Bulgarian International Center for Minority Studies and
Intercultural Relations in spring 1994. We are grateful to Antonina
Zhelyaskova and Krassimir Kanev for having made the results available to us.
Table 2. Opinion of minority group by majority group in Southern Balkan
countries
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------
Favorable Unfavorable
%
%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------
1. Opinion of Macedonians for:
Albanians 28 65
2. Opinion of Albanians for:
Greeks 47 49
3. Opinion of Bulgarians for:
Turks 52 39
___________________________________________________________________
Source: Surveys conducted for the USIA by the Albanian Independent Center of
Sociological Studies in Albania (1,000 interviews in July 1993); the Center
for the Study of Democracy in Bulgaria (1,090 interviews in April 1994);
BBSS in Macedonia (1,102 interviews in October 1993).
This is far from being the case. The data in the tables here indicates that
majorities despise minorities. Other surveys have shown that the hatred is
often mutual. The main reason is that the education system in these
countries (including the universities) is, with rare exceptions, at best
silent on the matter and at worst reproduce traditional negative
stereotypes, if not outright hatred. The same is true for the attitude
towards neighbouring peoples, who are almost always less popular than the
distant nations of Western or Eastern Europe. It is almost inevitable, then,
that most media constantly reproduce negative stereotypes and hate speech,
thus ensuring that intolerance is solidly rooted in the minds of the
majorities. Two comparative media monitoring projects in the region,
coordinated by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and by
the Bulgarian NGO ACCESS, have provided ample evidence since 1994. For
example, Serb and Macedonian newspapers frequently refer to Albanians as
"Shiptars", while Albanian papers call Serbs "Shkja". Both terms are
perceived as insulting by the peoples concerned. Macedonians have been
labelled "thieves" in the Bulgarian press, and "usurpers" and "heroin
smugglers" in Greece. Radio Skopje, on the other hand, has referred to
Greeks as "liars; dishonest merchants."
In this climate, minorities in the southern Balkans are easy targets for
official discrimination and popular intolerance, especially when the
countries they live in are in conflict with those of their "mother nation".
At the height of Greek-Albanian tensions in the mid-1990s, the Greek
minority in Albania was persecuted more than ever before in the past 50
years, while the Greek state used the large immigrant Albanian community
(technically not a minority) in Greece as a hostage to blackmail Tirana.
Tensions in Greek-Turkish relations or in Cyprus are regularly followed by
outbreaks of violence against Greeks in Turkey or Turks in Greece.
The sometimes hidden minorities in the Southern Balkans could not fight for
their rights in the Cold War period, when East-West conflict marginalised
their concerns in international fora. The post-Cold War era, fortunately,
has placed respect for human rights at the top of the agenda, even if there
is hardly a state in the continent fully committed to such principles. As a
result, minorities have become more vocal and demanding. If states and
dominant nations continue to treat them without the necessary respect for
their rights, there can be only one result: the exacerbation and consequent
rise of nationalism among, minorities, phenomena already present to some
degree in most cases. This will make it more difficult to solve the problems
and will eventually radicalise the reactions and demands of at least those
ethno-national minorities who feel they have the backing of their "mother
nations". It is obvious that this can only bring more instability to the region.
It is therefore imperative that all countries in the southern as well as the
northern Balkans come to grips with the danger and revise their minority
policies. A policy declaration to this effect was first proposed a year ago
by two Greek NGOs, the Greek Helsinki Monitor and the Minority Rights
Group-Greece. It was later adopted by other NGOs in the region, as well as
by the International Commission on the Balkans. It calls on states to
implement all human rights documents they have signed; to sign and ratify
all outstanding ones; and to adapt their legislation to conform to the
standards set forth in these documents. This means, first and foremost, to
recognise the right of individuals to define their identity and to belong to
whatever minority they wish. All religious communities should be equally
respected. Educational systems must abandon ethnocentrism and thoroughly
revise their curricula. Civil servants, especially teachers and judges,
should be trained to implement international principles on minority rights.
Special independent institutions (ombudsmen or commissions) are required to
oversee the application of these principles and also closely to monitor
media incitement to ethnic, racial or religious hatred. Such incitement has
contributed significantly to all Balkan conflicts.
Finally, intergovernmental organisations such as the Organisation for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and the
European Union must introduce measures that will help Balkan countries to
apply human and minority rights principles. Credible and practical
international sanctions must be devised for states which persist in
violating these principles, thus putting regional seucrity at risk. The
minority problems in the Balkan south remain less acute than those which led
to war in the north. Should they reach the same level, however, the Yugoslav
conflict may go down in history not as Europe's last tragedy, but as a mild
dress-rehearsal for the conflicts that followed.
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Athens misses a trick
by Panayote Elias Dimitras
[This article was published in the 20 March special English edition of Koha
Jone. WE regret that some unauthorised editing of the article affected some
points. We reporduce it here though as published]
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------------------------------
From:
Institute on War & Peace Reporting, Index on Censorship, ARTICLE 19,
Human Rights Watch, Inter Press Service, with International Helsinki
Federation for Human Rights, OneWorld Online and Reporters Sans
Frontieres.
FREE SPEECH ORGANIZATIONS ANNOUNCE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PUBLICATION OF
"KOHA JONE" AND LAUNCH "KOHA JONE" WEBSITE.
In collaboration with the above consortium of international free
speech and human rights organizations, the editors and journalists of
the leading independent Albanian daily, Koha Jone, along with other
leading Albanian writers, have put together an English-language
edition of Koha Jone. The paper's Tirana offices were destroyed by
the Albanian security forces on the night of 2-3 March.
PUBLICATION DATE FOR THE PAPER IS MARCH 20. It includes censored
interviews with key opposition figures, reports and analysis on the
political situation from the capital and the southern rebellion and
details of media repression. Leading newspapers throughout Europe and
North America have already featured some of these stories. The paper
can also be accessed on the Internet at:
http://www.oneworld.org/news/reports/kohajone/.
The site will be updated regularly with the latest news from around
the country.
For further information contact:
In the UK:
Rebecca Handler, Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 44 171 713 7130
Judith Vidal-Hall, Index on Censorship, 44 171 278 2313
Fiona Harrison, ARTICLE 19, 44 171 278 9292
Urmi Shah Human Rights Watch/Helsinki 44 171 713 1995
In the US:
Fred Abrahams, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki 1 212 972 8400
In Albania:
Helen Darbishire, 355 42 35035 (room 408)
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In 1989, Greece missed an historic chance of becoming a key player in the
Balkans: instead of acting as a mediator in the regional conflicts that
followed the fall of Communism, its government picked sides - usually the
wrong one. In 1997, its handling of the Albanian insurgency cost it a
further opportunity of improving its local image, by this time further
tarnished by its ill-treatment of the 350,000 Albanian immigrants inside
Greece.
Every internal crisis in Albania brings the old Balkan ghost of irredentism
out of its Greek closet. After the collapse of the Communist regime,
mainstream politicians and parties, ministers among them, joined more
extreme voices in reviving Greece's ancient territorial claim to Southern
Albanian - still known as Northern Epirus to many Greeks. The area has a
substantial Greek minority. On the diplomatic front, the view that 'what
Albania asks for Kosova, Greece can ask for Northern Epirus' was promoted
mainly by the then ruling conservative New Democracy Party (ND).
When the left wing PASOK government came to power in 1993, and outstanding
issues between the two countries had been laid to rest, US mediation
resulted in a rapprochement between Greece and Albania was truly impressive.
The deteriorating human rights record of President Sali Berisha's government
did not prevent the Greek Socialists from throwing their support behind him
before and after the rigged elections of May 1996; ND, who had helped
Berisha to his earlier election victory in 1992, made no objections. In
return for the opening of Greek minority classes in three Southern Albanian
towns - though not in Tirana or Himare where Greek pupils were more numerous
- metropolitan Greeks and Greek minority leaders became a significan part of
the Albanian Democratic Party's constituency at home.
When the current crisis erupted and desperate Albanians took to the streets,
Athens stayed silent. With the exception of Deputy Foreign Minister George
Papandreou, noone made the connection between an apparent economic crisis
and the state of democracy in Albania. The Greek government was more
concerned to muster international financial support to alleviate the plight
of the victims of the pyramid collapse - and keep Berisha safely in power.
In March 1997, a week before he sought reelection to the Presidency, Berisha
was invited on a state visit to Greece. The move infuriated the Albanian
opposition but came as no surprise to Greece's neighbours. Foreign Minister
Pangalos had already indicated by his reference to the Belgrade
demonstrators as 'a mob' and a marked lack of sympathy for their
counterparts in Sofia that Greece would go for stability before democracy at
any price.
When the South finally erupted, Athens was slow to react. It was only after
the intervention of the USA, followed by the EU, the Council of Europe and
the OSCE, that the Grek government finally understood that its neighbor was
suffering from a democratic deficit and offered its mediation. At the same
time, fuelled by the war-mongering of the Greek media claiming to have
'discovered' that the Greek minority was directly threatened by the
insurgency, members of the ND and voices within PASOK cried wolf and
demanded Greek military intervention inside Albanian territory to 'protect'
the Greek minority in the South. Given that half of them were already in
Greece and that there there was no confirmation of the reports - minority
leaders inside Albania were, indeed, denying these allegations - the Greek
government was forced to denounce these irredentist voices. However, bowing
to the nationalist hysteria whipped up by the Albanophobe media, it
persisted in the face of all the evidence to the contrary in demanding
public assurances from Albania that the minority would be protected.
So, when Berisha and the Albanian opposition reached their agreement on 9
March, Athens was as jubilant as the latter. It immediately issued a
statement expressing unconditional satisfaction. The fact that the Albanian
insurgents remained sceptical of the politicians in Tirana and continued to
take over the towns of the South, was of little acount to a government that
had successfully alienated its Greek minority in Albania - as well as the
citizens of that country who were so fierecely opposing Berisha and his
government.
===========================================================Panayote Elias Dimitras
Spokesperson
Greek Helsinki Monitor & Minority Rights Group - Greece
P.O. Box 51393
GR-145 10 Kifisia
Greece
tel: +30-1-620.01.20
fax: +30-1-807.57.67
e-mail: helsinki-AT-compulink.gr
===========================================================
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