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Cham Albanians, or Chams (Albanian: Çamë, Greek: Τσάμηδες Tsámidhes), are a group of ethnic Albanians who originally resided in areas of Epirus that correspond to the modern Greek prefectures of Thesprotia and Preveza. Chams speak the Albanian language and are predominantly Muslim, with a sizable Orthodox Christian minority.

At the end of World War II, nearly all Muslim Chams in Greece were expelled to Albania. They were accused by EDES for having collaborated with occupation forces. Indeed, several hundred Chams had collaborated with the Axis Powers, as part of the Balli Kombetar. However, approximately the same amount of Muslim Chams provided military support to the Greek resistance forces of the ELAS (Greek People's Liberation Army), while the rest were civilians uninvolved in the war. Since the war, no criminal of Cham origin was ever brought to trial.

Orthodox Chams remained in Greece, but they have suffered from assimilation and public suppression of their Albanian heritage and language.

Identity

Cham Albanians speak the "Cham dialect", also known in Albanian as "çamërisht", which is a subbranch of the Tosk Albanian dialect. Their name and the region's name, Chameria, is of uncertain origin. It may derive from the ancient Greek name of the Thyamis River, or from the ancient Thraco-Illyrian tribe of Sameis. The Chams of the southern Chameria region believe that they are descended from a race of ancient jelims. Jelims were figures from southern Albanian mythology, whose name derives from the Slavic transmission of the Greek word έλλην (ellin) which means "Greek".

Geography

The region inhabited by Chams, which by Albanians is called Chameria extends from the Ionian coast to the Ioannina mountains in the east, and in the south almost as far as the Preveza gulf. This are corresponds to seven villages in the southern part of Saranda district in Albania and in the prefectures of Thesprotia and Preveza in Greece. This area is part of the larger region of Epirus and administratively is divided in two prefectures of the Periphery of Epirus. Much of the region is mountainous. Farmlands are within the valleys in the central, southern and the western part of Thesprotia, while hills are concetrated in Preveza Prefecture. There are tow rivers in the region: The Kalamas River (also Template:Lang-el, Template:Lang-sq) and Acheron.

History

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Greek state

Following the defeat of Ottoman forces in the region and the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, an international boundary commission awarded the northern part of the region of Epirus to the Principality of Albania, and the southern part to the Kingdom of Greece, leaving Greek and Albanian minority areas on either side of the border. Most of the Cham-populated border area to the far northwest, except for a few Cham villages assigned to Albania, came under the Greek half. Most of the Muslim Cham population was part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

World War II

The remaining 20,000 Muslim Cham Albanians of Greece were subjected to discrimination that increased under Ioannis Metaxas, Prime Minister of Greece from 1936 to 1941. Tensions were exacerbated at the time of World War II. Following an Italian invasion of Albania (7 April - 12 April, 1939), the Albanian Kingdom became a protectorate of the Kingdom of Italy. The Greco-Italian War (28 October, 1940 - 23 April, 1941) started with the Italian military forces launching an invasion of Greece from Albanian territories. The invasion force included several hundred native Albanian and Cham auxiliaries.

The initial Greco-Italian War continued into the Battle of Greece (6 April - 30 April, 1941), with forces of Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Bulgaria joining the Italian side. The three Axis powers defeated Greece and divided it into occupation zones. The Italians, whose zone of occupation included Epirus, recruited a large number of Muslim Cham citizens to assist them. The property of several of the Muslim Cham feudal lords (beys), that collaborated with the Nazis, more or less passively, was confiscated in order to permit Greeks to settle in the area. The massacres that occurred in this region (i.e. Paramythia) against the Christian-Orthodox population had the full support of hundreds of Cham militias. There are no reports of Cham criminals having been brought to trial after World War II. They found refuge behind the Albanian border after retreating together with the Nazis in 1944.

During the Axis occupation, the Muslim Chams set up their own administration and militia, part of the fascist Balli Kombetar and XILIA organizations, at Thesprotia and collaborated closely with both the Italians and, when Italy capitulated, the Germans. Cham units comprised the main occupation force committing, alongside the Wehrmacht, a number of atrocities on their ethnically Greek fellow citizens, burning houses and entire villages to the ground, killing several hundred ethnic Greeks and forcing thousands to flee their homes.

The right-wing head of EDES, Napoleon Zervas, asked the Cham Albanians to fight against EAM-ELAS. After their negative response, EDES forced many Cham Albanians to leave their homes. Several hundred of them were killed and others died during their exodus to Albania. The property of all Muslim Chams (whether they collaborated with the Nazis or not) was confiscated in order to permit Greeks to settle in the area.

The left-wing army of Greece, Elas, was opposed to the idea of collectively punishing the Cham community, as several hundred Muslim Chams had enlisted in its ranks. After the war, only 117 Muslim Cham Albanians were left in Greece.

Muslim Cham units also played an active part in the Holocaust in Greece, including the round-up and expulsion to the Auschwitz concentration camp and Birkenau of the 2,000 strong Romaniotes Greek-Jewish community of Ioannina in April 1944. As the Germans and their allies began to lose ground to the anti-Nazi militias in 1944, and started retreating to Albania, many hundreds of Chams followed them.

Demographics

Today, Cham Albanians are thought to number 440,000. The majority of them live in Albania, while other communities live in Greece, Turkey and the USA. Their religion is Islam and Orthodoxy.

Historical demographics

The population of the region of Chameria were mainly Albanian and Greek, with smaller minorities. There is a dispute regarding the size of the Albanian population of the region. In Greek censuses, only Muslims of the region were counted as Albanians. According to 1923 Greek census, in Chameria region were living 20,319 Muslims who had as mother tongue Albanian language, in a total population of about 60,000. In Greek census of 1928, there were 17,008 Muslims who had as mother tongue the Albanian language. The only census that counted Orthodox population of the region of Albanian origin, was made by fascist Italy in 1941, but Greek authors claim that the way it was accomplised was exaggerated. This census found that in the region lived 54,000 Albanians, of whom 26,000 Orthodox and 28,000 Muslim and 20,000 Greeks. After the war, according to Greek censuses where ethno-linguistic groups were counted, Muslim Chams were 113 in 1947 and 127 in 1951.

Current demographics

The exact number of Albanians still residing in the Chameria region is uncertain, since the Greek government does not include ethnic and linguistic categories in any official census. According to other sources, Orthodox Chams today are approximately 40,000. Albanian is still spoken by a minority of inhabitants in Igoumenitsa.

Muslim Chams number at 400,000 from which 250,000 live in Albania and the remainder mainly reside in the USA and Turkey.

Today, the total population of Thesprotia and Preveza Prefectures is 106,411. The region's population density is close to the average of several rural and semi-urban areas in Greece and in the Balkans.

Religion

Cham Albanians are mainly Muslims, with a seizable Orthodox minority. Nowadays, 90% of the population adheres to Islam and 10% of the population adheres to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Current issues

The National Political Association "Çamëria" (in Albanian: Shoqëria Politike Atdhetare "Çamëria"), a pressure group advocating the return of the Chams to Greece, receipt of compensation and greater freedom for the Orthodox Chams in Greece, was founded on January 10, 1991. Greek descendants of Cham atrocities are also claiming compensation from Albania. The CPA (Chameria Political Association) claims a number of 2,800 dead and over 35,000 evicted although these figures are not supported by historians, like Victor Roudometof or Mark Mazower, who put the number of evictees at 18,000. In 1994, Albania passed a law that declared the 27th of June The Day of Greek Chauvinist Genocide Against the Albanians of Chameria and built a memorial at the village of Konispol.

Notable Cham Albanians

Bilal Xhaferri, writer
Mazar Dino, member of the Balli Kombëtar organization, protagonist of the massacre of Paramythia
Gjin Bue Shpata, medieval lord of Arta and despot of Angelokastron

See also

• Chameria
• Chameria issue
• Albanians
• Minorities in Greece
• Treaty of London
• Treaty of Bucharest
• Treaty of Lausanne
• Expulsion of Germans after World War II
• Axis occupation of Greece during World War II
• Collaboration during World War II
• Greek Resistance

References

1. ^ Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece. Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002. "Today there are approximately 250,000 Chams in Albania and an estimated 400,000 in the wider diaspora, mostly in the USA and Turkey."
2. ^ Mazower, Mark. After The War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton University Press, 2000, ISBN 0691058423, p. 25. "The war saw communal relations worsen quickly. In October 1940, the Greek authorities disarmed 1,800 Cham conscripts and put them to work on local roads; the following month they seized all Albanian males not called up and deported them to camps or to island exile. Not surprisingly, when the Italians finally took control of mainland Greece in 1941, they found Cham activists willing to call for unification of the region with Albania. Several hundred were conscripted into the anti-communist Bal Komitare to act as local gendarmes. From the autumn of 1943, these armed bands took part alongside the Wehrmacht in burning Greek villages. Such actions, it seems, were not supported by many of the local beys, nor by the Mufti. By the summer of 1944 it was obvious that a German withdrawal from Epiros was imminent. After the Cham bands turned down a demand from EDES to join it against the left-wing ELAS, EDES's leader Napoleon Zervas ordered a general attack on the Cham villages. Two attacks took place, in July and August, with the participation of the EDES Tenth Division and local Greek peasants, eager to gain revenge for the burning of their homes: many of the Cham villages were burned, and the remaining inhabitants–some 18,000–fled across the border into Albania."
3. ^ Mazower, Mark. After The War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton University Press, 2000, ISBN 0691058423, p. 26. "Unlike EDES and the local Greek peasantry in Thesprotia, ELAS was opposed to the idea of collective punishment of the Cham community. Several hundred Chams had enlisted in its ranks, and it had fairly good relations with the communist-led resistance in Albania itself."
4. Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Where to Now? Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002.
5. Leonard Newmark, Philip Hubbard, and Peter R. Prifti. Standard Albanian: A Reference Grammar for Students Stanford University Press, 1982, ISBN 0804711291, p. 226.
6. Babiniotis, G. Lexicon of the Modern Greek Language (2nd Edition). Lexicology Centre, 2002, ISBN 9608619017, p. 761. "Thyamis (o) Kalamas river (see) ; Greek: Μπαμπινιώτη, Γ. Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Β' Έκδοση. Θύαμις (ο) ο Καλαμάς (βλ.λ.) .
7. Babiniotis, G. Lexicon of the Modern Greek Language (2nd Edition). Lexicology Centre, 2002, ISBN 9608619017, p. 1806. "Cham (o) (Chamides) resident of Chameria, area of Thesprotia; (more precisely) the muslim albanophone (Turkalbanian) of Chameria, who was excepted of the population exchange with Turkey. ."
8. Elsie, Robert. A Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture. New York University Press, 2000, ISBN 0814722148, p. 131. "Jelim. Figure of southern Albanian mythology. These giants, Alb. jelim, def. jelimi, from Gk. έλλην 'Greek' with Slavic transmission, were known to the Saranda region. The Çams (of southern Çamëria region) believed themselves to be descended from a race of ancient jelims. cf. M. Lambertz 1973, p. 482; E. Cabej 1974b, p. 204."
9. Vickers, Miranda and Pettifer, James. Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1997, ISBN 1850652791, p. 207. "The region of Chameria extends from the Ionian coast to the Ioannina mountains in the east, and in the south almost as far as the Preveza gulf. Only seven villages centered on the village of Konispol, are in Albania itself."
10. Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece. Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002.
11. Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece. Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002.
12. Russell King, Nicola Mai, and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers. The New Albanian Migration. Sussex Academic Press, 2005 ISBN 1903900786, pp. 67 and 87.
13. Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece. Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002.
14. Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece. Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002.
15. Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece. Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002.
16. Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece. Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002.
17. Mazower, Mark. Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44. Yale University Press, 1993, ISBN 0300089236.
18. Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece. Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002.
19. ^ Vickers, Miranda. The Cham Issue - Where to Now? Paper prepared for the British MoD, Defence Academy, 2002. "This is in part due to the violence they suffered historically, but also to a collective prejudice against them on both sides of the border. Many Chams were persecuted by the Albanian Communist regime, which like the Greeks, believed that they had collaborated with the Italians and Germans during the Second World War. Whereas in Albania and the diaspora Cham communities have managed to preserve their dialect, traditions and folk songs, in Greece itself those Orthodox Chams, now numbering around 40,000, who were allowed to remain in Greece, have suffered from assimilation and the public suppression of their Albanian heritage and language. As a result, Albanian is only spoken privately in the home."
20. Ktistakis, Yiorgos. "Cham and Albanian ownerships in Greece", Paramythia Online (in Greek). "Το 1923 στην Τσαμουριά ζούσαν 20.319 μουσουλμάνοι που είχαν τα αλβανικά ως μητρική γλώσσα. Το 1925 η αλβανική κυβέρνηση έδωσε τον αριθμό των 25.000 μουσουλμάνων. Από την απογραφή του 1928 προέκυψε ότι στην Ήπειρο ζούσαν 17.008 μουσουλμάνοι αλβανικής γλώσσας. Το 1938 αναφέρθηκαν από την Γενική Διοίκηση Ηπείρου 17.311 αλβανομουσουλμάνοι στην περιοχή. Η επεξεργασία των αποτελεσμάτων του 1940 δεν ολοκληρώθηκε ποτέ αλλά σύμφωνα με μία πηγή οι μουσουλμάνοι της περιοχής ανέρχονταν σε 16.661. Σύμφωνα με μία άλλη -πιο αξιόπιστη- πηγή, οι μουσουλμάνοι ανέρχονταν σε 21.000 έως 22.000. Τέλος, οι ιταλοί υπολόγισαν το 1941, κατά τρόπο όμως υπερβολικό, ότι στην περιοχή κατοικούσαν 26.000 χριστιανοί Αλβανοί Τσάμηδες, 28.000 μουσουλμάνοι Αλβανοί Τσάμηδες έναντι μόνο 20.000 Ελλήνων."
21. Vickers, Miranda and Petiffer, James. The Albanian Question. I.B. Tauris, 2007, ISBN 1860649742, p. 238. "In a town such as Igoumenitsa (Albanian Goumenitsa), the Albanian language is still spoken by a minority of inhabitants."
22. Ελληνική Επιτροπή για τη διαχείρηση των υδατικών πόρων: Στοιχεία από την πρόσφατη απογραφή του πληθυσμού
23. Balkans Maps
24. Roudometof, Victor. Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN 0275976483, p. 182. "The figure of 30,000 is adopted from the Cham associations without checking the other sources used in the discussion in this chapter."
25. ]

External links

• Albania protest halts Greek visit, BBC Tuesday, 1 November 2005.
• Chams still pressing for return of Greek citizenship and property
• Greece: Human Rights Developments, Human Rights Watch
• Special Report 77: Albanians in the Balkans, United States Institute of Peace
• The Society Farsarotul - Southern Albania, Northern Epirus: Survey of a Disputed Ethnological Boundary (Tom J. Winnifrith)
• Miranda Vickers. "The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece". Quelle: Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. Conflict Studies Research Centre, April 2002.
• Miranda Vickers. "The Cham Issue - Albanian National & Property Claims in Greece". Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, January 2007.

• Ethnic groups in Greece
• Epirus
• Albanian people