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Expulsion of Cham Albanians

Expulsion of the Cham Albanians
LocationThesprotia Prefecture
Date1944–1945
TargetCham Albanians
Attack type
Forced migration, ethnic cleansing, massacres, rape
DeathsTotal: 1,200–5,000[1]
  • Killed: 1,200–2,877[2][3]
  • Hunger and epidemics: Up to 2,500 according to Albanian sources[4]
VictimsEthnic Cleansing:
  • 14,000–35,000 Muslim Chams expelled from the region
  • 475 women raped[2]
PerpetratorsElements of EDES, Allies of WWII,[5][6] elements of ELAS,[7] individual peasants[6]

The expulsion of Cham Albanians from Greece was the forced migration and ethnic cleansing[3] of thousands of Cham Albanians from settlements of Chameria in Thesprotia, Greece - after the Second World War to Albania, at the hands of elements of the Greek Resistance: the National Republican Greek League (EDES) (1944) and EDES veteran resistance fighters (1945).[5][6] The causes of the expulsion remain a matter of debate among historians.[8][9][need quotation to verify][10][11][12][13] The estimated number of Cham Albanians expelled from Epirus mostly to Albania varies from 14,000 to 30,000.[8][14][15][16][17][18][19] Cham reports raise this to c. 35,000.[1]

In the late Ottoman period, tensions between the Muslim Chams and the local Greek Orthodox Christian population emerged through communal conflicts. The Cham Albanians were originally Christian Orthodox by religion, but converted to Islam during the latter years of the Ottoman occupation.[20] These tensions continued during the Balkan Wars, when the region, then under Ottoman rule, became part of Greece. Before and during the interwar period, the Muslim Chams were not integrated into the Greek state, which adopted policies that aimed to drive them out of their territory,[3][21] led to tensions between them.[5][3] Unlike the Christian Albanians of Greece, the Muslim Cham Albanians were seen by Greek nationalists as an immediate threat to the state.[22] Meanwhile, fascist Italian propaganda initiated in 1939 an aggressive pro-Albanian campaign for the annexation of the Greek region and the creation of a Greater Albanian state.[23]

At the beginning of World War II, when the Greek state announced its full mobilization prior to the Italian invasion, Cham Albanians were alienated further by it, and were treated as a hostile population and experienced discrimination and oppression, while their community leaders were exiled.[11][10][10][3][10] Subsequently, a part of the Muslim Cham population collaborated with the Axis troops, with the degree being a matter of academic debate.[24][25][8][26][27][28][29] They did so either by providing indirect support (guides, local connections, informants etc.)[29][30][31] or by being recruited as Axis troops and armed irregulars. The latter cases were responsible for atrocities against the local Greek populace.[32][33] Overall, the Muslim Chams were sympathetic to Axis forces during the war and benefited from the Axis occupation of Greece.[29][30][31] These armed Cham collaborators displayed extreme cruelty toward the Greek population and indulged in massacres and lootings.[34] Armed Cham collaboration units actively participated in Nazi operations that resulted in the murder of more than 1,200 Greek villagers between July and September 1943,[35][36] and, in January 1944, in the murder of 600 people on the Albanian side of the border.[37] There were also moderate elements within the Muslim Cham community who opposed hatred of their Greek neighbors, including Albanian beys and religious leaders.[38][31] A limited number of Muslim Chams enlisted in Albanian and Greek resistance units in the last stages of World War II.[32]

Collaboration with the Axis fueled resentment by the Greek side and in the aftermath of World War II, despite the assurances of the EDES guerillas, most of the Muslim Cham community fled, or were forced to flee, to Albania.[29][34][39][40][41] The collaboration, which was also the outcome of Greek totalitarian regime's policy embedded in the prevailing nationalistic ideology of the interwar period, served as a justification for their expulsion.[3][42] In the process between 200 and 300 Chams were massacred by EDES forces in various settlements between March and May 1945, while over 1,200 were murdered in total. Some Albanian sources increase this number to c. 2,000.[3][4][43][14] However, atrocities were not encouraged by the EDES leadership and the British mission, but both were unable to prevent them.[44] Generally, violent incidents against Muslim Cham civilians were severely limited because the EDES leadership managed to impose discipline on its subordinate members.[45][46] In 1945–1946, a special collaborator's court in Greece condemned a total of 2,109 Cham Albanians in absentia for collaboration with the Axis powers and war crimes.[29][30] Several local Greek notables promised safe passage and offered to host all those Chams who would abandon the Nazi side.[7] As such, a few hundred Muslim Chams stayed in Greece.[3]

Moreover, according to Albanian sources, an additional 2,500 Muslim Cham refugees lost their lives through starvation and epidemics on their way to Albania.[4][14] After settling in the People's Republic of Albania and the ruling Party of Labour of Albania under Enver Hoxha did not treat them as victims, but took a very distrustful view towards them and proceeded with arrests and exiles.[39][47] The Cham Albanians were labelled as "reactionaries", "murderers of the Greeks" and "collaborators of the occupation forces",[47] and suffered a certain degree of persecution within Albania,[48] because their elites were traditionally rich landlords, they had collaborated with the Axis forces and they had been involved in anti-communist activities.[15]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Vickers, Miranda 2002 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Mojzes, Paul (2011). Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 108. ISBN 9781442206632.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Baltsiotis 2011.
  4. ^ a b c Kretsi 2007, p. 285.
  5. ^ a b c Evergeti, Venetia; Hatziprokopiou, Panos and Nicolas Prevelakis Cesari, Jocelyne (30 October 2014). The Oxford Handbook of European Islam. p. 352. ISBN 978-0-19-102641-6. Oxford University Press.
  6. ^ a b c Tsoutsoumpis 2015, p. 137.
  7. ^ a b Tsoutsoumpis 2015, p. 136.
  8. ^ a b c Thomopoulos, Eleni (2012). The History of Greece. The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations. ABC-CLIO. p. 123. During World War II, the Greeks hated them because some of them had joined with the Italian forces in terrorizing the Greeks.
  9. ^ Document 89/57/45 PRO/FO 371/48094. Cited in: Sozos Ioannis; Baltsiotis, Lambros (2018) Οι Τσάμηδες στην Ήπειρο (1940 - 1944) Panteion University
  10. ^ a b c d Baltsiotis 2011, Paragraph 56, Note 95.
  11. ^ a b Gizem Bilgin, Aytaç (2020). Conflict areas in the Balkans. Lanham: Lexington Books. p. 116. ISBN 9781498599207.
  12. ^ Tsoutsoumpis 2015, pp. 119–120:The ethnic infighting that took place in Thesprotia between the Greek and Albanian communities during the Axis occupation has been described as a forgotten conflict. Indeed, until recently, the only existing studies were those of local «organic» intellectuals; schoolteachers, senior civil servants, local politicians and retired military officers. According to these authors, the Albanian Muslim minority collaborated collectively first with the Italian and then with the German occupiers in the hope that an Axis victory would lead to the eventual creation of a Greater Albanian state. The foremost purpose of these studies was to justify the violence perpetrated against the minority, and to back Greek irredentist claims made towards Albania. Unsurprisingly, such accounts adopted a rabidly nationalist and anti-Albanian stance. The Albanians were presented as «brutes» who were driven to violence and collaboration by «their savage instincts» and their natural propensity towards violence and loot. Subsequently, the violence instigated by Greek guerrillas and civilians during the liberation was downplayed, while the involvement of the minority in collaboration and acts of violence against the Greek population was considerably exaggerated.
  13. ^ Kretsi 2002, p. 190.
  14. ^ a b c Tsitselikis 2012, p. 311.
  15. ^ a b Kretsi 2007, p. 57.
  16. ^ Mazower (1960), pp. 25–26.
  17. ^ Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict. ISBN 0-275-97648-3. p. 158
  18. ^ Close, David H. (1995). The Origins of the Greek Civil War. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-582-06471-3. Retrieved 2008-03-29. p. 161 "On the Greek side of the frontier, government forces in March–May 1945 inflamed tensions by savage persecution of the Albanian-speaking Muslims, the Chams, in Epirus, and of the slavophones in western Macedonia. EDES gangs massacred 200–300 of the Cham population, who during the occupation totalled about 19,000 and forced all the rest to flee to Albania"
  19. ^ Gizem Bilgin, Aytaç (2020). Conflict areas in the Balkans. Lanham: Lexington Books. p. 112. ISBN 9781498599207.
  20. ^ "Miranda Vickers, Royal Military Academy" (PDF).
  21. ^ Manta 2009, pp. 527–528.
  22. ^ Troumpeta, Sevastē. (2013). Physical anthropology, race and eugenics in Greece (1880s-1970s). Boston: Brill. pp. 193–194. ISBN 9789004257672.
  23. ^ Tsoutsoumpis 2015, p. 127.
  24. ^ K. Featherstone; D. Papadimitriou; A. Mamarelis; G. Niarchos (11 January 2011). The Last Ottomans: The Muslim Minority of Greece 1940-1949. Springer. pp. 297–. ISBN 978-0-230-29465-3. OCLC 1001321361.
  25. ^ Channer, Alexandra (2013). Divided Nations and European Integration. National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century. University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated. p. 167.
  26. ^ Meyer 2008, p. 705. "The Albanian minority of the Chams collaborated in large parts with the Italians and the Germans."
  27. ^ M. Mazower (ed.), After The War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943–1960, Princeton University Press, 1960, ISBN 9780691058412, p. 25.
  28. ^ Victor Roudometof; Roland Robertson (2001). Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy: The Social Origins of Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 190–. ISBN 978-0-313-31949-5. "During World War II, the majority of Chams sided with the Axis forces..."
  29. ^ a b c d e Konidaris, Gerasimos (2005). "Examining policy responses to immigration in the light of interstate relations and foreign policy objectives: Greece and Albania". In King, Russell; Mai, Nicola; Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie (eds.). The New Albanian Migration. Sussex Academic Press. p. 67. ISBN 9781903900789.
  30. ^ a b c Manta 2009, p. [10].
  31. ^ a b c Manta 2009, pp. 530–531.
  32. ^ a b Kretsi 2002, p. 182.
  33. ^ Roudometof, Victor (2001). Nationalism, globalization, and orthodoxy : the social origins of ethnic conflict in the Balkans (1st ed.). Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. p. 190. ISBN 9780313319495.
  34. ^ a b Nachmani, Amikam (1990). International Intervention in the Greek Civil War - The UN Special Committee on the Balkans 1947-1952, New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 116. ISBN 9780275933678
  35. ^ Meyer 2008, pp. 204, 464.
  36. ^ Meyer 2008, p. 473.
  37. ^ Meyer 2008, p. 539.
  38. ^ Mazower, Mark (2016). After the War Was Over : Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-1-4008-8443-8. OCLC 959881915.
  39. ^ a b Kentrotis, Kyriakos (1995). "Myths and Realities About Minorities in Greece: The Case of the Moslem Cams of Epirus" (PDF). In Grigorova-Mincheva, Lyubov (ed.). Comparative Balkan Parliamentarism. pp. 149–155. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-01-20.
  40. ^ Steven Béla Várdy, ed. (2003). Ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Europe. Boulder, Colo.: Social Science Monographs. p. 228. ISBN 9780880339957.
  41. ^ Michalopoulos, Dimitris (1986). "The Moslems of Chamuria and the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey", Balkan Studies, pp. 303-313
  42. ^ Alioğlu Çakmak, Gizem (22 December 2019). "YUNAN MİLLİYETÇİLİĞİ AVRUPALILAŞMAYA KARŞI: ETNİK MİLLİYETÇİLİKTEN SİVİL MİLLİYETÇİLİĞE BİR DÖNÜŞÜM MÜ?". Balkan Araştırma Enstitüsü Dergisi. 8 (2): 213. doi:10.30903/Balkan.657714. S2CID 213324380.
  43. ^ Close, David H. (1995). The Origins of the Greek Civil War. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-582-06471-3. Retrieved 2008-03-29.
  44. ^ Tsoutsoumpis 2015, p. 138.
  45. ^ Μαντά, Ελευθερία (2004). Οι Μουσουλμάνοι Τσάμηδες της Ηπείρου (1923-2000). Θεσσαλονίκη: ΙΜΧΑ. p. 179. ISBN 9789607387387
  46. ^ Γκοτόβος, Αθανάσιος (2013). Ετερότητα και σύγκρουση: ταυτότητες στην κατοχική Θεσπρωτία και ο ρόλος της Μουσουλμανικής μειονότητας. Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων p.65 doi:10.26268/heal.uoi.3810
  47. ^ a b Kretsi 2007, p. 58.
  48. ^ Kretsi 2002, p. 185.

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