"The appeals court of Albania recently confirmed three year prison sentences for three Greeks who had wrapped themselves in Greek flags in support of a local candidate who was running for mayor."
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/94838 <http://www.americanchronicle.com/> A double standard for Kosovo (Serbia - Albania) Australian Macedonian Advisory Council March 17, 2009 It is a year since Kosovo, with NATO backing, made a unilateral declaration of independence, breaking away from Serbia. Fifty countries, most of which have little knowledge of the political intricacies of the Balkans and even less about the complicated historical interplay between the various ethnic and religious groups living in the area supported the move. As a state it is doubtful whether Kosovo can survive. It has virtually no industry, no service sector, tourism is non existent and agricultural exports minimal. The economy has been propped up artificially by the presence of NATO KFOR troops and foreign aid. Its administration is run by the UCK, the terrorist-labelled group accused of trafficking women, drugs and arms. Worse still there are credible reports that during the insurgency against the Serbian government Serbian prisoners were taken by the UCK to houses in Albania where their organs were removed without anaesthesia, with the Serb prisoners begging first to be killed. Their organs were then flown overseas for human transplants. (The accusation comes from no less an authority than Carla del Ponte,the Swiss Chief prosecutor in charge of the Milosevic trial who said that she personally visited the houses where this harvesting of organs was alleged to have taken place. Bandages with blood were still strewn around as were various medical instruments. She said that the investigation was obstructed by NATO authorities in Kosovo who refused her access to UCK members accused by fellow Albanians of committing these atrocities). This then is the moral stamp of the Kosovo government leadership, a government in which the west has placed its confidence to run a democratic and politically and economically viable Kosovo. Though 50 countries have recognized what they call the "independence" of Kosovo (as has the US for its own strategic reasons) the whole question of whether this landlocked breakaway primarily Albanian entity can survive at all will in all likelihood depend on the outcome of yet another war in the province in the not too distant future. One should not discount Russian anger at the west for militarily destroying Russia's ally, Serbia, and encouraging, together with the European Union, several of its provinces to become independent statelets. The Russians have never wavered from their support for a united Serbia and Russian officials on several occasions have predicted that a new war will erupt sooner or later over Kosovo. This pessimistic view is not without its supporters in the Balkans who have a deeper historic perspective of the region and a better understanding of its potential for a new balance of power when Serbia becomes stronger and gets more allies on board. The main argument of NATO for Kosovo's independence was that it was inhabited by a majority of Muslim Albanians who were oppressed by the Christian Serbs. If we accept this argument for secession why don't we look a little further and cast our eye on Albania proper. If the NATO Kosovo argument is valid, then why has NATO not supported the secession of Northern Epirus, the southern Albanian province populated by a culturally, religious, and ethnically oppressed population who are Greeks? Northern Epirus has a better argument for secession than Kosovo because it is an area that always had a predominantly Greek population, it was a part of Greece, and at one time in the early 20th century even had several North Epirus Greek members sitting in the Greek Parliament. Further, the Albanians themselves agreed to the self determination of the Greeks in their southern Greek provinces by signing the international Treaty of Corfu. It was a foregone conclusion that Northern Epirus would devolve to become a part of Greek Epirus, a logical development since the area was nationally, culturally and religiously a seamless continuation of Greek Epirus. After the Second World War Greece expected Axis-occupied Northern Epirus to be freed and to rejoin Greece, but in one of those typically Balkan twists of history, politicians decided otherwise, and the Greeks of Northern Epirus found themselves not only cut off from the rest of Greece but lived behind the most barbaric Iron Curtain that the world has ever known. Greek families divided by the border were not allowed to communicate with their children or parents on the Greek side of the border for more than forty years. My own wife's father who was on the Greek side of the border spent forty years unable to see his mother and two sisters living three miles away. When the Albanians finally opened the border to the Greek villages inside Albania only one sister was still alive and she was seventy years old. The hardships and oppression faced by the Greeks of Albania were indescribable, their churches were desecrated by the hard line Albanian Communist regime, their culture repressed and any attempt by them to meet with their children and parents in the villages on the other side of the border resulted in imprisonment. The stories of repression of the Greeks in Albania are legion and while the Albanians of Kosovo today proudly fly the red flag with the double-headed eagle of Albania the Greeks in southern Albania are subject to imprisonment and beatings for displaying the blue and white flag of Hellas. The appeals court of Albania recently confirmed three year prison sentences for three Greeks who had wrapped themselves in Greek flags in support of a local candidate who was running for mayor. Where are the NATO and EU voices in support of independence for the oppressed and dwindling Greek population of Northern Epirus? Was the argument for the secession of Kosovo not also applicable to the population of the Greek provinces of southern Albania? Let us hope that the Obama administration will reassess both the situation in Kosovo and that of the Greeks in Northern Epirus. To apply a double political standard to two regions just a few miles from one another is to perpetuate national grievances and to open the door to a possible new round of conflict in the future. Let the analysts this time work with the historians and only then advise their governments which steps to take in these ever fragile Balkans. For the good of everybody. from: <http://greekpoliticalissues.blogspot.com/> http://greekpoliticalissues.blogspot.com/ [email protected]
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