79 years after the genocide of the Chameria Albanians, survivors and the descendants of the victims are waiting for the violent crime to be recognized
The mass murder of Albanian civilians was meticulously planned when units of the Greek general Napoleon Zervas approached the town of Paramythia at dawn on June 27, 1944. From June 1944 to March 1945, Greek forces and partisans carried out ethnic cleansing of the Chameria Albanians, killing 2,900 men, 214 women, 96 children and raping 745 women. In order to drive the inhabitants from their properties, soldiers systematically set fire to 5800 houses in a total of 68 villages.
The displaced persons suffered from hunger and epidemics and over 2000 civilians died fleeing from the Greek military. Due to the forced expulsion, around 35,000 Chameria Albanians had to leave their homeland forever. To this day, Greece refuses to recognize the genocide committed against the Chameria Albanians and strictly refuses to compensate the dispossessed Albanians. Greece accuses the Chameria Albanians of collaborating with the German Wehrmacht.
Albanian parliament classifies the 1994 massacre of the Chameria Albanians as genocide
In 1994, the Albanian parliament in Tirana passed a law classifying June 27, 1944 as genocide. In memory of the victims of the genocide, exhibitions, marches and commemorative events are held in Albania every year. The Chameria region is an area located in what is now southern Albania and north-western Greece. Historical sources date the Albanian settlement of the coastal strip to the 13th century. According to a census from 1910, 83,000 Albanians lived in the Chameria region. The majority of the Khameria Albanians are Muslims, but there is also a small minority of Orthodox Christians.
Chameria Albanians demand recognition of the genocide
After the Second Balkan War and the subsequent Conference of London in 1913, the southern part of the Chameria region was assigned to Greece. Interest groups of the Chameria Albanians are demanding that Greece recognize the crime as genocide, allow them to visit their former homeland and return their former property. In Turkish and Azerbaijani historiography, the term technicus Mezalim has become established for mass violent crimes against the Muslim civilian population.