CAM CAUSE AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION.
CAM CAUSE IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS
Ahmet MEHMETI
Greece is the only country in Europe today that openly violates the main conventions on which the new international order after World War II was founded. These monstrous violations are mostly felt by the 200 000 expatriated Albanians from their own ethnic lands in Çamëria.
Sixty years ago the darkest forces of Greek nationalism induced by the Greek government and led by the war criminals, general Zerva and
Plastira, started a massive ethnic cleansing of the Albanian Muslim population in Çamëria. The Greek Byzantine church was involved in this
criminal activity and has played an active role in it too. The ethnic cleansing in Çamëria had started since 1913 and it was accompanied by massive killings. Seventy-two intellectuals and personalities of the Albanian minority in Greece were executed in the place called Selan’s Brook. During a thirty-year period, the helpless Cam people had to submit to the so-called agrarian reform, which derived them of
their land to give it to the Greek settlers brought from Asia Minor during the 1920’s, and what is more, they were denied their mother tongue, the right to vote and life itself became unbearable. Before World War II started, the Cam people were prejudiced and deported
in the Aegean islands. Those who were called under arms were given hard labors and treated like prisoners of war. Nevertheless, during the war, the Cam people gave their own contribution with their participation in “Çamëria” and “Ali Demi” battalions. There were over 1000(one thousand) warriors, 70 of whom died, laying their own lives for the common cause side by side with the Greek liberation formations. These facts have clearly been confirmed by documents and books written by the Greeks of both political parties and the allied missions of the time. (Jani Sharra, Niko Zhangu, Mihal Miridhaqi, C.M. Woodhouse etc). But the sacrifices of this population in the liberation war were denied by the Greek authorities at the end of the war and are still being denied even today. For this reason, the Greek state still has in power the law of war, number 2636/1640 as well as similar laws such as 4506/1966/ and 1664/1998.
By the time this law was enacted, the Cam people were Greek citizens and it had nothing to do with them. This law today is held as pretext and to demonstrate to the civilized world how Greece itself violates the international conventions. Greece keeps on violating the Convention on Prevention of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity enacted on November 11, 1970. This convention was based on the resolutions of the UN General Assembly on February 13, 1946 and October 31, 1947 concerning the extradition and punishment of war criminals and the resolution 95 on December 11, 1946, which confirms the principles of the International Right recognized by the Statute of the International Military Court of Nuremberg. From the decision of that court and the resolutions of December 1966, the General Assembly has assessed as crimes against humanity the violation of economic and political rights of autochthon populations such as the martyrized Muslim population of Çamëria whose land was forcefully confiscated and the Christian population and the language and education in their mother tongue were denied. Article 1 of this convention stipulates that war crimes are “unpredictable regardless of
the date of perpetration”. Section B of article 1 provides for condemnation:” Expulsion through force of arms or invasion and inhumane actions…as well as genocide as provided in convention of 1988 on prevention and prosecution of genocide” even in cases when the above
mentioned facts do not violate the internal laws of the country where they were perpetrated”.
The provisions of this convention require that the representative authorities of the state that tolerate such acts be held responsible as
prescribed in article 2. This means that even the present day government, which procrastinates or denies these rights to Cam population is also responsible.
Article 4 of the convention obliges Greece to take legislative and other necessary actions to guarantee the provisions of Article 1 and 2 on
prosecution and condemnation of these acts. In keeping with this attitude the Greek state has not signed Protocol no.4 of European Convention on Human Rights. This deliberate action aimed at keeping Çamëria occupied as it is a strategic element of the Greek Megali
Idea. Article 1 and 3 of this protocol “no one shall be expelled, by means either of an individual or of a collective measure from the territory of the state of which he is a national ” and the second section of the same article underscores “ no one should be
deprived of the right to enter the territory of the state of which he is a national”.
On the other hand Greece as a member of the Council of Europe has ratified the European Convention of Human rights. However it continues to violate the rights of the Cam Albanians by unjustly accusing them as collaborators of nazi-fascists. Section 2 of article 6 in the Convention stipulates: “Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.” In fact, the Cam innocence has been proved according to law by Iannina Court by verdict with protocol no. 1837 date. September 29, 1976 and sent to the Ministry of Public Order, to the Department of Criminal Offences in Athens. Time has come for Greece to make a public apology for the ethnic cleansing of 2900 individuals, for 68 villages plundered and destroyed, for battered shrines, and for the 65-year unlawful exploitation and to take all actions to guarantee the safe return of Cams in their lands in Çamëria with all the dignity deriving from the international conventions that Greece has ratified. The Albanian state, besides negotiating with the neighboring Greece, must also work with UN and other European and American organisms.
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