By Arben Çokaj

Chameria, how it should be

Inspired from the book “The Diplomacy of Self-denial”
of the writer Shefki Hysa

Many times in life, we confront irresistible challenges. Efforts for existence seem impossible and the being surrenders to the destiny. In general the ill-fated man believes in the destiny more than them who are successful. But nobody survives without efforts. The prophet used to tell everybody “sow”, when they asked him how the weather would be that year. And you are going to reap what you have sown.

The Cham issue has been impossible for more than a half century.
The communist regime entombed it and the most distinguished part of those Chams that were violently deported to Albania, was aggressively victimized by the wild Albanian regime too. Kosovo’s people that had escaped from Kosovo to the Albanian “paradise” of that time had the same destiny. As their expectancy was too big, they couldn’t recover from the desperation and so they were sent in prison for agitation and propaganda.

Bilal Xhaferri, the most distinguished Cham writer, had the same destiny. His father was murdered by the communists when Bilal was just a little child. The communist regime was too cruel to deal with– it could kill you for a word. And Bilal was obliged to escape as the only way to continue his life. He created a distinguished literary work and directed for years “Eagle’s wing” (“Krahu i shqiponjës”) magazine in USA. This magazine symbolized Chameria and it continues being published in the post-communist Albania by the well known Cham writer and patriot Shefki Hysa, director of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri”.

The last weeks, Shefki Hysa has published an excellent book: “The diplomacy of self-denial”, which raises many important issues of the Cham developments and author’s personal attempts to keep up the Cham issue, the spirit of a maltreated, outraged and massacred population.

An unprecedented genocide was practiced over the Cham population when the Greek state didn’t recognize people’s rights and freedoms. The terrible crimes of the Zervist bands and the silence that the communist regime imposed in Albania, has been enough to snuggle up the Cham population, especially that part that was violently obliged to migrate into Albania. It was difficult for the Chams to awake and the difficulties go on even today, after 18 years of democracy because the politics of the Greek state and that of the Albanian state couldn’t converge in a political solution for Cham’s properties. When a right is denied, it’s difficult to win it completely. The silence was intentional and continues being so.

There are Chams in Albania and abroad, distinguished for their achievements in life. The Chams are organized in associations, parties etc., to ask for their rights that were negated to them in decades. They want back their property in Chameria, in that northwestern part of the neighboring Greece, where the Chams have their lands. The Greek state still isn’t predisposed to accept the historical truth, for all that the Cham issue is known by the Greek historians too, is known by the international diplomacy, especially by the western one, by USA and the European Union, which has initiated even a resolution in support of the Cham issue.

The well-known Albanian analyst and political scientist Arben Xhaferri, who has the same surname of the big Cham writer, would define: “there are nations that produce history as well as nations that produce chronicles”. It is necessary a high conscience and a common organized work, “selfless”, as the Cham writer and activist Shefki Hysa describes it, in order to transform the chronicles into history. The Chams have their own history; they should begin to promote it more, until they achieve the desirable result.

Despite the numerous difficulties, today the Chams have the possibilities to impose on the Greek state the recognition of the Cham rights, as a social, not only individual, group. They will achieve this only by means of a good organization and a non-manipulative conscience. Cham’s properties are occupied by other people, some of whom Greeks that came back from Turkey, after the Second World War. This is a social problem for Greece, which should give back to the Cham Albanians their properties, which have been used by the Greeks for some decades.

Seeing that the Greek state is totally lacking in desire and the problems that can be created in the Greek society with the return of the Chams in their own lands and territories, a better organization is nothing less than necessary to make their right a reality. The Chams should take control of their destiny. The Albanian state is overmuch corrupt, incapable and liable to risk to help in this issue. We can all remember the lacking affinity and the lack of interest that the Albanian state showed toward Kosovo issue. The Albanian diplomacy pronounced some words only when Kosovo’s people gained the western sympathy.

The election in USA of president Obama, a black man, get us back in retrospective, to witness what the Black Americans have suffered in centuries. The Black Americans were slaves and only after a civil war between north and south they could get free from slavery. The racism and the slight continued and they were too severe until the beginning of the past century. But their efforts made it possible, that gradually, through sufferings, maltreatments, murders and racism they could succeed in winning their rights and today the American President is a black man, with the slogan “Yeas, we can!”. The Black Americans touched their dream because they could.

And what about the Chams?! If the Chams work with a high conscience and with a contemporary organization, where everybody gives his contribution and the contributions are not misused, but they are efficiently used, in order to achieve the high intention for the materialization of their dream, in order to get back to the ancestor’s lands and to take the inherited properties, then they will be able to reach that, which today seems impossible. And the Chams have a lively example for this, Kosovo.

I once was in Fushë-Krujë to the dentist. I was trying to explain to a man from Kruja that Kosovo was going to win independence one day but he objected. “It will never be independent!”- He said. And I added: “Kosovo will become independent for those who work and believe that it can be independent. You will see that!” We were lucky enough to have George Bush in Albania and in Fushë-Krujë he announced that Kosovo will be an independent country. The independence was reached with work and sacrifices and it will be kept such with efforts.

In their fair attempts, the Chams should focus on the find of a political and spiritual leader, like Kosovo’s people found Dr. Ibrahim Rugova. They should pay a symbolic contribution (Kosovo’s emigrants pay 3% of their salary) for this common organization because without money no work can be done in the present-day chancelleries. And they should become conscious for the reality that surrounds them, because no one can help them more than themselves.

“The diplomacy of self-denial” can become a solution key, if a good part of the Chams work and sacrifice their time and just a little from their fortune, as the patriot Shefki Hysa does, for this common and fair issue. Successes don’t come by themselves– they come only if we work to realize them.

Translated by: Lorena Uliu