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| By Shaban Murati |
In the so-called diplomatic bargain package, which is underway for almost a year between Albania and Greece, where the Cham issue is ruled out with the consent of both sides, there is also a topic called "The Greek Minority in Albania". Its involvement in the agenda of bilateral diplomatic talks was personally confirmed by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on September on 9. He even specified that this issue is one of the conditions that Greece places on Albania to vote for the opening of EU accession talks.
Ask whom you want from the Albanian prime ministers and foreign ministers of the transition period: What is this "Greek minority issue" in Albania that appears as an unresolved issue in the current relations between our two countries? No one will know how to respond but have blindly accepted the existence of a "minority Greek issue" in bilateral relations. They will not know the answer, although this issue is 30 years old, serving as the Greek lanyard around the neck of the Albanian diplomacy to bring it around as a bear in the circus and to meet the demands and steps of a refined Athens strategy for deploying control in Albania.They will not know how to answer, because there really is not and there is no "Greek minority issue" in Albania. There is a Greek minority, but there are no issues because the Albanian governments with generosity and with the classical inferiority complex have solved and fulfilled all the requirements, conditions and fabrications of Athens, labeled by it as "the issue of the Greek minority".
The two main political parties SP and PD, made the Greek minority with the anti-Albanian law of 7501 in 1991 as landowners. Every Albanian government in the past 30 years has appointed at least one Greek minority member as Minister, for the only purpose to make Athens happy. Always there are some Greek minority deputies from every Albanian political party.
The Greek minority in Albania has enjoyed all the rights that it enjoys under the Albanian Constitution and international conventions on minorities. That minority has enjoyed the rights over the national average even during the communist regime and has been several times more privileged than the Albanian Chams of the Chams or Kosovars in Albania.
This is so true that even Athens itself, Greek prime ministers or foreign ministers, will never be able to publicly say what right is lacking to the Greek minority because they lack nothing. Athens only holds Nastradin's nails in our so-called Greek minority, because it serves its permanent strategy of influence in Albania.
From a diplomatic and legal point of view, this question arises: What is this "unresolved issue of the Greek minority" in Albania, which is included in the agenda of talks and which is the condition of Athens to the government of Albania in 2018? Athens plays and does not want to remove the collar around the neck of Albanian diplomacy, but on the other sidew, Tirana is accepting willingly this collar? And this has stuck to our diplomacy the artificial issue of the rights of the Greek minority, the neighboring state, which does not recognizes any minorities in its territory, neither the Albanian minority, nor the Turkish minority, nor the Macedonian, nor the Vlach, nor the Roma minority, Bulgarian, Egyptian, etc.
There is no "Greek minority issue" in Albania. There is a Greek minority, who enjoys all the rights alike, maybe more than the Albanians themselves. And until it does not exist, there can be no question of diplomatic talks between the two countries, because it is artificial and has a background. I warn you that the Greek strategy on this issue is twin with the Serbian strategy of Mitrovica!