[Prishtina-E] English/Albanian: Letter to Secretary Powell Regarding Nicholas Gage from the Coalition of Albanian American Organizations

[Valbona Sherifi]

Coalition of Albanian American Organizations
C/O 2021 L Street, N.W., Suite 402, Washington, DC  20036

Letter to Secretary Powell Regarding Nicholas Gage from the Coalition of
Albanian American Organizations

Washington, January 10, 2003: Through the initiative of the National
Albanian American Council (NAAC) and the Albanian Heritage Foundation (AHF),
the overwhelming majority of the Albanian American organizations
contributed, signed and sent the following letter to the US Secretary of
State Colin Powell and the National Security Advisor to the President, Ms.
Condoleeza Rice, the Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations, Senator Richard Lugar, the Chairman of the US House Committee on
International Relations, Congressman Henry Hyde and the Chairman of the
Albanian Issues Caucus, Congressman Eliot Engel. Please note that an
Albanian version of this letter is also released along with this statement.
The full text of the letter reads as following:

January 9, 2003

The Honorable Colin Powell
United States Secretary of State
US Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Secretary Powell,

We the undersigned, as Albanian Americans and as members of Albanian civic,
religious, cultural and humanitarian organizations, are writing to protest
in the strongest possible terms the United States of America Department of
State’s (DOS) official endorsement and support of the recent visit to
Albania by Nicholas Gage - a.k.a. Nikos Gatzoyiannis.

Nicholas Gage is a well-known opponent of Albanians’ interests in the
Balkans.  It is a matter of public record that the Panepirotic Federation of
America, Canada and Australia, the organization Mr. Gage represents, refers
to Southern Albania as “Northern Epirus” and considers it to be occupied by
Albania, an obvious provocation and a direct renunciation of Albania’s
sovereignty.  Nicholas Gage (i) greatly, intentionally and publicly
misrepresents the population of Albania’s Greek minority up to an astounding
30% of Albania’s population of three million, compared to the official
Albanian government number of 58,000, approximately 2% (ii) implicitly
portrays all of the Albanians of the Orthodox faith in Albania as Greeks,
thus offending the Albanian Orthodox Church and its congregation throughout
the world, and (iii) in an effort to vilify Albanians, has aggressively
campaigned in Washington and elsewhere with his fabrications about the lack
of human rights of Albania’s Greek minority.  These false claims are in
direct conflict with the conclusions reached by DOS, the Council of Europe,
the European Commission, and other international human rights organizations
in their various positive assessments.  The facts are that the Greek
minority lives side by side with the Albanians, has several media outlets
which communicate and publish only in the Greek language, has a
three-times-better teacher/student classroom ratio when compared with
Albanians in a system that provides education in Greek from elementary
school to university, and has a disproportionately high representation in
Albania’s government.

In addition, Gage publicly opposed the US/NATO intervention in Kosova even
as innocent Kosovar civilians were being massacred by the thousands,
including American citizens of Albanian descent.  Furthermore, as recently
as May 22, 2001, he stated in the Washington Post that the thousands of
Greeks in Albania should receive the same treatment as the nearly two
million Kosovar Albanians, clearly implying that when Kosova attains its
independence, Southern Albania should secede and follow step.  These
positions serve only to fuel tensions and threaten the progress of improving
Albanian-Greek relations while undermining overall stability in the Balkans,
an area where the U.S. has made a significant strategic investment of its
human, political, financial and military assets.

We are outraged by the fact that during his visit to Albania, and while
being hosted in an official capacity by our Embassy in Tirana, Mr. Gage (i)
reiterated all of the above-mentioned views, including the fabrications
about the number of the Greek minority and the analogy of their situation
with the Albanian Kosovars, (ii) downplayed the plight of the several
hundred thousand ethnic Albanians residing in Greece, who are subjected to
the Greek form of ethnic cleansing known as Hellenization, and (iii) had the
audacity to malign all of the Albanian Chams who used to live in Greece as
Nazi collaborators.  As highlighted in a 2001 press release of the Turkish
Foreign Ministry, Mr. Gage’s thesis is not only a blatant fabrication but it
is a political and historical crime against Albanian Chams, since, in fact,
many Albanian Chams died in Greece’s liberation struggle during WWII.  The
malicious characterization of Albanian Chams as Nazi collaborators is
particularly appalling in light of the fact that Albanians and Albania saved
100% of the Jews who sought refuge from Nazi persecution in Greece (as well
as in other Balkan countries), while, according to Harvey Sarner, the author
of “Rescue in Albania,” - an account of how Albanians saved Jews - of the
total population of approximately 72,000 Jews who lived in Greece prior to
the beginning of the war, 60,000, fully 83% of the Jewish population, became
victims of the Holocaust.  In addition, Mr. Gage conveniently “forgets”
that, as described in the words of Joseph Jacobs, Head of the US Mission in
Albania in 1945-1946, only “in the fall of 1944 and during the first months
of 1945 the [Greek] authorities in north-western Greece perpetrated savage
brutality by evicting some 25,000 [Albanian] Chams - residents of Chameria -
from their homes” and by killing over 5,000 men, women and children in a
clear attempt to establish an ethnically pure border region with Albania.
These events marked the culmination of genocidal and ethnic cleansing
efforts that Greek ultranationalists had commenced since 1913.  By 1945, the
Greek nationalists had cleansed the area of ethnic Albanians of Muslim faith
and also stripped them of their properties, valued at well over $2.5 billion
at the current market prices.  The tens of thousands Albanian Chams have
lived in exile ever since.  Thus, we would like to remind Nicholas Gage, as
well as those who share or support his views, that, despite the
manipulations, Mr.Gage cannot use history as a justification for his
destabilizing agenda.

As Americans and representatives of the Albanian American community, we are
deeply disappointed and disturbed that during his visit to Tirana, Mr. Gage
was hosted and publicly accompanied by Ambassador James Jeffrey.  In ex post
facto efforts to justify this grand-scale reception, DOS representatives in
the U.S. and Tirana have stated that Mr. Gage’s visit and endorsement was
necessary in order to foster dialogue and enable Mr. Gage to have his
“hearing day” before the Albanian authorities.  The Albanian-American
community is very supportive of dialogue regarding respect for minority
rights, friendly relations with neighboring countries, Albania’s integration
in Euro-Atlantic structures, and its economic development.  Indeed, dialogue
with the proper forums such as Euro-Atlantic institutions, human rights
institutions, and the neighboring governments, has been an important part of
Albania’s development as a democracy.  However, we do not understand what
dialogue DOS is seeking to foster, and for the benefit of whom, when Mr.
Gage is a private citizen who has a documented public record as one of the
most fervent adversaries of Albanian interests and who, to our knowledge,
does not have any standing either from the Greek government or from the
American government.

We are certain that DOS is aware that, for historical and more recent
reasons, Albanians view Americans as their truest friends.  Everything that
is endorsed by the United States, in the Albanian public’s perception,
becomes worthy of attention and support.  Therefore, by publicly hosting and
endorsing Nicholas Gage, the American Embassy in Tirana and DOS willingly or
unwillingly have tacitly endorsed his views, and thus they have breached the
trust of Albanians and Albanian-Americans.  We believe that as
Albanian-Americans, we have the right to demand that DOS and the U.S.
Embassy in Tirana serve as instruments for the furtherance of democratic
principles and economic development in Albania, rather than becoming
facilitators of the interests of individuals with chauvinist agendas.

DOS’s silence that preceded Mr. Gage’s trip to Albania, as well as the
events during his visit on the ground, have demonstrated that there is a gap
in communication and perception between DOS representatives and the American
citizens of Albanian descent.  It has been clearly evidenced through words
and deeds that America’s truest and best friends in Europe, and possibly in
the world, are the Albanians; therefore, we believe that the time has come
for joint efforts to establish a qualitatively different relationship
between the Albanian-American community and DOS. We request that the first
step toward bridging this gap be for DOS to issue a full public disclosure
pertaining to the nature and agenda of Gage’s meetings in Albania, as well
as render a public explanation about how Albanian and U.S. interests were
served by supporting a “dialogue” with Mr. Gage, an individual whose views
on the region serve only to stoke the fires of ethnic tension.

Notwithstanding the above, DOS can and should indeed serve as a facilitator
for true dialogue with respect to minority rights and other issues in the
Balkans.  As it relates to Greece, we urge DOS to pressure the Greek
government to recognize all ethnic minorities within its territory,
including more than 40,000 remaining Albanian Chams of the Orthodox faith,
and grant them the same rights that Albania provides to an approximately
equivalent number of existing Greeks in Albania.  As Greek human rights
groups and many international human rights organizations state clearly,
Greece's policy of nonrecognition of the existence of ethnic minorities is
no longer permissible.  In addition, dialogue is needed to address the
grievances of the hundreds of thousands of Albanian immigrants living in
Greece, who are being subjected to different forms of “Hellenization” as
well as societal and institutional discrimination.  Furthermore, we urge DOS
to do all it can in order to, once and for all, seek a just resolution to
the proprietary and other legal claims of the Albanian Chams, including
their right to repatriation and Greek citizenship.  Of paramount importance,
and as a complementary and preliminary step to achieving the resolution of
these issues, we ask DOS to pressure the Greek government to abolish the
Status of War Law with Albania dating back to then Italian-occupied Albania
of 1940.  By still maintaining a Status of Law of War with Albania over 60
years later, while at the same time signing a Treaty of Friendship, Greece
not only has created an absurd situation, but is in clear violation of the
U.N. Charter, which requires “[a]ll Members [to] refrain
 from the threat or
use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of
any state
”, as well as of other provisions of International Law.

Finally, a drastic improvement in communication channels and cooperative
efforts between the U.S. Government and the Albanian-American community is
necessary for a plethora of other Albanian issues in the region.  Since the
fall of communism, Albania has made considerable steps towards the
establishment of a democracy and market economy.  However, as evidenced by
several reports, Albania’s progress, economic development, and integration
within the Euro-Atlantic institutions has been constantly impeded by
high-level corruption, lack of political transparency, ineffective election
reforms, and limited results in the fight against organized crime and human
trafficking.  In Kosova, while tremendous progress is clearly evident,
further delays in the resolution of its final independent status are
impeding investment and economic development as well as creating a fertile
environment for destabilization.  Furthermore, despite the relative
stability achieved in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the
Macedonian authorities have a long way to go in order to fully comply with
the internationally brokered and the U.S.-endorsed Ohrid Agreement and
recognize and accept Albanians as equal and respected Macedonian citizens.
Last, but not least, much more can be done for the rights of Albanians in
Montenegro, as well as those of the Albanians in the Presheva Valley of
Southern Serbia.  The Albanian-American community stands ready to offer its
expertise, knowledge, experience, and contacts in the region in order to
work toward the resolution of these issues and the achievement of a
sustainable and real stability in the Balkans.

Albanians consider the United States to be their best friend.  At a time
when our country is engaged in a global war against terrorism, at a time
when many have tested their true feelings toward the United States, big or
small, true friendships such as the one the Albanians offer to Americans,
must not be neglected or forgotten.  Let us use the most recent Gage debacle
as a learning experience and a steppingstone toward the establishment of a
true partnership for the advancement of the common U.S. and Albanians’
interests.

A similar letter was sent to the National Security Adviser to the President,
Ms. Condoleeza Rice, the Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations, Senator Richard Lugar, the Chairman of the US House Committee on
International Relations, Congressman Henry Hyde and the Chairman of the
Albanian Issues Caucus, Congressman Eliot Engel.

Respectfully submitted by,


Albanian American Community of Illinois – Ilaz Kadriu, President
Albanian American Cultural Foundation – Cafo Boga, President
Albanian American Islamic Center - Imam Vehbi Ismail, Religious Leader of
Albanian Muslims in the US and Canada
Albanian American Society Foundation – Esad Rizai, President
Albanian Center of New York – Drita Kokalari, President
Albanian Heritage Foundation – Gary Kokalari, President
Albanian League of Prizren – Ismet Berisha, President
Albanian Media Group – Vera Mjeku, President
Alba Soul  – Ilirjan Papa, President
Ana e Malit - Xheladin Zeneli, President
Atlantic Association – Arber Muriqi, Head Representative
Dede Gjo Luli Foundation – Prele Sinishtaj, Head Representative
Democratic League of Kosova U.S.A. – Agim Rexhaj, President
Forumi Shqiptar - Ilirjan Papa, Director
Friends of Kosova Protection Force – Shefki Mexhuani, Head Representative
Frosina Network – Van Christo, Owner and Director
Human Rights Association "Chameria"
Illyria Newspaper – Ekrem Bardha, Publisher
Malesia-Humanitarian Fund – Gjon Ivezaj, President
National Albanian American Council – Richard Lukaj, Chairman
Pan Albanian Federation, VATRA – Agim Karagjozi, Chairman
Patriotic Association of Dibra – Lavdrim Cami, President
Peja Association – Agim Cavderbasha, Head Representative
Plave and Guci Foundation – Xhevat Kukaj, President
St. Paul’s Albanian Catholic Church – Father Anton Kqira

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