Racist attacks against the Greek minority in Albania continue to occur unabated and with little interest from the police and the central government.
Evangelos Doules (Ευάγγελος Δούλες) who is also known by his Albanian name Vangjel Dule, revealed the racist actions against the Greeks of Northern Epirus in southern Albania, on social media.
He posted on Twitter that "for days now, most of the bilingual signs, placed by the road authority along the national road that runs through the municipality of Finiki [Φοινίκη, Albanian: Finiq], have erased the names in Greek, the mother tongue of members of the Greek ethnic minority. This phenomenon does not occur for the first time."
The chairman of the Unity for Human Rights Party that represents the Greek minority in the Albanian parliament continued to explain on Twitter that "It constitutes a criminal offense. 2. It violates the spirit and the letter of domestic law and international conventions on the rights of minorities, 3. It proves and incites ethnic hatred."
He then said "Our call is for a genuinely European political spectrum, a healthy public opinion and the media to work together to put an end to such phenomena, the perpetrators and their instigators," before adding photos of bilingual signs that had Greek erased.
— Vangjel Dule (@edoyles) July 8, 2020
Meanwhile, the tourist season in Northern Epirus in southern Albania, specifically in the Greek town of Himarra (Χειμάρρα, Albanian: Himarë) may turn into a conflict between the indigenous Greeks of the region, and Albanian authorities and the mafia this year. This is in addition to the coronavirus pandemic and an increase number of robberies against the local Greeks, as reported by Greek City Times.
Himarra is one of the most northern towns of Northern Epirus that has been Greek for thousands of years but was awarded to the newly formed Albanian state after the Balkan Wars in the early 20th century despite the Greek Army liberating the majority-Greek region.
