Dionysis-Fredi Beleri, the ethnic Greek mayor-elect of the town of Himara in southern Albania, was arrested only two days before the local elections on May 14. The charges filed accused him of "vote-buying" and he has remained incarcerated since then.
The prosecution claims that Beleri "gave money to eight citizens to vote in his favor."
During the same month of Beleri’s arrest, there were a total of 31 accusations of bribery from multiple candidates. However, Beleri is the only person incarcerated while the others remain free.
In an interview from jail, Beleri said that he was arrested while he was sitting in a cafe with his lawyer and a cousin. They were arrested "in the cinematic way international terrorists are arrested. They [the Albanian government] wanted to cut off the wave of compatriots from Athens who were coming to vote and to terrorize fellow Albanians who supported me."
On September 14, the trial’s preliminary hearing was finally held, in which the court decided to maintain Beleri's imprisonment. The next court session occurred on September 18, validating the same ruling.
Beleri ran for mayor in the municipal elections as a candidate for the Unity for Human Rights Party, part of the opposition bloc, United for Victory. During the election campaign, Albania's PM Edi Rama personally attacked Beleri. He called Beleri “illiterate,” “scum,” and “an ugly face that would scare.”
Because he won the elections from behind bars, Beleri has not been sworn in as mayor. This means he risks losing his mayoral seat, which could result in another election in Himara.
On June 27, Beleri sent a letter from prison to the City Council on his swearing-in day as Himara's elected mayor. He wrote that despite the attacks by Rama, he believes in the power of truth.
“The unprecedented attack and the 45 days of my unjust detention do not change my deep faith in democracy, rights, institutions and, first of all, citizens. I believe and I call on you to believe. I hope that soon everyone will think freely and act virtuously. Therefore, I ask you to show patience, faith in democracy and the rule of law, in what you defended with your vote. Because on May 14, democracy won. Himara won. And I am grateful to those who showed bravery, but I also understand those who succumbed to pressure. But I promise you that for me there are no winners and losers. All the citizens of Himara and I as the mayor, the first among equals, will march together to become even stronger, protecting Democracy and Human Rights."
Beleri also serves as president of the local branch of the Democratic Union of the Greek Minority, better known by its short name, Omonoia. It is an organization in Albania whose mission promotes equal rights for the country's persecuted Greek community.
And for that, Omonoia has long been targeted by the Albanian government. In 1994, for instance, five Omonoia activists were sentenced to six to eight years in jail on dubious charges of "espionage". Opposition leaders in Tirana and much of the European diplomatic community agreed the trial had strong political overtones. Some human rights observers called the trial "evidence of organized repression."
Human Rights Watch, for instance, said it believed that there was "evidence that the five Omonoia activists were denied due process protections, and that decisions related to the prosecution, trial and sentencing were motivated by bias." Human Rights Watch noted in a 1995 report:
"The organization representing the Greek minority, Omonia, and the predominantly Greek political party, Union of Human Rights, experienced some obstacles to fair participation in the 1992 national elections. There have also been restrictions on freedom of assembly, religion and expression for ethnic Greeks.
"More serious, however, are the actions of the Albanian police and secret service in the south of Albania, where most ethnic Greeks live. Particularly before the trial of the five Omonia leaders charged with espionage, many people were improperly detained and interrogated, creating an atmosphere of fear among the Greek minority.
"The trial itself, which began in August 1994, contained many violations of Albanian and international law regarding the conditions of arrest and treatment under detention, inadequate due process guarantees and denial of a fair and public trial. These violations lend credibility to the claim that the trial was a targeted attack against a legal organization representing the Greek minority."
A brief look at Albania’s history demonstrates that Beleri’s arrest is an extension of the systematic Greek persecution in the country. Albania's long-standing policy has sought to erase the country’s Greek indigenous population.
Albania’s government has for decades seized, plundered, or destroyed Greek homes, properties and churches in Northern Epirus, a region with a significant Greek population in what is today southern Albania.
A 1945 report from the New York Times noted,
"Continued acts of violence against Greek communities in southern Albania, including murder, abduction, arbitrary imprisonment, mass deportation and house burning, are reported in an official study by the Greek Government, supported by a mass of purported detail."
Albania was ruled by a communist party between 1944 and 1991. Communist Albania persecuted its Greek community to the point that the properties of many ethnic Greek individuals and Orthodox churches were confiscated. Many Greeks were deported. The dictatorship of Enver Hoxha made religious expression illegal.
In addition, many Greeks were forcibly removed from the ancestral Greek areas to other parts of the country as part of the communist population policy. Meanwhile, the Albanian government settled Albanians in Greek-inhabited areas to change the demographic structure of those areas and dilute the Greek population.
During the communist period, Greek place names were changed to Albanian names. The use of the Greek language was prohibited everywhere outside what the Albanian government designated as "minority zones".
However, even after the transformation of Albania during 1990–1991 from a totalitarian cult-state to a multiparty political system, Albania's persecution against Greeks continued.
In 1993, the Greek priest, Chrysostomos Maidonis, was expelled from Albania. According to a Minority Rights Group report, "police beat between 10 and 15 members of the Greek ethnic minority, including several elderly women, in Gjirokaster" during a protest against the priest’s expulsion. In 1994, the Albanian government attempted to require that all religious leaders be born in Albania--an explicit move to expel the Greek-born archbishop heading Albania’s Orthodox Church.
Today, confiscations or destruction of Greek properties remain a major tactic of the Albanian government. In November of 2016, for instance, the government of Albania reportedly tore down nineteen Greek homes in Himara. Similarly, a 2018 governmental decree for "major road construction works and urban renewal projects" resulted in the demolition of even more Greek properties.
Meanwhile, the linguistic, and educational rights of Greeks in Albania have long been violated. In 1933, all Greek language education was closed down.
In 1994, the Los Angeles Times reported:
"Under Albania’s newly revised education laws, Greek-speaking children now have to be bused back to remote villages if they want to be taught in their native tongue."
Today, the Greek community in Albania continues to face major problems regarding their linguistic rights. Academic researchers, Mammou Anila and Arvanitis Eugenia of the University of Patras, note that in Albania,
"Teaching mother tongue [Greek] is considered incomplete [by the Greek community], and the teaching of Greek history and geography is banished [by the Albanian government]. The rigid Albanian curriculum is not responsive to Greek cultural elements, causing further alienation of the Greek minority students. There have been cases where Albanian teachers are appointed to Greek minority schools, which leads to poor communication. Almost all minority school buildings need immediate repairs and renovations to guarantee safety."
In 2019, Member of European Parliament Ioannis Lagos presented a written question to the Commission regarding the persecution of native Greeks in Northern Epirus:
"While the Greek government is making concerted efforts to secure the accession of Albania to the European Union, the rights of the Greek ethnic minority of Northern Epirus are being brutally violated by the Rama regime. The Albanian authorities have been mercilessly persecuting Greeks in the area by pillaging their homes, demolishing their churches and intimidating them, and even the Albanian courts are consistently biased against them. This has led to the killing of two Greeks from Northern Epirus, Konstantinos Katsifas and Aristotle Gouma. The oppression of the Greeks of Northern Epirus is so intense that even speaking Greek is a reason to be abused or even murdered, as was the case with Aristotle Gouma. This situation which successive Greek governments have met with cool indifference has caused the Greek minority to emigrate en masse to Greece rather than endure such conditions.
"In response to this question, the Commission must explain how it will defend the rights of the Greeks of Northern Epirus and why Albania’s accession negotiations haven’t been suspended until it complies with the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights."
Albania was granted EU candidate status in 2014. The words of Geni Gjyzari, Beleri's lawyer, heed as a warning for Europe: The lawyer says that the actions of the Albanian police targeting Beleri are the same as those used in Albania's communist era. Gjyzari calls Beleri's arrest and prosecution "a political accusation and a political setup."
What kind of a precedent could Beleri's unlawful incarceration set for the rest of Europe if Albania is not forced to release Beleri and recognize his mayoral authority?
Will other governments in Europe also claim the “right” to arrest elected officials with whom they disagree with?
The EU must immediately take concrete action which pushes for the ending of Beleri's incarceration, which is a blatant assault against democracy and a continuation of Albania's slow-motion ethnic cleansing campaign against its Greek citizens.
About the author: Uzay Bulut is a Turkey-born journalist formerly based in Ankara. She is a research fellow of the Philos Project.
