by Dean Kalimniou
His Honour, the Mayor of Cheimarra Vasilis Bolanos, is currently
languishing in prison. Some people have called him a criminal. I on the
other hand, believe that he is the most stalwart Hellene I have ever
had the privilege to meet. A cursory glance of any given year's batch
of Diatribes will reveal as least one or two references to him. Vasilis
Bolanos is the mayor of a historically Greek region that successive
Albanian governments have deemed fit to keep out of the recognized
"Greek minority zone." As a result, the Greek character of the majority
of the inhabitants of the region is denied to them and they cannot
enjoy the basic privilege of education in their mother tongue, or even
the basic human right of being able to determine their own ethnic
identity. Despite this non-recognition, successive Albanian governments
have had to deal with the election of an ethnic Greek mayor over
successive elections. This is somewhat embarrassing as it is difficult
to explain why an ethnic Greek would be continuously re-elected in a
region that is supposed to be non-Greek. Over the years, various
Albanian groups have: beaten up and stabbed voters, stolen ballot
boxes, engaged in blackmail and resorted to the Courts in order to have
elections that Vasilis Bolanos had won, invalid. Despite all this,
Vasilis Bolanos gets re-elected every time.
I will never forget driving with him through the village of Shen Vasilj, (Άγιος Βασίλειος), formerly inhabited exclusively by ethnic Greeks. As we struggled to negotiate the tortuous, pot-holed road, we came upon a desolate square, bordered all around by drab yellowing stone walls. On the far wall, in red ink, this slogan slashed its way across the brick-work: «ΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ ΣΤΟΥΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ.» I looked at the ruddy complexioned Bolanos out of the corner of his eye. His jaw had tightened, his lips had pursed so that I could see small rivulets of veins appearing at the corners of his mouth. Then with a twinkle of this eyes, he quipped: "Yeah, well now I think you know what these people's attitude is to Greek package tours."
If generalizations are ever permissible, one would venture to say that Cheimarriots are generally known to be stoic, inflexible and more unflinchingly patriotic than their compatriots. It is this unquestioned commitment to the Hellenic cause that has made the region of Cheimarra suffer perhaps more than any other under successive Albanian regimes. It was the Cheimarriots refusal to support the Communist Hoxha regime (after all, as early as 1914 their captain Spyros Spyromilios had declared the union of Cheimarra with Greece) that saw him ensure that they were not included in the government-sanctioned minority zone. Amazingly, they retained their language and traditions despite the official prohibitions and dire punishments in store for those who would assert the Greek character of the region. Vasilis Bolanos, who is also the president of Omonoia, the organisation that champions the awarding of human rights to the Greeks of Albania, is thus merely continuing in the tradition of his kinfolk. He does so in Cheimarriot fashion, commemorating Greek national days, raising the Greek flag and doing his upmost to convince Albanian public opinion, imbued for the large part as it is with nationalist exclusivist myths, that a Greek ethno-cultural affiliation can harmoniously co-exist with an Albanian nationality.
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