What is who's?Putting artificial borders in Balkans

Sometimes i use to call my country 'the wonderland' because there are things happening there that despite being unlogical seem to be logical. Although we have a beautiful tourism, we do not get advantage of that; although we have the same politicians ruining our lives, we keep choosing the same ones; although we have water, we don't have electricity; although we have possibilities in our hand, we do not make a change. The last wonder that really shocks me has the name 'Bollano' who is the name of the mayor of the city of Himare in the south of Albania. Himare is a very beautiful and small touristic place where i used to spend my holidays with my family.

This mayor who is originally greek has been conducting an anti-albanian campaign which has been accused only by the media. In 2006, many citizens complained that the mayor was not allowing their registration in the city of Himare as citizens because there were not orthodox and were not speaking Greek. Although there was a unit from the government sent to check about these irregularities, nothing was done. After that in 2008, there was another charge against Bollano. He had given an order to remove all the touristic signs established along the road starting from Llogara to Borsh because they were in Albanian and English and not in Greek. These signs were put from the General Directory of the Roads after a project financed from World Bank and the governments of Austria and Holland. This mayor had no right to give such an order because it is not in his competences and secondly we are in Albania, there is no logic to put sign in greek language. It is so shocking how a public person can do whatever he wants in a country where the laws express the opposite of his actions.

After these two major events, the prosecutor of the district of Vlora has prepared the dossier with the charge of 'abuse of duty' and they are just waiting for the day of the trial. According to article number 248 of the criminial law, abuse of duty is charged with imprisonment. For me, the best charge for this person would be that after getting out of prison, he should leave the country and his entrance to this country should be banned. Apart from him, the prefect of Gjirokaster Spiro Ksera participated in the celebration of the 'proclamation of autonomy of Vorio-Epir' in a greek city close to the border. He was seen to be under the greek flag and participating as the prefect of Vorio-epir. For people that do not know, Vorio-Epir means the northern Epir. Epir was a region in Iliria in the end of 6th century B.C.; it became very important in the years of Pirro in the 3rd century B.C. The notion of Vorio-Epir in political sense stems from years when the greek Prime Minister Jan Koteli introduced Megali Idea (the big idea) which was the creation of a big greek state in 1844. Since then, the south of Albania, including the districts of Gjirokaster, Korce and part of district of Vlore(part of which is Himara) is seen as Vorio-Epir.

For me all these seems nonsense. I would never argue if Epir was Greek or Albanian 2000 years ago. For me what is important is the present and the future. The south of Albanian is Albania's, inhabited with people speaking a different language from Greeks and having their own tradition and culture. We leave in the 21st century and other things are priorities for our country apart from deciding to change the borders. Macedonia does not want northern part of Greece called also Macedonia, Albania does not want western part of Macedonia and Greece should not even think about the south of Albania. In the end, we will all be part of EU, diverse but equal and living in harmony. Do borders matter?



http://www.petitiononline.com/HIMARA/petition.html