Anti-Albanian sentiment


Anti-Albanian sentiment or Albanophobia is discrimination or prejudice towards Albanians as an ethnic group, described in countries with large Albanian population as immigrants, especially Greece and Italy though in Greece the sentiment has existed mainly in the post-communist Albania era where many criminals escaped to Greece.
A similar term used with the same denotation is anti-albanianism used in many sources similarly with albanophobia, although its similarities and/or differences are not defined.
Its opposite is Albanophilia.

History and origin

Albanophobia in the 19th century

Realising the seriousness of the situation and the danger of a general uprising, Reşid Mehmed Pasha invited the Albanian beys to a meeting on the pretext that they would be rewarded for their loyalty to the Porte. Two of the main leaders, Veli and Arslan Bey, accepted the invitation and went together with their followers to meet with Reşid Mehmed Pasha at his headquarters in Monastir. On their arrival there, the Turkish commander led them into an enclosed field when they saw Turkish forces aligned in ceremonial salute parade. In fact, this was an ambush, and upon a sign from the pasha, the soldiers opened fire on the surprised Albanian beys and their personal guards. All the Albanians who had entered the field, some four to five hundred, were killed, while Arslan tried in vain to escape. He was killed by Ottoman forces after a short pursuit.
In 1889, Spiridon Gopčević published an ethnographic study titled Old Serbia and Macedonia that was a Serbian nationalist book on Kosovo and Macedonia and contained a pro-Serbian ethnographic map of Macedonia. Gopčević's biographer argues that he did not actually go to Kosovo and the study is not based on authentic experiences. Within scholarship Gopčević's study has been noted for its plagiarisms, manipulations and misrepresentations, especially overstressing the Serbian character of Macedonia. Gopčević's views on Serbian and Albanian populations in Kosovo and also the issue of the Arnautaš theory or Albanians of alleged Serbian have only been partially examined by some authors. Noted for being an ardent Serbian nationalist, his book Old Serbia and Macedonia is seen as a work that opened the path for unprecedented Serbian territorial claims in the region. Cyprien Robert does the same in The Slavs of Turkey. Stuttgart 1844. “ and Dr. Friedrich Ludwig Lindner in the painting of European Turkey. A contribution to regional and ethnology. Weimar 1813. “.
The Expulsion of the Albanians was a lecture presented by the Yugoslav historian Vaso Čubrilović on 7 March 1937. The text elaborates on the ethnic composition dynamics of Kosovo and other Albanian populated areas within Yugoslavia from medieval times to present. While explaining why any previous methods put in place by the Yugoslav authorities to overturn the ethnic majority of the Albanians in those areas, such as slow colonization or agrarian reforms, had failed so far, it suggested in details a radical solution, the mass expulsion of Albanians. The expulsion was seen by Čubrilović as a geopolitical measure, as to prevent potential Albanian irredentism.

20th century

A series of massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars were committed by the Montenegrin Army, Serbian Army and paramilitaries, according to international reports. During the First Balkan War of 1912-13, Serbia and Montenegro during the war with the Ottoman forces and after expelling the official Ottoman Empire's forces in present-day Albania and Kosovo - committed numerous war crimes against the Albanian population, which were reported by the European, American and Serbian opposition press. Most of the crimes happened between October 1912 and summer of 1913. The goal of the forced expulsions and massacres of ethnic Albanians was a statistic manipulation before the London Ambassadors Conference which was to decide on the new Balkan borders. According to contemporary accounts, between 20,000 and 25,000 Albanians were killed or died because of hunger and cold during that period. Most of the victims were children, women and old people and were part of an warfare of extermination. Aside from massacres, civilians had their lips and noses severed.

Albanophobia in the literature

Karl May represents the Albanian stereotype in some of his works. Especially in the novel "Through the Land of Shippers", published in 1892. In a criticism of this novel, Michael Schmitt-Some cited these stereotypes in 1995, the reasons for their origin and their later use.
Collective characteristics of the Albanians: positive ; negative

Origins and forms

The term "Albanophobia" was coined by Anna Triandafyllidou on a report analysis called Racism and Cultural Diversity in the Mass Media published in 2002. Although, the first recorded usage of the term comes from 1982 in The South Slav journal, Volume 8 by Albanian author Arshi Pipa. The report by Triandafyllidou represented Albanian migrants in Greece and was followed by other researchers like Karyotis in Greece and Mai in Italy. The hyphenated form "Albano-phobia" is used on some references, apparently with the same meaning.
Albanian stereotypes that formed amid the creation of an independent Albanian state, and stereotypes that formed as a result of massive immigrations from Albania and Kosovo during the 1980s and '90s, although they may differ from each other, are still both considered Albanophobic and anti-Albanian by many authors such as Triandafyllidou, Banac, Karyotis.
Albanophobia signifies a wider range of concepts that could be roughly grouped in two main categories:
The stereotype by some in Greece of Albanians as criminal and degenerate in Greece has been subject of a 2001 study by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. It is considered that prejudices and mistreatment of Albanians to be still present in Greece. According to a 2002 statement of the IHFUR, the Albanians are the most likely ethnic group in Greece to be killed by Greek law enforcement officials. In addition, the EUMC singles out ethnic Albanians as principal targets of racism. Furthermore, the EUMC found that undocumented Albanian migrants "experience serious discrimination in employment, particularly with respect to the payment of wages and social security contributions". Albanians are often pejoratively named and or called by Greeks as "Turks", represented in the expression "Turkalvanoi". Albanians in Greece are also classified in terms as "savage", while the Greeks view themselves as "civilised".
Prejudicial representations of Albanians and Albanian criminality by the Greek media is largely responsible for the social construction of negative stereotypes, in contrast to the commonly held belief that Greek society is neither xenophobic nor racist.
In March 2010, during an official military parade in Athens, Greek soldiers chanted "They are Skopians, they are Albanians, they are Turks we will make new clothes out of their skins". The Civil Protection Ministry of Greece reacted to this by suspending the coast guard officer who was in charge of the parade unit, and pledged to take tough action against the unit's members.

Italy

Albanophobia in Italy is primarily related to the Albanian immigrants mainly young adults who are stereotypically seen as criminals, drug dealers and rapists. Italian media provide a lot of space and attention to crimes committed by ethnic Albanians, even those just presumed.

Switzerland

Not infrequently, the Albanian diaspora in Switzerland is affected by xenophobia and racism. Many integration difficulties and criminal offenses of some criminal Albanians has caused many Swiss to be prejudiced against Albanians, which has led to fear, hatred and insecurity.
Political parties that publicly oppose excessive immigration and the conservatism of traditional Swiss culture - in particular the Swiss People's Party - strengthen this negative attitude among many party supporters. These parties have already launched a number of popular initiatives, which were referred to by the Albanians as discriminatory. In 1998, the Zurich SVP created an election poster with the words "Kosovo Albanians" and "No" in large letters when it came to financing an integration project for Albanians. In 2009, the Swiss People's Initiative "Against the Construction of Minarets" was adopted by the Swiss people. Many Muslim Albanians were outraged by this result and expressed their rejection. In 2010, the so-called "expulsion initiative" followed, which was also adopted by the voters. According to the law, foreigners who have committed serious crimes should be expelled from the country. The initiative on foreigners crime should thus reduce the crime rate and make the naturalization of foreigners more difficult. The "Sheep's Poster" designed by the SVP attracted international attention and was again described by many immigrant organizations in Switzerland as discriminatory.
Economic integration continues to present difficulties for Albanians in Switzerland. In October 2018, Kosovo's unemployment rate was 7.0% and in Macedonia population 5.3%, well above the figure for the rest of the permanent resident population. A study by the Federal Office for Migration justifies this with in part low vocational qualifications among the older generation and the reservations that Albanian youth are exposed to when entering the world of work. In the 1990s, many well-qualified Albanians, because of unrecognized diplomas, with jobs such. B. in construction or in the catering trade, in which the unemployment is generally higher. This also has implications for the social assistance rate, which is higher for ethnic Albanians, with significant differences depending on the country of origin. The most affected are people from Albania. In contrast, the number of students with Albanian descent is increasing today. In 2008, only 67 people were enrolled at Swiss universities, there are already 460 in 2017. Albanologists and migration researchers today assume that the integration and assimilation of Albanians is increasing, analogous to the development of Italians in Switzerland.
In its annual report, Amnesty International stated in 2010 that the "anti-minaret initiative" stigmatized Albanian Muslims in Switzerland and increased racism in Switzerland in general

Montenegro

By 1942, the city of Bar became a home of many Serbians and other refugees who were forced to flee from Kosovo and to escape the violence done by Albanian units. Many of these joined the Partisan forces and participated in their activities at Bar.
The victims were Albanian recruits from Kosovo, who had been pressed by the Yugoslav Partisans into service. These men were then assembled in Prizren and marched on foot in three columns to Bar where they were supposed to receive short training and then sent off to the front. The march took the rugged mountain ranges of Kosovo and Montenegro to reach its destination. Upon arrival locals reported that these men, who had marched a considerable distance, were "exhausted" and "distressed". The column of men which stretched a few kilometres were then gathered on the Barkso Polje. At one point, in Polje, one of the Albanians from the column attacked and killed one of the Yugoslav officers, Boža Dabanovića. Very soon after that somebody from the column threw a smuggled bomb at the commander of the brigade. This created a panic among the Partisans. The guards watching over the recruits then fired into the crowd killing many and prompting the survivors to flee into the surrounding mountains. In another case, several hundred Albanians were herded into a tunnel, near Bar, which was subsequently sealed off so that all of those trapped within the tunnel were asphyxiated.
Yugoslav sources put the number of victims at 400 while Albanian sources put the figure at 2,000 killed in Bar alone. According to Croatian historian Ljubica Štefan, the Partisans killed 1,600 Albanians in Bar on 1 April after an incident at a fountain. There are also accounts claiming that the victims included young boys. Other sources cited that the killing started en route for no apparent reason and this was supported by the testimony of :sq:Zoi Themeli|Zoi Themeli in his 1949 trial. Themeli was a collaborator who worked as an important official of the Sigurimi, the Communist Albanian secret police. After the massacre, the site was immediately covered in concrete by the Yugoslav communist regime and built an airport on top of the mass grave.

North Macedonia

Ethnic tensions have simmered in the North Macedonia since the end of an armed conflict in 2001, where the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army attacked the security forces of North Macedonia with the goal of securing greater rights and autonomy for the ethnic Albanian minority.
The Macedonian Academy for Science and Art was accused of Albanophobia in 2009 after it published its first encyclopedia in which was claimed that the Albanian endonym, Shqiptar, means "highlander" and is primarily used by other Balkan peoples to describe Albanians, if used in South Slavic languages the endonym is considered derogatory by the Albanian community. The encyclopaedia also claimed that the Albanians settled the region in the 16th century. Distribution of the encyclopedia was ceased after a series of public protests.
On 12 April 2012, five ethnic Macedonian civilians were shot dead allegedly by ethnic Albanian in an attack known as the Železarsko lake killings. On 16 April 2012, in the wake of the attack, an anti-Albanian protest was held in Skopje by ethnic Macedonians in which the participants were recorded chanting "a good Shqiptar is a dead Shqiptar" and "gas chambers for Shqiptars".
On 1 March 2013 in Skopje, a mob of ethnic Macedonians protested against the decision to appoint Talat Xhaferi, an ethnic Albanian politician, as Minister of Defence The protest turned violent when the mob started hurling stones and also attacking Albanian bystanders and police officers alike. The police reports 3 injured civilians, five injured police officers and much damage to private property. Although the city hospital reported treating five heavily injured Albanian men, two of which are on Intensive-care unit. During this protest part of the mob burned the Albanian flag.
On the 108th anniversary of the Congress of Manastir the museum of the Albanian alphabet in Bitola was vandalized, the windows and doors were broken. A poster with the words "Death to Albanians" and with the drawing of a lion cutting the heads of the Albanian double-headed eagle was placed on the front doors of the museum. One week after this incident, on the day of the Albanian Declaration of Independence graffiti with the same messages, as those of the previous week, were placed on the directorate of Pelister National Park.

Serbia

The origins of anti-Albanian propaganda in Serbia started by the end of 19th century and the reason for this was the claims made by Serbian state on territories that were about to be controlled by Albanians after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. By the late nineteenth century, Albanians were being characterized by Serbian government officials as a "wild tribe" with "cruel instincts". Others from Serbia's intelligentsia such as the geographer Jovan Cvijić referred to Albanians as being "the most barbarous tribes of Europe". Whereas politician Vladan Đorđević described Albanians as "modern Troglodytes" and "prehumans, who slept in the trees" with still having "tails" in the nineteenth century. On the eve of the First Balkan War 1912, Serbian media had implemented a strong anti-Albanian campaign.
Throughout the 1930s, anti-Albanian sentiment existed in the country and solutions for the Kosovo question were put forward that involved largescale deportation. These included Yugoslav-Turkish negotiations that outlined the removal of 40,000 Albanian families from the state to Turkey and another was a memorandum entitled "The Expulsion of the Albanians" written by a Serbian scholar Vaso Čubrilović. The document proposed methods for expelling Albanians that included creating a "psychosis" by bribing clergymen to encourage the Albanians to leave the country, enforcing the law to the letter, secretly razing Albanian inhabited villages, ruthless application of all police regulations, ruthless collection of taxes and the payment of all private and public debts, the requisitioning of all public and municipal pasture land, the cancellation of concessions, the withdrawal of permits to exercise an occupation, dismissal from government, the demolition of Albanian cemeteries and many other methods.
Aleksandar Ranković, the Yugoslav security chief had misgivings and a strong dislike of Albanians. Following the Second World War and until 1966, Ranković upheld Serbian control of Kosovo through repressive anti-Albanian policies.
During the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, on some occasions activities undertaken by Serbian officials in Kosovo have been marked as albanophobic.
The Serbian media during Milošević's era was known to espouse Serb nationalism while promoting xenophobia toward the other ethnicities in Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians were commonly characterized in the media as anti-Yugoslav counter-revolutionaries, rapists, and a threat to the Serb nation. During the Kosovo War, Serbian forces continually discriminating Kosovo Albanians:
A survey in Serbia showed that 40% of the Serbian population would not like Albanians to live in Serbia while 70% would not enter into a marriage with an Albanian individual. In 2012, Vuk Jeremić, a Serb politician made comments on Twitter about the rights and wrongs of the Kosovo dispute and compared Albanians to the "evil Orcs" of the movie . During 2017, amidst a background of political tension between Serbia and Kosovo, Serbian media engaged in warmongering and anti-Albanian sentiment by using ethnic slurs such as "Šiptar" in their coverage.

Derogatory terms