[7] After the Balkan wars and during the interwar period, the Muslim Chams were not integrated into the Greek state and faced discrimination.
[10] In addition, Orthodox Cham Albanians were counted as Greeks, and their language and heritage were under great pressure to assimilate.
In August 1940 the killing, possibly by Greek police, of an Albanian perhaps acting as a saboteur, was used by Italy as a pretext to worsen relations with Greece and as propaganda in Albania.
When Italy began its invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940, there were at least two battalions of Albanian fascist militia opposing local Greeks in the Korca area.
Italy's Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini claimed publicly that two Albanian battalions were attached to each Italian division that invaded Greece.
During the German-Italian occupation of Greece (1941–1944), the Italians gained control of Greek Epirus and proposed its annexation to Albania but the Germans opposed this.
The Albanian government used as a justification the fact that Greece did not allow Chams to pay homage at the graves of their forefathers, while they were asking to build several cemeteries for its soldiers killed in Albania during the Second World War.
Simitis confirmed that Albania expected the Greek government to solve the issue of Cham properties according to the European conventions by which Greece abides.
Other Members of the European Parliament promised to look at the possibility of proposing a Parliamentary Resolution which would seek to open a dialogue between Athens and Tirana, with the representation of Chams and international mediators.
[13] Turkey, meanwhile, is finding the Cham dispute a useful tool with which to draw international attention to the situation of the Muslim minority in western Thrace.
[3] As Greece does not acknowledge the Cham issue, as an existent problem between Athens and Tirana, the returning of the citizenship has not been discussed at all.
[13] They argue that the remove of their citizenship was a collective punishment, when even the Greek courts have charged only a minority of Chams for alleged crimes.
There were four different laws, from 1923 to 1937, that alienated the properties of the Muslim Cham Albanians, as a stipulation of the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations.
In 1953, the Greek parliament passed a law, that considered as "abandoned" the rural immovable properties, whose owner had left Greece without permission or passport.
While homes were nationalized in 1959, when a law passed by the Greek parliament considered them abandoned and allowed their conquest by other inhabitants of the region.
[20][21] This statement was opposed and criticized by the Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Kotzias, who asked the Commissioner to withdraw and correct his declaration, in what can be considered as one of his harshest tones, with a direct and threatening speech.
Meanwhile, on the Albanian Parliament this statement of the Commissioner was greeted by some MP's, including Shpëtim Idrizi, leader of the Party for Justice, Integration and Unity, whose primary aim is the promotion of the cham issues and also by the Foreign Minister of Albania Ditmir Bushati.
[22] Liberation Army of Chameria (Albanian: Ushtria Çlirimtare e Çamërisë) is a reported paramilitary formation in the northern Greek region of Epirus.