
OMONIA has reacted regarding the results of the 2023 Census and in a separate statement to the media, it is said that they reject the Census data.
According to OMONIA, representatives of minorities in Albania reject the data and demand that another special registration be made for minorities.
According to the data published by Censi for the year 2023, about 23 thousand Greeks live in our country.
OMONIA says that there is no reliable data base and that according to them they are excluded from data collection and processing.
Also, the statement states that there was a lack of transparency and it is claimed that "in repeated cases, the family units of members of minorities were not visited by the surveyors in charge."
Subject: Meeting of political formations and organizations of national minorities in Tirana for the Population Census process in Albania. They reject the results and submit a request for a special registration procedure exclusively for minorities respecting the principle of self-identification.
Last Wednesday, July 17, 2024, with the initiative and coordination of the Chairman of the Union Party for Human Rights, Mr. Vangjel Dule, a meeting was organized in Tirana with the participation of political formations and representative organizations of national minorities in Albania.
The exclusive topic of discussion was the Cens23 Population Registration procedure that was carried out in the country last year and the results recently announced by the State Statistics Authority - INSTAT.
After the discussions, the text of preliminary conclusions was jointly adopted for the single item on the agenda of the Meeting, which was prepared by the Democratic Union of the Greek Ethnic Minority OMONOIA, as the most important group in terms of numerical size and historical impact, as well as the most well organized in policies of sanctioning and implementation of policies related to National Minorities.
In conclusion, it was concluded by underlining that the state registration process is rejected by the entire spectrum of minority representatives, which on the one hand makes the published results unreliable and therefore rejectable and on the other hand highlights more fundamental problems related to discrimination and repression of minorities.
Government policies in this area are characterized by elements of the totalitarian nationalist mentality, which therefore do not comply with binding commitments of the country from membership in respective international conventions, nor with the prerequisites that are imposed to be fulfilled in the framework of EU integration.
Finally, all interested participants in the country request that the announced results be taken into account in the implementation of governing policies for minorities.
Moreover, they reasonably claim the application of an adequate procedure exclusively for the registration of demography and geography of communities of members of National Minorities with rigorous application of the right and criterion of self-identification.