Ethnic Greek mayor charged over removing road signs

Thu 29 May 2008, 15:34 GMT

By Benet Koleka
TIRANA (Reuters) - An ethnic Greek mayor in Albania has been charged for removing road signs in his area and demanding they include Greek place names, officials said on Thursday. Sokol Malaj, the lead regional prosecutor, said Vasil Bollano had overstepped his authority and his actions disrupted traffic on a roughly 60-km (40-mile) stretch of road.

"Mr. Bollano has the right to manage the road inside his municipality, but not beyond. He issued an illegal order and damaged the signs," Malaj told Reuters by phone. The signs were written in English. "My witnesses say he told them the signs would be put back only if they are written in Greek," Malaj added. "Someone visiting the area for the first time wouldn't know where to go."
The indictment issued by the prosecutor requested for the mayor to be tried on charges of abuse of office.

Bollano is on his third term as mayor of the western Himara region, an ethnically mixed area stretching over the southern half of Albania's coastline across from the Greek island of Corfu.
Bollano has come to symbolize the push for more rights for Albania's ethnic Greeks, especially the use of their language. The large Himara region is mixed, with Albanian and Greek-speaking villages next to each other among rolling hills and olive groves.

Bollano told Reuters the signs bearing the words "Himara Municipality" and the emblems of the European Union and Albania, had been put up without his knowledge and in breach of the law.
"The language was not the issue, the official rules and competences were the issue," he said. "The signs were also written in English, and they could well be written in Greek. It is the municipality council that has to decide about it."