From Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks

 

I decided to be here today, to look you in the eye, to have you look me in the eye, and to try to say what I have to say. For several days now, ever since this scourge began, I have tried to refrain from getting involved and, with great patience, to oversee and coordinate an effort that has been anything but easy, so that we do not fall into the trap of violence designed to draw blood.

I know the history of this boulevard. I know it well. The events of January 21 are still fresh in my memory. There were a few scattered fires here and there, within this perimeter, a bin here, a car there, but no institution was touched. Not a single Molotov cocktail was thrown. No law enforcement officer was injured or burned. Yet four protesters were shot dead from this building, and dozens of others were wounded. They could not even go to hospital, because beatings awaited them there too, so they were treated in people’s homes. Beyond the fact that those who throw stones, metal balls and screws to attack police officers are criminals, I remain fully aware that they are Albania’s “blind” children, and that, at the end of the day, their lives matter more than anything else.

So restraint is the beginning and the end of this whole matter. Of course, the damage is by no means insignificant, but physical damage can be repaired, and repaired quickly.

This is one of the thousands of paving stones torn out of the pavements along Dëshmorët e Kombit Boulevard to be thrown at the police. It is effectively a weapon that could even, God forbid, prove lethal.

You do not see these things in the images broadcast on television when they show that so-called “fire group”, those 200 to 300 masked people who have nothing to do with students, nothing to do with Albania’s future, but who are there, incited and moulded by all sorts of hands.

This is blind violence. It has nothing to do with Albanian youth, nothing to do with the children parents have at home and want to see make something of their lives. Facing this violence are the police, the individual officers. And as I hear endless complaints and justifications, which may be legitimate, and sometimes are legitimate, about the anger, the resentment, the reasons and the rights of those out on the streets as students, a fraction of a crowd that numbers 1,500 at most, some of whom are peaceful, I have thought, and keep thinking: what about the police officers? Do you see them? Do you know who they are? Do you know their lives? Do you know their struggles?

Well, I want to emphasise this very strongly. The families of those young men and women, those men and women in uniform who receive this “gift” in relentless volleys for hours on end, while being demonised on television screens and in the mirrors of digital hysteria as the perpetrators of violence, live on modest incomes. Very modest incomes, in fact, considering the sacrifice and endurance of these heroes of the state at this time. What is being challenged here is not me, the government, a governing majority or a party that has won an election. What is being challenged is a path, a mission, an objective. What is being challenged is a European Albania, Albania in the European Union in 2030. What is being challenged is an established understanding of relations between people, between opposing sides, between groups and political forces in a democratic space, where your freedom ends where mine begins, and my rights end where yours begin.

That is the challenge in these difficult hours. Naturally, I understand very well—far better than the overwhelming majority of those who want a pretence of calm might imagine—all the reasons why we are now subjected to this terror of stones. Not at the hands of the people, but at the hands of a handful of individuals compared with the great mass of the population, even though part of that population blindly supports this violence.

I understand, but I cannot agree to discuss any of those reasons while looking at a small business left in ruins. And these events have naturally brought back images from beyond January 21. Images that those protesting today as students have probably never seen, and do not know belong to this same Albania in which the rest of us have lived our lives. Images from 1998, when this building came under armed attack at the instigation of the very same hand that today incites, orchestrates and pays for this violence with stones. The Prime Minister’s Office was attacked with weapons. Thousands of Kalashnikov rounds were fired at it. There is even footage on YouTube of shoulder-fired rockets like those used by Hamas terrorists. And yet no business was burned down, small or large. Those barbarians did not descend on the banks, because Albania was only just emerging, traumatised by the loss of Albanians’ savings, from the wreckage of the pyramid schemes set up by that same senile fool who now calls for violence from morning to night, and by those around him. They were just like this second generation, raised under his emasculated and aggressive wing.

Why are bank branches being attacked? Why are ATMs being attacked? Is it ignorance that says, “Go to the counter and you will find money; break open the ATM and the money is inside”? That may be part of it, but that is not what this is about. They are being attacked because this is the plan: to spread panic, driven by a very sinister dream of bringing people out into the streets to demand their money. The money is not sitting there. Albania’s banks today are not Sude’s and Xhaferri’s pyramid schemes, which kept their dirty money under the table in front of the little counter where they paid it out, until they eventually came out and said, “That was the game. It is over.” They want the people out in the streets. The people are not out in the streets. Of course, as I said, there is no question that part of the population supports this, just as there is no question that a section of the population referred to as the diaspora supports it.

But strangely—or not strangely at all—all the leading figures involved in the diaspora are familiar faces from the last election, when they led the Democratic Party’s failed campaign abroad. There is nothing more to it than that. Meanwhile, here on the boulevard, there is certainly a very small section of students who have been indoctrinated, radicalised and inflamed by extremist ideas. As you have seen, these ideas are appearing in the same form in Paris, Rome, Milan, Portugal and Brazil, as part of a wider scourge. But our own scourge has its particular characteristics.

It is part of this wider scourge, drawing its inspiration and raw material from it, as it is part of a major effort, to do what? To do precisely what has happened to this country every time it has had a chance in its history to lift its head and breathe. And now, as it holds its head higher than ever before in its history, closer than ever to its historic dream, it is struck by this terrorising form of plague. Masterminds stage it all, as I told you from the very first day, even though many took my words badly, perhaps rightly so, are not in Albania and do not wish Albania well.

Yes, young people are frustrated. They are angry. Yes, students want more. They want change. They always have, they do now, and they always will. It is in their nature. But it is with great regret that I say that the young people and students on the boulevard are hostages of that masked “fire group” at the front, where minors are also widely used. Minors are used as shields to advance, to gain ground, making it impossible for the state, impossible for the police, to respond with force against small children.

Criminal elements are involved too. Two days ago, a drone carrying explosives was neutralised. It was intended to strike the Prime Minister’s Office and set fire to the inner courtyard, where that wooden structure stands, with God alone knowing what consequences. No young person, no student, no minor would think of such a plan, let alone carry it out. This is the work of a foreign hand.

We have a great deal of information. We will continue to build on the work we began at the very outset concerning interference on social media by those “foreign hands”. And, of course, another such hand is the Khomeinist Republic of Iran, the very pinnacle of disinformation.

In the evenings, the “clowns” gather in the “salons” of traditional media to glorify violence. Very few of them, very few, say even a word against it. Perhaps they have been intimidated, and I do not blame them. Because we have reached that point, but the day will never come when people in Albania are terrorised in the streets for what they think, when journalists are declared targets, politicians are declared targets, public figures are declared targets, for expressing an opinion that runs counter to the plans of these masked people. Behind those masks hide all those who wish Albania ill, and those who want Albania only for themselves, for whom Albania is a homeland that should flourish only when they hold power.

On the one hand, there is the glorification of violence, with no one saying a word about what is constantly happening to those in uniform who represent the state and defend the constitutional order of the Republic of Albania. Instead, everyone talks about young people being subjected to violence, minors being maimed, girls being abducted, an imaginary majority, “the people demanding a solution”. What people are demanding a solution through violence today? How can this be the Albanian people? And precisely because this is not the Albanian people, the Albanian people are not there. They are not there.

Sympathy and support for this are another matter. Those who do not want the Socialist Party in power are inclined to play down the violence. And they are wrong to think that violence will settle this and that it is only a matter of days. Foreign hands. Of course, who is trying, and why, to create the impression that Israelis have come here? That, as one piece of fake news that spread very quickly claimed, 1,000 Israelis arrive here every day to support me and the Zionist regime, and to beat or kill children? Whose interests does this serve? Who is doing this?

This is an Antifa conglomerate that inspires that section of young people who have been radicalised.

This is madness, but fortunately it is not collective madness, and it will not engulf the Albanian people.

And let us be absolutely clear with one another: this is not about my hold on power. I have nothing left to prove to myself. I repeat: my hold on power is not what is at stake here. What is at stake is our place at the EU negotiating table. It is that simple. And Albanians must think about this very clearly. Very clearly.

I invite anyone who wants dialogue, anyone who wants to meet me, anyone who wants to talk, with cameras, without cameras, with photographs, without photographs, at the Prime Minister’s Office, at a faculty, wherever you wish, to sit down and talk. What are your concerns? What do you want? What can we do for you? How can we make things better?

Thank you very much. And I say this sincerely to those whose businesses have been damaged, and to everyone else: our assessments show that the damage is actually much less extensive than it appears, because the evening clowns and the owners of those television channels amplify it as much as possible. As of midday yesterday, we had around 50 affected premises, most of them bank branches and mobile phone shops.

So, fortunately, only a small number were small businesses. But as far as we are concerned, the number makes no difference.

We will stand by them, and we will make them all, as I know how to do, better and stronger. Because everything that does not kill us only makes us stronger, and Albania will emerge stronger from what is happening.