From Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Remarks at the Meeting with the Leadership of the State Police
Good morning!
First of all, I want to express my gratitude and respect to you and to all those who, under your leadership, are confronting with dignity, strength and courage a wave of violence that has absolutely nothing to do with any of the legitimate reasons citizens in a free and democratic country may have for being dissatisfied and demanding more from their government.
I have come here again today with this (stone) because you really need to hold it in your hand, to weigh it, to consider how much greater its impact becomes when it is hurled at people in uniform, and what it can do to anyone.
There can be no negotiations with this (stone), nor with anyone who puts this forward, because the moment the state negotiates with this, the state has fallen. And the moment this prevails; its logic becomes the logic of the state itself. Albania has seen this film more than once, and it has seen how the consequences leave wounds that take years and years to heal.
Naturally, this does not mean that those who are protesting peacefully today—although there are very few who are doing so, because even the young women and men who join this movement do not, fundamentally, want peace; they want an overthrow—are terrorists. They are young people who have been ideologically indoctrinated and radicalized under the pressure or inspiration of that dark new force that has emerged in Europe and the United States, which the President of the United States has designated a terrorist organization: ANTIFA. The President of the United States has designated it a terrorist organization. This does not mean that the young women and men who think life is TikTok, and that through TikTok, without even being able to string seven words together, they can make Albania a better country, are terrorists. Not at all!
Are they university students? Of course. Are they school pupils? Certainly. But they are captives of a mindset, of a new ideology that has only one mission: destroy, turn everything upside down, tear everything down, level everything to the ground, because we are going to start all over again. Those here who are a little older still remember that time from which we emerged after 50 years of the illusion that everything would be levelled to the ground and started anew. And so, yes, it is an immense misfortune. I would call it a national tragedy today that the police forces, the young men and women, the men and women, and above all of you in uniform who are there to defend the state, are under attack not only from stones but also from television screens.
This is absolutely appalling because, as the Minister said, this is happening in France, this is happening in Italy, this is happening in Portugal, this is happening in Belgium, and there are warnings that it will happen everywhere. Yet in none of these countries has any political party come out in support of the protesters, cheered the flames engulfing institutions, or glorified the violence, the clubs, the beatings and the stones of a mob of black-hooded, masked individuals.
Behind those masks there are no students. There are no young women and men seeking a better Albania. There are only blindly driven individuals, uneducated people who do not even know where they come from or where they are going, victims of all manner of circumstances, who worship this (stone). They worship Molotov cocktails. They worship those slingshots loaded with screws and pellets that strike police officers in the skull. They worship disorder and chaos, and then they descend upon shops like beetles, gnawing away at the livelihoods, the sweat and the blood of the families who depend on those businesses.
How can anyone support, glorify or worship this mob, which needs psychologists, which needs to be treated by society as a group of young men and women who come from the outskirts to destroy the city centre, carrying within them all the profound misconceptions of an age in which they see on their phone screens how others, who make their living online and earn tens of thousands of euros without paying a single cent in taxes, can eat, drink, dress and live in luxury? And then these young people are exploited by other forces, by ANTIFA, by foreign intelligence services, and by Albania’s enemies and ill-wishers. Russia is not an ally of Albania. Russia is not a partner of Albania. Russia is not a country that wants Albania to become better, that wants Albania to be stable, to attract investment, to have a thriving economy, to join the European Union, or that wants Albanian students to be equal to students throughout Europe, so that every student, whether studying at a university in Tirana, Warsaw, Brussels or Paris, can be a student at a European university, with a European passport.
Russia wants none of these things. And it is no coincidence whatsoever that the ideological “father” of Vladimir Vladimirovich, there in the Kremlin, comes out and salutes the Albanian nation, salutes “the Albanian nation of Orthodox Christians and Sufis,” who are finally showing their true colours and standing against the European democratic order. It is no coincidence. It cannot possibly be a coincidence, because we know very well that from the very first day the flamingos appeared, just as many citizens were swept along by a wave of dissatisfaction, behind it there was also a wave of Russian influence across the entire social media ecosystem.
Thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands of fake profiles, created specifically to appear as Albanians seeking to protect nature, were mobilized, just as thousands upon thousands of others were mobilized from the terrorist Republic of Iran to protect nature in Albania.
How can these be coincidences? They are not coincidences. There is no coincidence here.
Albania has become one of the targets of a well-coordinated attack by a blind force which, as I told you, has now been designated a terrorist organization by the President of the United States.
At the same time, I repeat that those who are out there in the square are, of course, the daughters and sons of this country. We have been fully mindful of this, and that is why the State Police has exercised the utmost restraint.
What other than the restraint shown by the police could have allowed a series of institutions and ministries to be set ablaze, including the Ministry of Education?
Do you know why they go to the Ministry of Education? Not because they are students demanding more, but because they want to plant in everyone’s mind the idea that this is a revolt about education.
This is not a revolt about education. The protests about education were those of 2018, when there were more than 20,000 university students and school pupils, as you remember very well. They brought Tirana to a standstill for days and weeks. They shut down universities, lecture halls and classes, but they were peaceful and had demands concerning the university system. It took patience, calm and time to establish a dialogue. That dialogue took place, and the Pact for the University was agreed upon. Much was done well. There may still be things that have not been done.
The Pact for the University is an open book. Everyone is welcome to come, sit down with us and review it. But what kind of students are these? How can those who admire stones be students? How can those who stand behind the people throwing stones and applaud when a police officer is set on fire be students?
How can those who applaud the burning of small businesses, of the livelihoods of families who put food on their tables through the work they do in those kiosks, be students? How can those who applaud the burning of bank branches be students? How can those who applaud the ripping out of ATMs be students? Those who imagine that they will find a fortune inside an ATM and the savings of Albanians at bank counters are not students! They cannot be students, even if they are enrolled in school.
I have seen them. Yes, I too have seen fine young women and men, truly fine young people. They are not hooligans like those who resort to stones, clubs and fire, but they have been radicalized. They have been blinded by the idea that we should turn everything upside down once and then things will somehow get better.
How will things get better? How can things get better by turning everything upside down? What exactly is to be overturned? The will of the people? Meanwhile, all of this makes your resistance not only more important, but also more dignified in the face of all this pressure. And I repeat, it is not the pressure from the streets. It is neither the only pressure nor the worst.
The worst pressure comes from those so-called intellectuals, those so-called analysts and commentators who, every evening, take stock of the violence and feed and console their grudges, their bitterness, their envy, their incompetence, their failures and their anger by counting how many police officers have been maimed, how many institutions have been set on fire and how many businesses have been destroyed.
They rub their hands with glee because the end has supposedly come for Edi Rama and the government, because at last what they have been attempting for years and years, through every conceivable means, every kind of protest, every kind of demonstration and every kind of Molotov cocktail, has supposedly been achieved.
And now they have found their instruments, their tools, their blindly obedient followers who can do what those who offered them political shelter last night, doing exactly what they have done in other times as well—refusing to allow the police to do their job—never quite had the courage to do themselves.
They have found minors. They have found 13- and 14-year-olds who are taken, placed at the front with iron bars and sent there as cannon fodder, in the hope that, God forbid, a police officer might lose control and take the life of a minor, thereby providing a pretext for an even greater evil.They dream of bringing back January 21, so that they can draw an equivalence between me and us, who have brought Albania this far, transformed the face of this country and restored its dignity, and those who used to kill protesters on the boulevard.
That is why the dignity with which you are resisting this onslaught, the strength with which you are enduring this exhaustion and the courage with which you are standing firm against this pressure bring honour to your uniform and to the Albanian state. All clear-minded citizens and all ordinary families in this country, who want to live by their work, who want to go to work today rather than sit in front of the television, who do not want to live under the pressure of all kinds of reporters and analysts claiming that the police are throwing stones at protesters, owe you a debt of gratitude.
All Albanians owe you that today.
And above all, I want, very sincerely and in a spirit of brotherhood, to express my sympathy and solidarity with your families, your parents, your wives, your children and, for the women officers among you, your husbands.
Your families deserve solidarity. They deserve respect.
Therefore, under the new budget, your salaries will increase considerably from January 1. But beyond that, in recognition of all your resilience, all your sacrifice, all your courage and, above all, the dignity with which you are standing up not only to these individuals but also to those who, on television screens, are “tearing apart” the State Police, blaming the State Police and demanding that the State Police surrender, we will immediately make available a sum of €2,500 to every officer serving on this front. Because you are not only under stress, but you also have additional expenses to meet at this moment. And we decided to do it this way so as not to make any distinction. We did not determine the amount according to salary. We decided on the same amount for everyone, because at this moment you are all one, and one for all.
There is no question that the state will win this battle. There is no question that anyone who thinks they have brought the state to its knees, or that they can seize power through violence, will be disappointed.
And there is equally no question that those who have placed themselves at the service of this sinister plan for Albania—a plan that delights, first and foremost, Albania’s ill-wishers; a plan that delights the forces that do not want Albania to hold its head high in this region, where for centuries we were humiliated; that do not want Albania to lead the region in so many areas; that do not want Albania to welcome 12, 13, 15 or 20 million tourists; that want Albania to be a country nobody visits, as was once the case when even we ourselves were counted as tourists whenever we crossed the border—will face the consequences.
Not only will that never happen, but anyone who has blindly placed themselves at the service of this plan will pay.
I say to all the families of those minors: you will pay if you fail to take responsibility for your children. If you do not know how to protect your children and allow them, at the ages of 13, 14, 15 or 16, to roam the streets and act as human shields for those standing behind them, then the financial bill for all the damage caused will follow you to the very end.
And I say to all those others who leave school to attack the police: they will not simply return to school as normal without facing administrative consequences.
They will not receive free education.
Those university students who go out and attack the State Police will receive no scholarships and no financial support from the state if they wish to continue their university studies after throwing stones at the parents of other Albanian children—the children of police officers or of anyone else who stands on the side of the state.
They will not receive a single lek of Albanian taxpayers’ money for anything. Because it is with Albanian taxpayers’ money that we will repair the pavements. It is with Albanian taxpayers’ money that we will repair the traffic lights. It is with Albanian taxpayers’ money that we will repair the cameras they destroyed, the signs and the benches. And it is with Albanian taxpayers’ money that we will replace the trees.
So, dialogue at any hour, on any day, in any place, with anyone—except the political forces behind the violence that refuse to distance themselves from it, except those who throw stones at the police, and except those who applaud when a police officer is set on fire. Everyone else is welcome, or I am ready to go to them, to listen and to understand how and where a solution can be found.
But there will be no political solution involving artificial changes of leadership, artificial changes to the course of this country, or indiscriminately lumping together the innocent and the guilty, supposedly in the name of calm, in the name of love or in the name of peace.
There will be none. And not because I do not want one. This is not about my personal hold on power. It has absolutely nothing to do with that. Nothing whatsoever. I do not regard power as something that belongs to me personally.
For me, the office of Prime Minister is not a job. It is a mission entrusted to me by more than 800,000 Albanians, based on a contract that runs until 2029, to deliver on a series of commitments. And so far, I have not deviated from that contract. So far, all the newly promised programmes have been set in motion.
And meanwhile, the beginning and end of this entire story, the point where all the good and all the bad ultimately come face to face, is that we have not moved a single metre away from our objective or from the path towards raising the flag of Skanderbeg and Ismail Qemali there in Brussels, in the courtyard of the European home.
That is where Albania will finally free itself, once and for all, from that hand which has pursued it since 1912 and which grabs it by the throat every time Albania tries to rise, every time it lifts its head, every time it manages to emerge even slightly above the surface.
And today, we have risen far above the surface.
On that boulevard, in that square where yesterday the police were subjected to violence amid the applause of corrupt television screens, the whole of Europe gathered, and NATO will gather there next year.
So, stay strong. Be courageous. You must not feel any pressure. You must not allow yourselves to be intimidated.
I stand with you! I stand with you to the very end. Not just today, but tomorrow as well. Not just now, but for as long as I hold this office.
I have stood with you, I stand with you, and I will continue to stand with you—today more than yesterday, and tomorrow more than today.
Thank you very much!
