Translated from Albanian · Original article in Albanian →
In days when the square in front of the Ministry of Education and the boulevard in front of the Prime Minister’s Office have been filled with students, lecturers and doctors, Prime Minister Edi Rama has chosen not to listen but to accuse. In a public statement on Friday, 23 October, he presented the protesters detained by police as individuals funded by organised crime and by “foreign forces”, with the aim, according to him, of overthrowing order in the country.
Rama claimed that the people involved in the clashes with the police “are not students, they are something else”. He announced the publication of footage that, in his words, would “shock” the public, while he called the Democratic Party the instigator of the violence at the Ministry of Education and described it as “the icing on the cake”.
A grave accusation, zero evidence
A prime minister who calls his own citizens “paid by organised crime and foreign forces” has a duty to bring names, documents and facts. Rama brought none of these. BalkanWeb, which reported the statement, also notes that it mentions neither specific names nor evidence supporting the claims. Rama himself admitted at the end that now is the time for words “to be backed by facts and documents”, which means the facts have not yet been presented.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister held a “public trial” of people who are in police custody, without a court decision, labelling them according to their “looks”, as he himself put it. This is not the language of a state governed by the rule of law. The presumption of innocence does not apply according to the Prime Minister’s political sympathies.
The old strategy: divide and rule
Rama tried to split the students into “good” and “bad”: those who stay in a “peaceful protest” and those who, according to him, have joined a “wave of urban terror”. It is the familiar scheme of every government that does not want to answer demands: delegitimise the protest, criminalise the protesters, blame the opposition and “the foreigners”.
But the reality on the street tells a different story. On the same day, doctors and medical students marched towards the Prime Minister’s Office chanting against the government. Lecturers and doctors came out publicly in support of the students, while an allegation also emerged that lecturer Alfred Bushi was beaten inside the police station after being arrested. The question the Prime Minister avoids is simple: are lecturers and doctors also “paid by crime”?
Who is afraid of dialogue?
A government that is confident in itself sits down with students and listens. A government that feels threatened by its own young people calls them agents, criminals and mercenaries. Rama has chosen the second path. And the more accusations without evidence he makes, the more he shows that the problem is not the students, but a government that cannot tolerate their voice.
PasPerdes will continue to follow the protests and to publish every fact, document or testimony you send us.
