On Friday, 28 June 1991, the First National Conference of the Albanian Republican Party, whose proceedings were suspended last week on the occasion of the visit by the US Secretary of State, Mr. James Baker, resumed its work. After discussing the composition of the leadership bodies of the Republican Party, the Conference decided to establish a General Council composed of 54 people and a Steering Committee of 21 members, with one chairman and two deputy chairmen. Mr. SABRI GODO was elected chairman of the Steering Committee, and VANGJUSH GAMBETA and ZEF BUSHATI were elected deputy chairmen. The following gentlemen are members of the Steering Committee: 1. ZEF BUSHATI (actor, Tirana), 2. ALEKSANDËR ÇINA (geological engineer, lecturer, Tirana), 3. VANGJUSH DISHNICA (teacher, Korçë), 4. PETRO DHIMITRI (journalist, Tirana), 5. VANGJUSH GAMBETA (economist, Senior Scientific Associate, Tirana), 6. SABRI GODO (writer, Tirana), 7. ALEKSANDËR GJOLLMA (physicist, Candidate of Sciences, Tirana), 8. AHMET HASANI (economist, Krujë), 9. KUJTIM HASHORVA (mechanical engineer, Tirana), 10. MAKS HAVJARI (engineer, Tirana), 11. FJODOR KALLAJXHI (doctor, Tirana), 12. SKËNDER KËRÇUKU (economist, Candidate of Sciences, Tirana), 13. VIRON KOKA (historian, Doctor of Sciences, Tirana), 14. TAMARA KONOMI (physicist, Candidate of Sciences, Tirana), 15. PIRO LOLI (teacher, Gjirokastër), 16. EDUARD LAZE (economist, Tirana), 17. ÇERÇIZ MINGOMATA (dentist, Tirana), 18. YLLI RISKA (engineer, Elbasan), 19. SHPEND SHALLAKU (teacher, Lushnje), 20. DYRMYSH SHEHU (teacher, Peshkopi), 21. AGIM SHEHI (teacher, Durrës).

On 13 November 1990 I sent the People’s Assembly a document containing economic studies. It includes around 100 innovative studies and proposals, whose value amounts to hundreds of millions of lek. These concrete scientific studies are accompanied by samples, experiments and assessments of economic effectiveness. Of these studies and innovations, I consider it necessary to single out two: “The dependence of the economy on technology” and “Designing a new technology for dyeing departments handling fabrics made from a blend of 45 percent wool and 55 percent polyester.” Their economic benefit, considered only at the Textile Combine in Tirana, exceeds 30 million lek a year. The technological process has been studied from an economic perspective. But what is the problem? At the Textile Combine in Tirana and throughout the country’s material production structure, incorrect, outdated technological processes are being used, as well as serious violations of technological processes that cost the economy billions of lek. And responsibility for this does not rest only with the ministers, but also with technological thinking, which is below a mediocre level. Putting our studies and innovations into practice would make it possible for the Combine to overcome its backwardness, because their implementation would increase production, lower costs, and improve the quality, appearance, softness and wearability of the fabrics to a level of 100 percent. With indicators of this kind, it would be possible to open up guaranteed export channels for our textiles—channels that are closed today because of incompetent technological thinking. Changes to the existing technology proposed in these two studies would bring major economic gains at the Textile Combine in Tirana alone. Thus, 130,000 linear metres of fabric that are currently damaged by scissor-cutting would be saved; 385,000 linear metres that currently end up as remnants would be upgraded to usable fabric; 1,685,000 linear metres would move from Grade III to Grade I; and 813,000 linear metres would move from Grade II to Grade I. It is important to stress that these studies concern the elimination of major losses in the final processing of fabrics. We stress this because in the finishing stages we have made other substantial improvements to coarse fabrics. By letter no. 20.143 dated 24.11.1990, the President of the People’s Assembly sent me the following reply: “Your letter, together with the other materials sent for the Chairman of the Presidium of the People’s Assembly, Comrade Ramiz Alia, was forwarded to the Minister of Light Industry, Bashkim Sykja. He is instructed to study the contents of the letter carefully with a broad group of competent people, assess the issues you raise in it, provide a way forward for the problems that can be solved, explain and convince you of the conclusions reached, and inform the Presidium of the People’s Assembly of the outcome.” From the outset, after reading this notice, I was disappointed, because I have been put through these procedures for 30 years straight. Such a procedure not only meant that a response to my request would be delayed, but was also unjustified from the standpoint of establishing the truth, since these studies were being sent for judgment precisely to the opponents of developing technological processes and sound economic methods. This was the first surprise, though not an unfamiliar one to me. I waited five months. No one came to speak with me about anything, but from the involvement of the technologist Mariana Bushi and chief engineer Isa Feci I understood that my material had reached the Combine. On 21 March 1991 I went to the Presidium of the People’s Assembly. The staff in the reception department read me Bashkim Sykja’s reply. Once I learned its contents, I was overcome with anger, because the former minister had not only failed to carry out the Presidium’s instruction, but had addressed the Presidium in a slanderous and deceptive manner. In his reply he did not address a single economic issue, but instead focused on the economist’s biography, dragging his reputation through the mud. I presented innovations, proposals and studies; Bashkim Sykja dealt with the author’s background, making things up and insinuating. I have many documents concerning this conduct, one of them signed by him personally. I imagine Bashkim Sykja did not draft the letter to the President himself. It must have been written by some pen-pusher in the Ministry in collusion with several Combine officials. Bashkim signed it either blindly or knowingly. This is a double mistake, because he does not know the authors at all, and secondly, the President did not ask for biographies and insults, but for an assessment of the studies and innovations. Furthermore, B. Sykja repeatedly lies, because he contradicts the decision of the Combine’s scientific council, no. 2705/1 prot., dated 6.12.1990, signed by chief engineer Isa Feci, and the opinion of the textile factory of REXHEP ISMAILI (Continued on page 2)

The Albanian Republican Party is following events in Yugoslavia with great concern and profound sorrow. Military attacks, involving heavy weapons and aerial bombardments, amount to the declaration of an open civil war between the republics, fraught with great danger for the other peoples of the Balkans and Europe as well. We are deeply concerned about the fate of our Kosovar brothers, because Albanian blood has been shed there even in calmer times, let alone at a time of civil war, which creates conditions for Serbian chauvinism to act even more freely. There have been killings in recent days, as well as the arrest of Vetom Surroi, chairman of the Parliamentary Party of Kosovo, which outrages us. Expressing our profound anger at these acts of genocide against Albanians, we call on the CSCE to act immediately and with the utmost effectiveness, because such acts—which remind us of the Inquisition and medieval persecutions—have no place and must have no place in a united Europe. We have confidence in European diplomacy, because it will react immediately, guided by the undeniable truth that peoples want to live freely and not in a prison state. We also call, as we have until now, on the United States to support the legitimate demands of the peoples of Yugoslavia, who are rising up against Serbia’s yoke. It will be to their credit and in the interests of peace if this multinational state holds a democratic conference, at which Albanians, too, take the respected place due to them as an entire population in that country. Our Conference also gave attention to the Çam issue, so that the Albanian and Greek governments may, by mutual agreement, resolve the question of their return to the lands from which they were forcibly displaced during the Second World War. The Albanian Republican Party, through its members and supporters, will engage in vigorous activity in support of these just causes, which must find a solution as soon as possible in a free and democratic Europe. THE FIRST CONFERENCE OF THE ALBANIAN REPUBLICAN PARTY

I am a former Guards soldier who performed my duty to the people, protecting the top leadership, in an exemplary manner. I am the child of honest Communist parents who toiled all their lives to build the new society—or, put another way, to secure their daily bread. I am 31 years old, with a university diploma and a savings-book deposit equal to one month’s salary of 650 lek, and an apartment with one room and one kitchen, where I live with five people. I am writing to you today as a person at a crossroads of ideas, not knowing which European road to take, worn out by honest work and disappointed because someone is deceiving us and has been cheating us along our way. And who? You and your husband, of course. I do not want to go into the history of the war and ask how many battles you and your husband took part in, how many enemies you killed and how many men you wounded. Nor do I want to ask who you were related to, this or that hero, since I was not in the war and have not read the documents of the left. The only thing from which to draw such conclusions is that after the war you took the reins of power and left bullet wounds in our parents’ bodies; nevertheless, they would have borne the pain if you had not, gradually and day after day, continued to fire volleys at them in the mornings in the [unclear] and in the evenings in the neighbourhoods, and if they had not also been kept [unclear] for a very long time. Negotiating, a person is anguished about his fate, about the most basic necessities of life and livelihood, about how he has been treated despite being innocent, even about the freedom of his homeland?

I lived through 22 June, and it seemed to me that Hasan Reçi and hundreds of other comrades were at my side—people who have no graves, because Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship eliminated them one by one in a criminal manner, branding them with the most degrading epithet, «agents». The enthusiasm of the masses from Rinas all the way to «Skënderbej» Square, where the platform was symbolically erected in front of the monument to our legendary Hero Skënderbeu, for American Secretary of State James Baker, reminded me of the enthusiasm of the heads of state on 28 November 1944, Liberation Day, when the victorious partisans brought freedom and democracy, for which they had fought. Moved, with tears in my eyes, I saw the «agents» come back to life at the head of the demonstration: the victims of the first years after liberation. Their families, children and even their grandchildren suffered unprecedented persecution for decades under the inhuman class struggle. Today I speak only to you, dear brother Hasan. Seeing those hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, I imagined you at their head, hero of democracy. Who is Hasan Reçi? He is a front-line fighter among the distinguished generation of antifascists. I knew him in the 1930s, together with Mustafa Gjinishi, Demir Golelli, Bedri Pejani, Bedri Spahiu, Muharem Prendi, Zef Mala, Vasil Shanto, Tajar Zavalanin, Riza Çorova, Asim Kokoshi, Hamit Shijaku, Sinan Gjoni, Luan Filipi and many others whom the dictatorship generally eliminated, but whose ideals are breaking through today with democracy. Hasan Reçi was sentenced to death in 1935 in the north of Fier. From Paris, the Balkan Section of the Comintern, whose Albanian group included Llazar Fundo, Halim Xhelo, Koco Tashko, Omer Nishani, etc., sent reports through the press distributed in Europe about the harsh repression of the Fier movement. The cream of European culture, such as Amri Barby and Romen Rolandin, was compelled to intervene to save members of the uprising from execution and repression. Under this pressure, the authorities spared those sentenced to death and commuted their sentences to life imprisonment, except for the 11 gendarmes who were executed and about whom the revolutionary Halim Xhelo wrote a poem published in «Liria Kombëtare» in Geneva, the Comintern’s publication. The Comintern issued a postcard for Riza Çorova, who escaped and was killed by his pursuers. It also put into circulation a postcard bearing Hasan Reçi’s portrait. In Spain, Albanian volunteers in the ranks of «Vullnetari i Lirisë» published a photograph of commander Hulusi Spahiu’s battery and named it the «Hasan Reçi Battery». When fascist Italy occupied Albania, all the revolutionaries went underground to organize the resistance. The first steps had openly been taken to create the Pjesa Detachment. At the time the uprising against the Italian fascist occupation broke out in Montenegro, fighter aircraft were being loaded with bombs at our air force’s main depot. Hasan Reçi, one of the leaders of the resistance, together with the young revolutionary Hamit Shijaku, decided to locate the artillery-shell depot and destroy it, in support of the Montenegrin people in revolt. The operation was discovered and they were arrested. I was in Tirana prison when they brought Hasan Reçi in shackles. A swift trial was held. Both were sentenced to death. For Hasan Reçi, it was his second death sentence. As a well-known figure and a prominent resistance leader, he was not executed, so as not to revolt the masses; instead, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. We were shackled hand and foot aboard the ship that was taking us to the islands and prisons of Italy. In Bari they separated Hasan from us and sent him to solitary confinement in «Santo Stefano» prison, a prison from which no one returned alive. Hamit Shijaku was hanged. The dictatorial regime made Hamit Shijaku a martyr, but never a «People’s Hero», as he deserved. I believe no one was as close to Hasan Reçi as the man who carried out the operation with him: Hasan Reçi was branded an «agent» by the dictatorship. • • • When southern Italy was liberated by the foreign Allied Eighth Army, it also freed political prisoners, both Italian and of other nationalities. The Allies gathered all the liberated Albanians in a camp near Bari. The Allied command learned that among them was the renowned fighter Hasan Reçi. He spoke English well because he had attended Tirana’s American technical school. Hasan contacted the senior Anglo-American Allied command so that it would help the Albanian National Liberation War. An agreement was reached, and Hasan set off for Albania by submarine with an American and an English representative. They landed at Karaburun. (Hasan himself told me this after liberation, when we met.) They made contact with the first partisans. His first encounter was with a commander who was a former lieutenant of the kingdom and who had tortured the insurgents during the Fier movement. Eventually the group reached the headquarters at Odrçan. The antifascist Anglo-American coalition had assigned a Soviet envoy, Major Ivanov, to the headquarters. Hasan introduced the envoys from the Mediterranean Command. Everyone was enthusiastic. The Mediterranean Command representatives contacted their center by radio transmitters, reporting that the National Liberation War headquarters was eagerly awaiting the Anglo-American missions, which did not take long—unfortunately—to arrive. For the Albanian people, who gave everything to the liberation war and to a democratic government, the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition was the guarantee of victory. (Continued on page 4)