“For a policeman to let you cross the border along the Adriatic, you have to give him money,” declares an Albanian from Macedonia. Customs officers want money too, says someone else, as do doctors, investigators, inspectors, chiefs, directors, even the financial police(?). In short, people everywhere say that without money under the table you can’t get anything done. This, then, is the conclusion reached by a good many people. An operation or a difficult birth costs a lot today. They say that a telephone number has gone for as much as 2,000 dollars. If someone is arrested by the police for carrying a weapon without a permit, the investigation opens the door for him for a sum reaching 4 million. They also say that today’s owners have been taken over by customs officers and ordinary financial police officers. If this phenomenon really is so widespread, then it would be destructive even for the most powerful state in the world. This, then, is corruption at the middle and lower levels, which can destroy everything. Perhaps this is why powerful states have solved this problem by establishing ironclad and merciless laws. Professional corruption is one of the most punishable phenomena in the civilized world. But is this corruption present in Albania? Of course it is. Perhaps not to the extent and at the levels people talk about, but that does not matter much. It does not matter because it can multiply in a very short time. What matters is that the law must confront this phenomenon. It is true that this is a difficult task for the state today, because first and foremost it is a good number of officials and bureaucrats who are rumored to be corrupt. Being people of this sort, they find loopholes and many opportunities to evade the law. On the other hand, there really is a factor that encourages this type of corruption to the utmost. Nevertheless, this would be an unacceptable excuse in the face of the fatal consequences brought about by corruption at these levels. It is time to take a firm stand on this issue before it is too late.

The queues are the same, and once again kerosene is nowhere to be found! The announcement about the issuing and distribution of kerosene coupons was nevertheless received with interest. It was said that something would be put right, but hope remained only hope. The coupons were distributed without names, without addresses, and finally the very creators of this new bureaucracy admitted that many counterfeit coupons had been put on the market! The mountain labored and gave birth to a mouse! People wait for hours in queues and, when their turn comes, the kerosene is gone! Was this the solution?! Kerosene goes where it has always gone; the same people who have been profiting until now through dishonest channels and methods continue to profit. Across the border, a liter of kerosene costs two dollars. There are reports that the counterfeit coupons were of the same design as the originals, but what is most worrying is that citizens have once again been left out of pocket. ATSH

Appointed France’s Trade Adviser Frenchman Julien Roche, vice president of the Executive Council of the ADA group, has been appointed France’s foreign-trade adviser in Albania. It is a three-year, unpaid appointment; the decree was published in the Official Journal of the French Republic on December 23 of last year. Roche, 40, single, was the first foreigner to bring his capital into Albania, in the form of a joint venture with one of the Albanian state’s foreign-trade enterprises, back in October 1990. His current partner, Marcel Skëndo, president of ADA, is in prison, accused of forging company documents, while Frenchman Roche himself has been barred from leaving Albania. The Albanian press has devoted considerable attention to speculation and accusations concerning the activities of the ADA group. “I have submitted a request to the Albanian authorities to go to France around the middle of February,” he told Republika, “and I hope they will allow me to.” Roche owns the majority of the shares in all the businesses he has developed in Albania, including the airline ADA AIR, IBS, PERMB, the restaurants Chez Laurent and L’angle noir, the monthly Tribuna Ekonomike Shqiptare e Pavarur, and the newspaper TIT. Roche said that he would continue to serve as gj. p We know what kind of people we have: a people afraid of the beu and the agai. That is why we cannot give you your lands, because we would lose our electorate. Or do you want the Social-Communist Party to win again? Do you want March 31 to come back? Then everything will start all over again. If you absolutely want your property back, then vote for some other party; it promises you your property, so vote for it...! The fourth one. (A member of the Property with Justice Association). If you are not giving us our properties, then why did you take our votes? If you no longer need our votes, why didn’t we hold early elections?! We do not want March 31 to happen again and the communists to win, but you too have no reason to celebrate your great victories over communism if you do not return our properties! If you do not return our lands and properties, nothing has changed for us. For us, especially those in the countryside, nothing has changed; those in the city have received a few things, while we in the countryside are just as we were yesterday (former owners!). You know that there is no one against us. Whenever I speak well and praise democracy, you tell me I am saying what I do not feel. I urge you to forget what was written; you suspect that I have my own interests in mind, that I am trying to save myself—why, I ask, do you suspect me? Try bringing communism back once more, and then you’ll see me...! ...I listened to them all, but I could not agree with everyone. Naturally, this does not matter at all, either to them or to me. F. M.

Taka... — Everyone is entitled to their own point of view. Let us listen to them — Everywhere we hear people who are dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with what “this democracy” has brought us, or failed to bring us. I have listened to them all, but found it difficult to agree with everyone. The first one. (A former political prisoner). I suffered more than anyone from communism. I was in Burrel, I was in Spaç, while the rest of you lived freely, sold things on “Dëshmorët e Kombit” Boulevard, and voted 100% for Enver Hoxha. Now everyone is turning out to have been persecuted! Now it is impossible to tell who fought and who won. Now it has become difficult to say who loved Enver Hoxha and who opposed him. I see communists on every side. Oh God, when will you save us from the communists? We cannot save ourselves from them! Oh God, today I see more communists than yesterday, in their own time! The second one (An oppositionist). Would we have presented ourselves? We would immediately allow the minority to take power, whoever they may be... Don’t you believe it? The third one (A deputy of the majority): Communism was overthrown once and for all on the morning of March 22. Anti-communism won, and that means all our troubles are over. That was our goal. Everything that is done now is good, perfect. Don’t complain for nothing. You former owners, don’t complain either. We did not promise to return your properties. Even if we said something about returning them back then, we meant in the future. Later we will do everything, including returning the properties. win again? Do you want to bring back March 31? want your properties returned, then vote for

issue before it is too late. P. SKENDERI Journalists are not being killed; they are being murdered When the fiercest fighting in Europe since the Second World War began in Slovenia, and later in Croatia, journalists working near the combat zones were forced to wear the word PRESS written in clearly visible letters on their backs. This helped them survive in that hell of fighting. But only temporarily. While the world learned every day—thanks to these journalists—about horrific crimes, concentration camps, pits filled with corpses, and raped women, a “suggestion” came from Belgrade: a reward of 600 marks for every sniper who killed one of those wearing the word PRESS on their back. The Serbs had made a similar “suggestion” at the beginning of the war, targeting women and children too. And alongside the latter, the first journalists began to be killed... Marco Lucheta, 41, Danio D’Angelo, 41, and Alessandro Otta, 37, members of a television crew from Italian Radio and Television, are the latest three victims of the Bosnian tragedy, bringing the number of journalists killed during these two and a half years of war in the former Yugoslavia to 60 (continued on page 4)

They caused a citizen’s death The Sarandë police station reported two of its employees for criminal prosecution. As the official source at the prosecutor’s office in this district informed ATSH, criminal proceedings were initiated against two employees of this station, accused of using violence against the citizen Irfan Nano, as a result of which he lost his life. However, while police officer Lavdosh Metaj was placed under arrest, the other perpetrator has been declared wanted. The illegal actions of the aforementioned employees caused serious injuries and, consequently, his death on January 26 at Sarandë Hospital. Despite the surgical interventions and intensive treatment provided by the team of surgeons and resuscitation specialists for 13 consecutive days, it was not possible to save his life. ATSH

A friendly note to the director of “Dita Informacion” Being convinced that the director of a serious newspaper such as “Dita Informacion” has as much to do with the philosophy of publishing and selling as the state leaders themselves do with the events of such a political party, who must put on their festive clothes, I would ask you to spare me a few minutes for a coffee and a few words! In “Reflections on Gorbi” you put it more or less this way: “I have always thought of him (the leadership of a state) as a pragmatist, or, at best, as a steamboat captain who must steer the ship with his fellow passengers through organic shoals, using every kind of trick that does not constitute a crime.” Very good! If we are talking about statesmen of the Gorbachev kind, I do not undertake (because of my own weakness, or because of the insufficient facts available to us so far, or out of respect for world opinion of him) to prove the opposite. Nevertheless, I personally have always believed that Gorbi, even though he snatched the great Nobel Prize from the world, has completed his cycle of greatness, whether we call it great or glorious. From now on, only reflections will be written about him, or reflections on reflections...! But further down, in your Reflections (on George Soros’s Reflections on Gorbachev), we read: “It is undoubtedly a great merit of my people that, after Ramiz Alia fell from the throne, they do not remind him of the tricks he pulled during his rule, and especially during the ‘revolution’!!! Always as a friend, I would like you to clarify your ‘dark points’ about this phenomenon, not so much in order to interpret Albanian politics of the 1990s. 1. Do you really think that the people (mine, yours, yours, ours...!) do not remind Ramiz Alia of the tricks he pulled while governing? 2. Is it true that quite a few of today’s Albanian political groups are feeding the country’s political scene with mutual accusations that one another are ‘agents’ or ‘men’ of R. Alia? 3. Did R. Alia remain (when Enver was no longer even physically present) a Balkan ‘son’ of Gorbi, at a time when, under his leadership, scientific conferences against “Perestroika” and “Glasnost” were actively being held in Tirana? 4. So, does that mean that (Captain Ramiz) steered his ship, with the Albanians of the anti-Communist years (or at least the Gorbachev years) aboard, using tricks that “do not constitute a crime”? 5. Ultimately, is it true that Ramiz Alia is now in pretrial detention in Tirana and will soon appear before a court?! Finally, while congratulating you once again on the high standard of your writing, I would like readers to receive from you the answers to the above. With friendship and respect, Faruk Myrtaj

ELIDA BUÇPAPAJ Zhirinovski, this politician of the day, whom the world’s best-known agencies quote and discuss, created by the KGB, Gorbi or Yeltsin, has recently declared that ‘the problem of the former Yugoslavia is very clear’. Thus, he continued, there are only Croatia, Slovenia and Greater Serbia. So there is no longer either Montenegro or Bosnia-Herzegovina. ‘The problem of the former Yugoslavia is now a settled and closed matter in favor of the trio mentioned by Zhirinovski, who acknowledges this with “candor” at a particular moment, and it is understood that he is truly an insider. The geographical configuration of the former Yugoslavia has already been determined some time ago as a result of all the comprehensive diplomatic negotiations. Vons, Ouen, Shtoltenberg, Ghali, the UN, NATO and all the highest levels of the major international organizations. Thus the history of Bosnia-Herzegovina will remain a working example for these institutions of how things were done once, once upon a time, in a region of the Balkans: how an ethnic population was wiped out through round-table talks and according to a very precise agreement among these organizations. This agreement also contains minor anomalies, which are corrected very quickly, in the blink of an eye, such as the replacement of French General Zhan Kont, or something similar. There are voices calling for the lifting of the embargo on the Muslim side, the withdrawal of UNPROFOR troops and an end to this war through open battle. And where could things go after that? To the spread of this war and the involvement of other Balkan states? Why is there hope for Bosnia-Herzegovina? So, is it thought that this will be done in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s favor? No one accepts this logic, which is, de facto, the great, inexplicable logic. The political game of this end of the century shows that nothing has changed, that it remains a moderate, sophisticated policy, but one of the barbarity of 1878 or 1913.

German pesticides threaten to poison Albania Gj. PILIKA p. 2 Privatization boards sell owners’ properties F. MYRTAJ p. 2 Through the pages of Greek newspapers p. 3 The Albanian ring in Italy Z. ÇELA p. 3

This weekend was completely ordinary even for the capital’s crazy woman N. Taking care to avoid the many temperature fluctuations, she appeared in the capital’s alleyways sometimes dressed very warmly and sometimes lightly. On Saturday morning she took many little walks in front of Parliament, then chatted with the guards, who categorically refused to let her inside. Later, upset and defeated by the guards’ determination, the madwoman was found at the same place as her opponent’s fate, and then we can make a new list that matches our lucky number. Who can answer in what year Ali Pashë Tepelena’s head was bloodied, and when was this objective achieved? And now, what time has been requested, and what connection does this time have with Ali Pasha’s head? How much do the two heads weigh together? They say the director of ATSH has grown a beard. They also say he will keep it only until the President of the Presidency of Presidents of AD resigns, and the chairman of the Parliamentary Ecological Party, who spends all day and all night tending to the people’s troubles, is Shaban Memia. He is a true anti-communist who compromises with neither the Communists nor the female Communists. Sabit Broka is the chairman of the peasantry in our ranks. By adding my name to this list, the lucky number of the opponent is disrupted, our lucky number. THE CHRONICLER