SHIK helps “Brisku.” The King is shot at in Tropojë. The “Specials” are disarmed. President, Albania is groaning beneath blood!

Politics builds careers over pools of blood Albania is going through moments of madness. Albanians are fighting one another. Innocent people are being killed at every moment, made sacrificial victims of talkative, obstinate and neurotic politicians. Albania groans beneath the heap of corpses caused by the insane war of the state against its own citi- citizens. Now the civil war can no longer be concealed; it is a mad war in which everyone loses. The only winners are those provocateur politicians whose eyes have been darkened by the blood of the innocent. Let tomorrow pass judgment. Yesterday, 10 mothers’ sons died. They were burned, reduced to ashes in the mad armored cars and tanks. Such tragedies can happen only in Albania. And it all happened one day after the farcical rally that the president, the leading figure in Albanian politics, held in the city of Elbasan. The president left without seeing what happened afterward. Yesterday Elbasan lived through a day of anguish; the officials hid, while the people were drenched in blood. And the state shamelessly lies as it announces its official version of the events. The blood of those who became sacrificial victims of insane politics is being shamelessly manipulated. Not even a word about the source of the quarrel—a chief of police appointed out of spite by a party minister, for whom the lives lost matter less than securing the votes of June 29. Civil war has taken up residence in Albania: mass graves, fighting from south to north, an attempt on the president, bullets fired at the king. And, as far as we know, the warring sides are the Albanians themselves. Is it worth having dozens of people, whether they are civilians or police officers, killed over a chief of police, a minister or an electoral farce? Politics is responsible for what is happening in this country, where blood is shed every day. Albanian politics has not only failed; it must now be accused of murder. Those burned and killed yesterday in Cërrik accuse it, as do all those maimed and killed in this insane war, those resting in the depths of the Strait of Otranto, and the anguish that grips every Albanian family. Albania is weighed down by the agony of civil war, while sterile politics seeks to build a barricade over pools of blood. Woe to the poor Albanians, whose fate it was to be led by a rotten, sick and neurotic political class.

“REPUBLIKA,” Sami Frashëri Street, near “Petro Nini Luarasi” High School, Tirana. Tel/Fax (+355 42) 259 88 Tel. (+355 42) 230 90. Account No. 986/110, Tirana Commercial Bank