May the glory of Albanian journalism live forever and ever! There has been much discussion in Albania about the press and freedom of speech. It is well known that where morality is talked about a lot, there is no morality. And, as if to prove this axiom, arrests of journalists and editors-in-chief began. Even though the trials come to nothing, terror and a climate of fear can now be called a reality. What can a journalist do if his wife, brother, child, sister-in-law or friend says to him: “Do you realize you’re getting us into trouble? What have we done to deserve this?” And yet we assure the international institutions that FREEDOM OF SPEECH is guaranteed in Albania! No foreign journalist can imagine the conditions in which Albanian journalists work! So guaranteed is this freedom that in Albania not only are correspondents and newspapers of foreign newspapers and agencies being attacked and threatened, but so are internationally respected agencies and radio stations themselves, such as DPA, AFP, Deutsche Welle, REUTERS and, most recently, the BBC. It seems that, in keeping with tradition, the famous ATSH, whose number-one task is to spy and produce reports on articles critical of the regime, must immediately demonstrate its indignation by reacting savagely and publicly through its own newspapers (which are obscure, and completely unknown). Thus, immediately after RD attacked the BBC, this agency had the audacity and the honor to circulate a harsh protest against the station around the world, compiling biographies of the correspondents and journalists who have worked in the BBC’s Albanian-language section. Since we are speaking of ATSH, its current team has strict orders not to give the special bulletins—that is, those bulletins compiling articles critical of the regime—to the newspapers, or even to ministers, but only to the president’s office. This shows greater zeal and more exemplary discipline than this agency had during the dictatorship, when even editors-in-chief were entitled to receive these bulletins. (Let Comrade Mehmet Elezi be asked about this.) Following the example of the right wing of the party, today’s children of today’s party wing, such as M. Elezi, B. Trenova and many other journalists—people who made an extremely valuable contribution to militant journalism, which destroyed the party’s internal and external enemies with fire and iron—are now the very ones doing the same thing: after terrorizing people and openly threatening to eliminate or lynch the “enemies of the party,” they demonstrate the anxiety of some party wing by launching an attack even against foreign newspapers, and even against foreign agencies and newspapers, describing them as … (Continued on page 3)

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Read on page 5. Interview with Mr. Preç Zogaj