Last night, too, the police did not respond to the demonstrators’ violence The violence of the DP protesters is escalating. Last night they threw bottles of petrol at the windows of the Ministry of Public Order and then set fire to the main door of the Prime Minister’s Office page 3

Anyone who watched yesterday’s television coverage of yesterday’s rally

Anyone who watched yesterday’s television coverage of yesterday’s rally by Sali Berisha’s party must have felt the anxiety of the horrors this country has endured because of this man. watched yesterday’s television coverage of yesterday’s rally by Sali Berisha’s party must have felt the anxiety of the horrors this country has endured because of this man. Yesterday, the lumpen gathered around Sali Berisha publicly violated the most important and sacred institutions of the state: the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Public Order. It is true that Sali did not throw the bottles of petrol, but the one who incited them belongs to Sali. Sali himself did not throw the stones either, but those who did were his inciters. This highly public figure seems to have taken heart from the Albanian prime minister’s statement a few days ago, when he told the public that he would arrest Sali himself if he threw stones…?! Only some naïve person thought Sali would really be arrested, but everyone understood that Sali does not know how to throw stones, petrol bottles, or shoot a rifle. He is so refined and clear-headed that he knows how to drink nothing but bottles of water. He is not drunk. He is conscious; indeed, Sali’s face, the leading opposition figure in Albania, was smiling last night, lit by the flames of the petrol burning the main door of Albania’s Prime Minister’s Office. As another 14 September begins to draw to a close. Leaving a people with frozen hearts, still haunted by the terror of early 1997. Leaving foreign diplomats and normal politicians, intellectuals and journalists, people of science and culture, men and women, children and the elderly, open-mouthed. Where is Albania headed? What will the crowd led by Sali Berisha do the day after yesterday—that is, today? Today, the Albanian public is asking this question of the President of the Republic, Rexhep Meidani; the Prime Minister of the Republic, Ilir Meta; the Speaker of Parliament, Skënder Gjinushi; the leader of the majority, Fatos Nano; and all politicians. We all want an answer. We want it today. Today, and today alone. We want this answer for the sake of our beloved country, our brothers in Kosovo, and the shared blood between us. We want this answer so we can know our future, the future of Albania and the Albanians. We want this answer so that we are not humiliated again in front of our children, as in ’97 or on 14 September. The children who were smothered with the rags and clothes we spread out for them in bathrooms. Foreign diplomats: ask your governments what they would do if someone set fire to the gate of the White House or the gate of the Kremlin?

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And as if they were not satisfied with the foreign currency they receive from Albania, they try to leave us outside the European Union They demand democracy(!) for the minorities and oppress Albanian emigrants in Greece; they shout in Greek about Albanian Himara, but forget Çamëria; they take 4.6 million dollars from KESH and still leave us without electricity page 2