The figure of the policeman is inviolable in every state. Anyone who raises a hand against him challenges the authority of the State Last night Prime Minister Meta decided to reward the Tropoja police officer with 80 million old lekë, and the deputy director of the Kukës Prefecture Police, Shyqyri Gjoshi, and the chief of the Tropoja police station, Ali Gjoni, with 20 million lekë each Page 2

The figure of the policeman is inviolable in every state. Anyone who raises a hand against him challenges the authority of the State Last night Prime Minister Meta decided to reward the Tropoja police officer with 80 million old lekë, and the deputy director of the Kukës Prefecture Police, Shyqyri Gjoshi, and the chief of the Tropoja police station, Ali Gjoni, with 20 million lekë each By EMIN BARÇI “Dear Democrats! Don’t set off firecrackers today!” one of the Democratic Party rally organizers ordered yesterday in Skanderbeg Square. And the order was obeyed. Molotov cocktails, stones thrown at windows, and explosive firecrackers took a break yesterday. “Today, don’t set them off!” confirms that they have been set off up to now, that until yesterday citizens’ blood was boiling as they tried to distinguish the noise of a firecracker from the crack of a gun. Until yesterday, the Police and the State had been pushed to the extreme limits of patience and restraint. Until yesterday, parents had kept their children away from the playgrounds in areas violently taken over by the Democrats, because at any second the explosion of a firecracker could turn into a stray bullet. What the Democrats consider legitimate is the psychological terror inflicted on anyone who does not think like them, anyone who does not join them, anyone who does not hurl some stray object at others. It is unlikely that yesterday the firecrackers showed respect for the blood of the partisans. Yesterday it was clear that the firecrackers’ burning gunpowder heads had learned the lesson that the law had taught vigilantism. Yesterday the “untouchable” Berisha was in the same building where he had put Fatos Nano years earlier; he was questioned in the same office where the cleaner from “Koha Jonë” had also been questioned about the bomb the mafia had planted at VEFA; he entered and left through the same door, along the same corridors that for five years politicians, journalists, militants, women and old men had learned by heart, for the sole reason that they opposed his politics. Among Berisha’s opponents, the reason for his detention caused dissatisfaction. The chronology of the actions of the PD “strongman”—from the suppression of the July ’93 protest, through plunging the country into the chaos of ’97, with the loss of 1.5 billion dollars and the killing of around 4,000 people, to September ’98—promised much more than a few hours’ detention. But yesterday the government shattered far more than the myth of a “strongman,” the “untouchable,” the “monster.” Even Berisha himself, recalling the rallies from December ’90 through 1992, understood yesterday that the right is on the side of those who detain him, since the protest he organized and the calm in Tropoja and throughout Albania did not justify his anger. Will there again be squares occupied, firecrackers exploding, stones smashed, or Molotov cocktails burning? Complaining about the police, Berisha delivered the big news: the government is enabling other branches of the State to provide Albanians with a peaceful life. Now it is clear that, after dynamite and firecrackers, Berisha will end up...

The General Assembly of Albanian press publishers met yesterday in one of the function rooms of the Rogner Hotel. It discussed the problems and difficulties facing publishing activity in Albania. Among other things, the speakers focused on the need for a package of laws that would ease the position and activities of publishers of the free Albanian press. The current situation, with some of the highest taxes and duties in the world, as applied in Albania, cannot continue. Nor can the situation continue in which the press is not distributed across more than 60 percent of the country’s territory. The speakers called on the current majority to commit to providing effective, realistic and institutional support in resolving the serious problems facing the Albanian press and implementing a series of projects proposed by this association. The Albanian Press Publishers’ Association expressed its full solidarity with and support for the demands of radio and television operators to repeal the amendments made on 31 July 2000 to Law 8410 on radio and television, to reduce the taxes that are devastating electronic media, and to correct the serious violations committed by the KKRT in the electronic media licensing process. The Assembly restructured the association’s governing bodies. Mr Ylli Rakipi was elected chair, Nikollë Lesi deputy chair, and Leonard Gremi secretary. ALBANIAN PRESS PUBLISHERS’ ASSOCIATION Tirana, 29.11.2000

How Mehmet Shehu got me engaged during the war Emine Bahja, the only living People’s Heroine of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War, recounts the battles of the war page 14

“The new force of the right is ready” page 7