The Chairman of the Presidium of the People's Assembly, Mr. Pjetër Arbnori, at the head of a delegation, set off on an official and friendly visit to Greece, at the invitation of the Speaker of the Greek Parliament. (ATSH)

On Monday morning, the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, Lieutenant General Ilia Vasho, received at the General Staff the commander of the NATO Defense College in Rome, Lieutenant General Manuel De Abreu Castelo Branka, who is in our country on a friendly visit. (ATSH)

Open letter to Mr. ILIR HOXHA — Since March 22, 1992, no Albanian in Albania has lost their life for political reasons. — Your statement is irresponsible. For such a loathsome act, you deserve the condemnation of all humanity and to be condemned by history as an incorrigible liar. — On January 16, 1993, the ROTJER news agency broadcast an interview with you, as the son of Albania's communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, in which, among other things, you assert that “there were no violations of the law” during Albania's 46-year regime. (sic). Your political philosophy and ideological preferences are of no particular interest to me, for at least two reasons: first, political opinion and the right to free expression are your undeniable rights. Fortunately, the democratic victory in Albania makes it possible for everyone, without exception, to exercise such a right, although you enjoyed this right even earlier as a special privilege of your then-ruling class. Second, had your interest in “non-violation of the law” been a conscious and serious commitment of yours, you should have been among those who protested earlier, when Albania's prisons and concentration camps were packed full of political prisoners and their families, including women, children, and elderly people on the brink of death. not deserve respect. As a former political prisoner, and as one of those to whom this was done, Mr. Hoxha, what was the law applied to? There are two answers: First, every act committed against me from the day of my arrest until I had served my ten-year prison sentence was illegal and arbitrary, and therefore punishable by every civilized society and every state governed by the rule of law. Who is guilty? The one who gives the order, or the one who carries it out? Contemporary international legal practice, which condemns such state crimes, holds both the legislator and the executor responsible. Given your parents' central position in that regime, they are both directly and knowingly responsible for the crimes committed against the citizen Sami Repishti and hundreds of other Albanian citizens like him, because they flagrantly violated the law. Second, communist legislation in Albania was conceived, prepared, and enforced without any basic moral principle to justify its existence; it was immoral to the core. That legislation was so capricious because it served the sadistic desires of Albania's communist leaders, including both your parents, and arbitrary because its purpose was to punish the person and deny their right to freedom and fundamental human rights … recognized in documents dating back to the Ten Commandments of Moses and the teachings of the Gospel and the Quran, and continuing through the most recent achievements of the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Helsinki Final Act (1975), and the Charter of Paris (1990). Albanian communist legislation denied all the achievements of civilization in the political and social fields; it denied all the European inspirations of the Renaissance, humanism, and the Enlightenment, the social doctrines of past schools (including Marxism), and the humanitarian ideologies and movements of our century. Albanian communist legislation was the narrow framework of the tyrants and satraps of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the confines within which free voices and noble spirits were smothered; it was a chamber of torture, suffering, dehumanization, and death without a trace; it was the trampling of everything human toward which free beings aspire. In a word, that legislation was the embodiment of the anti-human; it was the codified Anti-Christ...! Mr. Ilir Hoxha, such a statement from a disinterested person would be merely the observation of a victim, for its absurdity alone, and might provoke concern with the exclamation: “Oh God! Forgive what he is doing.” But such a statement comes from the mouth of a privileged person, who never once raised his head to see what was going on around him (as you yourself acknowledge), from the mouth of a privileged person born into luxury, raised with every advantage, educated in the finest schools, who lived in the greatest comfort offered by his wealthy and powerful monarch parents, and who today, now that his princely privileges have run out and he is expected to live like everyone else, like the “broad masses” whom he has so greatly and so long despised, makes such a statement take on the character of an unmasked, calculated pose, intended to wound wounds that are still open. That statement is also one more attempt among many to scatter and bring back our dead past; to recall it once again by resurrecting fallen idols, creating an atmosphere in which crime, corruption, and lies would flourish again, just as they did for 40 years of the thirteen years of communist shame in Albania. What law are you talking about, Mr. Ilir Hoxha? For all of us, the victims of the communist regime in Albania, February 20, 1991, will remain engraved in our minds and hearts. That day the symbol of communist tyranny, the most hated figure of the red regime, Enver Hoxha, was toppled. That day, too, the last hope of the enthusiasts who hoped the whirlwind of democracy would pass them by without destroying the edifice of dictatorship that sheltered them for half of the (Continued on page 4) second, if your concern about the “non-application of the law” had been a conscious and serious commitment on your part, the prisons and concentration camps in Albania were completely filled with political prisoners and their family members, death. Today your voice commands no respect because it does not deserve respect. As a former political prisoner and one of those unfortunate people whose family members suffered terribly in the communist deportation camps in Albania, I wish only to refute your statement with my personal example. I was arrested on October 22, 1946, “for agitation and propaganda against the state.” The reason does not matter (the demand for free elections in 1945 or a just solution to the Kosovo issue). What matters is the fact that not a single article of the 1946 Constitution provided for my punishment. Freedom of speech, thought, the press, assembly and association were guaranteed (at least formally) by that constitution. Why was I arrested? Because the Party demanded it—a small, privileged section of Albanian society (led mainly by both your parents)—not because the law did. From October 22, 1946, until November 28, 1947, the date of my trial, I was kept completely isolated in the State Security cells in Shkodër. During that time, common criminals such as Zoi Themelli, Fadil Kapisysi, Nesti Kopali, Lefter Lakrori and their lackeys tortured me, Mr. Ilir Hoxha, mercilessly and without pause: beating me with pieces of wood, sticks and whips; hanging me by a rope and leaving me for long nights in a “tree”; subjecting me to electric current for hours; keeping my hands and feet bound for 14 months; pushing and spitting on me every hour, every day and everywhere; continually and for days on end denying me bread, water, air and medical care; keeping me shut in a dark, inhuman cell where my only companions were the prison latrines’ rats, as large as cats; insulting my personal honor and that of other family members a hundred times a day; stealing the little food and clothing my family sent me, and insulting them every time—especially my 60-year-old mother, who spent long hours, month after endless month, outside the prison door, hoping that one day, perhaps one day, she would be lucky enough to see her son, lost in the darkness of State Security, because that was what State Security wanted, not the law. I have read that you regularly visit your imprisoned mother, and I am glad of that. Allow me to tell you an example: One day, surrounded by the red guards, as Ethem Haxha was being taken from the interrogation offices to a State Security center, she wanted, as any mother would, to approach and touch with her hand her son’s body, blackened by torture. A guard saw her and, enraged, shoved her forcefully aside and slapped the old woman so hard in the stomach that the poor woman doubled over with a groan that tore at my soul. A law, in principle, is conceived, drafted, discussed and approved always in response to a need and a prejudice, in order to prevent the protection and respect of every citizen. In my case, which

(From the daily report of the American Department of State) The American Department of State's daily report of January 23, 1993, on the state of human rights in the world says that in 1992 Albania continued on the path to consolidating a multiparty democracy, with legal guarantees for human rights. Below we bring you the chapter on Albania. At the beginning of the report, it is noted that Albania entered 1992 under the leadership of an interim government formed after the opposition withdrew from the socialist-dominated coalition. This government led the country following the March 22 elections, which were judged free and fair. For the first time in half a century, Albania began to be led by a non-communist government. President Ramiz Alia resigned, and the Albanian parliament elected Dr. Sali Berisha as president. Toward the end of 1991 and the beginning of 1992, the report further states, there was unrest because of food shortages, and for this reason parliament passed a law establishing rapid-response forces, authorized to act in cases of disturbances of public order. These forces are believed to be responsible for the death of a student, who was beaten severely by them. From January to March of last year, it is said, food-related unrest in several cities was instigated by local socialist leaders, who refused to distribute foreign humanitarian aid. At least two Albanian citizens were killed and many others wounded by security forces. No investigations were conducted in either case. Thus, restoring order and calm became the main issue of the March 22 election campaign. After the elections, the new government quickly restored order and calm in the country and sought to reorganize the economy from a failed? [?] system into a free-market economy. Although the human rights situation has generally improved since the government and courts began implementing the 1991 law, Albania faces serious problems, the report says. In February, parliament passed an election law under which parties based on ethnicity were barred from participating in the March elections. According to information, there have been no politically motivated killings since 1992, but in some cases law-enforcement forces have used firearms against demonstrators. In December, those responsible for the killing of the four Martyrs of Democratic Independence in Shkodër in April 1991 were tried and sentenced. There is also no information about arbitrary arrests, and conditions in prisons are said not to pose a danger to the lives of prisoners. The new government has sought to respect all human rights and freedoms, such as freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of assembly and association, freedom to practice religious beliefs, freedom to travel within and outside the country, as well as all political rights without distinction of race or gender, religious affiliation, language, or social status. But despite these measures, rival forces accuse the democratic government of violating their rights and of various violent incidents. No convincing evidence for these accusations has been reported. (ATSH)

Message from the meeting between representatives of the DP and PSD On Tuesday, 26. 1. 1993, a meeting was held at the headquarters of the Democratic Party between representatives of the DP, Messrs. Dosti and Toto, and representatives of the PSD, Messrs. Gjimushi, Milo and Aliko. The meeting discussed the economic and political situation in the country. Mr. Dosti emphasized the DP’s position in favor of developing the coalition with the PSD in new areas and forms while, naturally, preserving its individuality. He asked that the PSD’s political position toward the reform and the Democratic Government be made public. For his part, Mr. Gjimushi pointed to the positive results of the parties’ alliance in local government and called for this alliance to be more strongly represented at the highest levels. Expressing the PSD’s position, he emphasized that it supports the government and the reform as a whole. Both sides found common ground in the idea of political stability, which is so necessary for Albania. The meeting took place in a friendly spirit. DP PRESS AND INFORMATION OFFICE

— THIS TIME TO DEFEND HER VIEWS At the court hearing in the Hoxha family trial, held in Tirana on 26.1.1993, the first to speak was Mr. Beshiri, defense lawyer for the defendant Nexhmije Hoxha. As the main argument in defense of his client, he cited the fact that all the orders for the treatment of the Hoxha family came from the First Secretary of the PPSH, Adil Çarçani, and other members of the Red Bureau. This, esteemed lawyer ... is known to everyone that ...

Government scandal or

Government scandal or journalistic abuse and sensationalism? In its issue 1 (7) of January 1993, the “independent” weekly newspaper from Shkodër, “Lajmëtari,” published an article entitled “Government Scandal” as its lead story. It states that “through documentation signed by the Minister of Finance and Economy, Mr. Genc Ruli, Albanian oil crosses the border, violating the UN embargo against Yugoslavia during the period of the construction of the years.” In order to shed light on the truth, the General Directorate of Customs urgently dispatched an inspection to Han i Hotit on 21.1.1993, assisted by the Border Police, the Financial Police, the State Audit, as well as the inspection authorities of the districts of Shkodër and Malësi (Continued on page 4)