President Berisha conveys his greetings for the holiday of Bajram p. 2

Interview with the PD’s Organizational Secretary, Prof. Dr. Ylli Vejsiu Many of them, who today stand at the head of the PS, and quite a few of those who have not allowed their party to break away from its past, were ready in those days to drown the peaceful student movement in fire. Today these people make up the most provocative part of the electorate, which remembers February 20, 1991, as a day of mourning. p. 3

Message from President Berisha on the occasion of February 20 It is a great pleasure for me to greet you tonight, fellow citizens and compatriots in Albania and abroad, on the fifth anniversary of our nationwide anti-communist revolt, which marked Albania’s liberation from the Marxist dictatorship and its ugly symbols. In particular, tonight I want to greet from the heart the hundreds of students who went into a hunger strike, and the hundreds and thousands of men and women, young men and girls who, five years ago, in the most powerful and massive Albanian anti-communist revolt, filled Skënderbej Square in Tirana and the squares of Albania’s other cities. Determined even to make the most sublime sacrifice—the sacrifice of their lives—with unparalleled courage, they defied the dictatorship’s police machinery, its bullets, tanks, armored vehicles and terror, and toppled and destroyed the foundations and humiliating symbols of half a century of tyranny. With the anti-communist revolution of February 1991, we Albanians wrote one of the brightest pages in our struggles and efforts for freedom. The February revolt was the hour of the greatness of our courage, the day that marked its triumph—the triumph of freedom and human and national dignity over the oppression, depersonalization and subjugation inflicted on us, and over the cultural genocide that even the most brutal occupations of the last millennium had not perpetrated. It bore witness to our national culture’s [text unclear] with Marxist socialist pseudo-culture, which would have meant the gradual extinguishing of our identity. The dictatorship and the dictator wanted to exclude us from every morality other than class morality, which arose from class struggle, in whose name a person was supposed to denounce God, parent, child, spouse, friend, country and freedom, because this was the interest of the class, the morality of the class, and, according to them, every other morality was immoral. That is why today, in the name of what we suffered and love, we value and honor one another, our civilization, our culture and their eternal values ever more. February 20 was our great test of patriotism and of our brothers and sisters in Albania throughout the world, who had been declared enemies of Albania solely because of their non-communist beliefs. During communist tyranny it was difficult to be Albanian. At the forefront, [text unclear] before them. February 20 is the day that changed Albania, the Albanians and their future. … imprisoned around 400,000 Albanians. Therefore, let us honor all those who stood up to the tyrant and tyranny. The February 20 revolt was a great tribute to their work and sacrifice. It was also a special tribute to the hundreds and thousands the anti-communist revolt of February 1991 in Albania wrote one of the brightest pages in the history of that marked its triumph, the triumph of freedom and human and national dignity over repression, depersonalization, and blind submission. The following fell in this revolt, thereby earning immortality: Artan Lenja, Artur Daka, Ismail Capari, Pellumb Tahiri, Spartak Deliu, Mikel Laro, Lulzim Barxha. Among the experiences of the anti-communist revolt of February 1991! The revolt of February 20, 1991 was not a revolt against a dead man, but the revolt of Albanians against Tirana and tyranny. For 50 years we experienced one of the most cruel and humiliating regimes of all time. Enver Hoxha, the symbol of bloodshed, wickedness, and deceit, severed us Albanians from our freedom and our Homeland for half a century; he turned a land of unparalleled wars and legends of freedom into a land of prisons, gulags, persecution, and oppression without parallel in our entire existence. He destroyed our property because he sought to depersonalize us, and that is why today we are poor in Europe. He destroyed our time and our future, and that is why we entered the 1990s without a future, like people and a country from a time that had been stopped. He destroyed our good name, dignity, friendships, and image in the world, and plunged us into the deepest loneliness in all our history. He turned Albania into his fiefdom, into a storehouse of insults and extermination directed at the whole world and of other national reprisals. The February 20 revolt was not a battle against the busts and bronzes of a dead tyrant; it was a battle against the living tyrant and dictatorship that in Albania had established themselves, living and all-powerful, in the dark souls of the shadows of the past in Albania. They ordered and killed all the most valuable Albanian intellectuals; not only did their cruel work destroy our ancient traditions and civilization, they also sought to ... ... and, like the Thénardiers of this century’s end, robbed families and old people who worked hungry, enriching themselves by adding to their wealth in neighboring countries. The dictatorship and the dictator live on and survive in the blood and minds of those who organized the waves of death, the coup at the United School, the civil-war scenario, and the massacres of February and April 2; those who ordered people to be killed in the streets, who ordered the universities to be closed, and who, even today, after their crushing defeat, call for skull-crushing, physical clashes, and cynically offer, even in 1996, Karl Marx’s satanic doctrine as a new alternative for the country—the doctrine in whose name they created this era and its red throne. February 20 is the day of the great reckoning of Albanians with the dictatorship, the day tyranny was terrified. We reserved those days for the red empire; we have reserved the end for all the empires and conquering emperors throughout our history. The February revolt was a blessed revolt. It had God’s blessing, the blessing of Albanians who fought and fell for freedom in every era, and the blessing of our children and the generations to come. It was blessed because we won. On February 20, the little David defeated the tyrant and brought Goliath down to the ground. It was blessed because the democrats and the people as a whole, with extraordinary bravery and courage, not only defeated the dictatorship but also averted the most dreadful outcome: a fratricidal civil war, which the ruling clique of Ramiz Alia, Fatos Nano, and Gramoz Ruçi tried to bring about throughout Albania. The victory of February 20 was a historic victory for Albanians and Albania. It was not a victory achieved in a single day or a week; it was the final battle in the saga of the epic resistance of Albanians to the ordeal and barbarity of communism, which began with the massacre of Tivar, and continued thereafter with the Postribë uprising and the revolts of Himarë, Spaç, Qafë Bari, Burrel, Mirditë, Kavajë, Malësi, Kuçovë, and up to the Shkodër massacre of April 2, 1991. In this resistance, among the most powerful in a people’s history, people fell to be made immortal at the altar of freedom; others were tortured, interned, or ... February 20 was our great test before God, because the communist tyranny sought to separate us from Him and make us rely on it alone. But we bore witness before God that for us there is one, and only one, and that we believe in Him. February 20 was our great test of dignity and self-respect. On February 20 we showed ourselves, our children, and the generations to come that those of us who lived through the dictatorship and submission to it were not defeated, but rose up; that we had the courage and bravery to cast off its yoke and liberate Albania. For this, we deserve to look to the future and take pride in our people, and to respect, value, and honor many others. Before our country and the generations to come, we stand with our heads held high, because we proved that we are people of conscience. February 20 was our great test for freedom. The dictatorship and the dictator turned Albania into a bunker and declared it a country where freedoms were forbidden. They removed Albania from the realm of freedom and wanted to keep it solely within their tyranny. We rescued it from tyranny. Albania today is a country of freedom. February 20 was our great test before Europe, because after severing the country’s ties with the continent, the dictator and the dictatorship had decided that Albania would not belong to Europe but to the dictatorship of the proletariat. On February 20, Europe saw its small nation rise to its feet once again like a giant, after decades of severe and exhausting moral and physical suffering, and triumph over a truly barbarous oppressor. February 20 was the great test of our civilization, culture, and morality. The dictatorship exercised ... ... a shield around 400 thousand a great undertaking for the country and a sacrifice by those who took part. It was also a special tribute to the hundreds of thousands of Albanian partisans, men and women, who won the war and returned to their homes with their heads held high, in the free air of their country, but whose dreams, hopes, and future—the things for which they fought and their comrades fell—would be destroyed by the dictator. respect, value, and honor many others. February 20 calls on all Albanians, regardless of our convictions and beliefs, to despise, condemn, and forever reject all ideas and forms of fanaticism, whether Marxist, black, or religious fundamentalism, whatever their kind. This day calls on us Albanians, regardless of our political affiliations, never to trust those who organized the February and April 2 massacres, the coup d’état, and the civil-war plan. They are red fundamentalists who regard the monstrous dictator as their father and have no interests other than their own and those of their clique. February 20 calls on us to respect and love one another ever more, and above all to respect one another’s freedom; to respect and strengthen the institutions of the rule of law; and not to forget that building a democratic state in Albania has not been easy, but that today it is vital to defend it from Marxist ideology and other dangerous ideologies. February 20 is a living call to us and to the generations to come: always to honor the deeds, sacrifice, suffering, torture, and eternal martyrdom—and the lives—of Mustafa Gjinisht, Shefqet Beja, Enver Zazani, Musine Kokalari, Sami Qeribashi, Seluadin Toto, Father Fausti, Father Damiani, Father Meshkalla, Sejfulla Maleshova, Trifon Xhagjika, Gramoz Omari, Vilson Blloshmi, Genc Leka, Josif Buda, Arben Broci, Mikel Koliqi, Sabri Koçi, Frano Ilia, Osman Kazazi, and hundreds and thousands of living and eternal martyrs of the 50 years of communist tyranny. Let their suffering, sacrifice, pain, and martyrdom live forever in our collective memory, in our social and national conscience, so that we may honor them and their deeds, and never again allow anyone to dare separate us from God, from freedom, from property, from our country, or from Europe.

p. 3

Among them are names already familiar in the black-ink press: former colonels with pistols and other former officials without pistols, but with important positions under the Dictatorship, such as Neshat Tozaj, Naim Zoto, Kiço Blushi and a dozen others who write under pseudonyms. Thus the Red Propaganda Front is formed, to support the activities of the political Red Front in Albania. p. 3

Another service to Serbia Brokaj portrays Albanians as terrorists and calls for a fight against peaceful negotiations p. 3

ZP threatens: The media will be placed under state discipline In yesterday’s editorial, the newspaper “ZP”, an organ of the SP, openly expresses views against freedom of the press in Albania. Protesting alleged misinformation by some newspapers, “ZP” writes that this is what happens: “In circumstances where Albania lacks the rule of law that would discipline the way public information is provided by the media.” Those who until now have made every possible accusation against the press law, considering it state control over press freedom, now declare that Albania lacks a state governed by the rule of law that would “discipline” the media. Accustomed to slandering and inventing all kinds of deceptions, the newspapers of “ZP” would fly into a rage whenever a journalist from “RD”, precisely on the basis of this fact, declared that Albania needed a press law. But now, unexpectedly, it is “ZP” that goes much further, issuing at the same time a dangerous warning for press freedom. After Çeka and Brokaj’s threats against journalists, “ZP”’s declaration about a state that would discipline the media shows very clearly what would await press freedom if the SP came to power. Even before coming close to power, opposition leaders have threatened to shut down newspapers, lynch journalists, and place the media under Ruçi’s discipline. What would happen if they actually came to power... E.PALOKA

Statement by the Journalists’ Association The Journalists’ Association of Albania notes with concern the increasingly active establishment of a strategy of tension and violence against journalists and the heads of Albania’s leading newspapers, warning of the suppression of press freedom. Public threats by political party leaders against Albanian journalists—to retaliate with trials and imprisonment, with exile outside Albania, and even with the closure of newspapers—are merely a warning of the Byzantine methods so familiar from the Albania of the dictatorship. The unprecedented attacks by the chairman of the Democratic Alliance party, calling for journalists to be imprisoned and free speech to be gagged once this party and the others come to power, according to their own declarations, are a significant warning of a Byzantine revanche which, although promised for after the elections, has in fact already begun. The publication of news and reports from an Italian press office concerning Serbian financing for the Socialist Party and a newspaper close to that party served as a pretext for demonstrating violence and issuing threats against the lives of journalists and newspaper executives. The public threats by a party chairman such as Nertan Çeka were immediately echoed by the same threats from the largest opposition party, the “Socialist Party,” within which elements activated by the darkest forces operate using the methods of the state security service. It was precisely these forces within the party that claims it will govern that failed in an attempt to lynch the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Zëri i Popullit.” And following this failed attempt, the Byzantine clans are seeking to intimidate and keep in terror the most important press in Albania, precisely on the eve of new parliamentary elections. The Journalists’ Association of Albania publicly condemns acts of violence, terror, and the Byzantine efforts of political forces to violate press freedom and secure a monopoly on information. Threats that, after the new elections, the opposition will organize public trials and drive journalists from their homes or send newspapers outside Albania constitute a failed attempt and, at the same time, a public declaration of the dictatorial vision for the future of society held by these political forces. The Journalists’ Association of Albania, as the largest organization of Albanian journalists, appeals to all its members to remain calm and avoid the violence and terror sought by political forces within the political parties. The Journalists’ Association of Albania appeals to all Albanian journalists to continue defending the public’s right to information, especially during an important period in Albania’s development. At the same time, the Journalists’ Association of Albania calls on all political parties, the President of the Republic, and all Albanian institutions to contribute, within the framework of the rule of law, to securing and maintaining the conditions necessary to inform society and safeguard press freedom. The Board