Albania prays for Arbnori
The West increases pressure on the former communist rulers: It demands that freedoms for the opposition be urgently guaranteed
The West increases pressure on the former communist rulers:
It demands that freedoms for the opposition be urgently guaranteed
Today Albania prays with entreaty and hope, with a lit candle, for the salvation of a life worth as much as the future. For the salvation of the chairman of the pluralist Albanian Parliament, Pjetër Arbnori, who is in a critical condition, still in a coma, placed next to the equipment of the Turkish military hospital in Ankara, where he has been hospitalized for more than three weeks.
Then, relieved just as much by the temporary lightness of the condition of the symbol of the pluralist parliament and by the anxiety of a bell brought out from the depths of history after three hundred years of freedom, Albanian political life today will be divided between anxiety and hope for the salvation of the symbol of Albanian democracy in the post-dictatorship years and the West’s efforts to curb the communist backlash against the Albanian opposition.
At the same time that Turkish doctors speak with moderate optimism about Mr. Arbnori's health, who this week is keeping Albanians in suspense along with the hope of seeing his eyes open again, the Western world is preparing to exert strong political pressure on the socialist government in Albania and especially on Prime Minister Fatos Nano to urgently guarantee the basic rights of the opposition.
Today, the American embassy in Tirana will make public a statement that first condemns the violence carried out in recent days against leading figures of the Democratic Party and calls on the Albanian authorities not to allow any obstacle to the political activity of the opposition. At the same time, European officials in Western capitals have also conveyed their concern about the climate created against the opposition in Albania.
Against this dramatic backdrop, amid prayers for the life of Pjetër Arbnori, the issue of political freedoms and the security of the opposition is becoming an issue in Albania's relations with the West.
The PD leader, Sali Berisha, before the journalists
The freedoms of Albanians in intensive care
Yesterday 15-20 of the hunger strike at the military hospital in Tirana, in place of which he puts forward the committee of the principals. Pjeter Arbnori, who is in intensive care, has been engulfed in a serious health condition.
The second wave of protests in Tirana with broad support of the hunger strike. Arbnori, Mitro and Ti.
ON PAGE 3