Protests throughout Albania against the neodictatorship. Today, a large rally in “Skënderbej” Square “Union for Democracy” calls on all Albanians, regardless of their background, who believe in freedom and its values, true patriots who aspire to an Albania in freedom, and right-wingers wherever they are in Albania, to join the citizens of Tirana on Friday, September 19, at 11:00, in “Skënderbej” Square, for their peaceful protest against the neocommunist regime which, after seizing power by force, has not ceased applying its old platform against the opposition through persecution, beatings, imprisonment and killings. Democrats from all over Albania! Let us gather on Friday, September 19, at 11:00, in “Skënderbej” Square.

Fatos Nano’s gang in parliament votes to lift the opposition leader’s immunity. The neocommunist clique seeks to drown Albania in blood Berisha: We will win the battle Democrats determined to make the most sublime sacrifice. Powerful protest rallies in Shkodër, Korçë and Kavajë. “Let’s blow Fatos Nano away” throughout Albania

By Sami NEZA A gang that came to Tirana from the communist rebellion voted yesterday to have Sali Berisha arrested. The various TV stations showed viewers the yellowed, miserable face of Enver’s prosecutor, together with the editors of two newspapers that had served as platforms for the Greekophiles and Serbophiles of last year’s rebellion. Then Fatos Nano went up to the ballot box. A vote to arrest Berisha. This entire spectacle took place in the meeting hall where the Central Committee party plenums were held, the very hall that Deputy Spartak Ngjela refused to enter three days earlier; the hall where, many years ago, the murder, imprisonment and internment of around 400,000 Albanians were prepared time and again. Outside, just as in ’46, when opposition MPs were attacked, there was a motley crowd gathered from remote villages, armed with Kalashnikovs, waiting to drive the legitimate owners down from the floors of villas and apartment blocks into basements, exactly as in ’46. The very few people they have brought with them will live well because they fought both last year and this year for their Enver, Fatos Nano. The other bandits, who five days ago took turns meeting with the Interior Minister, understood that the day had come to take revenge on the thousands of Albanians who removed the dictator from the center of Tirana, who took the villas in the block away from them, who took property out of their hands and threw them into the garbage, who opened the borders to the bourgeois world, who created the wealthy, who brought the old owners up from the basements and removed the looters of 1946 from their homes—but did not leave them out on the street. Yesterday, Parliament brought back to the country what Albanians thought they had forgotten: dictatorship. This is how dictatorships come about. First the thieves, then the abusers, then these people with peasants who even get onto committees, then minor judges, then the plenary hall, then the uniformed gang. This is the entire infrastructure of the gang-state, whose people no longer want to see its prime minister, its offices, its buildings, its faces, its decisions or its cars. That is why when someone enters the offices of this state, which was abandoned ten to one, they feel like leaving too. They are not to blame. When the state reminds you every day of a gang and something filthy, how can you then act with immunity? The lifting of the immunity of the chairman of the Democratic Party, the opposition leader, the former President of the Republic, the initiator of democracy in Albania in ’90, is a grave sign for all the idealists of the country, the country’s democrats and Albanian citizens, as in the years when we were sensitive to signals. Someone is trying to overturn things in blood: from Saturday to this Saturday, more than ten Democrats have been killed, among them the Leader of Democracy, Hajdani, and more than sixty others have been wounded, including the head and chairman of the Conservatives, Armando Ruçi. The Communists and their gangs have no reason whatsoever. They have gathered in the hall of the Father and, like their Father Enver or like Haxhi Qamili, are demanding the civilization and hope they won with the old communism. But they are still speaking as they know how—with guns. May God forgive us for letting them speak as they know how. Yesterday, the vote was not simply about Sali Berisha’s immunity. The gang voted to strip all Albanians of immunity; it stripped Albania and its democracy of immunity. Now thieves, bandits and abusers can harm ordinary Albanians who do not steal, do not kill, who are not Communists or Communist bastards, without the law catching them; they can harm them until they no longer remember their hands, democracy, Albania. They are in the cells, in front of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Plenum, the Villa and at Perikliut. They are not merely people; they are a gang. Albanian Democrats today face the enemies of civilization, the enemies of modern Albania, who, with kleptocracy in their hands and steel and boots, want to overturn what we have all built, what is our life, what is essential, what is ours: our homeland and freedom.

NANO RESIGN IMMEDIATELY

A high-level European delegation arrives in Albania today to help resolve the political crisis Yesterday, in Skënderbej Square Europe’s power players meet with Berisha ON PAGE 5

PDSH denounces the decision of the Court of Appeal , which, at Fatos Nano’s order, instead of acquitting six former senior PD officials, left them facing the absurd charge of crimes against humanity, thus demonstrating a shameful act by justice, assaulted by the terrorist clique in power. Fatos Nano, acting according to the logic of primitive revenge, ordered the Court of Cassation to keep Blërim Çela in prison solely for denouncing the multimillion-lek corruption of Fatos Nano and his clan in the transatlantic Levante & Co. affair. The PD Presidium expresses its full solidarity with Mr. Blërim Çela.

Secret order from Prime Minister Nano to the Telecom Directorate. Millions are being stolen from citizens Tens of thousands of telephone subscribers in Tirana, as well as in some of the country’s main districts, are having considerable sums of money stolen from them, which, by order from the prime minister’s office, will go toward paying special police officers, the newly uniformed police thugs, and rewarding those police officers who have not yet thrown in their lot. This news was also confirmed by well-informed sources inside the General Directorate of Albanian Telecom. A Telecom employee reports that in recent days this order arrived from the prime minister’s offices and an attempt was made to keep it extremely secret. Under this order, Telecom billing employees are instructed to enter on subscribers’ phone bills sums of money far greater than the cost of the telephone units they have used. The order also sets a minimum payment limit, stating that no subscriber is to be charged less than 5,000 lek, while the sums are much higher for offices, private companies, institutions, and organizations that are in opposition to the government. To carry out this scheme amid all the noise and commotion, the Tirana Telecom directorate has in recent days undertaken a series of purges in its administration, dismissing dozens of employees of various ranks, including the company’s bill collectors. “This government has gone mad,” says a Telecom employee. “It wants to use subscribers’ money to pay the criminal elements it has recruited to prop up this gang of thieves and murderers.” The first bills with these staggering amounts arrived yesterday, slipping under the doors of subscribers’ apartments. But we do not believe these subscribers will agree to pay out of their own poor pockets to fuel the crime and murders of innocent Albanians, solely for the sake of Fatos Nano’s seat and his clique. Ndreke GUJINI

Expansion of the PD Presidium and intensification of protests proposed Extraordinary meeting of the PD Presidium Last night, at its extraordinary meeting, the Presidium of the Democratic Party discussed the grave situation created in the country following the latest terrorist acts by Nano’s clique, which were aimed at the physical and political elimination of the opposition. The Presidium decided to propose to the National Council of the Democratic Party a series of appropriate measures to prevent the consolidation of neodictatorship in Albania. 1. The Democratic Party should intensify its protests in all their peaceful forms until the fall of the neocommunist dictatorship in Albania. 2. It should recommend that the National Council establish a Front for Rejecting Dictatorship in Albania. 3. The Democratic Party should suspend all forms of communication with the clique in power and its representatives at every level. 4. It should work to expose Fatos Nano’s criminal clique internationally and isolate it completely from the West. 5. It should recommend that the National Council expand the Presidium of the Democratic Party in response to the grave political situation created in the country.

Today, 19.09.1998, at 13:00, the National Council of the Democratic Party of Albania will meet. All members of this Council are invited to attend. THE PRESIDIUM

Journalists, beware of Nano’s political police ON PAGE 3