Brozi: Military attack against the Court of Cassation
Yesterday morning the most serious incident in the political power’s attack on the independence of the courts
"When the president of the Court of Cassation is mistreated by the police, when the dignity of a judge ends up in the hands of a policeman who beats him, when its employees are forcibly taken to the police station, do you think the freedom of the Albanian citizen is guaranteed? I would not want to be in Berisha’s place in Washington facing President Clinton. Judge for yourselves Berisha’s position when he speaks about human rights in Albania, when he speaks about the independence of the courts. I am convinced that President Clinton will not be deceived."
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Shame!
Everything that happened yesterday morning at the gates of the Court of Cassation cannot be explained by the logic of democracy. The siege by police of a central institution of the Albanian judiciary and the brutal treatment of its representatives is as much a disgrace to democracy as it is a sign of the serious dangers threatening it.
The Ministry of the Interior’s statement not only explains nothing, but by its absurdity it inspires fear. It inspires fear because some segments of power in today’s Albania are so servile to orders issued from above that they seek no legal basis whatsoever for their arbitrary actions. Violating the values of democracy is the threshold of the installation of totalitarianism.
The scene played out yesterday at the Court of Cassation, namely the further escalation of political life, already highly inflamed as it is, serves certain immediate and longer-term plans of the country’s political leaders. They want to create the impression, as they have indeed proclaimed, that with a president of the Court of Cassation who supposedly had been an executor of genocide and with several employees of that court allegedly infiltrated there by the former State Security, democracy is in danger. It is the implementation of the well-known fable: “The thief cries out: catch the thief.”
The truth is completely different. All the facts convince us that the Court of Cassation, this high temple of Albanian justice, has taken with full seriousness the carrying out of a mandate that has blocked democracy in Albania: the release of Fatos Nano. This frightens the rulers, in whose hands the files against Nano have remained and are burning them. Nano, the leader of the Albanian socialists, will not only stand out from all the mess cooked up in the kitchens of the Democratic Party, but with his firm stance and the vision of a European democrat he has reduced to dust and ashes all the scenarios that have been and are being played out in the backstage of Albanian politics to present the Socialist opposition as the greatest danger to the democracy we are building.
Even the moment when this political coup against the Court of Cassation and its members was devised shows that the authors are far too concerned to seek to undermine this independence that the court in question is fighting for, presenting the situation in the country and the fragile democracy we want to build as safely in hand. The secure image it seeks to create, especially in international bodies and chancelleries, further reveals the panic that has seized those in power.
Should this be the background to the long-awaited visit that the President of the Republic will soon make to Washington? No. Before Berisha receives a lesson in democracy in the world’s most advanced democratic country, he should take care to secure those freedoms and rights, those values that today the world has made a way of life, in order to show that he knows how to value them. He has not managed to achieve this either for himself as a person or for his own party.
Yesterday’s event is more than a disgrace.
The Nano case reminds us of political trials from the communist era
Press statement by the international secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, Dr. Karl Schrameck
The Albanian government’s fight against corruption cannot be misused to fight the political opposition. The recent political developments in Albania, especially in the case of the former prime minister and chairman of the Socialist Party of Albania, Fatos Nano, give a bad outlook for the way democracy is conceived in the ruling circles of politics in Albania. Through the recent changes made in the legislation, the aim is to make his release impossible during the review of this case by the Court of Cassation. This is not in line with the principles of a democratic state. These developments in the Nano case remind us of the earlier political trials of the communist era. Albania has also had dangers of this kind in the past. The way the government reacts to the Nano case makes us understand a step backward, and this is a bad sign for all those political forces and for Europe that worked for Albania’s acceptance into the Council of Europe.
In this context, Schrameck hopes for démarches by the leading troika of the European Union so that this “bad joke” may end.
Foreign Relations Office of the Social Democratic Party of Austria
Albania - Bulgaria 1-1
A draw worth as much as a victory
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