Gangs of criminals—the armed wing of the Democratic Party

Illustration: a figure of a large character, with a mirror and several people lined up in front of it.

Speech by PSSH chairman Fatos Nano at the Prime Minister’s meeting with 10 political parties on the electoral law, May 19, 1997 Mr. Prime Minister, you rightly raised the problem that, without establishing this government’s real authority as the executive, which under its mandate organizes and guarantees elections… stability and elections in Albania. The latest information is very worrying. Under the law, you must urgently take control of SHIK, so that this organization… free and fair in Albania, this process is not unblocked. Apart from you, at the head of a Government of National Reconciliation, formed under the March 9 Agreement, to which the President of the Republic has only one alternative—to cooperate and not obstruct—there are also two other structures that guarantee free and fair elections in Albania: this round table of the parties making up this government, as well as the international organizations, which hope, acting together under the general coordinator, to set out with you the agenda of joint actions for the electoral process. Meanwhile, I ask: what is happening with SHIK? I ask this of you as a citizen and as Party Chairman, because by signing the March 9 Agreement, together with the other partners at this table, we gave this government the opportunity to create a situation and hope for… is not outside the executive’s control and is not under the control of the people and structures that caused this crisis. SHIK commandos, SHIK officers, SHIK’s compromised personnel are once again on duty and are organizing terror, a scenario of tension in the South, and after that they will organize it throughout Albania. Given that the gentlemen of the Democratic Party are showing no genuine will to move this process forward, we are convinced that they have abandoned formal genocide in order to commit real genocide against those among this people who are against Berisha. Please answer this round table, as Prime Minister of the Government of National Reconciliation: when will SHIK be brought under control? Without this, nothing in Albania can be unblocked.

Vlora—a monument to popular heroism and the struggle for freedom, the radiant medal of our national pride and the symbol of the unity of Albanians, without distinction from North to South, around the national flag—continues to be kept under constant pressure and terror by those who burned it, robbed it and deceived it, by those who bared their teeth after surrounding it with soldiers and police of every kind, of the Mulosman type and company. WE EMPHASIZE Don’t provoke Vlora, Mr. Berisha! Vlora—the monument to popular heroism and the struggle for freedom, the radiant medal of our national pride and the symbol of the unity of Albanians, without distinction from North to South, around the national flag—continues to be kept under constant pressure and terror by those who burned it, robbed it and deceived it, by those who bared their teeth after surrounding it with soldiers and police of every kind, of the Mulosman type and company. And all this with the sole aim of subjugating that people, making them bow their heads and accept being governed by those who robbed and killed them. But Vlora and the people of Vlora now know everything. They know not only that, after surrounding it with the army, he ordered the bridges to be mined, but also about the new and old brutes who send special weapons at night, to intervene at the right moment. So, to put it in the language of Vlora and of everyone… more briefly, the people of Vlora and all Albanians understand what is being prepared against them, to “kill” them again tomorrow. Therefore, it would be good, before thinking about punishing the gangs of criminals against the people (their names are also being mentioned in Vlora), to think about helping Vlora, so that it can withstand the great difficulties into which Sali Berisha’s anti-people regime has plunged it. The blood of the young men treacherously killed and the great sacrifices of these past months are an appeal: Don’t provoke Vlora, Mr. Berisha. This means that the people of Vlora, like all Albanians, demand respect for the political consensus; they demand a fair, honest and equal electoral process; they demand that they no longer be branded as rebels, criminals, thieves, and so on. The defiance and bad faith of anyone in relation to the Government of National Reconciliation and the round table of political parties, the rush to pass as a theft a thieving law that does nothing but plan a bigger theft than that of May 26 last year, and a political crime more hideous than that of May 28 last year, when state barbarity attacked the opposition and the protesting people with its entire arsenal of weapons, call for vigilance and unity in the defense of democracy, against the dictatorship that split Albania into pieces and turned one part of Albania against the other.

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