WHEN WILL THE ATTACKS ON POLICE STATIONS END?
On the day’s events / the Kukës incident
A revolt took place yesterday in the city of Kukës, where around 100 local people, mainly small traders and criminal elements, who were demanding, unilaterally and violently, that the Albanian state remove customs duties on trade between them and the Kosovo market, charged at the police forces, burning police cars and causing material damage to the latter.
The Kukës Prefecture Police, aided by other police forces, managed to keep the situation under control. But what is striking in this highly abnormal situation is a statement by a senior official of the Ministry of the Interior who was directing the operation, quoted by the “Voice of America” as saying that the police had the situation under control and that it had also been resolved through talks.
The official did not specify the reasons for or aims of the talks, but the incident, in which police officers were shot at and their vehicles vandalized in a situation for which the police alone are not responsible, makes that statement somewhat ridiculous.
There should no longer be talk of dialogue with people who are criminal through and through, who shoot and even attack the police!
As far as these people are concerned, the state should set aside “peaceful conversations” and opportunistic conduct, because only luck has kept this clash from claiming human lives!
Various state measures, as well as personal discredit, cannot drive individuals to launch aggressive, armed attacks on the police, who today are merely enforcing the laws in force. There is no excuse for traders who refuse to pay their state obligations and, for that reason, assault the police! In response to such acts of vandalism, the police must respond with at least the greatest severity permitted by law. In this context, the senior official of the Ministry of Public Order’s statement about talks with the rebels, whether presented as a positive signal or as an attempt to conceal the truth, is not serious! No one denies the value of dialogue in such situations, and no one is asking the police to charge at rebels who are already isolated; but the rebels must understand that they will pay a hundred times over for the damage caused to the state! Otherwise, if this revolt too is brought to a close with “talks”, it would not be surprising if, tomorrow, in another similar situation where the police are not involved at all, they set the Ministry of the Interior ablaze! The only negotiation with the Kukës rebels is this: whoever shot at the police will be punished according to the law, and they will pay a hundred times over for the burned cars! I do not believe this is a state, and this is the logic of the state!