Head of SMI, Monika Kryemadhi is in Brussels today to hold meetings with MEPs from different EU countries.
Kryemadhi says that at these meetings she will appeal for help from their countries and will ask them to support any EC or EP initiative to help Albania in these difficult times.
Kryemadhi also says she will strongly denounce, according to her, intolerant dictatorial acts on media freedom.
Full statement by Monika Kryemadhi:
Albania is going through its saddest days, not only from the terrible consequences of the earthquake, which caused the loss of human lives and great material damage, but also by the government’s unscrupulous attack on free media and civil society activists.
Today I am in Brussels to hold a series of meetings with MEPs from different EU countries.
At these meetings I will appeal to the interlocutors for assistance from their home countries and I will ask them to support any EC or EP initiative to help Albania in these difficult times. I will also strongly denounce the intolerant dictatorial acts on media freedom.
Direct or indirect attacks on the elusive, free and courageous media denouncing Edi Rama’s autocratic regime, have turned into a real offensive against democracy and media freedom. During these days the autocratic power hit independent media such as JOQ Albania, Dosja.al, the satirical and informational site “Brryli Broadway” or the arrest and attempted arrest of civil society activists like Xhulia Aliaj and Adriana Kalaja clearly indicate that this government hates freedom!
The “Anti-Defamation” package proposed by the Prime Minister, the greatest slanderer in the political history of these 30 years, will be part of my denunciation with representatives of the European Parliament.
At no point we should not stop fighting for the protection of democracy, media freedom and human rights.
Any major reason seems at first glance from malignant interpretations of fearful power it is much less than the “voluntary” surrender to the autocratic power of acquired rights.
One of the founding fathers of American state and democracy, Benjamin Franklin said: Those who are willing to give up their freedom, in return for the promise that they will have more security, deserve neither one nor the other. / abcnews.al
