The Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, has reacted to yesterday’s protest in Himars in support of Fredi Beleri. Among other things, Rama writes that “in my memory there is no other case, when the elected officials of a democratic state organize a protest in another democratic state, against the authorities of this state”.
It has been several months since certain politicians and media in Greece have been asking Albania to release the elected mayor of Himara from prison. A few weeks ago, Margaritis Schinas, vice president of the European Commission and a good friend of Albania, published a letter addressed to Commissioner Oliver Varheley.
With a diplomatically warning tone for hindering the progress of Albania’s negotiations with the European Union, he asked his colleague to intervene with the Albanian authorities, because otherwise he, i.e. Mr. Schinas, sees “an immediate risk that this issue will negatively affect the relationship between progress of 2023 for Albania and its commitment to promoting the legal order”.
In my memory, there is no other case, when the elected officials of a democratic state organize a protest in another democratic state, against the authorities of this state.
But who and how can today release from prison an Albanian citizen of Greek nationality, who, as a candidate for mayor, is accused by the Special Prosecution Office against Corruption and Organized Crime, of having committed the crime of buying votes, for which the Code Albania’s criminal law is clear and drastic – while according to the unchanged decision in the three stages of the trial, he cannot be detained until the end of the judicial process against him?!
Does the Greek nationality give the Albanian citizen accused by SPAK and kept in custody by the country’s courts, a different status from 48 other Albanian citizens with Albanian nationality, including some mayors of my party, who today are detained under the charges of the same body, with identical decisions of the same courts?!
Today’s Albania is a European country, tolerant of every contemporary protester, but also historically hospitable to every foreigner, regardless of color, language or religion, and many moments in our history testify to this, when Albanians became the guardian angels of foreigners. in the struggle for survival, from the Jews during the Second World War to the Afghans today, including the Greeks stricken by extreme poverty in the north of their country during the bloody civil war, who knocked exhaustedly on the doors of Albanian families in the southeast of our country.
Not only that, today’s Albania is a European country with a new exemplary legislation for all minorities, where the Greek minority enjoys the same freedom and rights as the Albanian community, where our citizens of Greek nationality choose and are elected freely, as happened also in this year’s municipal elections in Dropull and Finiq, after an electoral campaign with messages given in Albanian and Greek (even by me myself, who unfortunately do not speak the wonderful Greek language); where the Greek flag flew freely amidst traditional Dropullite songs and dances and the Greek minority candidates took the mandates to continue governing their communities undisturbed; during the period of my government, houses built without permission in the years of transition were massively legalized for Greek families, and they were given thousands of property titles denied for decades, just as they were given to churches, where Orthodox believers perform religious rituals, titles of properties seized by the communist regime, unregistered until I came to the government.
/abcnews.al
