At 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, the atmosphere outside the prime minister’s office was calm. The police, many of them young women stationed on the steps or along the boulevard, seemed just as calm. The only sound came from their radios.
“Disperse them. There are 40 people… The one in blue is the organizer,” came the order over the radio, referring to protesters who were at that moment outside the Ministry of Education on Durrës Street.
Të lidhura
None found
In less than 10 minutes, hundreds of people who had been protesting outside the Ministry of Education moved toward Skanderbeg Square and the surrounding streets, trying to avoid the tear gas before regrouping in front of the prime minister’s office.
There, the crowd began to grow. Thousands of protesters, mostly young men and women, poured into the square from the many streets leading onto the boulevard. Among them were organized groups wearing a kind of improvised uniform, who took the lead in the march. Behind them, several thousand other people walked peacefully, calling for the prime minister to resign.
Saturday’s protest was part of a wave of anti-government demonstrations that began peacefully on May 31, opposing a tourism resort project in the protected area of Zvërnec. In October, the protests took a violent turn, with daily clashes between police and citizens. Fueled by a succession of government scandals, the rising cost of living and dozens of other grievances, the demonstrations have brought students, professionals and ordinary citizens onto the streets, united by their main demand: the departure of Prime Minister Edi Rama.
At 3:05 p.m., people were still marching along the boulevard. Clashes had already begun at the front of the protest, outside the prime minister’s office, between several dozen protesters and police, but they did not appear to affect the rest of the crowd. Just five or six minutes later, however, thousands of peaceful protesters hundreds of metres away from the clashes were hit from behind with tear gas.
Within minutes, dozens of police officers and water-cannon vehicles split the protesters in two, surrounding a sizeable group between the large bridge over the Lana River and the National Gallery of Arts. Trapped, the protesters tried to resist by throwing stones in both directions, but police filled the entire boulevard with tear gas. Dozens of tear-gas canisters were fired within minutes, creating a dense fog over Rinia Park and the adjacent boulevard, as protesters scattered toward Myslym Shyri Street, the pedestrian boulevard, the ring road and other connecting streets. The square soon emptied, as groups of police pursued protesters down several streets.
Even so, the protesters regrouped within 30 minutes. A group of nearly 200 to 300 people stood facing police at the entrance to Rinia Park. Thousands of others gathered again in Skanderbeg Square, facing a line of police blocking access to the boulevard. Protesters threw stones and Molotov cocktails, while police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Completely soaked by water fired by police and with her eyes reddened by the gas, a 28-year-old woman told BIRN that resistance was the only way forward.
“If we leave today, we have no future. We’ll all leave here if we leave Tirana today,” she said, as she recovered in an area clear of gas.
Most protesters share similar views.
“All I can say is that there’s no turning back,” said a man who introduced himself as a lecturer at the Polytechnic University. He said he had joined the protest because of accumulated grievances. The fact that people withstand the gas attacks and return to protest, he said, shows that the demonstrations will not stop. The man did not give his name because, like many protesters, he works in the public administration.
“The public administration is the most dissatisfied with the prime minister,” he said, adding that the repeated scandals have left public-sector employees feeling increasingly disillusioned, so he sees no alternative to continuing the protests.
A woman protesting alongside him said they had returned to Albania together in 2013 after studying abroad. They were now in the square hoping the country could change and they would not have to leave again. The woman, who said she had studied piano, noted that discontent was widespread.
“If you look around, you see people from different backgrounds and age groups, with different appearances. That shows this has affected a much larger part of the population, not just one group,” she said.
Public administration employees’ fear of being identified appears well-founded. A former employee of the Albanian Road Authority, ARRSH, said she was fired in July after taking part in the June protests. She said she learned from friends inside the institution why she had been dismissed, and stressed that there is no meritocracy in the administration, only “patronage appointees.”
“I’ve now been fired, even though I had the most complete and qualified CV at ARRSH after working there for a year and a half. I sent the prime minister a private message to make him aware of the situation, and the prime minister couldn’t solve it. He can no longer solve Albania’s problems,” she said, showing the unanswered message on her phone.
After 12 days of violent protests, she added, public anger had only grown.
“What I see is that people are even more frustrated, because he completely ignored the reforms we had been protesting peacefully against, holding up signs so they would not be passed in parliament,” the woman said.
“People will be here; they will keep coming to the square for a long time. For a long time, peacefully or violently.”
In Skanderbeg Square, amid tear-gas canisters skidding across the pavement and others flying overhead, Ardi, a 19-year-old studying medicine in Budapest, said he had come specifically for the protest, hoping the country could change. His friend, standing beside him, pinched his nose to protect himself from the gas and said change was possible only if the political class changed.
“Why is this country controlled by people who don’t want what’s best for it? I’m 18, and he has been in power for most of my life and has left us no option but a new system,” he said, as another wave of gas covered the square.
As she removed her gas mask and glasses, Mishel, a film directing student at the Academy of Arts, said the only reason she and hundreds of her peers had endured tear gas and violence day after day was the hope that things would change.
“Hope. Hope that perhaps our little Albania, with so much history and so many values, will manage to become a country where all Albanians are happy. Hope is what keeps us here every day,” Mishel said.
For her and other young people, the recent protests are the only hope in the face of widespread discontent.
“All Albanian students suffer and make sacrifices to get some schooling and gain knowledge. Knowledge should be free everywhere. Knowledge should be given freely everywhere, because it is what moves us all forward,” Mishel continued, describing an Albania where families struggle to make it to the end of the month.
As evening fell over Tirana, the pungent smell of tear gas still hung over the city’s streets. The protest continued for hours, with clashes in several other parts of the city. As of 8 p.m., no tally of the injured had yet been made public. After nightfall, police repeated their pattern of attacking people in side streets, detaining and beating citizens.
