The protests held yesterday outside Parliament and the police, together with the successive gatherings of the Albanian diaspora, have triggered strong reactions from people involved on the ground. Among them was businessman Erind Xhindi, who was present during the clashes with police and recounted in detail what he describes as a scheme devised by officers to crush and fragment the civic revolt.
According to Xhindi, everything began in the moments when tensions rose in front of the Parliament building. He says that at that point, the police’s main focus was not maintaining public order, but physically protecting the majority’s MPs, while more police forces were deployed on the ground to exert pressure and violence against the protesters.
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“At the moment when we were throwing eggs, the police officers’ attention was on protecting the MPs. Additional forces came there, I believe, as a form of pressure. The same situation continues, this government goes on dragging people away and taking them hostage,” Xhindi said, accusing the police of aggressive behavior toward citizens.
He also described how, in his view, the increase in police pressure and the way the arrested protesters were handled had a clear purpose: protecting officials and dispersing the crowd.
Later, the businessman also explained why the protest immediately moved from Parliament to the Tirana Police Directorate. According to him, the police followed a specific tactic to shift attention away from the main flashpoint of the protest, sending the arrested protesters to different police stations across the capital in order to confuse and divide the demonstrators.
Xhindi claims that as soon as the authorities achieved their objective and Parliament was emptied, the release of the detained individuals immediately began, an element which, according to him, proves the manipulative nature of this scheme.
“After that, we continued the protest at the Tirana police. I think they wanted to divert attention away from Parliament, so they took the arrested protesters to several police stations. They came out immediately after we left Parliament,” Erind Xhindi explained.
