Activist Edlira Çepani, a guest on the NOW program on Euronews Albania, said that rising tensions during protests in recent days were the result of the state closing off all legal avenues.
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According to her, after 129 days of pressure, arrests later deemed unlawful, and a lack of opportunities to be heard at public hearings or referendums, citizens’ reaction could move from throwing eggs to other means.
Çepani also emphasized that institutions, not citizens, should show restraint, as citizens’ demands for changes to the laws and territorial reform are being continuously ignored.
She said that for 129 days citizens had been vilified, insulted, pressured and arrested, while in most cases the courts had issued rulings deeming the arrests unlawful. Nevertheless, on the very same day that the court issues such a ruling, the police continue making unlawful arrests, using violence and dragging citizens away.
According to Çepani, these are people who have tried every possible means available to them because the state does not recognize their right to a referendum. She said that, in practice, this right exists on paper but cannot be exercised.
She added that citizens are not given a genuine opportunity to be heard at public hearings, where they could speak with their representatives in parliament, and are not even allowed to protest in front of parliament because the area is cordoned off from the boulevard all the way to the other side of Elbasan Street. Under these conditions, she said, people will react in other ways and the protests will escalate.
Çepani warned that a situation would then emerge that no one could control, describing this as an escalation from the mildest form of protest, which could move from eggs to other means and other forms of violence. She stressed that the question now being debated was whether this was good or not, but everyone knew that it was not. Nevertheless, restraint could not be expected from citizens who had demonstrated it in the best possible way so far, because institutions were the ones that needed to show restraint.
She asked how institutions could demonstrate restraint when citizens had been demanding, for four months—not only through protests, but also long before them—the review of several laws they considered completely unjust.
According to her, citizens had raised these issues and brought them to the attention of the authorities, but institutions were not addressing or reviewing them at all, while half of the citizens had taken to the streets over territorial reform.
Çepani said that institutions listened to citizens and then told them to do as they pleased, that the state would do as it pleased, and nevertheless expected citizens to communicate in the proper manner.
In closing, she stressed that when every form of communication provided for by law is denied, there have been other cases around the world in which situations escalated much further, to the point where politicians were seized and thrown into garbage bins. She said she hoped and wished that this would not happen, because she worked with colleagues in parliament and would be very sorry to see them in such situations.
