Serbian Consulate in Shkodër, Boçi Attacks Rama: Betrayal and Historical Amnesia Revive the Esat Pasha Metaphor

The debate over the opening of a Serbian consulate in Shkodër has sparked fierce political reactions. In a lengthy analysis, senior Democratic Party official Luçiano Boçi described the initiative as an expression of the Albanian government’s “betrayal and historical amnesia.”

According to Boçi, Shkodër retains the Serbian-Montenegrin siege in its collective memory. Challenging the way Prime Minister Edi Rama is handling the decision, he invokes the historical figure of Esat Pasha Toptani as a metaphor.

Boçi argues that genuine diplomacy must be based on truth and the acceptance of responsibility, not on erasing the past, particularly as Serbia has yet to apologize for the crimes committed in Kosovo.

His full reaction:

“Shkodër does not need Tirana to tell its history, because it wrote that history itself. Precisely for this reason, every decision affecting the city’s symbolic significance must be assessed with far greater responsibility than ordinary diplomatic calculations dictate.

The government has presented the opening of the Serbian consulate in Shkodër as a normal diplomatic step, even as a beneficial development, linking it to the opening of the Albanian consulate in Bujanoc. Formally, perhaps it may be regarded as such. Diplomatic relations are an element of the international order, and no one opposes dialogue between states.

Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that diplomacy does not consist solely of documents. It is equally bound up with symbols, and in the Balkans, their weight is known to be greater than that of the concrete used to erect buildings.

Shkodër is no ordinary city. It withstood the Serbian-Montenegrin siege and is a place where the past is not merely a chapter in books, but part of the identity of its residents and of Albania as a whole. In this city, the names of its defenders are spoken with respect, humility, and reverence. For this reason, the misgivings with which many citizens, intellectuals, and politicians have greeted this decision are hardly surprising.

What is more surprising is the government’s attempt to impose acceptance of this step as something normal, as though history were one of the many apps of the digital age that could be deleted with a single click.

Still less can history be reduced to a selective memory from which the siege of Shkodër, the Balkan Wars, Kosovo, and every other fact that spoils the aesthetics of Rama and Vučić’s present-day diplomacy are erased.

The past is part of our shared memory, and it is precisely here that the shadow of Esat Pasha Toptani begins to emerge in the background. This does not mean that the historical circumstances are the same, because they are not. But whenever immediate political interests are placed above national sensitivities, his name naturally reappears as a metaphor.

The point is not to judge the present through the categories of the past. The aim is to remember that some historical mistakes always begin by being sold as ‘pragmatic’ or normal actions and, in the worst case, as ‘wise’ and beneficial decisions. This is precisely what diplomacy is trying to do with the blessing of Esat-Rama.

The paradox deepens further when we recall that Serbia has still not apologized for the crimes committed in Kosovo. It continues to reject many historical truths, defend narratives that victimize the victims all over again, and leave the fate of missing people unresolved, without justice or accountability.

But apparently, the issue here is not Serbia’s memory. The problem lies in the Albanian government’s amnesia and, more specifically, in its betrayal and treachery.

Under the banner of ‘good neighborly relations,’ Shkodër and all of us are being asked to behave as though history were a bureaucratic obstacle, as though wounds could be healed with ribbon-cutting ceremonies and respect could be created through forgetting.

True diplomacy does not demand that memory be erased, Mr. Esat-Rama. On the contrary, truth is its foundation. Germany did not achieve reconciliation with France by denying the past, and Europe did not build peace by erasing memory. Reconciliation begins with accepting responsibility, not by imposing an artificial normality.

For this reason, opposition to this symbol is not directed against diplomatic relations. It is aimed at a model of government that regards citizens as spectators with no historical memory and treats Albania as no-man’s-land.

The shadows that come from history do not, in fact, frighten anyone. They become dangerous only when those in power act as though they did not exist. That is why they must be eliminated whenever someone betrays the country while claiming to be saving it.”