Student protests, BIRN: “Foreign hands” are Rama’s alibi for evading political responsibility

As protests by students and young people have escalated across the country, Prime Minister Edi Rama has blamed the opposition and unidentified foreign actors for the unrest. Experts in communications and governance see this rhetoric as an attempt to divert attention from the causes of the protests and the government’s political responsibility.

A few meters from the square in front of the Prime Minister’s Office, where police and protesters were clashing on Thursday evening, a group of young people tried to escape the tear gas by moving toward the former Blloku area, near the Parliament building.

BIRN witnessed the moment when two of them were stopped by two men in civilian clothes who were carrying rubber batons. After forcing the young men into a white car, the individuals left the scene. Two girls who had been accompanying those detained managed to run away.

“They also told us, ‘Come closer, don’t be afraid,’ but we ran. They stopped our friends,” one of them said. She was a second-year architecture student.

Distressed, the student tried to call one of the young men, a fellow university student, but he did not answer. She did not know whether he had been taken into custody by police or where he had been taken, and was trying to decide whether to notify his parents, who lived outside Tirana.

A few meters farther on, several police vans were parked by the side of the road, while officers were escorting other detained young people toward the vehicles.

Similar scenes were repeated throughout Thursday night on the streets of the capital. In some cases, the detentions were carried out by men in civilian clothes using vehicles without police markings.

A video circulated on social media showing a person being forced into an unmarked vehicle raised questions about the identity of those carrying out the detentions. The State Police clarified that the person had been taken into custody by Criminal Police officers as part of efforts to identify individuals suspected of involvement in illegal acts during the protest.

The mass detentions followed the escalation of protests against the government, which, after around four months of largely peaceful demonstrations, took a violent turn on Tuesday with the involvement of students and secondary-school pupils.

Chanting “Rama, resign!” and “Revolution,” thousands of young people took to the streets, while the protests spread from Tirana to other cities across the country. Clashes with police involved the use of tear gas, the detention of protesters, and acts of vandalism against public and private institutions and property.

Faced with this wave of discontent, Prime Minister Edi Rama has chosen to blame the opposition and foreign actors for the violence, without publicly identifying the latter or presenting evidence to support claims of their involvement.

“The malicious hand, the old hand, the bad hand […] is now also supported by other hands, foreign hands, foreign hands that do not want Albania to be peaceful,” Rama declared, claiming that the actors behind the unrest seek to obstruct Albania’s progress toward the European Union.

This is not the first time Rama has linked protests against his government to external influences. He used similar rhetoric in June, after protests began against a tourism project in the protected area of Vjosa-Narta, known as the “Flamingo Revolution.”

But communications and governance experts say that reviving the foreign-interference theory at a time when the protests have taken on national dimensions risks shifting the public debate from the causes of the discontent to claims of external threats.

“Any attempt to interpret and portray this massive expression of young people’s discontent solely as a movement driven by the influence of foreign countries would be a missed opportunity to reflect and assume political responsibility at the right moment,” Elvin Luku, a journalism lecturer, told BIRN.

“In a democracy, resignation is neither a sin nor a tragedy, but the noblest act a politician can take,” he added.

According to Luku, even if the involvement of foreign actors in inciting the unrest were proven, this would not exempt the government from political responsibility.

On the contrary, he argues that the penetration of such influence into society would raise further questions about the institutions’ ability to prevent it, providing an additional reason to hold the government accountable.

Luku notes that claims of foreign interference have been present in the government’s rhetoric both during the months of peaceful protests and after their escalation. In his view, although the influence of external actors is a possibility that cannot be ruled out a priori, it cannot serve as a justification for evading political responsibility.

Aranita Brahaj, head of the Albanian Institute of Sciences, AIS, also interprets the prime minister’s rhetoric about “foreign hands” as an attempt to divert attention from the protesters’ demands and the government’s responsibility for the crisis.

According to her, allegations of external interference, when unsupported by public evidence and made at a moment of confrontation with a civic revolt, risk turning the debate over the country’s problems into a discussion about security and stability.

“When a prime minister speaks of conspiracies and foreign interference without presenting evidence, and at moments when his power is at risk, he risks replacing the debate over citizens’ legitimate demands with a narrative of threats to the country’s security and stability,” Brahaj told BIRN.

She emphasized that the concern relates not only to the language used by the prime minister, but also to the impact this rhetoric may have on public perceptions and the institutions’ response to the protests.

“When the narrative of an external threat coincides with episodes of violence and institutional negligence, it creates a climate of insecurity that may objectively serve to weaken the protest and increase civil insecurity,” she said.

Brahaj places this approach in the broader context of Rama’s political communication toward critics and civic movements. According to her, the prime minister has spent months attempting to link mobilizations against the government to external influences, avoiding confrontation with the reasons for the discontent.

As an example, she also cites Rama’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, where, in her interpretation, political mobilization in Albania was linked to the phenomenon of disinformation.

Brahaj warns that the rhetoric of an external threat could have consequences beyond the political debate, affecting citizens’ willingness to participate in protests.

“In my view, this is not simply an attempt to discredit the protest, but the creation of a climate of fear and insecurity that may serve to preserve power by weakening civic resistance,” she said.

In this context, Brahaj calls for public attention not to be limited to the prime minister’s statements, but also to include the actions of the institutions, particularly the way the police have managed the protests, detentions, and episodes of violence.

“Today, the question is not only what Rama says, but also what the State Police does and does not do in response to these developments,” she concluded.