TIRANA - "They stole the election, they have stolen Albania". Edi Rama, Mayor of Tirana and the Albanian Socialist opposition leader, is frowning, his eyes still bright for what he saw Friday night in front of the seat of government, among its supporters. "Look at this video," he says. "It was shot by a serious and courageous journalist.We clearly see the shooter and against whom." The video images of the relentless flow. You see the crowd of protesters throwing stones at the palace of the Prime Minister. Then, from the window at the ground floor you see a soldier Strap on a gun and shoots. A sniper. A man falls to the ground.
The hits continue and collapses a second protester, third, then fourth. All in different and far between. A real shooting. "The world," said Rama, "is to see what he is capable of this regime. We were taken to the streets peacefully to demand democracy, transparency and legality. We were welcomed with guns.
They fired on innocent people. It does not happen in any European country. Only in Albania, a country that the international community as an example of port development and democracy. But it is false: this is the true face of the regime. One face of murderers. " Premier Berisha accuses you of attempting a coup.
What happened on Friday afternoon? "We have not tried any coup. We have only asked for a commission to investigate past elections, full of fraud." It has been denied? "We have not been granted any form of investigation. We want to ensure that the forthcoming elections, those of June, are vitiated by the same fraud." And the government? "He spoke of provocation, illegal actions.
He lost time, he hoped that people forget." But people have not forgotten. "People have realized that his vote had no value. And in this country has established a corruption of power." Then came the video nailing the former Deputy Minister of Economy and Meta. "What an illuminating testimony.
The voice and visual evidence of what we are complaining for 16 months. View the then Minister of Economy, closed his office, while asking a bribe of 700 thousand euro to promote a society in a public contract. The people are indignant. " To this took to the streets? "The fuse was the reaction of the government.
He denied what they saw and felt. He talked about the mount of provocation. He accused the left, the usual communist plot in the shadows, talked about the mafia, the attacks Crime. Why the violence, the shooting, the dead? "We ask ourselves. Everywhere in Europe occurs. In London, Rome, Athens.
The police are often involved and this can be tough. But in a state of law there are rules of coexistence, there are clear limits. We in Albania, they shoot to kill ". For those deaths was called for the arrest of some officials of the Republican Guard. "So far there is only a murder charge.
I do not think that those responsible have been arrested. For 50 years we have lived under the worst of communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe. We formed in secret, hidden, in exile, about the books you sent us the free world. We dreamed and fought for a different company. Instead we are ruled by a regime based on corruption.
And firing on unarmed crowds. " What will happen now? "There are families of three dead demand justice, there is a fourth wounded man struggling to survive. There is a government by force, arrogance, is expropriating all the achievements of twenty years. And there a desperate people seeking freedom and democracy.
Europe and the world can not stand and watch. They must help us find the only possible dialogue: the political. "
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