The Albanian opposition Democratic Party has commemorated the 30th anniversary of the killing by the state police of four pro-democracy protesters in Shkoder on April 2, 1991.
Arben Broci, Nazmi Kryeziu, Bujar Bishanaku and Besnik Ceka were shot by police while protesting in front of the headquarters of the Party of Labour of Albania (PPSH), three days after the latter had won the first pluralist election in Albania on March 30, 1991.
The PPSH had led the country with an iron fist since WWII, committing some of the worst atrocities in the region against its own people for nearly 5 decades.
Faced with a crumbled economy and student protests in some cities, the communist regime agreed to allow for pluralist elections.
They were held on March 30, with an extraordinary participation of more than 98 percent of people. The PPSH won against the newly created opposition Democratic Party (PD).
In Shkoder, people gathered in front of the PD headquarters, calling slogans such as “Down with Communism”, “Down with PPSH”, “Freedom, Democracy”. Their growing numbers and walk towards the PPSH headquarters prompted forces of the Ministry of Interior to open fire against the crowd and kill four protesters.
Albania’s Speaker of Parliament Gramoz Ruci was Minister of Interior at that time.
No one was held responsible for the killings.
The PPSH changed its name to Socialist Party in June 1991.
Opposition PD leader Lulzim Basha commemorated the four young men killed in protests in Shkoder.
“[They] were shot by the phalanxes of the dying regime, because they dared to say in public to a panicked dictatorship that its time was over and the Albanians had chosen freedom and Europe,” Basha wrote on Facebook.
Mayor of Shkoder Voltana Ademi, the only municipality held by the opposition, paid homage to the memorial honoring the four “martyrs of democracy”.
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