From: Neritan Sejamini
After a quarter century of distortions and lies of those who have wanted to exploit the events of December 1990 to provide themselves with legitimacy, merit, heroism, and sacrifice, we who have taken part in those events have to begin to tell and write the truths before we forget them and fall victim to historical falsifications and our own intellectual laziness.
If we demystify December 1990 it will enter into history an event that separated to epochs, rather than an event that brought down a regime. More than a destructive blow against the communist regime, December 1990 was the moment that thousands of students were psychologically and spiritually liberated and became the instigators of a great liberation from fear of a people that had lived since forever in fear and apathy.
Here are some simple facts of those three great days:
- Even though nowadays it is known under the name “December Movement,” it wasn’t a movement but a protest that lasted less than three days, from the late hours of December 8 until the evening of December 11. The protest started spontaneously and continued with a minimal amount of self-organization, and was as such never institutionalized as organized movement.
- During those three days, the students tried twice to flow into the streets of Tirana, but were stopped by the police. As a result, the protest was held in its entirety on the main square of Student City, today called Democracy Square. An elevated place on the side of the square was transformed into a stage, where with high volume and for the first time in public prohibited music was played, speeches were held, and slogans by students, teachers, and citizens of Tirana were coined. The communist regime allowed this manifestation and no police force ever entered Student City.
- The protest begun on Saturday December 8 late in the evening as a spontaneous reaction to complain about the nearly complete absence of electricity in Student City. A group of angry students, mainly from the engineering, economy, and natural sciences departments, first tried to protest in front of the directorate of Student City, but there was no one there at that hour of the night. It is unclear whether this initial group suddenly decided to seek a meeting with Ramiz Alia to make him aware of their grievances and for this reason walked toward the exit of Student City. This moment was the beginning of self-awareness, self-organization, but also the influence on students by persons from outside their ranks, mainly teachers and intellectuals of the period. As a result, the students’ requests, which initially were simply economic in nature, rapidly included also the request to allow multi-party pluralism.
- During the events of December 1990 there was nearly no type of violence exerted by the regime, except the light use of rubber weapon sticks to disperse the crowd of students that twice tried to enter the streets of Tirana. In the first hours of the protests, the state security stopped and arrested several students, whom they released a few hours later and even brought back to Student City by car.
- The student protests didn’t have a genuine leader, but rather a group of courageous students with strong characters that became the representatives but also guides of all other students. The three most remarkable of them were Azem Hajdari, Shenasi Rama, and Tefalin Malshyti. Their protagonism expressed itself by raising their voice and their courage to openly denounce the regime in their speeches in front of the students. Their leading role was more a role that inspired, gave and courage, and killed the fear that was present among all students. Azem Hajdari was the most remarkable of all.
- In the December student protests there haven’t been any genuine dissidents or anticommunists. Nearly all intellectuals that contributed to the students were part of the elite of the time, with members and directors of Albanian Party of Labor (PPSh) organizations among them. Several of the main figures, students or intellectuals, who were part of the protests and who later founded and directed the Democratic Party, were state security agents.
- Sali Berisha has not had any role in the student protests. On the contrary, he tried on the first day of the protests to quiet down the students with the aim of breaking them up and having the students return to class by promising them, in the name of Ramiz Alia, that their economic requests would be honored.
- Edi Rama has played no role in the December protests. He wasn’t even in Albania at the time, but for a private visit in Greece.
- Ramiz Alia and the Political Bureau decided to allow political pluralism on the afternoon of December 11, several hours before their meeting with the student representatives. The permission of pluralism was publicly announced before the meeting, making the meeting of the students with Ramiz Alia practically useless.
- After the three days of protests, nearly all students turned away from any type of real influence on the political developments of those protests, and especially from the influence on the first party that was born from them, the Democratic Party. Azem Hajdari was the only student who was still part of the PD leadership in 1992, when the party took power. The majority of the students that played an important role in the December protests emigrated out of Albania.
- The student protests of December 1990 have not been the cause of the fall of the communist regime in Albania. The were the last push against an economically and politically bankrupt structure that hardly could stand on its foot and was destined to be taken down soon.
- The so-called ideals of December haven’t really been a philosophy, a political or social vision. In general there was among the students neither self-awareness not great political or ideological clarity . Their ideal was in fact aspirational – aspirations for freedom and wellbeing brought together in those famous slogan: “Freedom and Democracy,” and, later, “We Want Albania Like All Of Europe.”
