Albchrome has sued activist and lecturer Jani Marka for defamation, demanding €8,000 (ALL 100,000) in compensation and for him to retract an alleged defamatory remark in a Facebook post in January 2020. The chrome mines company claims that Marka tarnished its reputation by suggesting that 43 miners lost their lives.
Albchrome is owned by Balfin Group, owned by businessman Samir Mane.
Marka wrote a Facebook post on January 30, 2020, when Albchrome miners were protesting after the company fired the leaders of a new miners union, as well some miners supporting them. He complained of the lack of media coverage on miners’ protests.
“How can it be explained that only few dare to mention the name of Samir Manes? Is it insignificant that in five years 43 miners have been killed at work? Are we unjustly bothering him, and he is a good man? The reason why Samir Mane’s name is not heard from the mouths of those who know everything [media pundits and mainstream journalists] is because Samir Mane represents the spinal cord of the economic system that has been consolidated in these 30 years of capitalism: the oligarchy,” Marka wrote on Facebook.
The miners’ protest was supported by Organizata Politike, a leftist activist group Marka is part of.
In its lawsuit, AlbChrome claims that from 2013 until 2019 only eight miners have died while working in its mines.
“Fatal accidents (with loss of life) from 2013 to 2019 (or today) in the Bulqiza Chrome Mine happened to 8 employees, including 4 employees of a foreign Chinese subcontractor called Wenzhou,” the company wrote in the lawsuit, according to a report by Reporter.
The company claims that Marka has attributed them 43 deaths of miners, therefore he has to compensate them for the damage and post a message on his Facebook refuting his January claim.
Organizata Politike reacted by publishing media and police reports showing 45 deaths in the Albanian mines during this period. They suggested that Marka had posed a rhetorical question referring to the mining industry in general about the deaths, and was not attributing all deaths to Samir Mane or Albchrome, according to the Reporter.
Most mines in Bulqiza, north of Albania, are operated by AlbChrome.
A Balfin spokesman told BIRN/Reporter that AlbChrome was ready to withdraw the lawsuit if Marka agreed to retract his previous post on Facebook.
Marka told BIRN that the lawsuit is pressure against activists, aimed at restricting freedom of expression.
