“People define the times.” This is Uran Kostreci’s answer to those who imprisoned and tortured him then, and who today justify themselves by saying they did what they did because “such were the times.”
No, it were not the times; it was the people who chose to be spies, torturers and inflictors of infinite suffering on others, while Kostreci and those alike chose to refuse communism and its crimes.
Today, however, the political prisoners – martyrs of free speech, aspirations for democracy and resistance against crimes by other humans – are facing not only the justifications of crimes but also the renaissance of symbols and personalities of the communist dictatorship.
The documentary “People define the times” focuses on the condemnation of this antihuman renaissance. Authored by journalist Desana Metaj, with the support of the Albanian Cultural Society Foundation, the documentary had its premiere at the National Museum last week.
The documentary attempts to expose the fact that in the 27 years passed since the fall of the Enverist regime in Albania very little has been done in condemning the crimes of the regime, in advancing the decommunistification, and in commemorating and honoring the lives lost, human sacrifices and spiritual resistance of the martyrs of communism.
The re-emergence of symbols of communism in Albania and the 50-year-long suffering and persecution under communism are brought face-to-face in this documentary, through testimonies from families who suffered executions, imprisonment, internment and persecution, only because they demanded and believed in freedom and in western values.
The audience is reminded of how former communist countries in Eastern Europe have all prohibited and legally penalized the use and promotion of communist symbols and personalities. The documentary makes a bitter denunciation of the fact that the Albanian political elite have made no single step in this direction.
Unfortunately, the teaching of the history of communism crimes is also lacking. Very little is taught in schools about the regime, and the young generation, who did not experience it, are completely ignorant about that grave period in our country’s history.
Amidst the lack of rehabilitation for the politically persecuted, the crimes of communism are only touched upon, while its symbols continue to re-emerge like dark shadows from times past.
Apparently, for those who bring back to life symbols of the regime with such ease, the lives of children, mothers and men it killed have no value or meaning. A part of them even proclaim they are exercising their right to free speech. However, as a girl from a persecuted family painfully puts it: “It cannot be free speech if you’re insulting the lost lives of innocent people.”
