The Postbllok [Checkpoint] Memorial commemorating communist atrocities in Albania was vandalized on Friday.
It is an installation composed of three parts: a bunker, a set of concrete girders taken from the infamous Spac Prison, and a piece of the Berlin Wall.
The piece from the Berlin Wall, originally painted in graffiti, was vandalized with spray covering the artwork all over.
It prompted Jonila Godole, the head of the Institute for Democracy, Media and Culture (IDMC) to call on the Municipality of Tirana of protect anti-communist monuments in the city.
“The Albanian Postbllok is like the Checkpoint-Charlie in Berlin, which no one would dare to vandalize. It symbolizes the communist regime’s terror, and it’s located in the garden of [communist prime minister] Mehmet Shehu’s villa. There are over 700,000 obelisks on LANÇ [communist resistance in WWII] in Albania but only a few memorials commemorating the victims of the 45-year-long [communist] regime. The few that have been built are under daily threat. The politics of remembrance and cultural heritage are selective, depending on the [ruling] party line,” Godole wrote on Facebook.
The memorial is located at the entrance of the so-called Bllok area in central Tirana where communist leaders lived during dictatorship until the fall of the regime.
It was created by writer Fatos Lubonja and artist Ardian Isufi, and installed in 2013.
The girders installed in the monument come from the Spac Prison where Lubonja spent part of his 17 years in prison.
“I refuse to believe that the vandalizing of the memorial could have a political background , given that it happened in the last days before elections,” Godole noted.
She called on the municipality to provide anti-communist memorials with the same protection and care for restoration as it does for other monuments.
