Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at a meeting with the families of the martyrs of January 21:

 

Hello everyone!

Today, it has been six years since the tragic day of January 21 which brought a great tragedy to your families.

January 21 continues to be a moment of halt in the memory of everyone without exception, regardless of the perspective of each of us. A moment that puts a mirror before our people and before all the political protagonists of public life. A mirror of the delayed justice, and of the need to bridge over the gap opened in the middle of the boulevard between the country and justice.

The view has changed today in the boulevard and around the Prime Ministry’s building. The high railing which used to make the Prime Ministry a prisoner of special importance guarded by the people have been removed. The building has opened its doors, and the first floor belongs to the citizens, to art, culture, debates, lectures, pupils and students.

Nobody is today afraid any longer to protest in front of that building, for everything they deem important to protest for, being this either right or not in the view of those who are in the building, but who are convinced that ultimately the right of everyone to protest is a right granted not only by the constitution and the law, but it has been an inviolable right of everybody since January 21.

Today, it cannot be imagined anymore that bullets can be shot from the windows of the building by order of the Prime Minister despising his citizen, whom he should serve whether they voted him or not.

Likewise, there isn’t today, and I am sure there will never be anymore any Prime Minister, or any special or not special order and security force that will give themselves the right to take the lives of people to protect the building, and neither will be any deep institutional clashes like those that culminated after the boulevard was emptied and the four bodies were removed. Clashes between the Prime Minister and the President, between the Prime Minister and the Prosecutor’s Office, between the latter and the Police. Clashes within the state, divided between those who give themselves the right to kill but use the power to prevent justice from doing justice.

Of course, what I am saying does not comfort you, but neither does it comfort us, and it cannot be enough for me as Prime Minister, to relativize the deep and always shocking truth of January 21 that four men, brothers, parents, were killed, and those four lost lives seek justice.

Just as, it is neither a consolation nor less of a reason to consider it enough and breathe relieved, the indisputable fact that that the killings of January 21 and the innocent victims of the bullets shot by the state became the strongest incentive among many incentives, the most stubborn reason among many reasons to undertake the deepest and most transformative justice reform in this country since 25 years.

January 21 has been and remains an inalienable motive. The motive of motives to not only launch this reform which, as all of you and everybody has followed, compounded specifically the Albanian politics, but also to take it forward, from the written Constitution and laws to a lawfulness of everyday life of the country and its citizens.

I’ve said and we’ve said since then that January 21 is one of those moments in the history of a country that create e pledge, and they’re never easy to sort out and free as from the pledge they create. But there is not the slightest doubt that today, thanks to the process of Justice Reform, justice for January 21 is closer, and receiving justice is a far more realistic option than it used to be without this reform.

People ask for justice every day. People with the sense of justice are inpatient to receive justice because they’ve been lacking it for 25 years, without counting the years before the fall of the regime when, as everybody knows, justice was a totally different concept that had nothing to do with the freedom and constitutional rights of each individual.

All those people who have today a problem with the prosecutor’s office or with the courts, are potentially daily victims of the lack of justice, the families of the four people killed on January 21 have been since 6 years the most gruesome images of this lack, and of course they are rightfully entitled by God and by tradition to feel hurt even more, for every day that goes by without receiving justice.

All of you have seen and experience, with pain, the contemptuous strength with which a corrupt and incompetent justice has pushed beyond its walls and set free all those who should be today behind bars.

It hasn’t dared to get out of its walls and look also for those who have never been questioned, not even for a day, an hour, a minute, to thoroughly sort out and punish the state crime of January 21.

Therefore, the cleansing of the Palace of Justice from corrupt prosecutors and judges is our inalienable mission. Today it is a possible mission thanks to the reform and because the very last obstacle of the Constitutional Court related to the Vetting was overcome. The Vetting will free justice from the clutches of many of those who still to this day as we speak, continue to do wrong, not as representatives of the people and as people exercising the constitutional will of the people of this country, but as protagonists of corruption and crime who have grabbed justice in this country by the neck.

Justice Reform will give Next Generation Albania the chance to be a different country from the one we inherited, and form the one we have today. I want to repeat also today, with much more conviction than a year ago, or than 6 years ago, that in relation to January 21 justice might be late, but it will not forget.

Although it has done as much as possible to make your daily life easier, our government will continue to do what it regards as a duty, first of all by acknowledging the liability of the Albanian state for the state crime of January 21. Liability which we have acknowledged “de facto”, and which we are determined to acknowledge “de jure” also at the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in order to give the case a chance to be reopened, being confident that such a case, reopened in the conditions of a reformed justice, will not end up a second time as it did the first time on the path of the corrupt and seized courts of this country.

In the government’s meeting a few days ago, we approved also the compensation fund for your families. This is an obligation that doesn’t reduce our main burden, which is to promote and support until the end of the process to receive the missed justice, but however it proves our solidarity with all of you until the end, by doing everything we can do.

Unlike what was commented in media bin with malice or frivolity, the compensation given to you was an obligation not to forget, and it stems from the need to implement judicial decisions which were delayed but nevertheless they were eventually taken. Once they were taken, we immediately took the right decision in the right direction.

I take this occasion to assure not only you, but surely many others who are following us right now, that neither I nor those who have been ruling Albania since June 2013, as an expression of the will of 1 million Albanians who did not vote us to replace one government with another but to radically change Albania, that we have not forgotten in any step but in every decision we take we take into account this fact: why Albanians wanted us to be in charge of this country in June 2013.

We’re not perfect. Of course, we’ve made our mistakes on our very difficult path of government, after a long and exhausting period the state collapse. But today, in this solemn moment, I want to repeat solemnly what I think and have previously said: nobody can prove the contrary to the fact that this government has never made deliberate mistakes.

In none of our decisions have we used our power against the interest of the country, of its people or of a single individual. If we have taken wrong decisions, they were not deliberate as a result of the abuse of power, but they were part of a colossal daily effort to promote the transformation of the country as never before.

We have made reforms which nobody dared to undertake in more than 20 years. The reform to enlighten the path of Ana’s future and of the future of all of her peers for Next Generation Albania, for the country that couldn’t have those who are missing here today and lost their lives in a meaningful protest, not only to change one government with another, but to ask for another Albania.

The reforms we have undertaken are deep and painful, and undoubtedly the costs of this reforms are first of all a burden on the weakest. But there is no other way to heal the body of the country from a cancer like the one that affected its every vital function, every sector and every institutions, thus making it impossible for the state to function as such.

We’ve made reforms about which it can be argued that they could have been better; that they could have yielded faster results or more results. But there’s no question that they’ve had and have a transforming impact in every sector, ranging from energy, to education, health and so on.

Charges on us are unjust, not because they’re different opinions. We might have different opinions on everything, but we cannot have different facts on which we base our opinions. So, the big problem we have today in our political debate is that we do not debate about different opinions, but about different facts, where one party speaks having provable facts, while the other party speaks with fabricated facts, just like about January 21. One party used to speak and speaks about 4 people killed with the state bullets, the other party used to speak about umbrella-like guns, about pen-like revolvers, about a whole chain of fabricated facts.

The same applies to the debate about energy. Facts tell that last year, for the first time in 26 years, Albania is more of an exporter than an importer. This is a fact. Meanwhile, the fabricated facts say that energy price for families has increased. This is untrue! Everybody can calculate energy price in their pockets, in the coffer of their household for every bill they pay. While, “yes”, it has increased for businesses, but not for families.

The same applies to education. We can argue as much as we want on the basis of different opinions about the reform that we have undertaken, but how can we question meaningful facts that are yielding meaningful results? How can we question the fact that we are paving the path for increased employment in Albania by turning vocational education into an option? And the fact is that when we started to govern, there were 3 thousand students attending vocational education, whereas today 27 thousand people are connected to vocational education schools or vocational training centres. This is a fact based on which we can have different opinions. We can be said that there should have been 55 thousand people, but we cannot have different facts.

The same goes for healthcare. We are said that we have given concessions to enrich some people at the expenses of people’s health, at the expenses of those who need healthcare. Whereas, we have actually made possible some things that until recently were not only impossible, but even unimaginable: the free check-up for citizens, the haemodialysis near home for those who suffered tremendously travelling three times a week from all over the country to come to Tirana along with their family members; medical instruments of the highest standards, whereas one of the reasons and consequences of infections from surgeries was old instruments; we want to enable tests of the highest standard. All these are for the people, and people do pay nothing. This is a fact!

We can discuss and have different opinions, but we cannot have different facts.

I brought these examples to underline once again, what I said at the beginning, and which is important on this day for the content of the government that today is on the right side of history in relation to January 21.

It is important for the memory of those killed on January 21, the fact that this government does not use power against their children or against all the other children because many others could have been killed on January 21, while many were injured.

Or the fact that this government does not use power to get rich by impoverishing those whom it serves. If it cannot make them rich or heal as soon as possible the deep wounds of the inherited poverty or of the inherited unemployment, then let’s discuss. We may have different opinions, but how can we argue with different facts? How can we transform dissenting opinions into facts by creating an environment of blind and deaf people who do but talk?

Ensuring you and all those who protested on January 21, all those who were not on the boulevard physically but were on the boulevard spiritually, or even those who may not have understood properly, or may have an understanding of their own, quite different, about the protest of January 21, that we are a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

I assure you that today, the day of justice for Aleks, for Ziver, for Hekuran or for Faik is closer to January 21 of last year, not because a year has passed and it is closer because it has been one more year that we seek justice, but because something very important happened in this regard during this year that passed, from 21 January 2016 to 21 January 2017. A change to the Constitution. A set of basic laws was adopted to show the kidnappers of justice in this country where they belong.

I assure you that on the next January 21 we will be definitely a lot closer than we are today, and a lot of those whom we have today opposite us as a wall, tomorrow will open the way and will be performing some other work, which is not that of prosecutors and judges. I hope that there will be among them also some of those in the dock, of course, also in relation to January 21. I hope.

I am confident, brothers and sisters, that justice for the state massacre of January 21 will be delivered. Sooner rather than later, you will be able to breathe freely, at least in this regard because we know that justice cannot return to life your beloved ones, but unquestionably it will make your life easier, because it will prevent them from being killed again every January 21.

Many thanks!

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Accompanied by Prime Minister Edi Rama, cabinet ministers and MPs, relatives of victims paid tribute in the Boulevard “Martyrs of the Nation” in memory of the four martyrs, parents and average citizens of this country, whose lives were taken in front of the Prime Minister’s office 6 years ago. Bouquets of flowers were placed where Ziver Veizi, Hekuran Deda, Faik Myrtaj and Aleks Nika were killed.