Prime Minister’s position on tragic death of Klodian:

 

Dear fellow citizens,

The death of the 25-year-old boy due to the extremely excessive use of force by a police officer was a tragedy for the family and shocking news for the entire society.

Being impossible for me to be physically here, I was forced to delay delivering this message. Because I couldn’t do so through letters, silently, and without the eyes directed to you all.

So, this message cannot help but touch upon the violent events of yesterday afternoon, which were excused by the tragedy just to unfold with the brutal vulgarity of their inspirers.

But, first and foremost, the lost life because of the fatal act by the police officer.

As soon as I landed in Tirana I visited the family of the late man. I am extremely moved by their reception and wisdom of Klodian’s father words. “Not a single flower in Tirana should be touched on behalf of my son! We want justice, not political uproar,” he told me.

But I want to publicly extend to the family, relatives and friends of the late boy my feeling of profound sorrow and sadness, along with my most heartfelt condolences over their unspeakable loss.

I am all aware that words in such a case are completely powerless in the face of the pain, desolation and sadness Klodian’s father, mother, sister, his brothers, uncles, their sons and their daughters have experienced. 

But, apart from words of apology and consolation, justice for the victim and reflection on the event, staying close to the family and sharing their pain, nothing else unfortunately remains after a life lost all of a sudden.

The police officer has killed a man in the most inexplicable way to date and completely irrelevant to any mission, operation or target related to the State Police activity in that location and at that very late hour.

But, despite the fact that the murder of the man was simply committed by another man, the weapon belonged to the state.

Therefore, the state should apologize, voicing at the same time commitment to fully shed light on the incident and legally punish the perpetrator.

The perpetrator has been immediately handed over to the justice hands and he will definitely undergo investigation and will be tried by the justice bodies, in complete independence and impartiality. 

His act seems utterly incomprehensible, apart from being utterly unreasonable, as far as we know. But of course, it is not us, but the justice that has the burden of the last say on the degree of the author’s guilt before the law. 

No matter how tremendous the impatience is to do justice on this case, justice needs to look into everything.

No matter how indisputable the guilt of the police officer is in our eyes, justice needs to hear him too.

Justice needs its time.

But, in the meantime, however natural it may be that in such a case, as absurd as it is extreme when one comes across it, however strong the emotion and the feeling of immediate revolt too, it is extremely indispensable that we do not lose clarity, and not let emotions, or worse, ugly political contradictions, confuse the way we reflect.

Let me reiterate my reflection loudly, as I have done it several times with myself, as soon as I received the news of the tragic death of the 25-year-old boy from the State Police gun.

Is this event completely detached from the line of conduct of the State Police or is it the culmination of a previous deviation of the State Police from the rails of legality?

Have the State Police been inclined to exceed the right to use force last year or over the past years, as police were accused, for example, by the President of the Republic, and not only, unfortunately?

Are the today’s State Police officials or the Minister of Interior himself personages tied with the crime, corrupt individuals or politically motivated when performing their duties and have they shown any signs of complacency, brutality and irresponsibility while on duty, negatively impacting the moral and the conduct of the police?

Objective answer to these questions would help anyone wishing to be objective or draw lessons from the tragic event, if it is negatively linked to at least one of the three questions I just raised, or to confirm the irrelevance of this serious event, either to the State Police course, or to the moral and professional integrity of the police top officials, including the Minister of the Interior. 

Please go just a bit back on time with the eyes of your remembrance and look at the “Shqiponja” police unit girl, Ina Nuka, the excellent Police Academy student, who lost her fingers shortly after she started her much-dreamed job due to the criminal attack by a violent protester in front of the Parliament of Albania.

Look at her colleagues; 76 of them injured, based on medical records, and more than 100 others hurt and having received emergency medical treatment after stones and other solid objects were pelted on them in front of the Prime Minister’s office, the Ministry of Interior building, the Assembly and other locations during a whole serial offensive of the violent protests over the past two years that indefinitely tested the prudence of the State Police. 

Look at the police officer, who risks losing eye vision due to a criminal attack that has torn out his eyeball during the last night’s protest.

Look at yourselves, being blocked not long time ago for months on, every afternoon, both at Tirana’s entrance and exit, because of another offensive of protests, which indefinitely tested the patience of the State Police.

Look at other episode also on the map of the politically motivated scenes and tell me where, when, how and how much along entire chain of the provoking and violence inciting events against the State Police have exceeded the police right to exercise force as stipulated by the law?

Hundreds upon hundreds of episodes, thousands upon thousands of stones, flares, firecrackers, bottles of gasoline thrown at police workers and officers, hundreds of whom have been hurt physically and, on the other hand, there is just a single case, the one in front of the Parliament building, where the State Police actually did nothing less and nothing more than any police office in the democratic planet would have done towards an infamous, long time and political provocateur.

Of course, I cannot count here the farces featuring actors and provocateurs, who played the role of the victims of police violence in front of the cameras, after attacking, pushing and using abusive words against the police.

This one of ours, of today’s Albania for full seven years, is not a police force that can easily brandish the baton when having enough of something, let alone a force encouraged to show the firearm when you do not obey and stop when asked by a neighbourhood patrol! 

The tragedy a couple of nights ago is a completely isolated fatal, condemnable and unforgivable episode, but totally irrelevant to the spirit and work of the Albanian State Police. 

Whoever says the opposite simply has a different opinion, randomly politically motivated, but thankfully without offering any evidence to prove what he says. And the President of the Republic himself, who is indeed the most outspoken proof of the disproportionate use of force of political and personal resentment to the detriment of institutional ethics and the law itself, is the penultimate one who has to open his mouth about State Police conduct; not simply because since the very outset he is one of the instigators and organizers of the abovementioned violent serials, nor because even just for the sake of appearances, he has never said a real word of solidarity with the police under pressure of violence, but because it is one of the worst examples of social and institutional conduct in the history of Albania. However it is the penultimate in this case.

Because the last one who can render moral judgments and character lessons on how the State Police should behave or how the Interior Minister should react after the tragic event of the night of December 8 is actually the puppet leader of the opposition Lulzim Basha. He is indeed the embodiment of the moral and character weakness, not merely because he is the leader of several tentative revolutions, whose main accomplishment is wounding police officers, nor because he is the number two polluter of the State Police with smear campaign, endless slanders and accusations, after the number one pollutant in the history of Albania that he has on his head, he together with the Democratic Party, but because he is the Interior Minister of the January 21 massacre, where there was not a patrol policeman who killed a man in the dead of the night in a suburban alley in utterly absurd circumstances, but it was the government, the bunker-turned office of the Prime Minister with dozens of fire positions that killed four totally peaceful protesters as the protest was dispersing, let alone the brutal mutilation of hundreds of others.

The State Police today are incomparable to what they were in the past. The police results today cannot be compared to the past. The conduct of the police officers today is incomparable to yesterday. The facts, the figures, the public opinion speak stubbornly about the impossibility of such comparisons.

But, of course, just like in every sector, the State Police have their members tarred with the same brush.

And nobody has ever claimed the opposite. On the contrary, continued overhauling of the police ranks to remove unworthy individuals has been part of the continued reforming and transformation of the police force over past seven years.

The State Police top officials today, including the Minister of Interior, their neither heavenly people, nor flawless ones over all these years of overtime and hard work, without complaining about the daily woes.

But, no one can accuse them through facts and evidence – I mean facts and not defamations and media hogwash – neither that they are linked to crime, nor that they are corrupt or politically, neither that they are corrupt nor politically charged and that they negatively influence the State Police force.

Just as night cannot be compared to day, not only the work and conduct of the State Police yesterday and today, but also the degree of tolerance and the level of listening of the citizens by the government yesterday, cannot be compared with the government today. 

I am proud that over the past seven years and two months since this government took over, the protest has since the very beginning has regained the lost right of citizenship in the gloomy years of the government of its assassins through pressure and even the use of weapons of the state.

When we just had embarked on the path of governing the country, precisely seven years ago, the biggest and most civil protest over the years of democratic pluralism took place in Albania; the protest to refuse chemical weapons, where not a single glass was broken, no policeman was injured, no leaves of grass were burned and that didn’t see the signs of typical hooliganism and vandalism of the protests instigated and organized by the overthrown rulers, who want to return to power by any means of irrationality by staging endless and systematic dramatizations and by misinforming the public opinion, even about the number of the dead in hospitals! 

People won and the government reflected after the mass protest back then, as the government heeded to the peoples voice and succumbed not to the example of force but to the force of example of countless protesters of all ages, walks of life and regions.

Also in the student protest, two years ago today, where, except for some excesses of some polluters of the democratic environment, who intruded like the parties’ bellwethers of ugliness and anti-urban chaos and frenzy, not a single glass was broken and no grass was burned and again, the students won and the government reflected! 

And from that beginning seven years onwards and until today, it has never happened for our government to degrade into arrogance, brutality, the ugliness of exceeding the right to use force on citizens, to impose anything on the path of implementing its own decisions. While the State Police in no case have served the government, but the law and the Albanian people.

Despite the fact that we have often faced threatening fabrications, dangerous provocations, brutal and ugly aggressions, we have never misused the police, we have never encouraged police politically, and we have never demanded from police what we have never actually wished: to violently crush those who think differently and who protest! 

Not even when the protesters were not citizens, but militants and fanatics of opposition parties, transported by buses and paid by the municipal units, among whom the hand of hooligans has stood out in all its ugliness, like those who set fire to Christmas and New Year trees last night, to the shame of their shameless inspirers, the police have been of the state and not of the government.

Therefore, today I want to tell all the members of the State Police, first of all those who last night faced the stones, the fire and the dirty mouth of the herd of hyenas that wanted to tear the windows and doors of institutions in the name of the poor Klodian, but on behalf of the four dancers of swords and quarrels, to feel proud of the uniform, of the sacrifice, of the tireless service to the law, the country and their people. 

The police officer who pulled the trigger on Klodian is a tragic exception that reinforces the rule consolidated throughout these years that the State Police are the citizens’ protectors, not a threat to their lives, to their rights and freedom. 

As soon as he was notified about the incident, the Minister of Interior has informed me and has tendered his resignation. And not simply for the sake of the appearances, but by explaining why his resignation from the high post is the right thing for him personally to do, for me after trusting him this post and for the government and our governing majority.

I have asked him to wait until I am back, because I want to look him right in the eye, listen to him and have him listen to me and be together with him at the moment of undertaking such an important step.

We met each other today and I am very proud of his high sense of civic responsibility and the moral quota through which Sander Lleshaj assesses his persona and his duty. I knew it, but let all those who want to believe in the fact that in this country not everyone is the same learn it today.

He has nothing to do with the grave act committed by the police officer. Neither directly, nor indirectly. But a 25-year-old boy has been killed and a grave has been opened in the soul of each Albanian family and the soul of an entire people is grieving. Sharing pain through words is one thing, but it is completely something else to address the grief through a human, citizen gesture, as a good Albanian, conveying to everyone a message of sympathy worth a million words. 

I know; consider it as if I have already by those with loose mouth, who never fail in disgracing us as a people, as a country, as a community of people, who will say everything afterwards.

But let them say whatever they wish to, because, after all, the today’s statement is short of saying everything for each and every one of us and time and history will tell everything sparing nobody of nothing.

Once I entered this building, I have said, this office is mine, yet the government and power is yours.

Surely, I often have failed to properly demonstrate that people and the country are the reason I am here, not the office. Undoubtedly, there is nobody else but me the one who should be blamed that I may seem somehow arrogant, complacent, indifferent to others, while listening and communicating with so many people, so many… 

Definitely, I have made my own mistakes too. But I do not remember, perhaps it is my memory to blame, but I don’t recall any other time and another government that tries to live with a sense of civic responsibility and aim for the right moral quota, without ever shunning the need for reflection, especially in the most difficult moments; without being afraid of the need to apologize, and above all, without detaching myself from popular sensibility. Not because there is no other way, but because we do not want another way. 

Brothers and sisters,

We don’t always succeed, we sometimes make mistakes, we fall and fail, but I want to assure you that we always put our hearts and soul to succeed.

We put our hearts and soul to live up to your trust and our ambition for the Albania we all want and everyone wants it better for our kids.

Thank you! God bless you all!