Condolences to our National Youth Day
By: Nensi Ahmetbeja
Tags: Police Brutality, Politics, Murder, Violence, Klodian Rasha

In the early hours of the National Youth Day of Albania, 8th December 2020, a devastating news echoed around our country. Two characters were involved: a policeman and a young boy, aged 25 years old.

When I first encountered the title on social media, I just skipped it immediately. “It seems so impossible for such thing to happen, that it must be fake news!” Silly me! I continued the day then, with little contact to my phone, until midday. Okay, I paused for some time. The same title, from a different source. So, I went ahead and googled it. Apparently, it had happened. The policeman had actually shot the young man twice, in the head and chest, causing his death. The motive was either lacking or unclear.

Image taken from https://www.tetovasot.com/

With that, there it was again, my sudden rush of anger and sadness at the face of an external power that seems to mess with our lives from time to time. The same way I had felt in the early hours of 17th May, against the same power that decided to shred our national heritage to pieces. Only this time, we were talking about a human life (not that they hadn’t dared before).

I woke up a day after, with a high fever, difficulty breathing and with that a high probability of having caught COVID-19. There was little I could do to join the protest that was taking place that afternoon, in honor of the victim, Klodian Rasha. So, as the clock had struck 4 pm, I was isolated from the rest of my family and my beloved citizens that had filled up the avenue of our capital city. Instead, I followed the progress through livestreaming videos and my eyes teared up multiple times amidst the grief, disbelief and justified outrage that the protesters were showing.

The more I find out about that event, the less it makes sense. However, I am writing this in an attempt to take the context piece by piece and realize how we have come to live in such reality. Let me get specific here. I will show you a comment that a young man shared on his social media account:

“The policeman may have done a mistake, but everyone has a duty to stop when ordered by the state police. Especially when you are breaking the law!

(Like it or not, we need masks and there is a schedule to go out). If you break the rules, do not complain about the consequences. I do not doubt that we should feel sorry for the boy and that the situation could have progressed differently, but the fact is that he had resisted the law and would never have degraded the situation to this point if he had conformed to the rules.”

I decided to include this here, as it is indeed part of that reality I mentioned a couple of paragraphs above. The ‘argument’ here is simply put and one-sided, and he is not alone. I do believe there are other people that think like this, but choose to express it through silence instead. Here is the deal:

The person is mentioning duties: how the policeman has the duty to order, while Klodian had the duty to stop when ordered.

We all know that with duty comes also responsibility. But the guy doesn’t even recognize both responsibilities here, does he? Let alone the weight of those responsibilities (which is elaborated on the second part).

According to him, it is Klodian that has “degraded the situation”, while the responsibility of the policeman is summed up with “[he] may have done a mistake, but…” Boy, does that ‘but’ hold over its shoulders a lot (like the-life-of-a-human-being kind of a lot). “ If you break the rules, do not complain about the consequences…” The simplified cause-effect way of this thinking is alarming. The consequence must be proportional to the disobey and, more importantly, to the damage it creates to our community. It’s the whole reason we have required rapists to be punished for a longer time in jail during this past year! Tell me, what damage did Klodian create to you, me and the whole community? And to what extent is that consequence justified?

Also, equally alarming is the “do not complain” part. He pretends that one should not be displaying any form of disagreement at the face of a rule-breaking, starting with the most minimal one: a complaint.

But even so, here’s a quick tip: Change who the rule-breaker is (from the victim to the policeman), and read that sentence again!

Phew! I usually choose to ignore these types of disturbing statements at the instance I read them, but there was a part of me that was hoping that, for at least such a sensitive case, I wouldn’t find any!

With that being said, here is our situation: the bare fact of having policemen controlling our neighborhoods at night should bring peace to our mind. Now it is solely the thin line between fear and anger what they leave us with. Should there be a deeper context to this, or is it really just a fatal mistake that should hold one accountable, as it is, actually, being treated from the authorities? And by context, I mean the position that the State Police has gradually installed in our country.

I will go ahead and recall very few of our experiences during the past years. I won’t pretend that this context is limited to these experiences — for that I would have to mention what communism has left us with, how our democracy was set and how 1997 played a role in the concept of hierarchy. Nor will I pretend that I can fully transmit these effects in an 8-minute-read Medium article, so I chose to preview a taste of the most recent events instead. It is up to you to decide to take a stand on where does this chain of events begins (and if it really ends?), may that be based on your emotions, objective research or at worst, ‘personal interest’.

On 2016, the police department suddenly starts having a special focus on its image, as part of the famous police reforms. It started with the new uniforms. Brighter colors, fresher look. They even promoted them on Friday entertainment shows, which had never happened before. Here is how Saimir Tahiri, the Minister of Internal Affairs at the time, described it in this interview:

“The police uniform and the Identification number is the relationship that the state police creates with the citizen, it is not just clothes, design.”

Then we started seeing more and more youngsters joining the department, especially young policewomen, joining in their 20s-30s. Overall, there seemed to be an attempt to add some sort of ‘dignity’ and ‘polish’ to the police that was missing during the previous years. And if the police feels respected, that shall reflect when serving and protecting the citizens. That’s the point, right?

Not particularly.

Image taken from www.faktor.al, 17th May 2020.

Most Albanians will recognize the picture above: showing the so-called policemen with no id number in one of the most important and popular protests that has happened in these last 4 years, in Tirana, on 17th May 2020.

What relationship was the state trying to create then with the citizens, when the latter couldn’t possibly identify their “protectors”?

To this day, we don’t know who those people were. But we saw what they were capable of doing. Near the place where our National Theatre existed, I witnessed with my own eyes a severe excessive force, that went beyond the level necessary to preserve life, prevent injury, or safely control the scene (sounds familiar?). Here is a video where a journalist is clearly hit on the head and body, just one example out of so many police brutality showcases that day. After the journalist shows the injuries of his body and the medical report on live TV, this is how our Prime Minister answered:

“As far as I know, there were no kicks or punches, but only accompaniment. I do not see injuries at all. What I see is pure state police procedure.”

No one got punished.

Just two days before that, a 15 year old boy was caught by the police as he was out past the curfew, and was violating the restrictive measures taken during our pandemic state. Administrative fine it is, right? Our police force didn’t think so. They beat up the boy, laid him on the ground, punched him, slapped him, again and again, while holding a knee against the boy’s face. Here is the video of the brutal violence, that went viral. And here’s what the director of our Police State, Ardi Veliu, had to say:

“…I will show you a video of this boy’s mother, who his mother is — you will understand what family this child comes from and then you can judge for yourself.”

He made wrong allegations and tried to ruin the mother’s image, but I won’t get into details, because that fact had ZERO relevance to the case. How can we be at such circumstances where the police state dares to somehow justify the violent actions through blaming the biography of a 15 year old (which wasn’t even accurate)?

Not a single policeman from that incident has gone to jail. Ardi Veliu? Still the director of our Police State.

However, we have instead seen the Minister of Internal Affairs be substituted 3 times over the course of just 4 years. Firstly, Tahiri left the cabinet after being officially charged by the Prosecution for drug trafficking. Then, we had Fatmir Xhafaj. According to Reuters, throughout his 19 months in office, Xhafaj was under pressure to quit over his half-brother’s drug conviction in Italy in early 2000. So lastly, since 2018, we have had Sander Lleshaj. Here’s how our Prime Minister introduced this change via Twitter:

“Sander Lleshaj will bring a new, positive energy at the head of Internal Affairs. Now we have to increase the speed and achieve even more significant results.”

And here’s how Sander Lleshaj went on a rant against a member of the opposition party during this Parliament session on 29th October 2020:

“You are [nothing but] a policeman. That’s what you’ve always been and that’s what you’ll remain, a policeman.”

Instead of new, positive energy, we are once again left with arrogance and disrespect towards the concept of police in our society, not just from a random person on social media that feels free to express whatever is on his mind. But from the head of the institution that is supposed to represent the police itself!

The sad part is that you and I don’t even have to wait for all these big incidents in our political and social scene to happen. We already have plenty of verbal or nonverbal arrogance to bear from the police on a monthly basis, even if it is just in road traffic.

Just a couple of weeks ago, a policeman stopped me in the street at 11:30 pm, past the allowed curfew. The way he talked was not only absolutely nerve-racking and rude but also unnecessary. He started off with nearly shouting, “As far as I know it’s past 10:30 pm, lady!” I had to give answers to a bunch of irrelevant questions such as “Where do you work?”, until I finally showed him that “blessed” authorization, which, by the way, he could have just asked for initially.

But is all this unfair treatment and adversarial behavior coming just from one policeman? Is it from 20? Or is there a general tension caused from highly incompetent and unexperienced institutions (starting from the lowest to the highest rank) that constantly refuse to be held properly accountable towards their actions?

I could end this by saying, “You are certainly free to choose, express and support the answer you wish.” But, I won’t.

Not at the expense of a 25 year old being murdered at the alley of his own house.