8-January-2005
Albania was known so far as a country with no real problems of racial prejudices or overt discrimination against Rroma. However, this situatioin is now degrading, and some of tthe violence against Rroma found in neighbouring Kosovo and Macedonia spills over to Ablania.
Some Rroma families, having lost most of their belongings with thhe collapse of the pyramyd schemes and the resulting turmoil, settled in the bed of the Lana river (a canal crossing Tirana) in a kind of shanty-town, which has been devastated several times by flood of the Lana river. Repeatedly, leaders of this vulnerable community, sought a long term solution from the city council, namely a safe place to build by themselves their own houses with easy terms to pay for the land they would acquire this way. All in vain.
On 6 January, without any notice, the so-called "Police of the buildings", producing an unofficial order, with no authoritative stamp, began to destroy all the Rromani families' cabins while exerting physical violence upon women and children present there during the action. The official reason was that 4 persons had won a trial in which they had been recognized as theformer owners of the land, and wanted to set up a car washing station on this location. One should emphasize that these four mountaineers had moved to Tirana in 1994 or so and they are not entitled to be regarded as legitimate owners of the land, which they acquired only through corrupting the police and judiciary. In addition all the alleged proceedings has been run without the Rromani families being informed, which constitutes in itself an iniquity and an act of contempt regarding the victims.