ALBANIA GOVT FACES BACKLASH OVER POLICE FORCE AGAINST PROTESTERS

NEWS

UN Concerned About Albanian Deportations of Turkish ‘Gulenists’

United Nations human rights officials expressed concern about the Albanian authorities’ treatment of two Turks wanted by Ankara, one of whom was rapidly expelled while the other awaits deportation in custody.

Albanian ‘Backroom Deal’ on Justice Reform Alarms US, EU

Albania’s most important Western partners have condemned what they clearly suspect are moves to undermine and water down the justice reform programme agreed in 2016 – which they have sponsored.

Alleged Gulenist Selami Simsek in Court in Tirana. Photo: LSA

GJERGJ EREBARA | BIRN | TIRANA

Five United Nations human rights officials have sent a letter to the government of Albania to raise the cases ofHarun Celik, a Turkish citizen who was deported from Albania to Turkey in January, and Selami Simsek, who is currently awaiting deportation in a closed migrant centre.

Both men are alleged by Turkish authorities to be members of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen’s movement, which Ankara alleges is a terrorist organisation responsible for a failed coup plot in Turkey in 2016.

The letter from the UN officials, which was published on Tuesday in Albanian media but written on March 20, warned that Simsek’s rights could be violated if he is sent to Turkey.

It says that Simsek “is likely to face detention, prosecution and, potentially, torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, for his perceived or imputed affiliation to the Hizmet/Gulen movement”.

Simsek was initially arrested at Tirana Airport and served time for using falsified travel documents. He was released from prison on March 9, but for reasons that remain unclear, police kept him for several hours in a civilian car before transferring him to a closed centre for illegal emigrants near Tirana.

His supporters claim that that several high-level government officials demanded that an immediate expulsion order be issued.

His laywer, Elton Hyseni, told BIRN on Tuesday that he has not yet received any official information about the case.

“We do not yet know whether his request for asylum has been accepted or not. [The authorities] havenot explained why they are keeping him in the closed migration centre,” Hyseni said.

Albanian government spokesperson Endri Fuga did not reply to BIRN’s request for a comment by the time of publication.

The letter from the five UN officials also questioned Albania’s deportation of Celik to Turkey.

“We are equally concerned that Mr. Celik appears to have been expelled for his alleged connection to Hizmet/Gulen movement, reportedly without any due process guarantees afforded by relevant legislation,” it says.

Albanian police put Celik on a plane to Istanbul on January 1 despite his pleas for asylum. He had been a teacher in a Gulen-linked school in Kazakhstan, then attempted to escape to Canada using a false visa. He was arrested in Albania in 2018 and served time for falsifying travel documents.

His extradition to Turkey was described as a major human rights violation by the Albanian opposition, which linked the unusually prompt decision by police to send him to Turkey with the friendly connections between Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The letter to the Albanian government was signed by Luciano Hazan, chair-rapporteur of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Leigh Toomey, vice-chair of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Felipe González Morales, special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, and Nils Melzer, special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

GJERGJ EREBARA | BIRN | TIRANA T he European Union and United States embassies in Tirana have criticised an alleged new political agreement in Albania on the future of the justice system, declining to specify who made this agreement or what it entails.

It comes some four years after the Albanian parliament adopted a package of changes to the constitution designed to overhaul the notoriously corrupt and inept justice system.

Since then, the parties have apparently entered into negotiations on a new agreement “behind the closed doors” that could end up changing what the US and EU call the “fundamentals” of the reform.

“I hope there is no truth to rumors of a back-room deal to kill justice reform in Albania,” US Ambassador Yuri Kim said on Twitter on Thursday, without elaborating. “Reform is painful, slow & imperfect, but it is necessary, making progress & must continue,” he added.

Moments later, the EU Ambassador in Tirana, Luigi Soreca, joined the fray. “The implementation of #justice reform continues and must be preserved. This is not the time to reopen the discussion on its fundamentals but to enhance its efficiency and reinforcing the resources at its disposal,” he wrote.

The US and EU are the two main partner countries that oversaw the agreement on justice reform after meeting years of intense resistance from local politicians. They are currently spending millions of euros on a costly monitoring mission. Political parties in Albania reacted to the veiled criticisms in an equally opaque way, the Prime Minister, Edi Rama, by quoting Shakespeare, and the head of the main opposition Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha, by denying being part of any such talks. President Ilir Meta had not yet commented on the issue.

“Hell is empty, all the devils are here,” PM Rama responded mysteriously, quoting Shakespeare’s playThe Tempest. “Any constitutional or legal changes to justice reform by the current parliament are illegitimate. Such changes serve only those who use their power to twist and undermine the reform and to politically control and capture the justice system,” Basha said.

Justice reform in Albania started in 2016, aiming to clean up the system by investigating the assets and links to crime of each judge and prosecutor, as well as aiming to create a system that was more independent of politics by reforming the way in which judges are elected. However, about four years later, the purge of corrupt officials is only partially complete while the numerous vacancies created by resignations and firings have paralyzed key parts of the system, including the Constitutional Court and the High Court.

Meanwhile, a new special prosecution and court designed to fight corruption and organised crime has till now failed to meet expectations of an aggressive investigation of high-level corruption.

NEWS

Albania Govt Faces Backlash Over Police Force Against Protesters

Top ministers face a chorus of criticism over allegedly unnecessary police violence against protesters on Sunday, who were angered by the sudden demolition of the National Theatre.

GJERGJ EREBARA | BIRN | TIRANA

Interior Minister Sander Lleshaj, Prime Minister Edi Rama and the police in general faced growing criticism on Wednesday for the force used to disperse protests in Tirana on Sunday against the demolition of the National Theatre.

While some critics complained that the violence was excessive and disproportionate, others voiced suspicions that it was deliberate – part of a strategy to discourage other protests in future. The Professional Journalists’ Association of Albania called on Prime Minister Rama to personally condemn the violence used against at least two media employees on Sunday. “Up till now, there has been no public apology and no investigation or prosecution of the perpetrators of the violence,” their statement said. “This leads us to think that the violence against the media was not incidental but was targeted,” it added.

Taunted by social media users on his Facebook page, Rama has repeatedly denied any violence occurred on Sunday. Even when faced with a photo of a police officer with his boot on the head of a protester, Rama suggested it was not be as bad as it seemed.

Meanwhile, eight protesters arrested for refusing police orders and for holding an illegal protest were ordered into house arrest or freed

Police guards outside the National Theatre being demolished in Tirana, Albania, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Malton Dibra

pending trial by a court on Wednesday.

Among them was Broiken Abazi, a leader of the Vetevendosje movement in Tirana, an NGO related to the party of the same name in Kosovo. Abazi published a letter from prison, accusing Rama of using arrests and violence to intimidate protesters. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Lleshaj rejected criticism of the police in a long Facebook post on Thursday. “The police don’t operate on political orders,” he wrote. “It was not a decision of the police to destroy the National Theatre or not,” he added, calling many of the critics “shameless”, “falcons”, “hideous persons”, and other negative terms. Sokol Bregu, a crime reporter who usually refrains from making political observations, called the violence unjustifiable. “The theatre issue is one thing – a battle of different opinions. Your violence is not,” he wrote to Minister Lleshaj. “Never in the last 24 years I have seen such protests, with youngsters holding books and the police beating them,” he added. He was referring to events on Sunday afternoon, after the scuffles between police

GJERGJ EREBARA | BIRN | TIRANA

Albania PM Tries to Defuse Anger Over Theatre Demolition

Activists have called for renewed protests over the shock demolition of old National Theatre in Tirana – which former European Council President Donald Tusk also condemned, as ‘going against the European values of rule of law and dialogue’.

Police removed dozens of protesters from the site on Sunday, as cameras filmed several cases of what looked like excessive force.

Prime Minister Rama and Mayor of Tirana Erion Veliaj, the two hate figures in the eyes of the protesters, meanwhile appealed for calm. “I want to extend my hand to anybody who disagreed with us in this battle,” Mayor Veliaj

One day after the shock demolition of the National Theatre in the Albanian capital, Tirana, the Alliance for the Protection of the Theatre called for fresh protests against what it called “a dictatorship”, as Prime Minister Edi Rama appealed for calm. An excavator removed rubble from the site on Monday morning, forming a contrasting image to billboards still inviting theatre-goers to come and see stage plays. Police officers remained present at the site, which saw clashes with protesters over the weekend, but there were no protesters on Monday morning. Some pedestrians passing by the rubble filmed the scene with mobile phones. “Aren’t you ashamed of protecting a gang?” one shouted at police who didn’t reply.

said, calling the demolition one of the most difficult decisions he had ever faced – but a right one. “I am not a saint and not blameless but I have nothing to do with dark works you accuse me of,” Rama said on Twitter, addressing one protester by name. Despite his soothing words, media reports said the police continued to behave aggressively against a group of young protesters after he sent that message. A group of human rights organisations condemned the demolition of the theatre, calling it an attack on the cultural and historical identity of the country. “We regret the situation our country is in today,” said a joint statement signed by 15 organisations representing a wide spectrum of civil society, from Roma and LGBT rights groups to free legal aid groups and media organisations.

The ruins of the National Theatre of Albania on May 18 2020. Photo: Gjergj Erebara/BIRN

“We are seeing elevated state violence and repression. These anti-democratic measures are being undertaken by the government and state institutions at a time when the country lack a proper opposition and a functional juridical system,” the joint statement added. Former European Council President Donald Tusk, now chair of the centre-right European People’s Party bloc in the European Parliament, also condemned the demolition of the threatre in no uncertain terms. “I condemn the demolition of the national theatre in Tirana on Sunday, which goes against European values such as conservation of cultural heritage, rule of law and transparent dialogue,” he said. The battle over the buildings built during the Italian occupation in 1940 has gone on for years, and their fate has become a trial of strength and test of wills between the Socialist-led government on one side and civil society and the opposition on the other.

and protestors had ended, when police approached a group of mostly leftwing students and forcibly removed them from the street. Videos later showed the students had made no provocation, and there was no apparent reason for the police intervention.

Police are also facing questions about why part of the force deployed during Sunday’s protest had their identification numbers removed from their uniforms and their faces hidden behind masks. A police spokesperson did not respond to questions from BIRN by the time of publication about why the police had removed their ID numbers. The episode fuelled speculation in some quarters that it was an attempt to stall a possible investigation of the violence.

Police violence remains a sensitive issue in a country where, as recently as two decades ago, they were seen as a brutal force that often beat people up in the street for no apparent reason. R eforms starting in 1998 aimed to create a more politically unbiased force that was less aggressive, and in which people might place their trust. Sunday’s events risked turning that process backwards, critics said. “I don’t agree with you that the law has been respected in this case,” the journalist Bregu wrote, addressing the authorities. “Rather, I fear that I will be the next to be beaten by your police, which is no longer mine,” he added.

The Italian architects and engineers used an experimental material to build the theatre called pupulit, a mix of sawdust and cement. The buildings were used by the Italian army for plays during the occupation, and for political show trials by the Albanian Communists after 1945. The National Theatre was later housed there until two years ago.

The rich history of the buildings and the experimental material used in them made them an important item of cultural heritage for their defenders – but none of that has impressed the Prime Minister, who has become determined to build a new concrete theatre in its place.