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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 13, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Albania: A few get rich, the rest are enraged

By Deirdre Griswold

Since late January, a popular rebellion against the newly rich has been developing in Albania. By the beginning of March, it became so intense that the right-wing government of President Sali Berisha declared a state of emergency and called on the army to quell protests.

Western wire services report of hearing gunfire in the capital, Tirana, and also in the southern city of Vlora. But they give few details on the fighting.

They do admit that crowds of angry people who had nothing but stones in earlier demonstrations have now armed themselves with weapons left behind by fleeing police and army deserters.

The demonstrations began after several pyramid schemes collapsed in January. Reuter reported from Vlora Feb. 10 that "elderly men and women picked up paving stones and handed them to the demonstrators" to throw at police.

One elderly woman in Vlora yelled out, "The police are fascists!"

When Berisha claimed victory last spring after an election widely acknowledged to have been fraudulent, his police viciously beat protesting crowds of pensioners.

However, the anti-government sentiment crosses all age groups. Dozens of students in Tirana, Vlora and Gjirokaster have been on hunger strikes, demanding the government's resignation. At the end of February, police blockaded the roads in Tirana leading to the university district.

Police kicked and punched high-school students who tried to join a campus protest.

Berisha redbaits protesters

Berisha is calling the protests "a conspiracy of extreme leftist groups." He is in close consultation with the U.S. government and the International Monetary Fund.

Nicholas Burns of the State Department announced Jan. 30 that two U.S. officials-from the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department-had gone to Albania to provide "technical assistance" to the Berisha government on how to handle the situation.

Albania has about 3.5 million people. A huge number of them lost their life's savings when pyramid funds started collapsing in January.

Albania is the poorest country in Europe. It was invaded by Italy in World War II. When Italian fascism was defeated, Nazi Germany moved in to Albania and set up a puppet government. The Nazis were finally defeated by the Communist-led Partisan movement.

After the war, a Communist government came to power under the popular Partisan leader Enver Hoxha. He had been a teacher before taking up arms against the fascists.

In 1991, after the destruction of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, the right took over in Albania. Many of those who resisted this move toward the capitalist West, including the leaders of the former government, are in prison today.

The right promised capitalism would improve living conditions. The door was opened to Western investment. A few people got rich overnight as state property was privatized.

In November 1995, Abdul Xhaja, minister of mineral resources and energy, announced that U.S. and European companies had discovered more than 440 million tons of oil deposits in Albania. They had invested over $100 million in prospecting over the previous two years.

At the same time, U.S. Marines from the Sixth Fleet Expeditionary Force began training in Albania's mountains.

A few months later, in March 1996, Albania opened its first stock market. Money began changing hands rapidly.

Today in Vlora, "drug runners, smugglers and money launderers drive through dusty streets in new-model luxury cars," according to a story in the March 3 New York Times.

The Berisha government pushed Albania's workers and peasants to try to get rich, too-by putting their savings into pyramid funds linked to the ruling party. Now the initiators of these companies have skipped with the cash, leaving the masses hungry and broke.

It's a harsh lesson in how capitalists accumulate their capital. And it has already led the president to dismiss Prime Minister Alexander Meksi and dissolve the government.

But this has not satisfied the people. As of March 1, the armed populace was in control of several southern towns. It was reported that an angry crowd had burned down the headquarters of the secret police in Vlora after seizing arms there and at a military depot on the outskirts of town.

They also broke into a supermarket warehouse belonging to VEFA, a company behind one of the pyramid funds. One boy, asked why he was taking food from the warehouse, pointed to his mouth.

Another crowd broke into President Berisha's seaside estate outside Vlora, stripping it of its luxury furnishings.

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