Prime Minister Edi Rama has once again commented on the protests that have been taking place in Tirana for more than a week.
In a Facebook post, Rama criticised the media, accusing them of failing to report transparently on the number of police officers injured during clashes with protesters.
Rama’s full post:
“Here is the SHAMEFUL RECORD of television broadcasters, where ‘students’ were portrayed as victims of brutal violence and the State Police as ruthless monsters mercilessly attacking innocent young men and women at every turn.
Look at the ratio of injured police officers to injured protesters in other democratic countries, where the scourge of ANTIFA terror is burning and destroying cities across Europe.
Everywhere, there are far more injured protesters than injured police officers, as would normally be expected.
But in Tirana, the figures are reversed.
Because, in reality, the State Police have risen to the occasion, never allowing the violence directed against them to divert them from their democratic mission.
Yet the reality in Tirana has been replaced by an entirely different reality on television screens that fuel this wave of violence and anti-state psychological terror.
From morning news broadcasts to evening celebrity shows, including live coverage filled with the melodrama of an imaginary student revolution, a diverse crowd of 1,500 people at its peak was glorified, despite having absolutely nothing in common with the concerns, problems, needs, suffering or hopes of students and Albanian families. Meanwhile, the State Police were targeted with criminal shamelessness.
Those working in television, most of whom live off corruption, astronomical salaries, weekly payments, Instagram advertisements and even podcasts funded with under-the-table money, are an army of people exploiting pensioners. They declare little income while earning enormous sums, spending day and night stirring up a disgusting mixture of hatred, vulgarity and indecency, while field journalists and camera operators are treated like slaves, working merely to make ends meet.
They bear even greater responsibility for the days of terror inflicted on the people of Albania than those who blindly throw stones and engage in violence.
*** I put the word ‘students’ in quotation marks at the beginning because very soon you will see the faces and the evidence concerning many of the masked heroes who terrorised the Albanian people with the spectre of 1997 and who have absolutely no connection to universities or student life.
REAL STUDENTS ARE THOSE WHO WANT TO CHALLENGE POLITICS AND THE GOVERNMENT WITHOUT RESORTING TO VIOLENCE AGAINST PUBLIC OR PRIVATE PROPERTY, BUT INSTEAD BY POINTING OUT THE PROBLEMS THAT NEED TO BE ADDRESSED THROUGH DIALOGUE AND JOINT COMMITMENT.”
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