TIRANA – “I greet and support all the artists and citizens of Tirana who have defended the National Theater for so long,” has said Kosovo’s outgoing Prime Minister Albin Kurti in a FB post on Sunday praising the effort to save Tirana’s Theatre for the last three years from demolition which happened on early Sunday morning.
For the last three years, the Albanian government of Edi Rama has been trying to demolish the theatre, which it accomplished in the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic and the reluctance of Democratic Party’s Basha to keep the pledge to save the building.
“When losses occur, the event, as well as the loss itself is marked in history by resistance. In resistance we learn, and since we do not forget those lessons, those who benefit today lose tomorrow, while those who lose gain,” said Kurti without mentioning by name either PM Rama, the perpetrator of the demolition or opposition leaders who failed to support to the end the art protectors.
The Municipality of Tirana, which is the owner of the site, says it will build the new theatre with public money.
“We must be the defenders of every corner of our culture. A part of it was stolen from us by the Serbian occupier – 1,200 cultural artifacts of Kosovo. Another part was oppressed and suppressed by dictatorships and ideologies, it was attacked by the academies of our neighbors, it was sold and ruined by the ignorance of officials or institutional corruption,” said Kurti.
Further on Kurti, who has been the founder of Self-determination Movement (Levizja Vetevendosje ) winner in the last general elections in Kosovo, said that when a cultural monument collapses, it is not as a result of a partial judgment that derives from one’s particular taste, but because of the temporary interests associated with the benefits of the few./argumentum.al
