“I consider a great honor and evaluation the participation of the honorable and important Ambassadors to our country right in this place where the Albanian anti-communist men, youth, democrats, and patriots suffered in this catacomb. But because they were as such those boys and men decided to hit the most savage communist dictatorship in the world,” said ex-political prisoner Bedri Coku
By Genc Mlloja
Senior Diplomatic Editor
“This past which we are remembering now is the present of those who had the bravery to react. That present should be written as it is history. It should be remembered for not allowing it to never return for the younger generations in the future. That is why it is important to turn the notorious prison of Spac into an international remembrance center,” has said the Ambassador of Austria to Tirana, Johann Sattler.
The Ambassador launched that appeal at an event organized on May 27, 2019 at the prison camp of Spac to mark the 40th anniversary of the execution of the political ex-prisoners Vangjel Lezho, Fadil Kokomani and Xhelal Koprencka, while 66 other prisoners were given longer sentences. The first uprising in Spac erupted on May 21, 1973, which was crushed tragically on May 23 of the same year with the execution of four youngsters – Skënder Daja, 23, Pal Zefi, 29, Hajri Pashaj, 29, and Dervish Bejko, 27 years old.
The political prisoners Lezho, Kokomani and Koprencka were executed because they had written an open letter from the Spac prison in 1979 addressed to the then Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Albanian Labor Party so that they should distance themselves from the path of the communist leader, Enver Hoxha against the backdrop of the ruining of Albania’s economy after the split with China in 1978.
The remembrance event, which was organized by the Austrian Embassy in collaboration with the Institute for Democracy, Media and Culture (IDMC), the Institute for Studies in Crimes and Consequences of Communism and in cooperation with Mirdita Municipality, was as an occasion to remember the victims and ex-prisoners of that political camp of the communist regime through different activities including visits to prisons’ debilitated buildings, literature and music.
“Thanks to ex-prisoners for being here, to Fatos Lubonja, Bedri Coku and Shkelqim Abazi for the readings, Zamir Kabo (piano) and violoncellist Bertin Christelbauer for the music, Minister of Culture Elva Margariti for attending,” said a press release issued by the Austrian Embassy.
“Spac, an Open Grave”
In her remarks during the event, the Minister of Culture, Elva Margariti said they were in Spac not to erect walls but space for dialogue, to give meaning to this remembrance site which is linked with the past, but on top of all it is an address to the future and belongs to the sons more than to their parents.
The Minister put a rhetoric question: “What should we do with such places?” And her answer was: “For all those who were locked here, this place is still a piece of their life, a permanent unhealed pain, an open grave. It is precisely up to us to preserve and turn it into a linking knot between the past and the future; a place to build a new bond with the younger generations through memories.”
The Austrian Ambassador, Sattler told the participants in the event among whom representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Tirana, dozens of ex-prisoners, their relatives, and journalists, that they should not leave that truth in oblivion, but see it in its eyes.
“The prison camp of Spac was located in such a remote place, in such a steep terrain at the entrance of the tunnel of a mine, in a place surrounded so properly among mountains, where there was no need for high walls to secure the camp, but just an entering gate and a barbed wire fence,” said Ambassador Johann Sattler in his remarks.
“This site where we are now is a living attempt for the depersonalization of the individual through fear and terror denying him everything like physical freedom, freedom of thought and speech which are fundamental rights,” he said. In his view, the prisoners locked in that jail were held like guinea pigs to see how much people could resist, but they found enough bravery to oppose the regime of the dictator.
“Their courage to provide us a different future today got as a reward execution and in the best case longer sentences for the rest of the prisoners,” said the Ambassador. “The evidence of political prisons in the human history has shown us the violence and terror as well as the power for survival, the love for life and freedom,” Vienna’s top envoy to Tirana said.
The well-known analyst, Fatos Lubonja, who was an ex-political prisoner in Spac, read parts from his book “The Re-sentencing” which contained personal memories on the communist jail and also on the executed ex-political prisoners, Fadil Kokomani and Vangjel Lezho.
‘Cries from Underground’
In his revelations quoted from his book ‘The Voices of Memory’ the ex- political prisoner, Bedri Coku brought memories of what he called cries from the underground which shook Albania. He said Spac prison was a hell of the Albanian communist dictatorship where men and young people, patriots and democrats suffered for decades working as slaves within the spiritless mountain, which was the face of the rigid communist dictatorship. Even though under the pressure of an exemplary dictatorship in the human history such events have happened in this small site and the Albanian oppressed people should be proud of their race, he said.
He recalled the first uprising of the political prisoners on May 21-23, 1973 and the second revolt which took place in 1979 when a group of prominent intellectuals jailed in Spac wrote a letter of protest to the Political Bureau of the CC of the Albanian Labor Party so that they should distance from the path of the communist dictator, Enver Hoxha against the backdrop of the split with China in 1978-1979.
“Being self-conscious, the intellectuals, who were suffering in this camp of slaves, irrespective of their political points of view, decided jointly to write a letter of protest addressed to the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Albanian Communist Party where an appeal was made to its members to distance themselves from the path where Enver Hoxha was leading the country to ruin,” said Coku.
Further on, he expressed the pain that none of state bodies or personalities during the last three decades have neither mentioned nor organized any remembrance conference on the values and importance of these events.
Given the oppressive atmosphere reigning across the country and the timing when the events happened during the rule of the dictatorial regime, the revolt of the political prisoners in Spac takes special value in the history of the Albanian people, he said, adding that the uprisings in that political prison should enter into the aureola of the important national or international events.
“I consider a great honor and evaluation the participation of the honorable and important Ambassadors to our country right in this place where the Albanian anti-communist men, youth, democrats, and patriots suffered in this catacomb. But because they were as such those boys and men decided to hit the most savage communist dictatorship in the world,” said the ex-political prisoner, Bedri Coku.
During the stay in Spac the participants in the event were shown by the ex-political prisoners places where they were held, the canteen, the dormitory and other facilities which were in such a bad situation seeming as if they would fall right away.
© Argumentum
