TIRANA, August 9 – It was August 8, 1991, when the ship “Vlora” was anchored in the Port of Bari in Italy. There were about 20,000 Albanian immigrants on board, who were looking for a better life in the neighboring country. The event is remembered every year by the Italian media itself, such as the daily “Corriere della Sera”, which carried an article three years ago under the headline: “When Italy was “America” for Albanians”. The newspaper in question underlined that this case was the first to mark the phenomenon of the flow of immigrants towards the Italian shores, a phenomenon that today is more common, although the Albanian refugees are no longer the protagonists.
The Albanians were transferred from the port to the Vittoria stadium. The refugee ship had earlier been rejected in Brindisi and changed course to be towed by tugboats and docked in the port of Puglia.
“They are people, desperate people. We cannot turn them back, we are their only hope”. This was the phrase that the mayor, Enrico Dalfino uttered at the time.
The ship Vlora was a merchant ship flying the Albanian flag. On August 7, 1991, it had just returned from Cuba with a cargo of sugar cane. As soon as it arrived in Albania, it was filled with thousands of Albanians, who wanted to go to Italy. The first destination was the city of Brindisi, and then headed to Bari.
The exodus via the merchant ship Vlora was the most famous episode, but certainly not the only one. The communist regime in Albania had isolated the country from the western world, bringing about the increase in poverty. After the fall of the dictator, Enver Hoxha in 1985 the situation did not improve, and thus, thanks to the influence of the Italian TV stations, the movements of Albanians in search of a better future began. /Argumentum.al
