The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.15           April 14, 1997 
 
 
How Working People Revolted In Vlore

Interview with Albert Shyti, head of Committee for the Salvation of Vlore  

BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND BOBBIS MISAILIDES
VLORE, Albania - The revolt of Albania's working people began in this city in early February and spread to the southern half of the country. Militant reporters came here twice, on March 23 and 28, and talked to many working people and young rebels to learn the truth about how the insurrection unfolded.

One of the rebel leaders we interviewed is Albert Shyti, 27, the organizer of the Committee for the Salvation of Vlore. Shyti comes from a working-class family. His father worked in construction and his mother was a factory worker. Like thousands of his fellow countrymen, he immigrated to Greece in 1992 to find a job, save some money, and eventually return home. He worked as a laborer on a variety of jobs during his five years in Greece and, like many others, deposited his savings in the Gjalica "pyramid scheme," based in Vlore. Four other failed funds were headquartered in this city.

Shyti returned to Vlore on January 30 to withdraw his savings after news spread that these scams began declaring bankruptcy. He soon found himself on the front lines of the antigovernment protests and assumed central leadership responsibility when they developed into an armed revolt.

Ruin from attempt to imitate capitalism
In a March 23 interview with the Militant, Shyti described the devastating conditions that working people here faced as a result of President Sali Berisha's capitalist "market reforms." Vlore, Albania's second largest port in the Adriatic with a population of 170,000 including the surrounding villages, was one of the country's industrial centers. About 30,000 workers had jobs in factories producing shoes, furniture, electric appliances, cement, agricultural machinery and spare parts, clothing, dairy products, and other food. The surrounding valley was one of the country's main centers for citrus and olive oil production.

Under the Stalinist regime of Enver Xoxha, "There were jobs and food for all," said Shyti, "but we didn't have freedom. We were a people isolated from the rest of the world." As a result of Berisha's reforms, almost all the above factories closed, throwing workers into the streets with virtually no income. Throughout Albania, 90 percent of industry is shut down now, after the government eliminated state subsidies to "non profitable" enterprises. As part of implementing austerity measures prescribed by the International Monetary Fund in order to get loans for imports, the government slashed social services, including cutting off unemployment insurance.

Berisha's measures toward denationalizing the land also devastated working farmers and agricultural production. Since 1992, the government sold farmland to peasants at relatively low prices amounting to 3-5 stremas [1 acre = 4 stremas] per family member. But the allotments were divided into plots irrationally far away from each other and the transfers were riddled with favoritism, with Berisha supporters getting the best lands.

Shyti said the procapitalist regime sold the most arable land and agricultural machinery, which were state-owned, "not to those who worked the land but to Berisha's circle of people." The ending of state aid for cheap credit to get seed and fertilizers resulted in the collapse of agricultural production in big swaths of the country. The government carried out these measures, Shyti said, "without asking the opinion of the people who worked all these years on the land and produced the machinery."

That's why thousands of young workers and farmers like Shyti left for Greece, Italy, or other countries in the region.

According to Shyti, the "circle of people" benefiting from the sale of state lands and agricultural machinery were "the same people who set up the `pyramids.' " The government promoted these schemes, which were supposedly privately owned, through the state-controlled media. Several of these companies were featured as prominent supporters of Berisha's Democratic Party on its election campaign posters last year.

Berisha touted the incomes working people received from the pyramids for about a year, offering interest rates of up to 25 percent monthly, as the benefits of capitalism. But as Shyti explained, the function of these companies was pure fraud and usury that had no relationship to production. "All this money poured into Vlore from abroad, including the money we earned working in Greece, and we didn't know where it all went to," Shyti said. "There were no productive investments to build new factories or roads, there is nothing."

"There was no law in Albania allowing companies such as Gjalica to function," Shyti said. "Only the state has the right to regulate money circulated."

The battle of February 9
Gjalica had announced February 6 as the deadline for withdrawals of deposits. Tens of thousands of workers, including Shyti, returned to Albania to demand their money back.

On February 5, Gjalica president Fetin Petsaliou announced that "the company had no money," said Shyti. Nearly 17,000 people gathered within half an hour for an angry but peaceful protest demanding the government assume its responsibility and compensate them for their losses. The demonstrations mushroomed in the following days, and protesters clashed with the police. Shyti, along with other workers were at the front lines of the daily rallies.

In the early morning hours of February 9, word got out that Berisha had sent thousands of SHIK agents and troops with tanks to crash the protest movement. About 10,000 heavily armed soldiers had surrounded the city. Later, insurgents found out that most of the troops and officers were from out of town and had been paid handsomely for the task. Soldiers had been offered the equivalent of nearly $300 per day and officers over $1,400 per day - exorbitant amounts in a country where the average wage is about $80 a month.

Shyti and about 15 others gathered downtown at 7:30 a.m. and were reading a notice pinned on a lamp post for someone who had been killed the night before. They were soon surrounded by troops who ordered them to disperse. That's when the first confrontations began. As people started shouting, "Down with the government, down with Berisha!" Shyti and a couple of others broke the encirclement to get the word out to city residents about the troops sent by Berisha. Within half an hour, virtually the entire city had poured into the streets. "Children, old people, women and men, all came out," said Shyti.

Demonstrators shouted at soldiers to leave town but they answered with plastic bullets and they started to beat up protesters. Shyti and many others in Vlore said the response was in line with the city's tradition of having been the center of the independence struggle from the Ottoman empire in 1912 and of the partisan movement and the subsequent socialist revolution of the 1940s.

In the confrontations that developed in the center of Vlore, Artur Stemi, a 32-year-old worker, was shot dead by Berisha's army. "When we saw Artur dead, all logic and constraint disappeared for a while," Shyti said. Nearly 100,000 people stormed the stunned soldiers with stones and sticks. Troops captured told rebels after the battle was over they had been told they were to face "100-150 criminals and tramps causing problems," said Shyti. Within half an hour the troops had been disarmed or fled. While hundreds were injured, no one else was killed that day.

The troops caught by the rebels were given food and shelter and those injured were hospitalized. "It was after that battle, after blood was shed, that people began raising as the central demand the resignation of Berisha," Shyti stated.

Soon afterwards, 57 university students went on a hunger strike demanding the president's resignation, which they ended when Berisha declared a state of emergency March 2.

Formation of Vlore's defense council
While daily protests continued at the Square of the Flag, Shyti said, "there were some people with experience getting on TV channels and giving press conferences who were talking around the problem, who were not telling the truth to the people. I feared their statements may be intended to defuse the actions, so people would return home, forget the fraud, forget that someone had been killed." Shyti managed to convince the manager of the local TV station to let him go on the air live on February 13. He used the contract he had signed with Gjalica to expose government responsibility and put the blame on the authorities for the violence. As he was speaking the live program was cut off twice, he said, "but people did get to hear at least some the truth.

"Next morning, dozens of people I didn't know approached me on the street, congratulating me for my action and saying we need to get organized."

At a protest rally of several thousand on February 14 Shyti stepped forward and asked for volunteers to serve on a citizen's council to organize the defense of the insurgent city and other tasks. "Thousands were demanding a group of people with a right direction, who know what they want and how to achieve it," Shyti said. "A committee that would be accountable to the people." Four other volunteers stepped forward. This initial core of five was expanded to a 35-member council called the Committee for the Salvation of Vlore by February 21. In addition to a few workers, the Committee now included representatives of the Democratic Forum, an umbrella coalition of opposition parties, former army officers, and others who supported the demands of the rebels.

Shyti said that the committee meets daily and organizes security, distribution of food and medicines, and other tasks. The council uses the facilities of the Ali Demi high school as its headquarters, which has been closed, as all other schools in the country for a month. It has also conducted foreign policy by meeting with representatives of the Italian and other European Union governments off Vlore's coast. Rallies, initially organized twice a day in Vlore's Square of the Flag, are now held daily. At these mass meetings, ranging between 4,000 and 10,000 people, council members inform citizens of developments in the country and seek approval or modification of decisions by the committee. Often, people from the audience come up and take the microphone to tell their stories.

The Committee for the Salvation of Vlore also spearheaded the formation of the National Front for the Salvation of the People, which was founded in Gjirokaster by eight such defense councils on March 12. The Front held subsequent meetings in Vlore on March 14, Ballshi on March 17, and Tepelene on March 21. A nationwide conference of 150 people, including representatives of five rebel councils from northern Albania, was held in Vlore March 28 at the initiative of the local committee under the sponsorship of the Front.

Since its formation, the National Front has called for the creation of a presidential commission to replace Berisha. This commission would be made up of representatives from the government of national reconciliation, the National Front and all the opposition parties willing to join. The Front has rejected all demands for the rebels to turn in their weapons before Berisha resigns.

"There is no chaos or anarchy in Vlore," said Shyti, as the big-business press proclaims everyday. "The people are armed but they keep their weapons at home. Very few people are using them carelessly." As far as the lootings and robberies carried out in Vlore, Shyti said "this should not be an issue. There are thieves throughout the world, for example in America. They are not just in Albania." Some of the lootings are reportedly done by Berisha's armed gangs. Shyti acknowledged that putting an end to these actions does remain a challenge for the local committee and the entire Front.

In order to undermine his role as a central leader of the revolt, the Berisha government has spread rumors that Shyti is a member of the opposition Socialist Party and that he collaborates with Greece's secret police. Shyti said that he has nothing to do with the Greek police and he is not a member of the SP because he does not believe in any of the existing parties. "For me, God is the people," he said. "I respect religion, but above all, I respect human beings whatever the color of their skin may be. We stand for human dignity. And that's why I want to fight Berisha's men who are spreading these stories."

Asked about military intervention by the European Union or NATO, Shyti said, "There is no position for troops from around the world here. We've made that clear, we do not accept it. We are capable of eventually creating the conditions for peace and security ourselves."

Bobbis Misailides is a member of the Federation of Foreign Airlines Workers in Athens, Greece. Tony Hunt from London, England, contributed to this article reporting from Vlore.  
 
 
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