The False Apocalypse Read online

  ‘There is a way,’ Walsh replied.

  Qorri and Gonxhja stared at him, waiting for the magic formula.

  ‘Judo,’ Walsh said.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He has to be forced to turn the pistol on himself, so that when he fires he shoots himself.’

  Qorri remembered Walsh saying that before he came to Albania he had been cultural attaché in Japan.

  Qorri parted from Walsh, still imagining Berisha firing a pistol and the bullet striking himself. Would it be the opposition’s skill, his own lunacy, or fate that decided where the bullet would fall? Walsh hadn’t offered them a solution, only a helpful metaphor.

  The evening news reported that after the rally a crowd of three or four hundred protesters had headed for Scanderbeg Square. But the report concentrated not on the protesters but on the fate of the police who had borne the brunt of the crowd’s aggression and had been pelted with stones. Hooligans, the report said, had injured five policemen and destroyed four of their cars. Seven people had been arrested.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter XXII

  Hunger Strike

  It was the fifteenth day of demonstrations in Vlora. In what had now become a ritual, between nine and ten in the morning and five and six in the afternoon the people marched together to Flag Square where speeches were made. The city lived on and for demonstrations, and almost everyone assembled in the square.

  But the people of Vlora would never have joined together to fill the square for this collective rite if they had not been nourished by the very specific hope of recovering their money. Nobody knew how it would be returned, and as the days passed, more and more voices announced that the money was lost forever. In some people, this fostered an even more irrational hatred of the government and a desire to overthrow it, but others just as irrationally grew depressed and gave up. Those who were not demonstrating only about the lost money but were bent on using the passions of the crowd to overthrow the government began to think that the movement should be expanded if it were not to lose its impetus or become self-destructive.

  For some days there had been rumours of escalating the protests with a hunger strike of students at Vlora University. A group of students announced 20th February as a deadline for the resignation of the government and the return of the money. Then they would start their fast.

  ***

  The Forum could not determine if it were a coincidence or a premeditated plan for the students to go on strike on the anniversary of the overthrow of Hoxha’s monument and on the very day of the rally on the Ali Demi field in Tirana. The organisers of the Vlora protests were in contact with Tirana, but also acted independently and unpredictably, and any coordination of action seemed to come more from a shared purpose than good organisation. Recently, events in all the towns seemed to flow and merge naturally like currents in a great river.

  According to ATA, forty-two students went on strike. The opposition said sixty. They occupied classrooms on the ground floor of the university, tied bandanas round their heads, and lay in corners, creating less a public form of self-sacrifice than a media event. Strikers had to display faces distorted by suffering to feed the anger of the public. The declared reason for the strike was solidarity with the demonstrators of Vlora, demanding the government’s resignation and the return of the money.

  The strikers and their supporters outside were inspired by the original, legendary hunger strike of students that had led to the toppling of Hoxha’s monument in February 1991 and hastened the final collapse of the communist regime. There had been several strikes since then. The most famous had been the underground strike of the miners of the Valias coal mine and the first strike of the former political prisoners which hastened the departure of the Democratic Party from the coalition with the former communists and led to the arrest of the dictator’s widow Nexhmije Hoxha. Among the people at large, these strikes had been highly emotional collective experiences. Intense media pressure concentrated public attention on the self-sacrificing strikers and plunged the nation’s institutions into crisis. Faced with the destabilization of the country, the government had been forced to resign out of fear that the impassioned crowds could act as they did when they toppled Hoxha’s statue.

  Aware of the power of hunger strikes, Berisha was very frightened that the scenarios that he himself had used could be turned against him with the same success. Therefore he agreed to meet a delegation of the students. But like his predecessor Ramiz Alia six years before, he failed to reach any understanding with them. The old scenario was enacted again, except that Berisha was careful to show greater resilience in the face of strikes against his government.

  There was every sign that he would try to end this strike by force. He was helped in this by the fact that, in contrast to the strike of 1991, this one was being held in Vlora, where, according to the government, it was being organized by a minority, manipulated by traffickers and former Sigurimi agents.

  ***

  ATA reported that the students had been given blankets and were guaranteed medical aid, and that the police station had sent personnel to guard the building. The report also cited inside sources claiming that on the first day there were no concerns about the students’ health.

  On 22nd February, ATA again carried a short report: ‘The students’ strike continues. Their health is good, except for one student who during the night had a temperature of 37.5°C. On Friday one student left the strike and was replaced by another. The students are satisfied with the conduct of the police.’

  Every day, huge numbers of demonstrators joined the strikers’ relatives in the square in front of the university. The most articulate among them made speeches, calling on the crowds to continue their protests until their demands were met. They sang songs and chanted, ‘We want our money!’ and ‘Down with the government.’ When they got tired of shouting in chorus, other orators climbed onto the improvised rostrum and made more speeches.

  Qorri did not like the fact that the strikers’ aims contained a contradiction that had already prompted disagreements within the Forum. They demanded both the resignation of the government and the return of their money. He thought that the government should either return the money or resign, and the question of what money was left should be investigated by the government of professionals or the new one to emerge after elections. He had always opposed any pledge to the return of the money because it seemed to him a false and impossible promise. For him what was most important was to bring down the government, which had to be punished for the catastrophe it had caused. But after a press conference at the Hotel Rogner at which he and Kurt Kola had said that the Forum did not promise to return the money, both their own people and their opponents had attacked them. Berisha’s press, to discourage the demonstrators, carried banner headlines, ‘Forum Does Not Promise Return of Money.’ Within the Forum Qorri and Kola were accused of political naivety, because if they did not promise the money they would lose support. This caused the first rift in the Forum, and on the following day some journalists close to individual Forum leaders had written that the three former political prisoners should resign their positions to make way for tried and tested politicians.

  There was something else about the strike that troubled Qorri, which also had to do with the false promise to return the money. The students were in fact eating, and this was not a genuine hunger strike. The same had been true of earlier strikes. Everyone knew they were eating, both the organizers and the government. No act of self-sacrifice was taking place. The strike was a kind of theatre acted out by both sides, but which both sides pretended to believe in, and indeed experienced as if it were real. Could anything genuine come out of this sham?

  These doubts running through his mind were much weaker than his faith that he was working for a just cause. Truth and lies, pretence and honesty coexisted in the movement, sometimes within the same person. Many people had joined the movement unclear whether they did so because of the money or the violation of th
eir freedom, for the sake of power or in a genuine effort to solve the crisis. Ultimately, was there any clear distinction between play-acting and an authentic event?

  ‘This sublime step shows that Albanian youth has resolved to act in order to change the destiny of the nation, to liberate the country from corrupt politics and the irresponsibility of the ruling party.’

  ‘The Forum for Democracy strongly supports the students of Vlora and their political and economic demands. We appeal to all the students of Albania to express solidarity with them through peaceful demonstrations of all kinds, from boycotts of classes to hunger strikes.

  ‘The Forum appeals to the people of Vlora and the entire country to support the young people of Albania.’

  On 23rd February, Gumeni, Gjinushi and several others went to Vlora and repeated this call from a rostrum among the fervent protesters. The language seemed to seek to give meaning to the students’ action. Yet, when Qorri thought of how they were secretly eating, it seemed to him that the strike was stillborn.

  Meanwhile, reports soon arrived that students from other cities were preparing to start strikes in solidarity with the students of Vlora.

  ***

  On 24th February, a group of doctors reported that the health of the students had deteriorated. Seven of them had been admitted to hospital, and others were showing serious symptoms. Nobody could tell to what extent this report was accurate or fabricated. It was the aim of both sides to dramatize the harm done by the other. ATA countered with a report that groups of demonstrators around the university were launching increasingly wild slogans for the resignation of the government, and threatening to burn down the District Council and the city’s courts if they didn’t strike too. On 25th February, the strike committee reported that fourteen students had now been admitted to hospital.

  ***

  Berisha continued his feverish activity to prevent power slipping from his grasp. He visited Elbasan, Peshkopia, and Shkodra, and then set off for the south. In Gjirokastra he expressed his gratitude to his supporters for their ‘civilized’ attitude. He said that their stand was a deserved response to all those who pursued anti-Albanian, antidemocratic, and careerist aims at the expense of honest people. He told them that the Council of Europe supported the State institutions.

  But the main piece of news from his visit was his reply to a question about early elections and the president. ‘The elections,’ Berisha said, ‘will be held in due time, and that is in 2000.’ The idea of ‘first the constitution, and then the president,’ he added, was mistaken because the country required leadership. The president would have to be elected by the deadline of 9th March.

  The message was that Berisha, regardless of what his opponents wanted, had decided to get himself re-elected and had no intention of letting go of power. This added fuel to the flames.

  ***

  By 26th February, the seventh day of the strike, there were fifteen strikers in hospital, and the strike committee claimed that the condition of the others was worsening. The students insisted that they would not give up their strike before their goals were achieved. Both sides seemed to be preparing for the inevitable showdown. The entire south was racked with conflict. Tractors blocked the road to Memaliaj after an inhabitant of the town was arrested in the demonstrations.

  On Thursday, 27th February, Meksi stated in parliament that the country was on the brink of macroeconomic instability: the collapse of the currency, inflation, and a budget deficit. The Foreign Ministry denied the reports by some foreign media, including Reuters, that rapid deployment forces had been sent to Vlora. These malevolent slanders of extremists, the ministry stated, had seriously radicalized the situation in the city.

  Chapter XXIII

  The Left and the European Right

  Qorri could not believe his ears. The announcer of Albanian Television, his voice slightly more strident than usual, was reading a report that twenty-eight British MPs had submitted a petition against the motion of a group of Labour members criticizing the Albanian Government. The long report quoted extracts from the petition, which stated that the MPs ‘supported the measures proposed by the British government, the Conservative Party and the honourable member for Chertsey and Walton to help Albania in its continuing transformation into a democratic and free market state.’ They added, ‘We point out with concern but not with surprise that the honourable members of the Labour Party have also signed petitions in support of communist dictatorships in Afghanistan, Cuba, and Nicaragua.’ The Conservative MPs also supported a statement by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, according to which ‘the Albanians should be congratulated on creating a multi-party democracy,’ and condemning the foreign observers, who, according to the group, were old friends of the Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha. They also criticized the Albanian Section of the BBC for reporting every criticism of the PD and its government, while passing over in silence the statement of the British Helsinki Group.

  In its next item, Albanian Television reported that the Foreign Ministry had charged the BBC with having accused Albania of breaking the oil embargo against Yugoslavia, without any serious evidence, but simply trusting the word of an Albanian diplomat dismissed in 1994 for being in the service of the former communists.

  What a ridiculous misunderstanding, thought Qorri. How could the members of this parliament, with a reputation as the wisest in the world, believe that the opposition was trying to bring about a revolution to restore the communist regime? He remembered Gumbel’s word ‘dogged.’

  During the dictatorship, the Albanians had considered the West a monolithic deity to which they looked for salvation. Now they discovered that the European left and right, between which at one time they could barely tell the difference, were arguing about the crisis in Albania and interpreting it through the ideological lens of the Cold War. At every meeting with the European right wing, Qorri had tried to explain to them that their so-called anti-communist allies had behaved like communists, and that what the opposition was trying to accomplish, this time on its own, was the overthrow of a regime that had visibly inherited characteristics of the previous one. After every conversation, he would wonder if he had succeeded in convincing them. He had also tried to explain to Western leftists that what they were doing had nothing to do with preserving certain values of Socialism, which they had fought for in Europe when they had idealized the communist regimes of the East, because what was happening in Albania was not a popular revolution against a savage neo-liberal capitalist regime, as some of the left-wing radicals portrayed it.

  But the memory of the period before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the divisions of that time continued to colour the new reality. The present was seen as a perpetuation of the past. It was no accident that Berisha insisted on using the term ‘left-wing,’ and also refused to meet former political prisoners but only representatives of the Socialist Party. In this way he cemented the division he wished to preserve, portraying what was happening as a comeback of the ex-communists.

  The European categories of left and right simply did not correspond to the way Albanians used them and did not help to explain what was happening. In fact, this movement did not resemble other popular movements familiar from history. It was peculiar to itself, born out of the specific experience of a society isolated from the world for fifty years.

  ***

  The day after the report on the petition of the British Conservatives, the Forum asked at its news conference at the Rogner for more attention from Europe, and Qorri also said there that the Forum had doubts about some of the aid for Albania that Western governments were planning. ‘Berisha has had plenty of aid,’ Qorri said, implying that Berisha should now be punished for misusing this aid rather than given more. The next day he saw himself pilloried again by Albania and Rilindja Demokratike as anti-Albanian.

  Chapter XXIV

  The Fire Smoulders

  In Vlora people passed sleepless nights after the news that special forces had come to put an end t
o the students’ strike. Hundreds and thousands of people gathered round the university and others patrolled the darkened streets in cars. Occasional gunshots could be heard.

  Rumours that the SHIK had a plan to evict the students had been circulating round Vlora for some days. The government denied any such intention, but few believed it. The people of Vlora were now convinced that the central government was preparing to reassert the authority of the State in their rebel city. The strike and the university square where the crowd camped out day and night to encourage and protect the students were now the heart of the rebellion. The students had now decided irrevocably to press on with the strike until the government resigned.

  Tension increased when the Meksi government accused the strikers of paralysing all the institutions of government. The port and the city’s shops had closed down completely. The branch of VEFA had stopped paying back even small sums of $100-$500 because of the confusion created by the strikes and protests. The company’s bosses appealed to the population not to cause difficulties, but they took no notice. The government now filed a suit against the strikers at the Tirana Court, calling their strike illegal.

  Clearly, this accusation was intended to justify government intervention. The Court put off making its decision and asked the defendants to be informed so that they could be present. The rector of the university was summoned to appear in court on 27th February.

  Meanwhile, forty-six students at Gjirokastra University started their own hunger strike in support of Vlora and said that they would continue until the demands of the Vlora strikers were met. In Elbasan, a student was cheered when he called for a boycott of classes in support of Vlora’s demands for the resignation of the government.