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OPINEWS

August 30/ The victims wait, the executioners return "reborn"!

Politiko 2026-08-30 21:55:24

August 30/ The victims wait, the executioners return "reborn"!

By Bardh Spahia
Today, on the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, we remember thousands of Albanians who were shot, imprisoned, exiled and disappeared by the communist dictatorship. But 35 years after the fall of the regime, Albania has still not closed the account with the past.
The Democratic Party in the first government built the legal and institutional basis for the rehabilitation of victims, while in the years 2005–2013 compensation took on another dimension. In 2009, the planned fund reached about 3.17 billion lek. Today, after 13 years of Rilindja, the fund is only 1.5 billion lek, while over 10 thousand files are still in process. So, the victims continue to wait.
But the problem of Rilindja is not only financial. For 13 years, Edi Rama and the Socialist Party have not done what would be the moral and historical obligation of a political force that directly inherits the DNA of the communist regime: to truly apologize clearly and publicly to the victims and their families.
Instead of a full confrontation with the past, we have seen an attempt to turn communism into decor, into tourism and even trying to evoke nostalgia: from Bunk'Art and the House of Leaves, to the Peza Festival and to the interventions to revitalize the dictator's house. The memory of communism is served as a cultural-tourist product, while Albania still lacks a genuine National Museum of Victims of Communism, where the victims, the pain and the crimes of the regime would be at the center.
And while the victims wait, the executioners and their political successors still find space in the public narrative. In 2025, a material by the Parliamentary Institute included Enver Hoxha as a “Hero of the People” and “Hero of Socialist Labor”. The feelings after the scandal do not change the essence: a dictator cannot be treated as a figure to be honored in state institutions.
This is the hypocrisy of the Renaissance: a ceremony for the victims, but a relativization and often even justification of the crime; propaganda for memory, but a lack of justice; reparations that drag on, while the history of the dictatorship turns into a nostalgic spectacle.
The victims do not need propaganda. They need justice, reparations, the graves of their relatives and a national memory that will never allow the rehabilitation of the dictatorship and its executioners.
After 35 years of democracy, the message must be clear: one cannot honor the victims in the morning and rehabilitate their executioners in the evening. Albania needs an honest confrontation with communism and its tragic consequences for Albania, consequences that unfortunately Albanians continue to suffer today.

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