Prime Minister Edi Rama has once again attacked protesters, days after protests and clashes in Tirana. During a meeting with the State Police, attended also by Interior Minister Ervin Demo, Rama described young people taking part in the protests as individuals in need of psychological treatment and claimed they are being used by foreign services to destabilize Albania.
Commenting on the protesters’ actions and the use of molotov cocktails, the prime minister said that some of them seek chaos and destruction, while describing them as young people coming from the outskirts to attack the capital’s center.
“They worship the molotov and the chaos and rush to the shops. This group needs a psychologist and to be treated by society as a human group of girls and boys who come from the outskirts to destroy the center, they have great misunderstandings”, Rama stated.
The prime minister also claimed that protesters are being used by foreign services and actors who, according to him, have malicious intentions toward Albania. In this context, he mentioned Russia, saying it does not want Albania to be stable, with a developed economy and in the European Union.
Rama also defended the actions of the State Police during the protests, stating that officers have shown maximum restraint.
He also addressed the protests near the Ministry of Education, questioning students’ participation in them. According to the prime minister, footage of protesters throwing stones and applauding when police officers are set on fire does not match what he expects from students.
“How can they be students, those who admire the stone and stand behind those who throw stones and applaud when a policeman burns”, Rama said.
During his speech, Rama attacked the protesters, calling them ‘hostages’ and people without schooling.
“A wave of violence that has nothing to do with any of the reasons of a democratic country to demand more from the government and to be dissatisfied. I came again with this, because one must hold it in hand, weigh it, calculate how much weight is added when it comes to directing people under uniform and what it can do to anyone. This is not negotiable. With anyone who puts this in front, there is no negotiation, because at the moment the state negotiates with this, it has fallen. When this wins, then the logic of this becomes the state itself. Albania has seen this film more than once, and its consequences are wounds that take years to heal.
The young people of this do not want peace but overthrow; they are young people idealized under the inspiration of that dark and new force that has appeared in Europe, which Trump has declared a terrorist organization.
This does not mean that young people who think life is TikTok, and who, with TikTok and without being able to connect words together, will build Albania. They are hostages of a new spirit and ideology that has only one mission: Destroy, demolish everything, level it, because we will start from scratch.”, he said.