In December 1990, Ramiz Alia's regime in Albania was blowing the whistle, but it was still "biting". The borders remained hermetically closed to the outside world and anyone who attempted to cross them was shot. Some student protests in Tirana with union demands were at the limits of what was acceptable for the dictatorship. It was Tuesday the 11th of the month, and there is no religious holiday in the Christian calendar. For the Greeks of Albania, however, that Tuesday has been recorded in their history.
Today, every year, in the village of Alykos, near Agioi Saranda, the inhabitants of the Bourkos plain with the minority villages pay homage to their four children who were murdered at the border, one step before they trample over the barbed wire fences and breathe the wind of freedom. They commemorate, together, for the repose of the souls of the thousands of expatriates and Albanians who during Hoxha were exterminated by the mechanisms of the regime while trying to escape to Greece and their corpses were dragged tied to tractors in the villages as an example...
It rained all day. In the blur, a Chinese-made truck, one of the few vehicles circulating at the time, approached the barbed wire fences of the "Jasta" camp in the hills of Agioi Saranda. A soldier with a Kalashnikov under the hood leaped out from the post of a remote lookout, sat in the passenger seat, and the truck roared off into the night.
The risky escape project of the two friends, along with some other expatriates who then "loaded" from the minority village of Alyko, had begun. However, the journey towards the dream will be drowned in blood at the border. However, he will become the trigger for the only dynamic rebellion in Albania against the regime. Thousands of expatriates, carrying the coffins of the dead, marched armed with axes, clubs, crowbars and rakes towards the city of Agios Sarandas and clashed on its outskirts with the police, the army and militia groups of the party, which were sent to intercept them.
Arriving at the border, opposite the village of Mavromati Thesprotias, the five young men, Vagelis Mitrou from the village of Germa, Thanasis Kotsis, Thomas Massios and Antonis Raftis from Alikos and the soldier from Fieri, left the truck a short distance away and continued pedestrian. As they approached the electric wire fence, however, they were noticed by the guards who started shooting at them.
The company soldier returned fire killing an Albanian guard and the conflict escalated. Two of the expatriates were killed on the spot and the other two were seriously injured, while the armed Albanian soldier was arrested, about whose role much was said afterwards. The dead and wounded were taken to the nearby village of Tsifliki, where according to the testimonies of locals, amid screams and moans, the two seriously wounded youths were shot. As soon as the news reached the village, hundreds of people started for the border, some to receive the bodies and others to take advantage of the confusion in Greece.
The dead children were transported to the village in a truck they "ordered" along the way, which was seething with anger against the regime and demanding revenge. With abbreviated procedures, they decided to move carrying the coffins with the bodies of the children to Saint Saranda to burn the party and police offices.
The then seventeen-year-old Leonidas Papas, who was at the top of the march of the angry, holding a lid from the coffins, tells APE-MPE, exactly thirty years later. "It was an unprecedented situation, a spontaneous uprising. Men, women, old people, small children, we started with obituaries, curses and slogans to go and set them on fire in Agios Saranta. There was neither organization nor guidance, each one did what expressed him.
"We were shouting slogans 'down with the dictatorship', 'Long live freedom', 'Ramiz Alia is a murderer' and here and there there was no 'Union with Greece'. There was a frenzy, such slogans had never been heard before. Rage and passion were overflowing, we were determined for everything. Along the way, other Greeks from the minority villages joined us, in the end we numbered over two to three thousand".
At a distance of two kilometers from Agioi Saranda, in a ravine in the village of Lykursi, the regime had deployed forces of the army (without weapons), the police and parastatals of the party militia, to prevent the procession from entering the city.
“As soon as we came face to face, they asked us to back off. In front went the coffins and behind a world that could not be held back by anything. At some point the collision happened. A commotion could be heard behind us and people were pushing us forward. We pushed back the soldiers who did not carry weapons and clashed with the policemen who at some point started shooting. At the sight of the wounded, the crowd went into a rage.
From everywhere you could hear voices, curses, appeals of mothers who had lost their children in Panzourlism, the obituaries referred to the ceremony of an ancient tragedy. At some point in the afternoon the cooler voices prevailed and it was decided to turn back to bury the children. After all, we had achieved our goal. Such a thing had never happened in Albania".
To our question about how the Alia regime reacted to this unprecedented outburst of expatriates, Leonidas Papas, an engineer today and former president of Omonia, says:"For several days there was an atmosphere of overexcitement in the village. We lived hours of autonomy, absence of the regime, unprecedented. No police, no nothing. No one in uniform. The police blocked them at a distance from the entrances of the city and did not allow the people of Aliki to go to Agioi Saranda. Not even the Alikiites who lived in Agioi Saranda were allowed to go out. They were afraid that we would go one by one and then join together and march through the city.
"One day they sent us a message with their hafies that the border guard who was killed at the border was from the north and because the northerners have the law of revenge, they were trying to spread the word that they are coming down en masse from the north to kill and take the blood back. That a huge convoy is coming, stopped by the police who allegedly protected us from massacre. I remember that when this rumor spread, all the villagers gathered in the village with axes, trikulias, knives, scythes to defend themselves. Some were afraid and told us to move for a while to another neighboring village so that the Greeks would protect us there. Twenty days later it was announced by the regime that we will have a plurality, everyone started speaking openly against the regime, things relaxed.
"The media of the regime smothered the issue. At that time there was state television, one channel, only Zeri Populit was an informative newspaper, there was Argyrokastro radio, controlled of course, there were also some newspapers with purely cultural content, nothing to do with current affairs.
"Of course they didn't say anything. Everything learned was learned by word of mouth. Things would have been completely different if this had happened in 1985 or even earlier, the regime would have uprooted the entire village and sent us into exile. They would say that they will contaminate our entire area. They would execute many, they would imprison even more, there would be a people's court for the whole village. The whole village would leave. Such a thing would hardly happen without considering it improbable. In any case, he might have begun to relax somewhat, and talk to each other about the regime, but still no one dared to think of crossing over to Greece...".
A year later, the regime collapsed and the residents of Alykos held the first memorial service for their heroic children. In 1994, by the decision of President Sali Berisha, the four expatriates will be officially recognized as "martyrs of the Republic" and in 2007, with funds from the Greek Parliament, a monument was erected in the square of Alikos, where every year, on December 12, the four young people were buried , a memorial service is held and events follow. A modest memorial ceremony will also be held tomorrow to mark thirty years since the death of that day in the village.
SOURCE:APE-ME