ALBANIANS TELL THEIR PM: YOU TURNED US INTO RAFT PEOPLE
THOUSANDS of people took to the streets of the Albanian capital Tirana yesterday to demonstrate against Edi Rama’s Socialist government.
Rallied by Sali Berisha, the head of the opposition, they gathered outside Mr Rama’s office to protest against alleged government corruption and the rising cost of fuel and food.
In a speech to the crowd, Mr Berisha said that Mr Rama was to blame for the mass departure of young people from Albania – which has left Britain facing waves of illegal immigration.
The former prime minister and head of the Democratic Party claimed the world now ‘sees us as raft people’ after an estimated 12,000 Albanians crossed the Channel in small boats this year. ‘Albanians today are a people of rafts,’ he declared, ‘because someone – and this someone is Edi Rama – robbed them of their vote, turned their freedoms into an illusion, into a fictitious vote, only so he could stay in power.’
Earlier this month Mr Rama accused the British Government of discriminating against Albanians to distract from its ‘policy failures’.
As they marched through Tirana, protesters carried a rubber dinghy bearing British and Albanian flags to ‘express their concern about the mass exodus’ of young people, according to the journalist and activist Isa Myzyraj.
Up to 1,200 police officers, many in full riot gear, were deployed to control the swelling crowds, claimed local reports. Even so, some demonstrators broke through police cordons to kick and throw paint at the door of the prime minister’s office.