TIRANA, Dec. 14 – Genc Pollo, a senior lawmaker of the opposition Democratic Party who heads the Albanian Parliamentary Committee on Education and Media, has sent a message to Thorbjorn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, asking the human rights body to help fight media censorship in Albania following a series of events that Pollo believe are of concern.
“After apparent serious wrongdoing by the Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj related to the landfill where a teenage worker got accidentally killed two
journalistic initiatives to investigate the case ended up with the journalists such as Alida Tota and the Publicus group being abruptly fired and seeing their contracts unilaterally terminated. There seems to be good circumstantial evidence to link the authorities to this,” Pollo writes in his message.
He added that the ruling Socialist Party MPs breached parliamentary rules and procedures and even resorted to physical obstruction to prevent the Committee on Education and Media to hold hearings on this issue while government ministers in Parliament attacked the investigative journalists trying to discredit them.
