Most of these young men have hopelessness in their eyes. The hopelessness turns into rage and fills their fingers with strength as they clutch a stone and throw it against the police, as they grip a street sign and try to take it down, as they light a Christmas tree on fire.
The wrongful killing of 25 year old Klodian Rasha by a police officer in unjustifiable conditions, as self-defense or public danger would have been, was a very grave episode which put a major strain on relations between police and citizens. The foot-in-mouth behavior of the police with their confusing attempts to shift the blame and create justifications made things much worse. The protest of many citizens, mainly youth in various cities of Albania and most vocally in the capital is fully justified.
There is something to be said against violence, which is unjustified. The violence perpetrated against police and the violence against protesters, especially minors, are both very worrying, very damaging to the fabric of Albanian society.
However the most important thing right now is to understand what the factors that fuel this rage are. The increasingly aggressive behavior of police officers that have fronted citizens in the protest and clashes from the Astir highway to the demolition of the National Theatre is one of them, the arrogance of the state institutions and the political majority and their tendency to blame everyone and everything else except themselves is another. Another major one is the bad governance, pervasiveness of corruption and deteriorating prospects for economic and social improvement.
Add to this a sprinkle to worldwide pandemic that takes its toll among families, strains the public services and increase unemployment and you have the perfect combusting mix of social uprising.
However what shines through unmistakably, with pain and terror is the hopelessness. Most of these young men have hopelessness in their eyes. The hopelessness fills their fingers with strength as they grab a stone and throw it against the police, as they grip a street sign and try to take it down, as they light a Christmas tree on fire.
Some of their peers have understood the weight of this hopelessness and have overcome it by taking their bags and leaving, leaving for school, leaving for seasonal jobs, leaving for Germany. Not looking back.
Therefore it becomes urgent for this government and this majority to cast aside their brutal arrogance, their willful blindness and stop claiming that these protest are organized by the opposition or even worse paid by them. It becomes urgent to see the real discontent and address it beyond the fake pity about misuse of minors or the barrage of verbal abuse towards media and opposition.
Hopelessness is often a point of no return.
