TIRANA TIMES
TIRANA, Sept. 19 – Archbishop Angelo Masaffra of the Catholic Archdiocese of Shkodra on Tuesday read a decree which said the Catholic Church will excommunicate anyone who dares commit a murder for a blood feud cause.
Masaffra said that involves all the religious rites linked to the church. He also said how a person could be pardon if accepted the crime and apologized.
The next day Prime Minister Sali Berisha said the government would ask the change of the penal code on the blood feud and revenge punishment to life imprisonment, together with that for the killers of police officers.
The move was sparked by the killing of a teenager last month while she was walking together with her father in Shkodra streets. There is a feeling that the blood feud cause is being used unsparingly by many people to take revenge, often also involving women and children.
That is a good move, though so much alter than what the other civic organizations have long asked from the authorities to stop this shameful image of the country.
The Albanian Institute of International Studies has asked for such a punishment since seven-eight years ago. Following research studies on the phenomenon the Institute had proposed harsh punishment for such a crime. It had also asked for the involvement not only of the government authorities but also of the religious communities to stop such murders.
The Catholic Church in Shkodra said that, “Prompted by the murders occurring among our people and in an effort to protect them the diocese has issued a decree of excommunication for all who kill or engage in blood feuds”.
Under Catholic canon law, excommunication is the ultimate censure, depriving the recipient of access to all sacraments of the Church, from baptism and mass to last unction.
What was really interesting in the church’s decree was that it said for the people involved in blood feud cases that upon accepting the crime they should first serve the legal punishment, the imprisonment set from the courts, before asking pardon at the church.
Since the fall of the communist regime more than two decades ago, the country saw a revival of the vendetta cases, taking hundreds of family members, children included, to isolation fearing revenge acts that is murder.
All Albanians, and not a single one among the young generation at least would ask a return of that age, remember how revenge acts were stopped from the former communist regime. They do want that form of discipline and order existing at the time, when people feared using a weapon to take revenge. Even at that time many people hid rifles but they were afraid of using them.
With the coming of democracy in 1990 the Catholic Church was the first to hold a mass at the Shkodra cemetery participated of thousands of people, many of them from other religious communities.
The lack of the proper law and order, the existence of a strong government urged many people toward vigilante; take the law into their hands.
In many cases people tried to use the medieval code of Lek Dukagjini in the killing for blood feud. But soon that idea degenerated and though mentioned, everyone knows that that code has really nothing to do with such murders. That code does not allow the killing of a woman or a child and it had strict steps in revenge acts, which are almost never respected by the people claiming vendetta.
Authorities on their side have done so little, not to say anything at all. One may only remember a former president, Alfred Moisiu, once taking part at a conference of the civic organizations involved in reconciliation of the blood feud cases.
Everything has remained in the hands of a few non-governmental organizations and individuals. Often their intervention has turned into a money-earning act and really does nothing to help the cases. People have slowly started to lose trust in many mediators.
There is no data or statistics on the number of the families, persons involved in blood feud issues in the country. It is generally accepted that the phenomenon is more spread in northern Albania. It is hard to believe government statistics claiming that such killings have fallen sharply over the last decade, when one hears how the 17-year old girl was shot dead downtown Shkodra.
It is high time that authorities, the central government and local authorities, the civic organizations and especially other religious communities join ranks to fight such a negative phenomenon in the country.
