Census angers minorities

TIRANA, Jan. 5 – Albania held a census last year and its preliminary results in late December showed that the country’s population has dropped over the past decade because of emigration and lower fertility.
Albania’s population was 2.831 million in 2011, compared to 3.069 million in 2001. Men slightly outnumbered women, by 0.2 percent. The census also showed that the majority of Albanians, 53.7 percent, now live in urban areas. The urban residents had outnumbered the rural population for the first time in the history of censuses in Albania. Population density was 98.5 persons per square kilometer.
More than 1 million Albanians living in Western Europe and the U.S. were not included in October’s census.
These were the first results and the full ones are expected to come out later this spring.
Some civic groups and also the minorities complained about the census, its two questions on ethnicity and also religious affiliation.
Albania has some minority groups: Greeks, Macedonians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Vlachs, Roma and Egyptians. They also have complained of the censusand have said they would pursue a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, following Albania’s Constitutional Court ruling to erase the category “nationality” in legal and civil registries as it considered that not necessary to include on the census forms to enumerate the population in Albania.
The Albanian court acted on the legal challenge issued by several local judges as well as the Red and Black Alliance, one of the main opponents of recording ethnicity and religious identity in the Albanian census that took place last October.
The minorities claim the government openly discriminates them by making it unconstitutional for citizens to be of any other nationality than Albanian. Some already sent protest letters prior to deciding to challenge the court ruling in Strasbourg and some also called on their members to neglect the census.
But the government claimed it was a success and Prime Minister Sali Berisha ironized all opponents turning down their claims and figuring out that Albanians may now claim to be an urban country.
Only a small fraction of the population did not take part in the census.
The census is held every decade in all countries and also in the EU member countries. At this moment it is normal for Albania too to hold it. The census normally only reflects the data needed for the government and also for general statistics.
But in this country there are likely other hidden threats that make the civic groupings to oppose it.