This International Youth Day, Tirana’s Municipality will bring together three generations of Albanians in the context of the activity: ‘8 December, the first meeting with freedom’.
Organized in the Youth Centre TEN, at 12am, this event will celebrate the International Youth Day by explaining its meaning and significance, screening the documentary 8 DHJETOR 1990…27 VJET PAS (‘8 December 1990…27 years later’) and hosting in a panel members of three generations: those who brought change in the beginning of the 90’s with present-day youth, those born at the beginning and at the end of the 90’s, in order to discuss the challenges of the youth generation after generation.
International Youth Day is an important date for Albania, as it was on the 8th of December, in 1990, that a group of students and professors of the University of Tirana became the initiators and make protagonists of the peaceful protests that brought the fall of communism and birth of democracy in the country. Their public act, as much political as it was civil, non-violently ended Albania’s long isolation period and opened the way for the country’s European integration.
The students who protested in December of 1990 had high aspirations and national ideals which to this day remain the best democratic school of thought. Led by the motto ‘We love Albania like the whole of Europe’, they demanded the establishment of a system that bore western values and legal duties, as well as the guarantee of political pluralism as the main basis for a free and developed society.
The event will be launched by Tirana’s major, Erion Veliaj, who is also the organizer. After the documentary airs, the open panel titled “Generations’ face-off: December in three periods” will take place, consisting of prominent Albanian figures such as Pandeli Majko, Mesila Doda, Blendi Gonxhe, Ilir Dizdari and Bislim Ahmetaj.
Albania’s Youth Day, 8 December, was announced by the Albanian Parliament as National Youth Day in memory of the Student Movement of 1990.
