Police beating caught on camera leads to firing of deputy chief. State Police Chief Artan Didi says the use of violence from police officials was not acceptable. Amnesty International report shows violence part of a wider trend in Albania.
TIRANA, Feb. 26 – The latest in a series of incidents of police brutality caught on camera has led to the firing of the deputy police chief in the southeastern city of Korçë and the suspension of several police officers.
The incident occurred last weekend, and a cell phone video released through social media channels showed how a minor traffic accident between a 31-year-old man and the deputy police chief, Arben Hasani, led to the beating of the driver in public by several police officers.
Three policemen are shown to hit the driver, as he was taken in custody, after scratching Hasani’s car.
The video went viral and was quickly picked up by mainstream news media outlets.
A more severe beating followed at the police station, the victim told the media from a hospital bed.
Two other policemen have been suspended for the incident.
This was the latest amateur camera footage showing police brutality in Albania. Another man is seen being kicked on the ground by two cops as he was being taken into custody in another cell phone video, while earlier this month a police officer is seen slapping a woman and calling her “a whore” after she spit on him during traffic stop.
Authorities said in statement they welcomed the fact that residents were filming the work of police officers and added police too are increasingly using video footage to fight ill-treatment of residents and corruption.
State Police Chief Artan Didi held a meeting with senior police officials from all around the country saying that the use of violence from police officials was not acceptable.
Didi said that the acts seen in the videos severely damage the police image and its work, especially toward cooperating with the communities police serve.
“None of us have been given these jobs to show how powerful we are, but rather to show how powerful the law is,” said Didi, urging police to apply the law equal to all.
The recent incidents have turned political, with the main opposition Democratic Party calling on the government to fire the entire police leadership.
Albanian human rights organizations, like the Albanian Helsinki Committee, condemned the police violence as a repeated phenomenon, however, it also greeted the immediate response the incident by the police leadership as positive and urged for more instigations of this kind in the future.
Police ill-treatment among concerns in Amnesty International report
Amnesty International, states in its latest annual report released this week that Albania has not done enough to prevent police officers ill-treating those in custody.
“Impunity generally persisted for allegations of ill-treatment by law enforcement officers,” the report noted.
In May 2014, the Albanian Parliament introduced a new Internal Issues and Complaints Service to combat police corruption and human rights violations, the report noted.
It added that in August last year, the Head of the Public Order sector of the State Police in Kukës was charged with abuse and unlawful deprivation of liberty, for the ill-treatment of a detainee.
The organization also focused on domestic violence in Albania, which remains widespread and its victims rarely benefit from justice, the international organization for human rights says.
The report says access to adequate housing for people living in poverty, including Roma, remain very limited despite government pledges.
“A former barracks designated as temporary accommodation for victims of forced eviction did not meet international standards,” the report noted.
It also noted that former political prisoners organized hunger strikes in protest against the government’s failure to fairly distribute compensation for their imprisonment by the communist government between 1944 and 1991, when thousands were imprisoned or sent to labor camps and subjected to torture and other ill-treatment
In addition, the report noted that in response to EU pressure, Albania developed a new border management strategy.
“Over 500 undocumented migrants and refugees, including Syrians, were detained between January and June. Others were returned to Greece without access to an asylum process,” the report noted, adding that “by the end of September, over 12,000 Albanians had applied for asylum in EU member states, on grounds including domestic violence and discrimination against LGBTI people and Roma.”
BOX: Amnesty International calls global response to violence “shameful and ineffective.”
Internationally, governments failed to protect civilians from violence by states and armed groups, Amnesty International said, calling the global response “shameful and ineffective.”
In its annual report, the human rights watchdog called 2014 a “catastrophic” one for millions of people around the world.
“As people suffered an escalation in barbarous attacks and repression, the international community has been found wanting,” Amnesty secretary general Salil Shetty said in a statement.
The report said millions of civilians suffered horrific violence and human rights violations from Syria to Ukraine, Gaza to Nigeria, while the number of displaced people around the world exceeded 50 million last year for the first time since the end of World War II.
It criticized the European Union’s response to the 4 million Syrian refugees displaced by conflict in the world’s worst refugee crisis. By the end of 2014, only 150,000 Syrian refugees were living in EU states, it said, while 3,400 refugees and migrants had died in the Mediterranean Sea trying to make their way to Europe.
“It is abhorrent to see how wealthy countries’ efforts to keep people out take precedence over their efforts to keep people alive,” Shetty said.
Amnesty singled out the United Nations Security Council for criticism, with Shetty saying it had “miserably failed” to protect civilians.
