TIRANA, Dec. 5 – More than 6,000 people executed or killed during the communist regime do not have a proper resting place, because their graves have been hidden from their families.
This has been a pressing concern for the families and former dissidents, leading to the government’s action to support efforts by the International Commission on Missing People to find the remains of 6,000 Communist-era victims.
Last Friday, it held a donor conference in Tirana to support the work from the ICMP to find the remains of people who were executed or died in Communist camps and prisons from 1944 to 1990.
The conference served as a fundraising event so that ICMP starts working at two sites where it is suspected that a large number of bodies of people executed during communism were buried.
One is a former detention camp in the Ballsh area and the other spot is the Dajti mountain near Tirana, a place where a lot of executions were carried out during Communism.
Also in 2010, the then-government formally invited the ICMP to provide assistance in institution-building and technical assistance in the identification of remains through a DNA-led process. But it resulted in no deal as two-year negotiations seemed not to convince either side to proceed.
Albania’s former politically persecuted continue to protest against the government and ask for more financial compensation, despite the efforts made by different governments.
Albania’s Association of Former Political Prisoners says about 5,577 men and 450 women were executed for political crimes during the communist regime. About 100,000 others were imprisoned or sent to labor camps.
