In the aftermath of the heinous murder of Vlora judge, Albania needs to reflect on property-related conflict and violence.
Tirana Times
The public execution of an Albanian judge, Skerdilajd Konomi, earlier this week in Vlora caused great distress not only in the justice community but the Albanian society as a whole.
Done through a car bomb, in the middle of a city street in the middle of the day, it was clear those behind this heinous act wanted to strike fear in the community – not just murder a young judge. The assassins appear to have taken a page out of the 1980’s Italian mafia methods, prompting authorities and others to quickly connect the murder to organized crime.
Police are investigating several leads to find the murders. One of them revolves around a property conflict in which the 33-year-old judge was involved not in his capacity as a judge but as a party in a lawsuit in another district. His family claimed to have inherited part of a considerable amount of land in the Lalzi Bay coastal area, north of Durres, which is currently one of the hottest and most expensive seaside real estate markets in Albania.
If the murder is indeed tied to a property conflict, it is unfortunately not the first one. Many of Albania’s property issues are currently unresolved thanks to unjust redistribution related to the communist era and conflicting laws since communism fell. As a result often there is more than one claimant for the same piece of land. The property distribution is often seen as unjust by those who owned the land before communism.
This ownership uncertainty stifles domestic and foreign investment, leaves a huge capital untapped, but above all creates conflict between the people claiming ownership.
According to a study by the Albanian Institute for International Studies, one of the top sources of conflict in the Albanian society today relates to property. Unfortunately, this trend is on the increase.
The fact that property registration is in shambles shows the state and the justice system have failed to properly handle the issue. Corruption eats at the country’s core too. The conflicts then start from fist-fights in courthouse steps to sophisticated murder of the organized-crime-style like the one we saw in Vlora this week.
Albania needs to address the root of property-related conflict, as it has caused too many victims and violence will likely continue in the future. It means setting up an integrated system to deal with property in the entire country rather just making changes here and there that ultimately don’t bring justice for all and allow crime to profit.
An entire group of Albanians were stripped of their rightfully-owned land during the communist era, and very little restitution has been offered so far. As long as property issues are not resolved justly for all those involved, conflict will continue to take place. To be sure, due to the reality in Albania, which means paperwork is scarce and corruption is rife, this won’t be easy. But it is high time for all those related to this issue to reflect, sit down and come up with a just solution accepted by all parties.
As a closing note on the murder, authorities need to find Konomi’s murderers as soon as possible and bring them to justice. If this can happen to a judge, one can only imagine how unprotected than man and woman in the street feel. Let’s use this sad occasion as a starting point to make sure such violence does not happen in the future.
