Notes from day 137 of Albania’s Flamingo Revolution
Eric Czuleger, reporting from Tirana. This story is being updated as events develop. Last update: Thursday, Oct. 15
The background
The Flamingo Revolution has been in the streets of Tirana for 137 days. It began on May 31, a day after private security guards assaulted a member of the public at a demonstration in Zvërnec against a luxury resort in a protected wetland linked to Jared Kushner.
It grew into a movement demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama over corruption and state capture. For most of those 137 days it has been peaceful and self policing. Any indication of violence or property destruction was shamed and constrained by participants.
That changed on Tuesday.
A student rally outside the Ministry of Education over tuition, dormitory conditions and the price of living in the capital turned into a running fight with police. Twenty-three people were detained overnight. Six officers and a journalist were injured. By Wednesday the student movement and the Flamingo movement had merged.
Suddenly the frustration of over 100 days of protests and no action found its accelerant in young men willing to destroy property and fight the powers that be with rocks and fireworks. That's how we got here.
The Flamingo Revolution had numbers and endurance. The students brought young men with nothing to lose and a grievance the state could not buy off. Both demanded the same thing: that the state listen. If the government won't step down then at least elections could be possible. Instead they were met with silence and derision from the halls of power.
This is how the target list emerged. For several days and nights the violence has been aimed at banks and municipal buildings, several of them set ablaze. The night before I went out, videos were circulating of protesters beaten bloody, one young man with a visibly broken ankle being dragged away unconscious.
Wednesday, 7pm: the Ministry of Justice
I stood outside the Ministry of Justice and watched young men break into the building and set the ground floor on fire. A couple of doors down, another group had pulled a street sign out of the pavement and was using it as a battering ram on the door of a bank.
The young men in masks were not alone. Alongside them stood older people, in their fifties and sixties, taking pictures and cheering them on. “Bravo çuni!” I heard it more than once as a pile of debris went up. Good job, boys.
This is where the Rubicon got crossed in both directions. The police have brutalized protesters. The protesters have burned government buildings. Each side now has to answer the other or risk becoming irrelevant to its own base. Neither can walk it back.
Thursday, 11am: the march on Parliament
I found the crowd on the boulevard. Young men were climbing stoplights and tearing apart a city-owned snack kiosk. There was not a police officer in sight. The rumor moving through the crowd was that Parliament was next.
A young professional woman agreed to talk. The violence, she told me, is aimed at the government and the financial institutions and nothing else. She ended the interview by urging people to come to the protest to burn the city and burn the government.
Then someone started the move. Nobody announced it. We were all walking toward Parliament. A refrigerator lay beaten into scrap in the middle of the road. The chant was “Studentët po vijnë.” The students are coming. There was no leader to follow. The crowd moved like a flock of birds changing direction with out a leader.
We reached Parliament without obstruction. I found that strange. If there is one building the police know the crowd is coming for, it is the seat of government. Young men in black hoodies went to work on the side doors. When the doors gave, they called for gasoline.
“Policia, policia, policia.” Six officers in riot gear came up the street. Six. The crowd met them with rocks, then turned the barricades into battering rams. The fight was brief and intense. The officers had no gas and no stun grenades. They turned and ran.
Then a CS canister came rattling down the road and cooked off a grey cloud. The crowd ran when they couldn't take the noxious fumes any more. But there were more targets to be had.
Thursday, noon: the Ministry of Education
Parliament is not the only government building in Tirana. The crowd turned toward the Ministry of Education, where Tuesday’s trouble began. This time the state was ready. Water cannon, tear gas, stun grenades. The crowd broke and reformed.
Early afternoon: the bonfire at Skanderbeg Square
They claimed the intersection where Rruga e Kavajës meets Skanderbeg Square. Recycling bins got dragged into the crosswalk and filled with whatever the city had left lying around. The whole thing went up. Young men stood on top of the burning bins for photographs, Albanian flags raised over the smoke.
Behind them, the older generation had come by to watch. Some took pictures. Some cheered. The support for violence against government buildings and banks is not universal. It is widespread. One line came back to me over and over, from people of every age.
We tried the peaceful way.
Afternoon: cat and mouse
By mid-afternoon the day had settled into a pattern. The protesters pick a government building or a bank and try to destroy it. The riot police arrive with gas and stun grenades. Tear gas comes in, the crowd scatters, and twenty minutes later it has reformed in another part of town and picked a new target.
Repeat. The flock moves on. The state chases it. Rocks and fireworks. Gas and stun grenades. Batons versus street signs. A handful of heavily armored police against an army of angry protestors with the desire and support to see the government burn.
This is what I am seeing. Will it be effective to make political change? That I don't know.
The rumors, and what I’ve seen
Every crowd generates its own intelligence. Here are the three claims I keep hearing, and my read on each.
The protesters are paid agitators. The people doing most of the damage are high-school and university-aged young men. That is the exact demographic the student protests are about. I have seen no evidence that anyone is paying them. Grievance is free and young men are the most dangerous ballistics in the world.
The police are foreign forces brought in to brutalize the population. I walked up to the police line and asked in Albanian. The officers who told me to get lost were Albanian. If a foreign government had sent riot police, they would be better at this.
The government is leaving buildings unprotected on purpose so it can crack down harder. I have seen no evidence for this either. The simpler explanation is that the police are understaffed and the planning is poor. Twenty officers against more than a hundred protesters reads like a shortage. This is a movement about government corruption and its inability to meet public needs. This extends to poorly trained and staffed police as well.
What comes next
Both sides have crossed a line they cannot uncross. The state has to show it can hold its own buildings. The crowd has to show it can keep taking them. That is the logic of tonight.
We will see what happens. Stay tuned.