ALBANIA/FILE: Diehard Hoxha supporters celebrate late Albanian dictator's 100th birthday

Record ID: 560703

  • Title: ALBANIA/FILE: Diehard Hoxha supporters celebrate late Albanian dictator's 100th birthday
  • Date: 15th October 2008
  • Summary: (CEEF) TIRANA, ALBANIA (FILE - 1981) (REUTERS) LARGE PORTRAIT OF HOXHA ABOVE BALCONY AT OPEN AIR RALLY HOXHA WAVING TO CROWD
  • Embargoed: 30th October 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: History,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA2ILS66GJ1UXF8MNX1QDW8LBU6
  • Story Text: Diehard supporters of Albania's late Stalinist dictator, Enver Hoxha, joined his son to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth on Monday, hoping history would one day restore his now-tarnished image.
    Hoxha's widow, Nexhmije, and his son Ilir wanted to welcome visitors inside three-storey stone mansion where he was born, but authorities refused to let them use the house which now serves as the town's ethnographical museum.
    Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha described the celebration as monstrous and shameful, saying Hoxha had persecuted, interned, jailed and executed a quarter of Albanians.
    Graffiti in red showing Hoxha's communist star, the acronyms of the Communist party Hoxha led, his name and date of birth are all over Gjirokaster. Some has been whitewashed or written over by detractors.
    Hoxha supporters proudly showed off the memorabilia they had collected, lamenting times gone by.
    "In the lifetime of Enver Hoxha, the people were happy, there were not crimes and murders. While nowadays, as Enver predicted, man eats man. This is what happens now," said veteran of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War, Sherif Maskaj.
    "If Enver Hoxha had not existed, if there would be no Tirana and Albania, and if they were not involved in defending the nation, there would have not been a liberation war in Kosovo and Kosovo would not have been a republic now," said ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, Rexhep Krasniqi.
    Hoxha's son Ilir told Reuters that the media has censored positive comments about his father.
    "I think it is nonsense that they are afraid of a dead dictator.
    His power does not consist in what appears in the media but in what he has done for his people, the Albanians in Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro, the ethnic Greeks and the the Cham Albanians in Greece," he said.
    Asked by reporters if the family felt guilty about the repression and persecution under Hoxha's rule, Ilir, who in the past spent a year in jail for defending his father, said, everything had happened according to the law.
    Enver Hoxha was born on October 16, 1908, and after leading the World War Two resistance, ruled Albania for 40 years as one the world's most reclusive and oppressive states. He died on April 11, 1983.
    He destroyed mosques and churches and banned religion, closed the borders and in a bout of paranoia built thousands of pillbox bunkers across the Adriatic and Ioanian Sea coastlines.
    Today most Albanians condemn Hoxha's rule as a dark period. Although still largely rural, the country has seen fast economic growth and a building boom in recent years as it tries to catch up with wealthier European nations.
    But in Gjirokaster, amid booming songs and speeches against the backdrop of a larger-than-life picture of Hoxha, dozens of supporters hailed him for changing Albania from a feudal country to a developed nation with free schools and education.

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