The parents of students detained during protests in Tirana have denounced police violence and arrests they consider unjust. Worried about their children’s fate and disillusioned with the authorities, they describe economic hardship, a lack of prospects and fears that the young people who took to the streets to demand a better future in Albania will end up leaving it.
Since October 13, Tirana has been gripped by a wave of clashes between protesters and police as demonstrations by university and school students against Prime Minister Edi Rama’s government escalated.
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The young protesters oppose corruption, the high cost of living, the lack of economic prospects and conditions in education, while demanding the prime minister’s resignation.
The demonstrations, which followed months of largely peaceful protests, have been accompanied by clashes, damage to public and private property, police use of tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets, and numerous arrests.
Police have reported injured officers and damage to institutional buildings, while human rights and media organizations have raised concerns about whether the use of force has been proportionate.
But as footage of the clashes has filled television news reports, another drama has unfolded outside police stations and courthouses, where parents wait for news of their detained children.
Outside the detention facility near Police Station No. 3 in Tirana, a 54-year-old man struggles to hold back tears as he recounts how his son, a third-year student at the Agricultural University, ended up in police custody during the protests that have swept the capital.
The last time they spoke, his son told him over the phone that he was walking along the pavement to get a taxi. It was 7:30 p.m. After that, his son stopped answering his calls.
“They used barbaric violence,” he says, adding that his son is in a cell with a broken nose and facial injuries from police blows.
He also alleges that a friend of his son ended up in hospital after being beaten with rubber batons. According to him, a video shared on Instagram shows girls shouting at police officers to stop beating the two young men.
“I beg the State Police not to maim the children,” he says. “Arrest him, but don’t hit him in the head,” he adds, before his voice trembles and he breaks into tears.
The father, who works as a security guard, says he can barely make ends meet on a salary of around 500,000 old lek a month. Now the family must also find money for lawyers to defend his son.
His story is just one of dozens of family dramas unfolding outside police stations and courthouses as protests against Prime Minister Edi Rama’s government have been accompanied by mass arrests and allegations of police violence.
Parents awaiting their children’s release report beatings with rubber batons, mistreatment during detention and arrests they consider unjust.
But their anger goes beyond police violence. They speak of low wages, the high cost of living, corruption and a lack of prospects—the same problems that brought their children out to protest.
Their accounts are dominated by disillusionment with a state that, they say, has failed to give young people opportunities to build a future in Albania and is now punishing them for demanding change.
Outside the Tirana Court, where he was awaiting a hearing to review his son’s detention, another father describes the experience as evidence of the fear that, he says, has replaced trust in institutions.
“Enver had them shot; this one is beating them to death,” he says, drawing a comparison between Edi Rama’s government and the totalitarian regime of former communist dictator Enver Hoxha.
His wife and daughter stand beside him.
The father says his son went out to protest not to cause unrest, but because he wanted to live in Albania and have a better future.
“My son went out to protest for his rights, for a better future in Albania. So he wouldn’t have to leave Albania, so he could stay here,” he says.
He alleges that during a visit to Police Station No. 3, he saw another young man with a broken nose who, he says, had not received the necessary medical care.
“Our first demand is for the rule of law in Albania, not police violence. Everyone should have rights,” he says.
Another parent, the father of an 18-year-old student, waits near the same detention facility. He alleges that his son was sprayed with an irritant and struck in the neck with a rubber baton before being held in custody.
He says that two hours after the detention, he received a call from a police officer telling him to come in for information about his son.
“You can take him in and check his identity, but not take him in under these kinds of conditions,” he says, calling on police not to use violence against school and university students.
He hopes the court will release his son.
The brother of another detained student, waiting outside the courthouse, also considers the arrest unlawful and says there is no evidence against him. He says the family learned of the detention through a phone call the young man made to his mother.
“Stop the violence against students,” he says, urging citizens to support the protest and students to distance themselves from acts of violence. “Rama should resign, because Albania won’t die if he resigns,” he adds.
The recent clashes also appear to have changed the makeup of the protests, bringing parents, pensioners and university lecturers onto the streets. They see the mobilization of young people as an opportunity to voice grievances that have accumulated over the years.
A woman in her 50s, who says she is protesting in support of the students, calls on parents and intellectuals not to remain indifferent.
“Young people are the future of this country. They must take this country’s destiny into their own hands,” she says, adding that the police violence is unprecedented.
“We must protect our children. It makes no difference whether they are mine or yours; they are all someone’s children,” she stresses.
Another woman, around 55, says she has been taking part in demonstrations for more than 120 days, but has found the clashes of the past week particularly distressing.
“We can’t eat, we can’t work, we can’t even smile with things the way they are,” she says, describing the police’s conduct as irresponsible.
For some older protesters, the demonstrations have brought back memories of the fear and repression of the past.
A pensioner who says he has followed the protests from the first day criticizes his own generation for not being determined enough to support young people.
“The younger generation, which has risen up and is demanding its rights, has not been helped by their fathers and grandfathers, because they have been afraid,” he says.
In his view, responsibility for the country’s future cannot be left to students alone.
Solidarity has also spread through the academic community.
Marsela Musabelliu, an economics lecturer, sees the protest as a call to fulfill a moral responsibility toward a generation that, she says, is losing hope.
“It pains me to see the lecture halls empty this year. It pains me to see the light of hope fading from my students’ eyes month after month,” she says.
Musabelliu calls on colleagues and citizens to show solidarity, arguing that indifference to the fate of young people will have consequences for society as a whole.
“Let’s come together and support them, however we can, whenever we can,” she says.
Beyond anger over the arrests and police violence, interviews with relatives and protesters reveal another source of discontent: the difficulty of making a living in Albania.
Low wages, high prices, a lack of affordable housing and emigration recur in the accounts of people of different ages and professions.
A woman who returned from abroad to live in Albania says her two children now live outside the country.
“I chose my country again as the place to live, but I see that the difficulties are enormous,” she says.
For her, the protests are not simply a confrontation with the government, but also a demand to stop the continuing departure of young people.
“What good is Europe to us if we cannot put our own country in order?” she asks. “We need to provide employment opportunities so there is a future in this country. People should not have to leave. They should come back and enjoy this country,” she adds.
A 71-year-old former miner offers another perspective on economic hardship.
He says he worked in the mines all his life and now receives a pension of 250,000 old lek a month, which is not enough even for electricity bills and medicine.
“I worked as a miner all my life and get 250,000 old lek a month. It’s not even enough to pay the electricity bill,” he says.
Although his children are married, he says they continue to face financial difficulties and uncertainty about the future.
The pensioner also links the current discontent to longstanding property ownership problems and the abandonment of villages. For him, the student protests express a disillusionment that extends beyond a single generation.
For many of those interviewed, Prime Minister Edi Rama’s resignation is seen as a way out of the crisis. Others call for investigations into police violence, the release of students they say were arrested without evidence, and guarantees of the right to protest. Behind the political demands, however, lies concern for their children’s future.
The relatives waiting outside police stations are not necessarily interested in clashes between political parties. They want to know whether their children are safe, whether they will be released and whether they will one day be able to live with dignity in the country where they were born.
For the 54-year-old father waiting outside the detention facility, that future already seems difficult to imagine in Albania. He says the past few days have been among the hardest of his life.
Amid concern for his son, legal expenses and the struggle to make ends meet, the decision to leave seems increasingly irreversible. Three days after his son’s arrest, he no longer speaks of the opportunities his son might have in Albania, but of where he will take him as soon as he gets out of his cell.
“I’m getting out of here,” the 54-year-old says. “I won’t leave my children here anymore either.”
