Spiropali said that “August 23 was marked by the European Parliament as the Day of European Remembrance for victims of communism and fascism. A day in tribute and remembrance of those tens of millions of human lives cut short. Those personal dramas and tragedies of all human society caused by two extreme sides of regimes and ideologies. Two sides of the same abyss. Two sides of the same criminal coin, which were nazi-fascism and communism.”

“It is often advised that to move forward one should not turn one’s head back. It is often said the opposite. To guarantee security and make sure the evil does not repeat itself in the future, an eye must always be kept on the past. “What is forgotten risks repeating itself,” Spiropali said.

“It has only been roughly three decades since Albania separated from the communist dictatorship. Babies born in that breaking point of history are already parents and their parents are grandparents of grandchildren. It is very difficult to explain to a child today what the prison of conscience was, to explain the weight of the cell door, the darkness of the gallery where it was slavishly worked, the nightmare triggered by the barbed wire, or bullets shot in the name of ideology that divided Albanians, mother from son, sister from brother, neighbour from neighbour. ”

The parliament speaker said that three decades are a very long time for the individual, but are a few in the historical life of a nation.

For Parliament Speaker, these tragic stories should serve also the social-political life to strengthen democratic institutions and safeguarding of freedoms and human rights.

From 1949 to 1950, 82 men, 62 women and 37 children and young people perished in the Prison of Porto Palermo.

For 13 months, from 1949 to 1950, relentless attempts were made to turn this place int a dream grave and a mountain of human suffering, Spiropali said.

“Porto Palermo camp is also one of the sites that needs to be studied, displayed and like viruses that are killed when they come out into the sunlight, it must be illuminated by the light of recognition to break with the past for good,” she said.

/sm/