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Helping Democracy From Afar
| Article
# : |
18528 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1991 |
2,850 Words |
| Author
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Elez Biberaj
Elez Biberaj is chief of the Albania Service of Voice of
America. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia
University and is the author of Albania: A Socialist Maverick
(Westview Press, 1990). |
For the communist leaders of Albania, the defection to France of Albania's greatest living writer could not have come at a worse time. The announcement came suddenly in October 1990, at the close of the Balkan Foreign Ministers' Conference, the highest level meeting of regional officials ever held in Albania. The government had made elaborate preparations and built up the meeting as a major event marking the beginning of a new phase in Albania's relations with its neighbors. The Tirane meeting, which followed President Ramiz Alia's participation at the U.N. General Assembly's session in New York, represented an important aspect of the regime's policy of returning Albania to the mainstream of international politics. Albania hoped to enlist its neighbors' support for full membership in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which would represent a major step toward the country's eventual integration into Europe after decades of self-imposed isolation.
The conference came less than four months after more than four thousand Albanians had entered foreign embassies in Tirane in early July and eventually gained permission to emigrate. The refugee crisis thrust Albania into the limelight and focused international attention on human rights violations and lack of democracy. The incident also caused a serious strain in Tirane's relations with Western European countries. With the Tirane conference, Alia hoped to improve his regime's tarnished image and portray Albania as a politically stable country poised for democratic reforms. To this end more than ninety foreign correspondents were invited to cover the meeting.
Kadare announced in Paris on October 25 that he had asked French authorities for political asylum. Until then, he had been considered by many as a supporter of Ramiz Alia's policies. At the time of his defection he was vice president of the Democratic Front, the country's largest communist-controlled mass organization. And during 1970-1982, he had been a member of the People's Assembly.
Although Kadare claims the announcement of his decision was not deliberately set to coincide with the Tirane meeting, the news of his defection overshadowed the results of the conference.
In announcing his defection, Kadare said he was disappointed with the slow pace of political reforms. He said he had met with President Alia in the spring of 1990 and had been hopeful genuine reforms would be implemented. But in the wake of the refugee crisis in July 1990, according to Kadare, there were signs Alia was tilting toward traditional
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