Clashes Erupt at Albania Anti-Government Protest

A few thousand people gathered in the Albanian capital at demonstrations organized by the country’s right-wing opposition, according to an AFP reporter.

Scuffles first broke out in front of the government building when demonstrators tried to break through a police cordon and some of them threw Molotov cocktails.

The crowd then moved toward the headquarters of Rama’s Socialist Party where more Molotov cocktails were thrown, setting on fire the entrance door and a banner with the prime minister’s image, the AFP journalist reported.

The protesters, who want Rama to step down and a caretaker government to take over until next year’s parliamentary elections, also targeted the interior ministry headquarters and the city hall with Molotov cocktails. A bus station and several garbage containers were set on fire.

Police, deployed in large numbers, used teargas in a bid to disperse the crowd moving toward the parliament.

“So far 10 police officers have been injured in the attacks with Molotov cocktails, pyrotechnics and solid objects,” a police statement said.

Meanwhile, according to the AFP reporter at least three demonstrators were mildly injured by Molotov cocktails during the nearly four-hour protest.

Police urged the demonstrators to stop attacking them and state institutions, warning that measures were being taken to identify those involved in the attacks.

“This is the first step toward civil disobedience,” Flamur Noka, an official of the main opposition Democratic Party, told reporters in front of the party’s headquarter.

“We will continue our battle of civil disobedience until Rama resigns and a caretaker government is formed,” he said.

The protest was held a week after opposition lawmakers threw their chairs out of parliament and set them on fire in protest at a prison sentence handed to one of their peers.

Ervin Salianji, an official of the Democratic Party, in September was found guilty of “giving false testimony” in a drug trafficking case that targeted the brother of a lawmaker of the ruling Socialist Party.

The opposition described the MP’s arrest and conviction as a “blind act of revenge and political terror against the Democratic Party,” accusing Rama of being behind it.

Democratic Party leader and former prime minister Sali Berisha said earlier that Monday’s protests would be the “battle of our lives.”

Berisha has been under house arrest since December last year on charges of “passive corruption.”

He has rejected the accusations against him as politically motivated.