In this article
The miners’ protest and demand for status
Today, in Tirana’s stifling heat, dozens of miners broke the quiet by protesting outside the Prime Minister’s Office without the permission of those in power. Most were elderly, but their demand was the same as in recent years: status for miners!
In the afternoon I did a random “search” and found that repeated calls for protests had been reported for 6 months. Since March, there have been continual warnings of a “hunger strike”, and today the same promise came from those defying the heat of those in power.
In the last three months alone, the mine has claimed at least 4 lives. Yet this has not been the lead story in the traditional media. Today, meanwhile, as I searched up and down the internet, a piece on Balkanweb caught my eye: just one day before the protest, there was a piece of “commissioned news”*: “From ruin to revival/How Albchrome is changing the face of the Bulqiza mine”.
This “news” sat right beside banners for a private hospital, a bank, mobile phone companies and so on. But there were also media outlets, such as “Top-Channel”, that did not report today’s protest at all.
After watching two or three one-minute reports with no background information at all and reading the “response”* of those heating up the seats of power, a naive question came to mind: for God’s sake, why won’t they give them this status?!
Meanwhile, I thought of a group that already has a “status” in this country, and has had it since 1993, yet those up there, those in power, somehow managed to sour even that for them…
Of the 42,772 politically persecuted people listed by the Institute of the Politically Persecuted since 1997, according to the Supreme State Audit’s (KLSH) audit (2016), only 23,964 have applied. The rest, 18,808, have either had enough and, out of self-respect, no longer ask these people for anything, or no longer live in Albania at all!
I hope that, for the miners, the kinds of politicians we have had for 27 years will behave differently!
Commissioned news is any material supplied to the media, with or without payment or sponsorship, by the PR (Public Relations) departments of companies, institutions or parties that have an interest in creating or influencing perceptions around a particular image, idea or perception.