Police terror against protesters reached its peak on Monday evening, the sixth day of student protests, when the streets of Tirana became scenes of chases and beatings of young people by groups of police officers who had gotten out of control. Footage filmed during the evening shows uniformed officers, often wearing masks and without identification marks, running after protesters, hitting them with rubber batons, punching and kicking them, and continuing to intervene even against people who are not seen using violence. Among them are minors, who are chased through the streets of the capital by officers equipped to intervene in protests.
More than on any other day of clashes, the police appeared to have become a force that had lost the logic of maintaining order and aimed solely at physically punishing protesters. Instead of neutralizing those who committed acts of violence, frustrated police officers often appeared to beat up defenseless young people who posed no apparent threat.
The incidents started in the morning hours.
The video above shows a police officer hitting a student with a rubber baton, while the student begged not to be shot and insisted that he had done nothing illegal.
Young protesters were seen hanging out for no reason, just because they were out on the streets, and being pressured for no reason.
During the morning, the police repeatedly used tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets. But the intervention deteriorated in the evening, when the pursuit of protesters moved from the main boulevards and squares to the alleys of the capital.
Police entering church yards as seen in the video above. Groups of officers running after young people and protesters being shot in the streets away from institutions created images of a punitive operation. In the scenes seen below, the goal no longer seemed to be simply to disperse the crowd, but to shoot those who remained on the streets.
In the footage above, a group of 15-year-olds are seen being surrounded by police after being beaten. When reporters ask them if they had been at the protest or not, some of them say they are afraid to speak out for fear of being beaten up more by the police.
What gives a political dimension to these images is the fact that the escalation occurred a few hours after Prime Minister Edi Rama's speech to the leaders of the State Police.
While holding a stone in his hand, the prime minister announced that he would give a reward of 2,500 euros to the protest police officers and further, there would be a salary increase in January.
Instead of asking the officers for restraint in the face of an increasingly tense situation, Rama incited them towards violence when he portrayed the young protesters as vandals, extremists and manipulated by foreign forces.
Denigrating the protesters in front of the police, he used expressions such as "blind beings, uneducated people, people who don't know where they come from or where they're going," while linking the protests to ANTIFA, Russia, and Iran.
But Rama also drew an equal sign between those who peacefully protest and those who attack police, paving the way for mass terror against anyone who came before the police.
"Anyone who is in a violent demonstration is a target of the state police," he declared, then adding: "And for this reason, you are just as much a target of the police as the other one," the prime minister said.
The consequences were seen in the evening. Dozens of arrests, but hundreds of young people beaten and raped by out-of-control police officers, who on Monday evening resembled out-of-control mercenaries more than state employees, but satisfied because they had 2,500 euros in their pockets./Lapsi.al
