Speech of Minister Kodheli at the opening of the museum exhibition “BUNK’ART”

: Published: Saturday, 22 November 2014 15:38

Mr. Prime Minister,
Mrs. Kumbaro,
Ladies and gentlemen, friends and guests,

Because of my duty, more than a year ago, I visited and accessed in many areas and facilities built over the decades from European countries in cases of possible and expected confrontations among them. When we first began talking about the activities on the occasion of the 70th Anniversary of Liberation, the idea to open to the public this military underground hotel, or anti-atomic bunker, exalted me.
It did so, because we need to remind to ourselves and to show our children how the effort of the men and women who fought and died during the National Liberation War (NLW) gradually turned into paranoia, which separated Albania for about 45 years from its natural western allies.

We are in the great week of remembrance of the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of the country. Albanians clearly joined the war of the Europe peoples against the Nazi-Fascist occupation. With the British-American full help and support and whipping the weapons away from the invaders, we were the only Eastern European country that was liberated without the help of the Red Army. And this is a strong symbol even for the uncertain present, when history tends to repeat itself.

It is shocking, when thinking about, how the ideals of freedom of November 1944 gradually turned into a structured totalitarian paranoia, part of which is also this facility. November 29 was the big day of freedom and equality for the Albanians after WWII, the great opportunity to have their destinies in hand, leaving behind the repressive and colonial past.

But history is not always sympathetic to small nations. The spiral we entered for 45 years was far from the ideals of the sons and daughters of this nation, who fought the invaders. We abandoned the natural western allies and moved constrained towards the Asian steppes, to fulfil the paranoia of the regime built substantially on social inequalities.

But I think, 45 years in the history of an ancient nation, like ours, are like 45 minutes in the life of a person. Hence, we should never forget that time and this facility, as many other similar, that will serve to us to remind ourselves that the respect for human rights, democracy and law enforcement will prosper Albania.

In this quarter century of democracy, we have often tended to return to authoritarianism. Ghosts of the past are still around us. We need to close these ghosts somewhere; why not, in this bunker of their dictatorial past.

Thank you.