Islami Sisters placed on administrative
leave after 30 years working at the Voice Of America
By Mërgim Korça
The
two legendary journalist sisters, Isabela (Islami) Çoçoli and her sister Zamira
(Islami) Edwards, have been placed on Administrative Leave at the Voice of
America. This announcement rightly spurred the Albanian press to very actively
cover the topic for days. They worked there since 1985 and were singled out as
outstanding employees during the VOA presentation by director Mr. David Ensor on
December 18th, 2013. It is not my intention to write in length about
the escape from communist Albania by these two heroines and their late brother
Klement, who was drawn along Corfu Canal as they swam 12 kilometers from
Saranda to Corfu Island. The canal is known for the large numbers of sharks frequently
passing through it. Therefore I wanted to first, briefly emphasize what links
my family with the Islami family, from which the two heroines of this story
descend.
After
I expose the facts I know about the events that happened 30 years ago, it is
important for the reader to evaluate the recent decision of the VOA to place
the Islami sisters on administrative leave. This presentation of facts is also
my family’s moral obligation to the uncle of these two heroines, the late
Shazivar Islami, who died in a communist prison.
THE
DESCENT OF THE ISLAMI SISTERS
On
their mother’s side, the communist regime executed their grandfather, Maksut
Selenica, and his brother. The late honorable Nadire (Selenica) Islami, their
mother was imprisoned at a young age for her anti-communist beliefs. When she
was released from prison, after 10-years of suffering, she married late Mr.
Hajdar Islami, who had graduated from the Academy of Physical Education, “Farnesina,”
in Rome. The two sisters and their late brother Klement were the fruit of this
marriage. On their father’s side, their grandfather had studied theology as an
ordained Imam. His name, Dervish, had nothing to do with the official name of
the Bektashi sect. Late Dervish Islami carried the duties of the Vice Chair of
the Albanian Muslim Community.
Their
uncle, Shazivar, had studied in Florence and was appointed Chief of Staff to
the Minister of Education, just when the late professor Xhevat Korça was the
head of the ministry. After the arrest, Xhevat Korça was tried on the Special
Trial of April 1945 in which prosecutor Bedri Spahiu with a great triumphant
tone, thinking he nailed the defendant to the wall, charged the former Minister
of Education with the embezzlement of the F.A.P.I. funds, finances made
available that year to all institutions. However the prosecutor made the false
accusation without knowing that Shazivar Islami had released the original
document in which the Minister ordered the fund to be distributed in the form
of a monthly pay as a supplementary bonus for all teachers in Albania and
Kosova! Faced with the unpredicted situation, the prosecutor addressed the
jury, with the pretense: “the defendant gave out supplementary wages to the
teachers to make them pro-fascists!” Then the former minister addressed the
court, headed by Koçi Xoxe, saying, “If an Albanian teacher trades his
patriotic ideals for a wage, then I’ll admit, my intention was so!”
To
the account of the Islami sisters’ lineage, the heroines we are focused on, I
will briefly add two of my memories that have remained with me of honorable Hajdar
Islami. On one occasion Hajdar told me about his last meeting with his brother.
Shazivar had fallen ill while he was in prison, and was sent to the prison
hospital. A few days later and with much difficulty, Hajdar was permitted to
see his brother. After he asked one prison guard, then another, where his
brother was, none of them directed him to the room. He walked by a bed entirely
covered with a sheet, which looked like someone was concealed beneath it. Hajdar,
involuntarily, pulled up the sheet, and what did he see? His brother Shazivar…lifeless.
Hajdar held strong. Reason conquered his feelings by preventing him from giving
the guards the pleasure of seeing him broken. He kissed his brother’s forehead
and pulled the sheet over him. Then he left the prison hospital. This
event details his character and explains his display of unshakable confidence when
he parted from his three children on the day the three got in the back of a
pick-up truck which took them away from Çerma internment camp forever. He bid
farewell to them without shedding a tear.
The second
event was when one day Hajdar and I came upon each other in front of the Post
Office in Lushnja city. As we embraced he said to me: “We both know the
bond between us, but don’t risk meeting with me because you will have to pay
for it dearly!” That was the last time I saw Hajdar Islami! Like on that
occasion, having been in a similar situation which left deep traces in my
memory, I can’t help but praise the gracious approach towards me of my high
school and military service (labour unit) friend, Kastriot Bajraktari, who was
interned in Lushnja, the son of Mul Delí Bajraktari (offspring of the legendary
family of Çun Mula of Hoti), academic officer and fearless defender of the
Albanian borders, as well as a well-known thinker and orator. Thus as a common rule,
parents are the cornerstones of lineage and as a conclusion, I’ll parallel the
demeanor of Hajdar and Kastriot with the proverb - the apple doesn’t fall far
from the tree. Consequently, the Islami sisters with their courage and
the personality they established whilst in internal exile or in their work at
VOA Albanian Service, are inspiring examples that the apple indeed does not fall
far from the tree!
ALBANIA, A
COUNTRY BESEIGED BY FEAR AND POVERTY
Thousands of pages have been written on
factual testimonies about that tyrannical period. If summing up those pages in
a few lines, no one can challenge the fact that we lived in a country
surrounded by electric current barbed wire as well as a land planted with mines
in the zone before the barbed wire was reached. Those who oppose are free to
openly do so, but…they cannot even deceive themselves, for today they are free
to travel in any of the EU member countries without a visa, and they can travel
to other countries by obtaining visas from their respective diplomatic missions
without the intervention of the Albanian government. Furthermore the fact cannot
be negated that within this huge concentration camp called Communist Albania, the
prosperity of the system hyped for half a century by the communist dictatorship
propaganda machine, was enjoyed by the people on ration stamps and bread queues.
The persecuted people and their families were
the first who experienced the violence and cruelty, and then they were followed
by a great number of families of former communist leaders whom the dictator
targeted. Oh, how the communists felt when the state security vehicle stopped
in front of their house, for not only were they 100% sure they had not acted
against the government, but they also had never dreamt of speaking out thoughts
on the poor quality of the bread (which if expressed…were reason enough to be
officially sentenced to ten years of loss of freedom), and surely they did not
dare to judge how the government was run.
So the country lived with unfounded and seemingly sustainable fear on
one end, and extreme poverty on the other.
The dictator himself called it the dictatorship of the proletariat while
disguising it as the most democratic country in the world. What a paradox that in
such a democratic country, the Islami family was interned to Çerma
concentration camp in Lushnja only because Klement (at that time only 17 years
old) was brought to an interrogation office on the account he had alluded
against the government and later was locked in the Elbasan Psychiatric Hospital,
where he underwent depersonalization through drugs administered by the doctors.
This treatment towards the Islami family under the devilish class struggle was
the main motivation that drove Klement, when he rejoined his family in the internment
camp, to persuade his sisters to flee the country by endangering their lives and
leaving their parents behind.
Let us continue and broaden the focus of our
objective, while shedding light on some new facts. Mr. Arben Xhixho worked at the
foreign section of Radio Tirana Service in Communist Albania from 1986 to 1992.
Whoever has lived through the communist dictatorship period in Albania
thoroughly understands that without being a person with certain political assurances
one could not hold a position in the field of communist propaganda! However in
the coming years, after the crumbling of the communist dictatorship, the stratagem
for carefully choosing and appointing former communists at the head of every
department required the manipulation of the public opinion. Mr. Arben Xhixho was
one of them. He paved his way to US and got hired by the VOA Albanian Service
in the distant year of 1992, initially as journalist, and then as the Chief of
Service.
At his heels was Mr.
Ilir Ikonomi, who also came to US and was hired by VOA Albanian Service in 1992.
He, too, had worked in the section of Chinese propaganda at Radio Tirana Service
of Communist Albania.
The
infiltration of the scions of communist families into the VOA Albanian Service will
not end here. At the end of 1998 the Voice of America hired the high-ranking
communist leader Drago Siliqi’s daughter, Laura Konda, an ex-employee of the
Voice of the Albanian Communist Youth having worked there from 1984 to 1991. In
brief all these appointments can no longer be seen as accidental without further
wide-ranging deliberation. There is one particular moment I want to emphasize which
will allow us to generalize all that has been written up till now. The fact
that Mr. Arben Xhixho started working for the VOA as a journalist was known to
me since 1993 or 1994, for I have known well his father, Jani, a staunch communist
with deep communist convictions. He was the secretary of the communist party of
the Agriculture Mechanization Station in Tirana and directed the communist
educational meetings at which he never missed out on a chance to quote Enver
Hoxha, mostly citing his book, “When Laying the Foundations” in which Hoxha
denounced “the class enemy.” Furthermore he was so dogmatic that one time a
communist Xhavit Çalliku caused an incident by saying, “enough with this, or
you will make me leave the meeting.” However it never had crossed my mind to raise my voice against employment of a
son of a communist in one of the services at the VOA. Logically the question arises, why? Well, as long
as I considered entirely wrong both “the class struggle” and its devilish and
condemned tool, “the class enemy,” which was so intensely ill-used by the
communist dictatorship in Albania, then I should by no means let myself look
from the same angle the collaboration of Mr. Arben Xhixho with the VOA. And
now, the following question comes up: why did I decide to speak up and expose
his actions today? It is because they are identical to the directives given out
by Ramiz Alia when he predicted the communists would morph into capitalists. To this day I believe Mr. Arben Xhixho conformed
his stance at every opportunity to condemn the communist dictatorship to its
core, just as Ramiz Alia directed when the communist dictatorship crumbled. It
is clear to the eye, he did it only to be trusted by his VOA superiors. Today,
as the chief of the Albanian service of VOA, he turns back to “the class
struggle” and plays it out on the two sisters, who were extremely persecuted by
the communist dictatorship, by placing them on administrative leave after their
thirty years of work at the VOA Albanian service. So it is his deceitful approach
that makes me fill with disgust, for I see their placement on administrative
leave as an extension of “the class struggle,” a creed that nurtured Mr. Arben
Xhixho from his very young age.
IN PLACE OF THE EPILOGUE
It is not effective to discuss supposed directives
given by the last Albanian communist dictator Ramiz Alia to appoint communists
or their scions at the head of every political pluralistic institution in Albania’s
democratic foundations, but it is essential to analyze the aftermath of the
events, from the time when the communist dictatorial system crumbled. The placement
on administrative leave of the two heroines is a flagrant act of “the class
struggle” mentality, which occurred not in Albania but in the US, at the
Albanian Service of the Voice of America. Inevitably, supported by the course
of factual events, it is crucial to make inferences and draw conclusions.
AAFH Translation