Rama, stone in hand: “The state that surrenders before this does not recover.” Drone claim, rubber bullets defended, dialogue offered

Tirana, 18 October 2026, morning

Prime Minister Edi Rama addressed the violent protests in Tirana this morning from the boulevard, speaking with a paving stone in his hand. He said the violence is seeking blood and that he has tried not to fall into that trap.

“Here I am, I have not gone. In any case, I decided to be here today, to try to say my piece. I have tried not to get involved, and to follow and coordinate, with a great deal of patience, an effort that is not at all easy, not to fall into the trap that has been set, of violence that seeks blood. Blood is being sought. And I know the history of this boulevard, I know it well. Still fresh in my memory is what happened on 21 January, when there were a few sporadic fires here and there within this perimeter, not a single bin, where nothing was touched, no institution, where not one molotov was thrown, where not one member of the security forces was injured or burned, and when four protesters were shot dead with bullets and dozens more were wounded, who, unlike today, could not even go to hospital because the club awaited them there too, and were treated at home. Beyond the fact that those who throw stones, steel balls and bolts to take out the eyes of the police are criminals, I bear in mind that they are blind children of Albania, and that at the end of the day their lives are worth more than anything else. Self-restraint is the A to Z of this story.

Of course the damage is not small, but it can be repaired, and repaired quickly. The great damage is elsewhere. I have been only a little involved, and the field has been left free to those who begin the day and end it with violence. You do not hear anyone condemn the violence clearly.

This is one of the thousands of stones torn up from the pavement of Dëshmorët e Kombit boulevard to be thrown at the police. It is practically a weapon that can become lethal. My head is not small, but look at what this stone can do if it lands on someone’s head. There is no need for me to show the scan of the skull of the officer struck in Shkodër. The images the televisions show, when they put on that so-called fire group, those 200, 300 in masks who have nothing to do with the students but are there, paid, do not show these things. This is blind violence that has nothing to do with Albanian youth, with the children parents have at home and whom every parent wants to see turn out well. Facing this violence stands the police, who confront the rancour, the anger, the rights of those who are out in the street as students, a fraction of a crowd that at best reaches 1,500 people, part of whom are peaceful.

I thought, and I keep thinking: but the police officers, do you see them, do you know who they are, do you know their lives, their troubles? On the television screens they are demonised as the authors of the violence. These are families living on modest incomes. For the sacrifice and the resistance of these heroes of the state. What is being challenged is not me, the government, the majority; what is being challenged is a road, a mission, an objective. European Albania is being challenged. It is being challenged in a considered and traditional way, in a democratic space. That is the challenge of these difficult hours.

Here is what a colleague wrote to me last night, and I will read it today, about a very telling message I received from a young man who works in the public administration and who gave me his view of the situation, speaking about himself inside the administration and sharing with me the feeling that he could not build a career because others were building theirs inside the administration. The police officers, they too have their grievances, but unlike the rest they do not call for resistance against the state, they are themselves the resistance of the state. At first light, every hour and every minute of these days, the police are not asking for attention, for promotion, for much that surely is owed to them, but they surely need to feel our presence, and society’s, in this sacrifice before the stones, the pellets, the molotovs, the flames of a masked crowd.

What is being challenged is Albania in the European Union in 2030, and the European way among forces in a democratic space where my freedom and my right end where yours begin. That is the challenge, that is the test. Naturally I understand, far better than the overwhelming majority of those who want a feigned calm might think, all the reasons why we are in this terror of stones today. Not from the people, but from a handful of people, even though part of that mass blindly supports this violence. I understand them, but I cannot possibly accept any of those reasons when I see a small business ruined. And this event has naturally brought back to me the images beyond ‘21 January’, the images that those protesting today as students surely have not seen and do not know belong to this Albania where the rest of us made our journey: 1998, when this building was attacked with weapons by the very same hand that today incites, orchestrates and pays for the violence of the stones. The Prime Minister’s Office was attacked with weapons, fired on with thousands of Kalashnikov rounds, there is footage on YouTube, and with hand-held rockets like those of the Hamas terrorists, and yet not one business was burned, those barbarians did not rush at the banks, because Albania was just emerging from a horror in which Albanians lost their savings, in the ruins of the pyramids raised by the very same dotard who turns up from morning to night, and by those around him who were just like these ones, gelded and aggressive. Why are the bank counters and the cash machines attacked? They are attacked because this is the plan, spreading panic, as though Albania’s banks today were ‘Sudja’ and the filthy ‘Xhaferri’. They want the people in the street, but the people are not in the street.

Meanwhile, here on the boulevard is a very small part of the students, extremised, ideologised and blinded by extremist ideas which are appearing in the same form in Paris, Rome, Milan, Turin, Portugal, Brazil, in a general fever. But this fever of ours has its own specific character. It is as much part of that general fever, from which it takes its inspiration and its raw material, as it is part of a great effort to do to this country what has happened to it every time in its history it has had the chance to lift its head and breathe. When it is closer than ever to its historic dream, along comes this terrorising form of plague, all of it staged. They are not in Albania, they do not love Albania. The young, yes, are frustrated, angry. The students, yes, want more, want change, they always have and always will, it is in the nature of their being. But with great regret I say that these young people and students on the boulevard are hostages of that fire group at the front, of those in masks, where minors are also widely used. Minors as shields to advance, to gain ground, making it impossible for the state and impossible for the police to respond with force, with small children. Crime is in there too. There is a foreign hand.”

“Inspired by foreign hands, an Antifa conglomerate. Behind the extremes stands the dotard who carries the evil”

Rama attributed the protest to foreign influence, naming Russia and Iran, the Antifa movement, religious extremists and, without naming him, Sali Berisha, and cited disinformation about Serbian police paid to beat protesters.

“Those who do not want the PS in power are inclined to relativise the violence and think this business is solved with violence and is a matter of a day. Foreign hands: why is someone trying to create the idea that the Israelis have come here, that here, as a fake story spread at great speed claimed, a thousand Israelis land every day to support me and to beat and kill children? Whose interest is that? This is an Antifa conglomerate that inspires frustrated young people with the political extremes, buffoons, a completely deranged neo-communist and a neo-Ballist on the other side who incites violence, who pays for violence and who does not stop. Behind the political extremes stands the dotard who carries the perverse evil that has haunted Albania since 1912. Then come the religious extremists, in a country that has never had and will never have religious problems. This country is stronger than ever in the international arena. Israel is a friendly country, as is Qatar. Those two have no diplomatic relations.

The cherry on the cake is the Serbian soldiers who have supposedly come here and are supposedly inside the uniforms of those men whose salaries today are lower than most people’s in this state, who take stones in volleys, who are burned as if they were enemies of this country, and who are now suspected of being Serbs. This is madness, but fortunately not collective madness, and it will not take in the Albanian people, nor those who are against this government, because we have seen this film. These people have no sense at all, they are completely empty-headed.”

To the students: “I have heard ‘prison, prison’ and ‘resign’ every day, but not one demand”

“I have heard you every day because you have come under my window. I have heard you: to prison or to the rope, prison, prison, resign. I have not heard demands. You have come there for 140 days and never once knocked on the door to tell us like decent people, eye to eye, why you should go. Because with prison, prison, prison as in those medieval squares, we are no longer in the 21st century, we are not in what we chose. You want me to go, that is the most normal thing in the world, but how am I to go? At least come and convince me why I should go, or let me convince you why I should not. Have we not reflected? I have listened very carefully, but we have come out of the first phase of the mass flamingo protests with lessons that we are putting into practice one by one. I no longer listen to Zvërnec, because the whole truth is online now, transparent. All the conspiracies have collapsed because they are there at the Flamingo Mirror.”

“Dialogue, certainly, but with whom?”

“I have mocked no one. I have pointed the finger at those who are also today part of the thing, not to make Albania better; they are there to turn Albania upside down, whether on behalf of the PD or of the Khomeinist Republic of Iran. That is the truth. Dialogue is needed, certainly, that is the A of it, but with whom? With the students? I return to 2018. That was a student movement, but this is not. It is a trap, not for me, for Albania, in which paid, extremised people, young women and men, idealists who have fallen prey to an ideology, a madness so called Antifa, have taken the others hostage.”

Drone with explosives

“Two days ago a drone with explosives was neutralised, intended to strike the Prime Minister’s Office, setting fire to the inner courtyard, God knows with what consequences. No minor would think up that plan. That is a foreign hand.”

“I am not in a job, I am on a mission”

“The mission is that Albania no longer bows its head to anyone. That Albania stands with its head high, where it belongs. I am not in a job, I am on a mission.”

On resignation: “Make way for this? What is at stake is the EU negotiating table”

Holding up one of the stones, Rama asked what would follow if he left.

“‘Make way for the young.’ Which young? These? Make way for this? Let us presume for a moment that I made way for this. What comes after it? Calm, better government, a European Albania, Albania in the EU? After this comes the past we have lived through and paid all the tributes for, and which I have not allowed to be paid by those growing up amid a thousand and one difficulties, the greatest of which is the chaos of social networks, of hatred, division, envy at why he has it and I do not. Those children who went in to grab iPhones at Vodafone are the victims of the clowns who show them their backsides on Instagram, who strike poses for them and make them feel completely worthless because they do not have an iPhone, not the book.

Let us be very clear, this is not about my power. I may at the beginning have had the wish to meet the great of this world. I have seen them and they have looked me straight in the eye. I have proved to myself that I can represent this country with the highest dignity, not with arrogance but with pride. I make only the necessary trips. I no longer even have the wish to travel for this office. Wealth? What can I tell you, it is pointless to talk about it. What is at stake is the negotiating table in the EU, it is that simple. Albanians must think about this very clearly: do they want this, or the EU.”

Rubber bullets and RENEA: “The circle around those in masks will be tightened”

Rama defended the police use of rubber bullets, saying an officer’s jaw was broken by a steel ball before the first rubber round was fired, and said the deployment of the special unit RENEA is ordinary police duty wherever there is a threat.

“The police officer took the steel ball here, his jaw was split open. His comrade removed the criminal who had fired the pellets. Look at the police in France, who fire rubber bullets. RENEA has a duty to come out the moment there is a threat; it comes out even when an Albania–Serbia football match is played, what does that mean? It came out and it will come out, that is not up for discussion. The circle around those in masks will be tightened; the law also says you cannot conceal your identity.”

“The state does not surrender before stones.” The invitation

“The state does not surrender before stones, and whoever surrenders does not recover for years. Let us stop it here. I invite anyone who wants dialogue, anyone who wants to meet me, anyone who wants to talk, with cameras or without, with photographs or without, at the Prime Minister’s Office, at the faculty, wherever you want, so that we can do things better. I am speaking to those boys and girls who stand there not to throw stones, but who have the stones and the masks as their vanguard, and who then say the police hurt us. There is no ballet being danced there, and no football being played. What do you have, what do you want, what can we do for you?”

“Whoever wants to talk, I am here. Those who want stones and masks have the state in front of them”

On the damage done to businesses, Rama promised that everything would be rebuilt, and stronger.

“Whoever wants to talk, I am here. Whoever sends messages with stones and masks has me and the state in front of him. The damage is much smaller than it looks, because it is the evening clowns who amplify it to the maximum. We will do all of it the way I know how to do things, better, stronger, because whatever does not kill us makes us stronger. This will make Albania stronger,” the Prime Minister concluded.