– Gjon Bruçi –
These days, the citizens of Shkodra faced an extraordinary and shocking crime within a family. A young mother, with her three fragile children, ended her life by jumping from the Buna Bridge to drown in the waters of the river in question. Such a crime within the Albanian family is neither the first nor the last. We hear about dozens of murders and suicides almost every day in the dark chronicles of the news. Now, after three and a half decades of “bourgeois democracy,” the crisis of the family is not only more severe but also more dangerous, putting into question the entire society, of which it is the foundation.
What is happening and has been happening to the Albanian family?
Albanians have always considered the family the most precious thing, and in the great book of traditional codes, the Family Code held a special place. Thanks to this code, even in the absence of the state or under foreign occupation, Albanians managed to preserve the foundation of the family, ensuring their existence and survival.
But what is happening today in modern times and in the system of “bourgeois democracy” to the Albanian family?! Due to the socio-economic and cultural policies of the current system, shocking phenomena are emerging in the Albanian family, leading it towards degeneration and destruction, which questions the foundations of society. The apologists of the bourgeois system try to justify the crisis of the family with stress and the individual’s mental state, who “happens” to not be able to orient himself in the new situations of development. Following this reasoning, they are forced to touch on economic causes, but do not go further. To overcome this “hard nut” for the system, these apologists paraphrase by saying that “these phenomena” also occur in developed countries. With the latter, they inadvertently prove the fact that the capitalist system, wherever installed, produces the same negative phenomena because these negative phenomena are inherent in the system itself.
All those who experienced the time of socialism and are now “enjoying” the visible regression of the bourgeois system are able, without being psychologists or sociologists, to explain the main causes of today’s crime in families. Here are some of the obvious reasons:
Firstly: The Albanian family, as the starting point of the family code, had morality. Socialism, while preserving the essence of this code, enriched it with new and modern norms of communist morality. The current bourgeois system does the opposite. It is enough to see television programs like “Përputhen” and “Big Brother” on Top Channel, which have become “champions” of the vulgarity of television spectacles.
Secondly: Marriage and the establishment of a new family have been considered very important moments in social life, so Albanians have accompanied them with beautiful pagan and religious rites. Today, not only through propaganda but also through legal applications, cohabitation and marriages within the same gender and sex have come to the “scene,” which not only lack anything modern but are also destructive practices for the sacred institution of the family.
Thirdly: The socialist system “eliminated” the vestiges in the family hierarchy of the Middle Ages, with the “lord of the house” and the “household servant,” but on the other hand, it managed to create complete harmony within the family, a harmony that recognized and ensured equal rights and reciprocal obligations among its members. The current system, with its socio-economic policies and excessive propaganda, promotes and deepens contradictions between generations, ages and sexes, leading to misunderstandings, conflicts, and even to the crimes of murder and suicide.
Fourthly: “A heavy stone is on its own ground,” our people paraphrase. When the family rises and lives in its inherited lands, within its clan and community, it lives and is educated with the same customs and traditions and is consolidated to the highest degree. Therefore, the socialist system paid attention to demographic movements, ensuring optimal living conditions in every rural and urban area of the country. The chaotic demographic movement imposed by the capitalist system, and especially emigration towards European countries and beyond, has fragmented Albanian families into many parts, indeed “modern,” but with shattered unity within.
Fifthly: In socialism, family matters were considered everyone’s concern. Not only family members but also a range of social organizations, workers’ collectives, and even party and state organs were involved in preserving and consolidating it. The opposite happens with the current system. The Albanian family, although it may have its home in the middle of the capital, is isolated as if it were in the Sahara desert. In the Albanian family, there may be various problems, but no one knocks on its door to help solve these problems. Only when the ugly event occurs, only when the crime occurs, only then do the specialized state organs rush to do the “expertise,” just as the media rushes to assemble the next media sensation.
Note: Although our current state has over 12,000 police officers, plus traffic police, municipal police, rapid intervention units, etc., in the neighbourhood or village where the citizen lives, there are only two people responsible for the order and tranquility of the citizens: the village (neighbourhood) elder and the all-powerful, if indeed these two people are present in every neighbourhood or village all the time, as there are many cases, especially the village elder, who is also abroad for his “personal affairs.”
The daily crimes happening on the streets, especially those within families, show that the state does not have control over its territory. Territorial control cannot be achieved in any way with police alone, nor with “artificial intelligence” tools, as our government officials claim. Territory is controlled through professional and accountable governance. And the government officials directly responsible for ordinary and organized crimes are the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Order. The Minister of Public Order, although moving up and down through police departments and precincts, fails to fulfil his duty properly because he is not a specialist in “arms” but in politics, and he doesn’t fulfil that either as is required. As for the Prime Minister, he considers the problem of crime solved, paraphrasing or thinking the expression: “they bite each other’s heads,” a concept also thought by other authorities, as long as the crime does not reach their doorstep.
This is what is striking even to the shortsighted: Despite the incompetence of the state organs in our country, which have failed in almost all fields, especially in the field of corruption and crime, no one has yet taken political or criminal responsibility, least of all resignation. Because the resignation of a government official is too difficult, as it is linked to the high salary he receives from the taxpayers’ money, even though the taxpayer has been left to his fate and the mercy of crime.
Even for the latest case in Shkodra, there will surely be an official conclusion and perhaps even an accurate identification of the true perpetrator of the drowning of the young mother with her three fragile children, calling the of the author crime a “monster.” But in reality, the true “monster” is the social system that has been imposed on us under the name of the “capitalist”!
(Translated from the Albanian original and first published in “Gazeta SOT” on May 7, 2024)
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