VNA brings this time the secret document of 1963, in which a report from the Lushnja district is addressed to Hysni Kapo, signaling the problems caused by the mass internment of families in this area. Internment, intended as an instrument of control and exploitation of the workforce, was filling agricultural cooperatives with people who could not work. The document treats the interned population as a labor contingent. The document discussed internment as a political measure, but highlighted the problems arising from its implementation in practice in Lushnja, mainly in agricultural cooperatives.
This report constitutes historical evidence of how the communist state treated people as objects to be exploited for work. In the report, the internees were treated as labor contingents. Families were evaluated only according to the number of arms capable of work and the ability to meet the norms of agricultural cooperatives. While bread debts, malnutrition and the inability to meet the norms set by the cooperatives were presented simply as administrative obstacles, and not at all as human tragedies, caused by the internment of entire families in the villages of Lushnja.
Even the mentally ill and disabled were included in the internment regime, even though they did not pose a political threat. The problem for the state administration was not their internment, but the fact that they were not a usable labor force. In other words, they were worthless to the system.
The First Secretary of the Party Committee in Lushnja consequently asks the Central Committee of the Albanian People's Party in Tirana to rationalize the deportations, bringing to Lushnja mainly families with active labor force, that is, not families with small children or family members unable to work. This report shows the state of dictatorship that requires discipline and production, that manages the population according to the function of the ability to work. Internment thus appears as a technology of power that produces control and exploitation of man for work.
Text of the archival document:
LABOR PARTY OF ALBANIA DISTRICT
PP COMMITTEE
No. 22
Lushnje, 9/I/1963
SECRET
Ex. No. 1
CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE ALBANIAN PP Comrade
: Hysni Kapo
TIRANA
We inform you that from time to time, contingents of internees come to our district from the border area of the homeland. However, in many cases we are finding that the selection of the element for internment is not made on the basis of the dangerousness they pose and consequently it seems unfair to us that the number of internees in this district is increasing, which harms us politically and economically. There are some from some districts and especially from the districts of Shkodra and Korça, the Internal Affairs Branches have interned to Lushnje persons who do not pose any political danger and who have put us in difficulties regarding their economic treatment.
We are mentioning some examples from the Shkodra district: 7 families with 54 people were interned. These were placed in the Kryekuqi agricultural cooperative. The families in question, according to the data, were interned because they had sheltered for several days the fugitive Hamit Bajram Lisaj, who had committed a crime for ordinary matters and who was later caught and sentenced by our bodies. These families, from the investigations carried out, have maintained a good political stance, including their stance towards the government and the state. Most of the people in these families are elderly or children, so, not having a workforce to work, they suffer very badly even for their bread. Their children are seriously ill, have complained and mentioned the lack of food. They only make ends meet with alms from the villagers. Typical is the case of Hasan Vula's family, which consists of 11 people, in which there are minors and elderly people and only a 14-year-old boy is a workforce. This family still owes the cooperative about 20,000 lek just for bread. The cooperative is considering cutting off their bread, which makes their situation even worse.
We think that the above people would not have caused any harm even if they had not moved from their village, at least they had their homes there and with their little livestock and land they could have fed themselves.
There are many other cases that have been brought to Lushnje as internees from other districts, with mental and physical disabilities, people without any danger, which increases the number of internees in this district. Thus, Ali Ogrenj from the village of Floq was internees from the district of Korça, an element with a serious nervous illness, schizophrenia of the last degree, who has been hospitalized in the neuro-psychiatric hospital of Vlora for a year. Likewise, Zihni Çeliku, internees together with other members of his family, an invalid element with a serious eye condition, without ears and hands, accidentally injured by a hand grenade.
Rexhina Çuka, who has been suffering from severe schizophrenia for a long time, was interned from the Shkodra district with her family members. As in the above cases, there are many of these sick people who were sent to the contingents of internees for "political danger".
There are also many cases where, due to the speed of the internment, the internees do not even take with them the necessary things for living and thus, by being brought in so urgently, they have put us in serious difficulties in settling them.
We believe that this problem is serious and primarily political, therefore we ask the Central Committee Apparatus to intervene near the border districts to make a very careful and detailed study when it is time to send or internecine. Also, we should be given the opportunity to send a commission from the Ministry of the Interior to review the internees who are currently in our district and those persons who do not pose a political danger, who are seriously mentally and physically disabled, sick, past working age, to be given the opportunity to settle near the villages from which they came or near their relatives.
FIRST SECRETARY OF THE DISTRICT KP
(Qazim Myrseli)
