It began on the morning of a nameless day, why nameless, it was May 22nd and it is called "The Day of the Revolt of the Qafë-Bar Prisoners?" - yes, because the days in prison are very similar, like the prison uniforms, with stripes, the days like this, the nights like the black uniforms of the police. Inside the barbed wire it seemed as if there were exhausted saints and crazy devils. The night brigades, the third shift of prisoners, had returned from work, they had been waiting on their feet for 2-3 hours and no order had been given to go to the dormitory. Half of them were sleeping on their feet. Leaning against the wall, against their friend, against the stairs, against the barbed wire. Black marks on their faces, either from being unwashed, or from the horror they saw in that fragment of a dream.

Only round bunkers, domes, concrete mouths calling our names, spewing cold fire and ice. What, are the spectators of the amphitheater cheering, the cooperators of the mountains? Shame. Tigers, panthers, party secretaries are emerging from the entrances of the bunkers.

The police were swarming among us, tigers, tearing off prisoners' arms, tearing open their bellies with their claws, a trail of intestines, one trampling on the other's limbs, the police were returning to take what was left of the extortion, the other arm, some ribs, skulls were cracked, bunkers, but the sky, I didn't see it, it was a concrete dome, it was sinking, it was getting closer, we took our breath away, other walls after walls, fell, collapsed. The rubble was on us. We were giving up. We escaped...!

MOANS AND BLOOD

… Groan(h) again: oh-hhh-ooo-ooh! Another groan, the night, the last of the uprising, it rose up-iih-ste shka-ah-llë-eh-t. It fell, oh, it rose, ih, slowly, ah, it saw the sky, full of star nails, full of holes, groans fall, the black earth, with sighs of pits, it shook, ej, of, op, uh, uf. The groans dripped blood-ak. Lava… The spasm of groans fell again, long, he took his ribs with his hand, broken, two, three, yyyyeeeehhh, he exhaled, uh! He fell…

All the arrests, both pre-arranged and random, had been completed, the central command had been notified by code that the uprising in the political prison of Qafë-Bar had been successfully suppressed, a complete victory, when the prisoners were still on their knees and a former provincial investigator, now a senior official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, so diligent in torture, stopped his steps and asked the person next to him, the police chief or the operative.

– Here you have him, Nuredin Skraparin, do you understand?
- Yes.
– How is he behaving?
– No problem. Correct.
– I was his investigator 10-15 years ago. We punished him as much as we wanted. They were drinking in a club, and he, a complete enemy, dared and hit comrade Enver with a bottle.

– How?…

– The portrait of our glorious leader. I will not part with you for the rest of my life, – I shouted at him. How could we not put his name on the list of those arrested…?! Give him a good beating before I ran away…! They took him to the wall…! Dragging. Ah! Oh, oh… The shadow of groans fell again. Oh. He lay down… the ground was groaning, the dusk above it, panting over the pool of his own blood…! “Get up, condemned man,” the policeman shouted after him. – “Climb the stairs, to the dungeons.” The prisoners around him were motionless, as if under a curse. According to the regulations, it was not allowed to help another. Ah, if I took him by the arm, his broken ribs would hurt terribly, to carry him to the small gate… of the inner dungeons.

Sorry, my fellow sufferer, I couldn't help you, I didn't do anything for you, ah! Warm gushes of blood burst from my mouth between my broken teeth…! Uuu-je-ee-ee! Water… my wounds burned inside my body, electro…oh…vo…zi…sti Agroon Ho…ja, he was moistening my lips with a cloth, I don't know where he found the water, maybe it was raining, but you… in the dungeon, I saw the police hit you on the head with a stick… calm down, don't talk… Roola(h)nd Too(h)li was holding my head so that it wouldn't fall to the ground, they arrested him too, but he's tall, he has more places for wounds than me… and he wasn't letting me die… Goooooo(j)iiii, water…!

ALIVE IN THE ARCHIVE

I must be half alive… and half dead. Maybe everyone is like that. But where am I like this? Nothing moves, there is no humming, the sound of wheels, a pulse, they must have unloaded us from the car where they threw us tied up one on top of the other. I was alone, yet they put me in a coffin alive? What do they want from me now, they are going to take me to court, back to the hostile group of soldiers, did we shoot you once? No, no, Zhabolli, we left you alive, look how weak you have become, we have made you weak, you can't even lift your arm, but we made you head of the re-education office in Qafë-Bar. But why am I wearing a helmet and handcuffs, like those who are going to be shot?! We will take off your helmet and begin the Chinese torture, a drop of water will fall on your head repeatedly, in the same place, but it will make a hole in your skull, it will completely split it.

You will sleep on a bamboo, it grows 7 cm. per day and pierces your body. It hurts a bit! Do you remember that we only got factory machinery from China, but also torture tools, tricks, types of torture? We also got a Chinese specialist who specialized in ours, and a guy, they make old documents, as if they were real, and we leave the files in order, not yours, no, who cares about them, whether you sign or not, it doesn't matter at all, I'm talking about history, we do it as we want, it's all right, the events happened the way we want, here's the document, our Chinese does it, better than the real thing. But where am I? Inside the coffin.

Listen, I want you to sign the list of 36 names of the group that led the political revolt of Qafë-Bar. I don't know that the revolt was political and I don't know if there was any organization or group. Dalip, do you understand what you're saying? We know that it was like that. It doesn't cost us anything, to put the lid on the coffin, 5-6 nails. Do you like being buried alive? So, sign this letter, and here's the other one, the decision that you will be released. Choose between the two letters...! It's not bones that break. We broke that scrapper's ribs, but also Xhike Bazhino's... just one leg, Drago Vujošević's... the Montenegrins, we made him completely black.

Hey, hey, what about Sandër Sokoli? He died on the way, in the car, all his bones were broken, everywhere, everywhere, he was a mess. (The Party died too.) What about my friend Dine Fratari? We took him away, threw him in another prison, they beat him a lot too, and Lekë Mirakaj, and… if you sign, we said, I have an order from the minister. I won't wait long for you, we can return him in another way. What's going on like this, is this investigator inside the coffin? It's that, the camp coffin, that you made for us, you fish, it's no longer needed for the dead, but for the living…! Voices come from inside you. You won't sign? Put the lid on the coffin. Don't they need the coffin for other living people. Where are the signs? Am I underground?

PUNISHMENT OF REVOLT

The bell rang, iron on the head. They gathered us in the canteen again. That rascal was there, where we had left him, motionless, that's what he looked like. Do they want us to repeat the rebellion? That officer from the South came again, the deputy commissioner, what the hell was he, his hat with the star rolled off and he got tangled up in his legs like a cat, like his own ideology, you say. Policemen with signs of wounds. Half heads tied with bandages, pieces of broken arms. Communication. The commissioner's voice wanted to seem strong, unwavering and he himself was standing straight like those firing squads. Battery of weapons. The dictatorship of the proletariat crushed the revolt of the enemies... and... the people's court...! He fell silent. He lowered his eyes to the paper, without glasses...!

The Criminal Panel of the Supreme Court, after reviewing the file in charge of the defendants… we were taken aback, names, names… imposed these sentences: Sokol Sokoli, death, shooting; Tom Ndoja, death, shooting… Sokol Progri, 25 years in prison, Vllasi Koçi, 25 years in prison, Martin Leka, 16 years in prison, Haxhi Baxhonovski, 21 years in prison, Bajram Vuthi, 15 years in prison, Ndue Pisha, 25 years in prison, Lush Bushgjoka, 12 years in prison, Kostandin Gjordeni, 10 years in prison, Lazër Shkëmbi, 12 years in prison and Hysen Tabaku, 11 years in prison. For all of them, the serving of the sentence began on May 22… what about those who were shot? And Sandër Sokoli... with his head hanging from his shoulders, they threw him on top of the others in the car, a corpse, with broken bones and tied up... the signatures of three judges of the Supreme Court, Puka, on 3.06...!

In Spaç, over 100 people were re-convicted. The days of their victory were taken away. They are no longer called that. But they are not days, they are lives…! Time is not ours, but outside of us like stolen goods…. They killed them… They chained all the prisoners together two by two and lowered them to the ground. They also sentenced the prison dog to be shot, because it openly sided with the prisoners, not only barking at the police, but also jumping at their feet, biting them. And a real trial was held for it. Doesn't our prison resemble a natural coliseum, - Gëzim Çela was saying, - the stairs go down steeply, under those stairs are the black galleries.

The stairs rolled down and stopped in the arena, the squares surrounded by barbed wire. The walls of this coliseum climbed up…! I couldn’t hear anything. Bullets roared and drowned out the voices. And the stormy applause, the cheers for the Party and Comrade Enver, in the cinema halls, when the judge gave the verdict of punishment, by shooting… fell on my shoulders. Behind the wall, my murdered friends fell once more, the terrifying holy trinity of their heads with streams of blood and the line of slaves, of those bound in chains, newly convicted…!

In the Spaç revolt, they shot four: Pal Zefi, Skënder Dajë, Dervish Bejko, Hajri Pasha. Confiscating their share of the family wealth. What, chairs, spoons? And with the removal of the electoral right 5 years after the sentence. After death? Terrible, cynical. Because the voters here are dead…! The desire for life and the thirst for crime were put face to face, groaned Shefqet Gjana. See the Big Bear in the sky, how it trembles, are their souls, the four shot in Spaç and the three in Qafë-Bari.

We were talking to ourselves. No, to our dead… in old Albanian, with ancient messages, fires, screams, other signs, smoke. Often man feeds his own captivity. But we broke its technology and saw that here there is the substance of freedom. This is the victory and not only ours. Under the blankets, murmurs were heard, imprisoned prayers to God, prayers were repeated, the Bible, the Quran, languages ​​were mixed, Babylon under the prison blanket, while the skull of a policeman, stuck on a pole, with his teeth out, gnashed in the darkness…!

AND PRISON SENTENCE

Then the sentence was given for the place of serving the sentence itself, the prison! Just as Spaçi was sentenced after the revolt. And what will they do, will the prison be imprisoned too? How? What, will they demolish the buildings, the stairs, will they overturn the dormitories? If you tell me that they will increase the violence, you have nothing more to add to that. A condemned prison, wonder! Will they fill its grounds with barbed wire and, will we walk over them every day, barefoot, when we go to work, which will have become even more difficult? The surrounding mountains, the water, the air are condemned.

Everything will be worse, even worse. Starting from food, calories will be reduced, although they were few, but families will be put under rules, so that nothing will happen and meetings will be as rare as possible, twice a year, maybe. Even letters. They can remove the television – they will do well – and reading Enver's books, no, they will increase that. No walking will be allowed, they will drive away the surrounding families, there will be no more beautiful women on the other side of the barbed wire, there will be no…!

Convicted in a condemned prison

Where else do I know? The dictatorship is insatiable, worse than in the old days, when there were superstitions, but, to be an atheist, to believe in nothing and to condemn even the horse of your Deputy Minister of Defense after his shooting, to take the poor animal to the municipal, in Kukës, to pull the garbage cart, and what a white, royal horse, the Kinostudio asked for for filming, no way, it is a horse with a bad biography, they said. But why, the black car of the Minister of Defense himself, after they shot him too, they took him to Ersekë. Do you know what they did to him?

They cut half of the car and welded a large boiler to it, turned it into a vegetable van and the driver never washed the car, he was afraid to rub it with water. And it looked like a monster hybrid. Is that true? And the danger is that his minister and deputy minister – what are their names? Beqir Balluku and Petrit Dume – will be remembered by the white horse they condemned, and the black car, which made it worse. Nameless graves run… skeletons with undecayed shackles…! Mild poison was thrown into the food…!…With the aim of a slow death… soap soda… ordinary poison…!

"...The food provided was of poor quality, completely beyond any standard or quality...! After all, even for military units, restaurants or the population, it was in pieces. But what is inexcusable, of criminal, genocidal proportions, is even the systematic method of poisoning that was used against prisoners... which led to weakening and then to death of...!

And, to think that this was done in parallel with the hard work that the convicts performed, with the daily violence they received as well as with the numerous isolations, is truly painful…! In a report dated August 27… it was admitted by the prison command that they had complained of poisoning… Stomach pains and vomiting accompanied the prisoners' daily life…”!

PROSECUTOR'S ACCUSATION

In the file of the Qafë-Bar revolt: "The purpose of committing this act was to carry out the escape in a more organized manner by opening the operations, by exploding the galleries. The criminal acts committed by the defendants represent a significant social danger against the socialist social order and the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat..."!

"The convicts of the Qafë e Barit camp, Sokol Zef Sokoli, Sokol Zef Progri, Tom Kol Ndoja, Lush Prel Bushgjoka, Haxhi Shefqet Baxhinovski, Vllasi Llambi Koçi, Kostandin Sotir Gjordeni, Bajram Islam Vuthi, Martin Sokol Leka, Lazër Zef Shkëmbi, Hysen Halil Tabaku and Ndue Martin Pisha, in collaboration with each other, have committed the criminal offense of terror against a representative of the state, provided for by article 50/1 of 13 of the Criminal Code...!

…The defendant Haxhi Bazhinovski explains the actions he committed: When the political instructor saw the knife I was holding in my hand, he told me to hand it over, but I refused and with it in my hand, I attacked him by shooting him in the stomach. I don't know if I killed him or not.…?! Only when they heard the crack of rifle bullets did the defendants feel the fear and great strength of the dictatorship of the proletariat and began to retreat…!

firing

…The two young men… I am the same age as them… I can’t speak… I can’t stop crying… they took them from their cell, at night, tied up…! And it is not known where they took them, where they killed them…! The minutes were signed by six people…! The composition of the commission appointed to implement the Supreme Court’s decision… with 60 Kalashnikov magazines… under the direction of the district police chief….! The file trembled in my hand:

Sokol Sokoli, son of Zefi, born in 1952, from the village of Gërni in the Tropoja district, sentenced by decision No. 3 dated 3.6.1984 of the Criminal College of the Supreme Court to death (Shooting), after the Presidium of the People's Assembly with letter No. 888, dated 7.6.1984 did not spare his life. Tom Ndoja, son of Kola, born in 1952, born and residing in Kllogje in the Shkodra district, sentenced by decision No. 3 dated 3.6.1984 of the Criminal College of the Supreme Court to death (Shooting), after the Presidium of the People's Assembly with letter No. 888, dated 7.6.1984 did not spare his life…!

The last groans of the two convicts, after midnight on June 9, before the firing squad, are handwritten on the document. But who wrote them, the gunmen? Here they are: Before the execution, the convict Sokol Sokoli was informed that his life was not spared and in his last words he said: “Don’t kill me from behind. I’ll dig the hole myself. The Presidium of the People’s Assembly did a good job. We didn’t do anything to anyone”! The convict Tomë Ndoja, in his last words, said: “Long live justice!” At the end, the signatures… 30 lines, one page in total…!

EYE MASSACRE…!

...The letter ordering the execution of Sokol Sokol and Tom Ndoja, signed by Minister Hekuran Isai, June 8, 1984, had on the side a note... unbelievable... from the director of the Directorate of Criminal Enforcement: "By order of comrade minister, the eyes of the two convicts who will be shot should be given to the Ministry of Health for scientific work."

What?! I read it again. Horror! I put my hands on my forehead as if to protect my eyes from a cruel plucking. The execution took place on June 9, at 24:00… without a firing squad, carried out by two people…! Who are they? Yes, all of them…! And then they gouged out their eyes… how?! With a bayonet?! Horror! And they took the eyes to the minister? Where? They left them on the table? Did he knock on Enver's office to show him? Was the dictator watching? They really gave them to the Ministry of Health, for scientific work?! Criminal, you say. Ministries of death!…

Or did they want the retina or some nerve, to put in the frozen eyes of the dictator? How, with what means? But where can these people! Or have they tried it once. And they chose brave eyes, from the mountains…! But in those dead eyes there was revolt, shooting… did they want to see them, to transfer them to some microfilm or to completely disappear…? My eyes hurt…

And what haven't these people done, they have cut off legs and arms through torture, with a saw, they have pulled out nails, teeth, their insides, they have poured out their blood, they have covered living people with their heads outside on the ground, they have made them scream, they have cut out their tongues so that they never speak. And they have gouged out the eyes of the murdered. No, they have gouged them out before the shooting. Come on! They needed living eyes...! No! But these people have completely destroyed the human being! Memorie.al