By Sokol Çunga / BIRN
The speech of the activist Sokol Çunga at the protest concert in Tirana on October 30, 2016, against the HPPs in Valbona and against the import of garbage in Albania.
I have never been part of the stands, because I don’t like stands, but today I went up to this stage together with these artists because among these boys and girls, I see pure civic art, art stripped of any political nuance. These are the conscious artists of Albania, who appeal to the citizens under the motto ‘For Earth, For Water, For Air and For Life’.
Once upon a time, a century or so ago, there were some Albanian men from Kurbetlinj, who gathered together, put their efforts and expenses in the service of the motherland. They came here and joined a handful of other enlightened men and declared Albania a free and non-dependent country. Today we call these men renaissance and fathers of the nation.
Today we have boys and girls from inside and outside Albania and from Kosovo, who gather for a very vital cause, for nature, for the nature of Albania. Today, unlike yesterday, we do not need to protect the borders of the country and the fragmentation of the nation, today we need to protect the nature of Albania and to preserve the conscience of the citizens from destruction.
This is the renaissance art we need today. Without citizens there is no civilization, without citizens there are no professionals, there are no officials, there are no citizens. Without citizens there is neither government nor prime minister, without citizens there is a flock of sheep without a shepherd.
These words are addressed to the media, which brought us all those vans and occupied our square, but I don’t believe they are broadcasting as much space as they occupied. It begs that the citizen knows not only his responsibilities but also his rights. The citizen’s right is to demand from his state an account of whether it is working or not and if it is not working, why it is not working.
Jokes like, ‘oh my, I didn’t do it, the other one did it before me’, or scaring the citizen with gogols and scary dreams are not democracy, because then this is not a society and it is not a functioning democratic society, but it is The Middle Ages which needs a renaissance. Because there can be no urban renaissance, there can be no reborn Albania if there are no citizens, if there is no civic conscience.
You can find the full article published by Reporter.al here (in Albanian).
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