Engineer Sajmir Maloku passes away/ He invented the 'can' to watch Italian channels during communism

2025-08-14 22:37:00, Aktualitet CNA

Engineer Sajmir Maloku passes away/ He invented the 'can' to watch

Engineer Sajmir Maloku, known for his invention of the "Can" that allowed citizens of Tirana to watch Italian television channels during communism, has passed away.

Through a reaction, the Nationwide Union for the Integration of Political Prisoners and Persecuted of Albania shared the news, highlighting, among other things, the engineer's long ordeal of suffering during the dictatorship.

Full reaction:

The tyrant engineer Sajmir Maloku, who brought to Tirana with his invention "Kanaçe", the time when the citizens of Tirana watched Italian television channels, left us, his fellow sufferers, from our beloved Tirana!

The student who graduated with a gold medal from higher education, the talented engineer who started his life with knowledge and in the end the dictatorial regime imprisoned him in Burrel and Spaç, has passed away! Tirana has one less intellectual, one less anti-communist resistance fighter, one less good and knowledgeable tyrant! The one who led his fellow sufferers in February '91 in the overthrow of the dictator's monument!

Sajmir Maloku today constitutes a living testimony of suffering and survival in the Albanian communist hell. Maloku, with his existence and the story of his hell, tries to tell us and testify to the cruelty of communism, the heartlessness, the wickedness, the madness, the lawlessness of the system, the torture, the violence and above all the harshness and brutality to the point of bestiality of the communist system that terrified Albanians for 50 years.

Sajmir Maloku was accused by the communist regime as a spy for 17 capitalist countries and an agent of the British in particular. An electronic engineer in the army by profession, Sajmir Maloku was persecuted, investigated, and blackmailed by 120 spies and collaborators of the State Security and by 9 investigators of the regime. He suffered 9 years in the most brutal and terrifying prisons of the dictatorship.

In addition to the sentence, Maloku and his family suffered just as many years of surveillance, tracking, wiretapping, and framing by the State Security — the terrible beast that kept the Stalinist dictatorship afloat through the fear, panic, persecution, violence, arrests, and terror it caused everywhere.

After a fake trial, Sajmir Maloku was held for 200 days underground, under water and mud, hidden from the communists, at a time when his family was searching for him in all the prisons of Albania.

He was imprisoned for 9 years by the former State Security, on charges of "agitation and propaganda", for inventing a device — "Kanaçe" — that served as a television antenna to watch foreign stations, which the communist regime strictly prohibited.

In communism, one had to see and follow only what the Party of Labor said. Any other attempt led directly to prison. If you did not obey the party, you were the most vile enemy of class and power, the party and the people. Communism controlled everything and everyone, even people's tastes. Everything that was not approved by the party-state was declared forbidden, dangerous and punishable.

Sajmir Maloku's fellow sufferers were great figures such as: Dom Simon Jubani, Father Zef Pllumi, Monsignor Frano Ilia, Dom Ndue Sahatçija, Cardinal Ernest Simoni, Cardinal Mikel Koliqi, Dom Nikollë Mazreku, etc.

Testimonies of persecution in the communist hell, like that of Sajmir Maloku and the many Albanians who suffered unjustly, are the dark mirror of dictatorial horror. Bringing this macabre darkness to light is a liberation not only for the souls of those who died, but also for those who heroically stood firm — like Sajmir Maloku and thousands of fellow sufferers of the time. /CNA