The right to life gives life to every right

2024-08-26 21:10:00, Opinione Besnik Bakiu

The right to life gives life to every right

Besnik Bakiu

These days the Albanian society has been shocked by a series of serious criminal events, murders, injuries, quarrels, violence from the most banal and macabre.
It seems like society is numb and waiting for the next crime to happen. And he does not disappoint. It has been permanent and one of the most monstrous; with various geographies of realizations, causes, countries, etc.

Every day we encounter what the media feeds us, with the law not functioning properly, the screaming silence of those who should not be silent, and the findings/analyses of those who should act. The right to life is seriously threatened.
"It is true that the law cannot force another man to love me, but it can prevent him from violating me, and that is no less important" - appeals the great Martin Luther King.

Although the Constitution defines it as a personal right, we must treat it not as a private matter, but as a public matter, since its uncertainty destroys the entire Albanian opinion, destroys people's lives, destroys our security, and above all destroys the future. It is the responsibility and obligation of the state and society to take measures for the safety of their citizens. This responsibility cannot and should not be held only by the Police, which, despite all the problems that other extra-police actors have/or create, remains one of the most dedicated and sacrificed institutions in Albanian society. Even in quite a few cases, she is in the positions of the fable "Hip up because I killed you, come down because I killed you".

Responsibility for the safety of human life needs to include the legislature, the government, the opposition, independent institutions, justice bodies, local government, religious institutions, the media, non-profit organizations, that is, in a word, the whole society.
We must not forget that the number of murders and injuries in these last three decades is on a frightening scale, as close as it can be to those of a war. It is a political-social-institutional shame for all of us, that in 33 years, in Albania, about 6,000 people have been killed and injured for various reasons. This shame becomes more shocking, when our politicians, the killed are only numbers. So many killed during my rule and so many killed during your rule. They forget that these cold numbers are human lives, human pain....

Could it be that "we Albanians are more in love with death than with life"? Personally, I am against this opinion as I do not belong to that group, which tends to demonize everything Albanian, or take the role of the victim for everything that is not going well in our country. In my opinion, we are a people like all the peoples of the world, neither superior nor inferior. We are in the part of the sun that belongs to us. Knowing the history of other peoples will give us the right and prove the paradigm that we may be late, but not that murder and crime are our best companions.

Then the question naturally arises "Why do Albanians kill in democracy"?
Personally, I try to justify the Albanian society, arguing that the Albanians during most of the history did not have their own state, but the rule of foreigners. Even when there was no foreign rule, the state was not in its function, but of the Albanian rulers. Being pastoral in origin, and driven by external invading factors to live isolated in the mountains or fragmented in provinces, regions or states under the influence of others, we have not always had the opportunity to develop sufficiently.
After the 90s, where our transition was very traumatic, offering an unlimited freedom for the individual, the family and our whole society. A chaotic freedom without rules, which could not be managed and controlled by economically poor and intelligent individuals isolated from the social-cultural development of the other world, not accepted by it and without hope for tomorrow.
Let's not forget that we are debtors to the past, especially to the past, whose crimes we haven't given a name ("I owe the crime that I didn't name" - cries the poet) nor the well-deserved punishment for anti-humanism.
Albanian society suffered social trauma and recognized phenomena, which it not only did not think about, but was also morally divided. We were the ones who gave ourselves the right to call the rightful owner: we certified the former owner and occupier as the rightful owner. Law 7501 "On agricultural land" returned to us like the rope outside the grave of the village batakçi. We were the ones who ran to buy university and scientific degrees, even doctorates and professorships at the kiosks/universities at huge prices. It was us who destroyed every material good that had been built up over decades. All this happened in front of us, before our eyes.

Uncontrolled demographic movements of the population with different cultures and mentalities; crisis and violence in the Albanian family, etc. coupled with the unresolved property problem, are among the main causes that "produce murder".
This situation, where almost always not the right but the "strong" wins, reduced the self-esteem of the individual and our society to a minimum and gradually we begin to believe that we deserve this way of life, we do not aspire more than survival, we constantly lose from our civic and cultural values, we underestimate civic awareness and behavior and do not consider social responsibility necessary.
The weak citizen reaction, which favors the expansion of the spread of the "crime culture" geographically and demographically, as well as its use as a "legal" tool to "set off accounts" or "solve" natural individual problems and disputes.
Crime is no longer only associated with young people, their age problems and youthful impulsiveness. The crime was committed by people of different ages and social categories, living in urban and rural areas.

The impotence of state institutions is present especially in the "legalization" of revenge (since there is no canon to accept the testing of children or women). Instead of reacting strongly, the state boasted about its policies and the aid it provides to stranded families. It is scandalous when you look at ministers and deputies that during the electoral campaigns (even later), visits and promises to stranded children are part of their propaganda. No "honorable ones", misery does not want mercy, it only wants justice.

Difficulties in the cooperation of law enforcement agencies to build a proactive policy with the community, as a result of the communist legacy of the "spy", or the deconspiracy of the files of these persons; have brought an impossibility of recognition in the initial stages of conflicts and their prevention. The culture of impunity coupled with the occasional amnesties, pardons, reduced sentences, the departure of murderers in the direction of indictment; has had a significant impact on the phenomenon of violence.

The black and white media coverage of criminal events. In the news, the violator of the law is put in the center, and in some cases he is even indirectly presented as a sympathetic figure. But the real hero, those who caught him and put him before the law, is not visible, no one talks about him.
The lack of social responsibility, which motivates us to behave without evaluating the consequences of our actions, is not only civic immaturity and lack of cultural and family formation, but also a comprehensive and inherited backwardness in our historical development.

All these years, the simple Albanian lives almost abandoned by ideals, by the belief that he has a moral, he has a right, but this right is established only by God and not the institutions, for which he votes and pays. And for him, even though he believes in God, his faith in the land, in freedom, justice and that one day this country will become, as its citizens believed in the early 90s - like all of Europe, is broken.
This is not a feeling of fatality, but concern, which begins with collective amnesia, the loss of social memory that what is happening is not happening to us for the first time, as well as obligation on behalf of the future of our children.

Everything happens in front of us, before our eyes. Corruption of souls is more serious than financial corruption or bribery, but we did not worry about it in time, so like any latecomer, we pay the heaviest interest-delays, which no amnesty forgives.
We have not done what the great poet of American democracy, Walt Whitman, appealed to when he urged his citizens to "oppose much and obey little." These golden words of his today belong to every people, every individual who seeks a higher quality of life. What about us Albanians, have we objected and protested enough to have a better quality of life? I think not. No, because society is involved, but passive; not that it is impure, but impure, informal, semi-illegal, extra-institutional, clannish and somewhat masochistic.

Today, the development of society cannot be thought of without social order and justice, which can only be established by a visionary leadership that thinks not only about itself, not only about today, and that manages to understand that both people, money, and work, property, family, society, the nation, and the state have value in a system with rules and social equality before the law. Such a system can make democracy functional, bring back respect for man, tolerance for the existence and need of others, obedience to the truth that is not a monopoly of anyone, the effort to increase the quality of life and hope for tomorrow for everyone and of all.

My biggest dilemma is not a war lost, but a war never fought. If there was a war, even if it was lost, it ensures the desire to win; as you find yourself in battle again!

I want to recall what President Obama said when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, that: "It is undoubtedly true that development can rarely take root without security. But it is also true that security does not exist where people do not have enough food, clean water, or the medical conditions necessary to survive. Security does not exist where children cannot aspire to a good education, or a job that supports a family. Lack of hope can destroy a society from within"; so I would modestly suggest to Albanian politics to give the importance that belongs to the safety of life. This should form the core of a continuous campaign, according to the motto "The right to life gives life to every right", not only in attracting the attention of the public to appreciate the sanctity of life, but also in efforts to draft through a broad public and political debate, a legal framework, followed by the establishment of a body that will be able to assess, observe and denounce every murderous circumstance that threatens every day.
So there is light at the end of the tunnel and I believe and hope, but strong wills are needed, cooperation and definition of an ideology or ideal is required to know what we are looking for and what is today, in the 21st century, the true desire of Albanians, as Mahatma Gandhi says: "The main purpose of life is to live righteously, to think righteously, to act righteously."