Dashnor Kaloçi
Memorie.al Rare testimony of the writer, poet, publicist and diplomat Visar Zhiti in the well-known show RREFIM on TV Scan, regarding his arrest on November 8, 1978 after a note made by Ramiz Alia on an information report of the Publishing House “Naim Frashëri” where Zhti had sent for publication a poetic volume. How a group of villagers got up from the village of Vila in that cold winter, walking for several hours in the frost and frost and went to the Interior Branch where they asked the mayor Agron Kokona to release the teacher, as their village since its creation , had not made possible to cut the friend in word….?!
“At noon on November 8, 1978, while I was walking with my friend, the director of the Puppet Theater, I was thrown in the bars and arrested in the middle of the city of Kukës, where I served as a teacher for several years after graduating from the Higher Pedagogical Institute of Shkodra. After that, they tied me up and took me to the Kukës Branch of Internal Affairs, where after cutting my head to zero, they locked me in a cell.
After a few days I was taken out of the cell and told to lean against a wall without moving. At first, I was scared because I said who knows what they do to me, maybe they will shoot me… .as we had seen in the movies….?! “But that horrible feeling passed me quickly, when a man appeared in front of me holding a camera and showed me how to pose in front of him.”
This is how the writer, poet, publicist, translator and diplomat Visar Zhiti remembers the moment of his arrest, exactly on that holiday (November 8) where those who had planned his arrest wanted to “enjoy the Party” because they had discovered “An enemy of the people.” So, after a few days where he was left locked in one of the investigation cells of the Kukës Internal Branch, after they took the photo, he needed for the card that was opened for the prisoner, the investigation process immediately started against him.
Visar remembers that he was the first to address the investigator saying: “Yes, why are you arresting me”?! “Yes, you did agitation and propaganda,” the investigator returned in a high, sharp tone, which meant that he had come there to give an account and not to demand. But without finishing the word of the investigator, Visari returned it with the same calmness as with the first question: “Yes, that is my task, to do agitation and propaganda, because I am a teacher…” “Yes, but you did the agitation and propaganda against the Party and the popular power “, the investigator returned in a brutal tone, which he and his colleagues continued until the end of the investigation in April 1979 when he was tried and sentenced to 13 years in prison. political with the accusation of agitation-propaganda.
But before he could stand trial, even in the first days after his arrest, something rare happened to political prisoners accused of crimes against the state: A group of villagers, on a cold winter day, came down from the village of Vila doing several hours on foot in the frost and frost and went in front of the Kukes Branch of Internal Affairs ?! But what were those villagers looking for near that building that aroused only fear and anxiety and to cast terror with its shadow?!
This is well remembered by one of Visar’s students, Selman Billa, who writes, among other things: “From the village of Vila i Kukës where Visar was a teacher, nine mountaineers with white hats rose in the cold winter with snow and frost and requested a meeting with the Chairman of the Internal Affairs Branch, Agron Kokona, to release Visar. After receiving them, the Branch President allowed only Feriz Dragjoshi and Ismail Latif Billa to speak. Islam tells the Branch President: “I have the eldest son crippled since he was 30 years old. From the day you put the teacher in prison, he was not told the tears from the evil that comes to him. You read books to him and told him stories that changed the situation of the boy, for the sake of my son and the people of the Villa, forgive us the teacher for knowing us for the best to this day.
While Ismail Latifi says to the President of the Branch: “We felt very close to the arrest of the teacher, if they had stopped one of our sons, maybe we would not have come, but since our village has been plotting, it has not bothered us not to I go out to my friend when he is with our bread, you have never been a host and I want you, Mayor, to free us from this place and we will know for you as long as life lasts ”.
The Branch President said to the mountaineers: “You have done your best in this cold weather for the teacher of your village and you are saying that he is the best of all, that remains to be seen. You are asking me to release him, but you are in the wrong place, as I only have the key to the handcuffs in my hand and for your efforts, I will not shake it hard. I do not have the key to the door, the key to the door is in Tirana, go and get the key up there at the Party and I will release your teacher “.
“After so many years, it turned out that a branch president had told the truth, despite the fact that he was bad, but Ramiz Alia was one after the other.”
All these, ie the beginning of his arrest and the investigative process against him, came after a report-information that the Publishing House “Naim Frashëri” in Tirana had sent to the Central Committee of the ALP on July 27, 1978, regarding a poetic volume that Visar Zhiti had sent for publication. And on that information of the Publishing House where the poems of Zhit and three other poets were analyzed, which were labeled for mannerisms, hermetic poems, modernist, etc., etc., the Secretary of the Central Committee of the ALP, Ramiz Alia (covering art, culture and propaganda), with his writing he had made a long note, where among other things he finally ordered:
“Do not make any concessions, do not underestimate this issue, because it can become dangerous. But pursue and bring this problem to an end together with other organizations. “Let me know the end.”
And after that, according to the written message from Alia, the document in question with the report-information was given for notification, even to half of the Politburo, such as: Simon Stefani and Hekuran Isai, (two secretaries of the Central Committee of ALPs that covered the sector of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, such as the Ministry of Interior, State Security, Prosecution, Investigators, Courts, prison camps, etc.), and Manysh Mufti, Foto Çami, Xhelil Gjoni, Pirro Kondi, as well as Mehmet Karakushi and Miti Nito, two senior officials in the Central Committee for Art, Culture and Propaganda. This note of Ramiz Alia was fatal for the young poet Visar Zhiti who since 1972, when his friend, the famous poet Xhevahir Spahiu, published some poems in the magazine “Nëntori” and “Drita”, tried to publish that volume. poetic that was returned to him and returned to him by the editors of the Publishing House to fix it as unsuitable for publication, and he (Visari), not only did not succeed in it, but ended up behind bars for years, where he continued his passion , writing poems and secretly getting them out of jail in a variety of ways.
Regarding these and other events from the prison period from where he would be released in the late 80s, ending up as a loading and unloading worker at the Brick Factory in Lushnje, (where his family lived for years half-interned ), etc etc, Zhiti told in the already well-known show “RREFIM” on TV Scan with president Mrs. Elvana Hana.
In his story, among others, Mr. Zhiti made public for the first time the photo that was taken of him a few minutes after his arrest on November 8, 1978, a photo which was provided by his file recently obtained from the Information Authority of the former State Security Files./Memorie.al
