Open Letter to President Donald Trump
Flamur Buçpapaj
Subtitle:
Please intervene in Albania for justice and the restoration of the dignity of politically persecuted people
Dear President Trump,
I, Flamur Buçpapaj, an Albanian citizen and a founder of the democratic movement in Albania, address you with this open letter to draw your attention to the dramatic situation experienced by my generation and many others who fought for freedom and democracy.
Testimony and sacrifices
We, the generation that founded democracy, did not merely enjoy the right to speak; we were politically persecuted as a people. I clearly remember being expelled from school because of my “biography.” I attended high school together with students who had failed, yet I had all top grades.
I traveled on foot, through snow, rain, and frost, from Tropoja to Fierzë, winter and summer alike, without any means of transportation. Studying was limited and extremely difficult to endure. Where could one study after so many expulsions, walking long distances and often without food? The Party did not want us, but it did not want to appear openly; it ordered teachers to destroy our lives.
For example, the physics teacher was a collaborator of the State Security, from the villages of Malësia e Madhe, with only a three-year institute education. He was negative and despicable. We had to confront such teachers, and not only him. Others looked at us through the “lens of biography,” stigmatizing us for our origin and our past. He ended up in his own moral trash, while I continued higher education.
Even there, we were pursued by our biography. The lecturer of medieval history was a negative man, a Security collaborator, ignorant, yet capable of sending people to prison to demonstrate the regime’s power. Naturally, I did not want to attend that faculty, but I had no other option.
Persecution and resistance
The surveillance continued, especially against me. He could not tolerate me because I wrote for the Shkodra newspaper Jeta e Re, for Radio Shkodra, and often for central publications. For this work I received modest fees to survive as a student. He wanted to appear in newspapers, but I never agreed to interview him. Our confrontations were so severe that I often ended up at the Shkodra police station due to his secret denunciations.
In 1989–1990, I was ready to openly oppose the system—and I did. Together with many dormitory friends, we spoke openly against the regime, especially about the inhumane conditions in the infamous Zdrale dormitory in Shkodra. When the student movements began, clashes with the police became inevitable.
The first anti-communist demonstration on December 13 was organized in our dormitory, and I was its organizer. Students marched in lines from the dormitory to the institute to warn the people of Shkodra that we would resist.
The persecuted citizens of Shkodra joined us, including in the burning of Enver Hoxha’s monument and the bookstore. I confronted Xhemal Dymylli directly; no one else spoke in the auditorium—fear and arrest were waiting at the door.
The people supported us, and the December 13 demonstration became a symbol. Besides me, those arrested included Nazmi Peka, Arben Çeliku, Amo Fanko, the student Mjalinda, and others. I was beaten so severely that I spent a month in intensive care at the Shkodra hospital. It was Azem Hajdari who visited me and enabled my release.
I organized and led the hunger strike against the Party of Labor and Ramiz Alia. However, other students from Shkodra did not join us and never openly opposed the Party. When I went to Pjetër Arbnori to help found the Democratic Party, he told me, “Do not come again, or I will denounce you.” No one supported me. Those who later became deputies and high-ranking officials had previously denounced me to the State Security.
After the fall of communism and continued injustices
After the formal fall of communism, a historical paradox occurred: none of us who truly founded the Democratic Party received leadership positions. We were excluded according to the logic of “Katovica”—the recycling of old elites under the guise of pluralism.
None of us became ministers, directors-general, or decision-makers. Meanwhile, individuals linked to the State Security and the Political Bureau became leaders, deputies, and beneficiaries of public wealth. We, who were beaten and persecuted, were left outside every structure.
Many of us today live in poverty, isolated, often without families. The system ensured that we would receive neither positions nor property, leaving us only one path: leaving Albania. Emigration became an imposed solution.
My experience in the United States
After completing my studies, I served in the intelligence service as a senior officer in the central apparatus. I am a co-founder of Albania’s National Intelligence Service, at a time when there were no desks, no offices, no typewriters, no basic working conditions.
I specialized in the United States of America. Even there, I encountered spies in high positions who played the same role as those I had left behind in Shkodra and Fierzë. They spied on us and excluded us from work. The chairman and deputy chairmen were collaborators of the State Security and brought in others such as Ymer Calamani.
Likewise, the former patronage minister Margariti attempted to seize the National Theatre building to construct a 50-story tower, with 22 entrances for herself and her staff. I have been and remain committed to a Western, non-partisan intelligence service, with the goal that Albania resemble Western societies and the United States.
After this, I left for the USA. I completed further education, obtained U.S. citizenship, and published numerous articles, books, and scientific studies, both there and in Albania. Today I say: God exists. I am in order in every respect. Those who attacked me have remained nowhere—only in the space of their own moral decay.
Conclusions and appeal
Albanian democracy was built on real sacrifices, but it was administered by opportunists. Without a clear break from the criminal past, without historical justice and accountability, democracy remains formal and fragile.
This letter is both a historical testimony and a moral appeal. Albania needs institutional cleansing, a definitive break from the legacy of the State Security and the Political Bureau, and the restoration of dignity to the politically persecuted.
Please, President Trump, intervene so that justice and dignity for persecuted Albanians may be restored, and Albania may not remain hostage to elites who exploit the communist legacy for personal gain.
Truth may be delayed, but it is never lost. Without memory, democracy risks turning into a farce.
Respectfully,
Flamur Buçpapaj
Former leader of the hunger strike and the student movement, Shkodra 1991
