The Albanian Young Greens protest against the behavior of a considerable part of the citizens of Lezha (city in the north of Albania) towards Klodi which must be described as being against humanity, morality and the constitution.
Klodi is an Albanian guy who had emigrated to Italy. This year he came back to Albania and is now participating in a reality show called „Big Brother“. It is on this show which takes place every Saturday live on TV that he admitted in front of 4 million Albanians that he is homosexual. This was the first time that one Albanian guy or girl openly accepted his/her sexual orientation without any fear.
Klodi’s admittance, however, has caused a lot of trouble in Albania. Immediately, some citizens of the city of Lezha (a city in the north of Albania) protested in the street of their city against him. The citizens of Lezha protest because Klodi is from Lezha. Lezha is not a city of high living standards, people are rather poor, the unemployment rate is high, many people have emigrated. And here is the point: These people have never demonstrated for their rights, for more employment, for better standards of living. In this city , the electricity is not working for 24 hours, the water is not working for 24 hours either. Still, these citizens never stood up for these elementary standards, elementary rights.
One night they then heard a guy who took the courage to openly state that he is gay and immediately went on the streets with big scolding. The problem is that Klodi’s life is in danger because a lot of people swear that they want to hurt or kill him at the moment that he leave the “Big Brother” house. This topic has been transformed into the topic of the day because it has “shocked” the entire nation. Everywhere you go you come across people talking about and blaming this guy – and for what? For him being gay. The Albanian people are homophobic.
We as Young Greens are fighting a lot for this topic, we are the only political organization that has protested against the demonstrations attacking Klodi. Also we have encountered lots of objections from the society, we were told that we are not humans but we won’t stop our fight for the human rights.
The constitution of Albania prohibits by law any discrimination on basis of race, religion, gender and sexuality. Protests like the ones against Klodi must therefore be stopped. We are a country in progress and development and we wish to be integrated in the EU – this behavior does not take us towards this goal. To us as Greens, the respect for human rights consitutes a fundamental principle, especially the rights that belong to the sexual orientation. If we do not start to respect and follow the human rights and according life norms, we can’t pretend to catch higher standards than the ones we have today.