HONOR FOR ALL THE ALBANIANS

(Impressions from Riza Milla,
director of Democratic League for the Albanians of Montenegro,
in Chikago)

Patriots from all regions, from Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Ulqin and around are reunited to honor Bilal Xhaferri’s figure. Those who have known him personally but even activists that have never had the opportunity to meet him but have heard about him by their colleagues and have appreciated him with sympathy, are reunited to accompany him in the maternal Albania. It’s been so many years since his pitiless death but the memories and the works he left us to transmit them to the young generations, is and remains a big asset for the thesaurus of our national culture. Bilal Xhaferri’s personality is being affirmed day by day and is becoming a reality even for those severe adversaries who didn’t save his life, using the most ignoble methods, in exile too, to cut his pen. A proverb says that the host’s bread and the berserk’s gun can’t be stopped. Even Bilal Xhaferri’s pen, by which he raised his voice against the Albanian dictator and dictatorship, couldn’t be stopped. He was depressed for Albania and the Albanians and said that we Albanians are the most ancient population of Balkan and we don’t deserve to live isolated of other European populations. He couldn’t accept Albania without Kosovo and Chameria and said: “There isn’t an Albanian state without Kosovo, Chameria, Plava and Gucia, Hoti and Gruda”…

Instead of becoming a reality, his ideas were converted in a family tragedy. As it is known, his father was shot because he wanted Albania to be up to the place where was spoken the Albanian language. Blood can’t become water. And the son continued the father’s way, even though he knew his life was in danger.

The Albanian communist government adjudicated him as people’s enemy, without taking into account his talent and his work at service of the country. But Bilal couldn’t be Albanian people’s enemy. He was only a political opponent of the dictatorial system, which aimed and realized, with the most horrible methods, the total human discrimination. The intellectual Bilal Xhaferri, with the hope of better days coming, went into exile, against his desire, but unfortunately he didn’t enjoy those happy days he had dreamt. It wasn’t said to view a free, democratic Albania.
We thank the initiators, Mr. Shefki Hysa, representative of the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri”, and the Albanian Democratic Government that gave us the opportunity to satisfy Bilal Xhaferri’s desire after the death. Finally his body will repose in the entrails of the earth that he loved so much, for which he died and was burnt as a candle, as Naimi, the big poet of Renascence, sang.

We beg the Albanian government and all the other governmental and nongovernmental institutions of our maternal country, to work for the Albanian’s good, wherever they are, to respect and honor them while they are alive, not to enounce them heroes only after death. To work with spirit and consecration as does the Cultural Association “Bilal Xhaferri” which is fulfilling with success its major mission, the return of Bilal Xhaferri in Albania.

We all wish we could return one day at our homeland, in that sacred land of Gjergj Kastrioti and Ismail Qemali, of Shote and Azem Galica and many other heroes. Greet Albania for all the emigrants, when getting there!

The memory of Bilal Xhaferri will last in eternity, as that of all our shiny heroes!
Thank you and have a good flight toward the lands of maternal Albania!

Riza Milla

Chicago,
May, 1995