22
October 2019
FEATURE
When Albanian Migrant Ships Tugged Malta’s Heart Twenty-eight years after ships loaded with desperate Albanians docked in Malta, those seeking refuge and those that helped them remember how their stopover led to a remarkable outpouring of solidarity. BESAR LIKMETA | BIRN | TIRANË
O
n the evening of August 8, 1991 Daphne CaruanaGalizia – then a young reporter for the Sunday Times of Malta, stood at Saint Paul’s Bay, listening to the radio chatter between two Albanian ships, the Durresi and Lirija, and the Maltese authorities. Earlier that day, the ships had arrived in Malta from the port of Vlora in southern Albania with hundreds of people on board. Many were young men desperate to escape the economic hardship of what was then the most isolated country in Europe – regularly compared to North Korea. The late reporter –who became an anti-corruption icon after she was killed by a car bomb in 2017 – documented “the human face of tragedy” by speaking to a group mostly of teenagers – some of whom had jumped ship and were now housed in a primary school awaiting repatriation. “Looking at these photographs after so many years, it certainly provokes emotions,” recalls NdricimBaci, who was then 22 and had left for Malta with his 15-yearold brother, Avni. “Twenty-eight years have passed but I still remember those dramatic moments,” adds Baci, who together with his family now lives and works in Italy. After three days on the island, the migrants were repatriated under an agreement between the Maltese authorities and Albania’s then foreign minister, MuhametKapllani, with the promise that the returnees would not be harmed or persecuted. Many Maltese people, CaruanaGalizia among them, disagreed with the decision to turn back the Albanian migrants. In a later commentary in the Sunday Times, she argued that they should have been offered political asylum. But their plight hit home, and a nucleus of volunteers launched an effort to gather food and clothes to ship to Albania. Following an appeal by Mother Teresa – the ethnic Albanian nun now honoured as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, assistance was also provided through several institutions of the Catholic Church and the island slowly embarked on its first overseas development effort. “Albania became a country that the Maltese would adopt,” explains Claudia Taylor East, executive director of SOS Malta, an organisation set up to deliver aid and run projects in Albania.
Irena Laska, executive director of the Mary Potter Palliative Care Center in the city of Korca. Photo: Besar Likmeta
Exodus on a biblical scale: Albania’s communist regime was the last dictatorship to crumble in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its implosion was precipitated in 1991 by a massive exodus of refugees to the West on ships seized in ports by crowds of young people desperate to leave a country that was an economic ruin. A report prepared in 1992 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe noted that in March 1991, tens thousands of Albanians had seized ships in the ports of Durres and Vlora, arriving later on Italian shores. Another flow of migrants was registered on August 8, 1991, when an estimated 10,000 Albanian nationals on board several ships forced their way into the port of Bari in southeast Italy. Another 1,000 reached the port of Otranto. Two other ships that tried unsuccessfully to land in Sicily were diverted to Malta and later returned to Albania. Baci, who then worked as truck driver in Vlora, together with his 15-year-old brother, was on board the Durresi, which, together with the Lirija, sailed from Vlora toward Malta. He recalls that when they left port, people on board feared being attacked or forced to turn back by the Albanian navy speedboats in the Otranto Channel. They only breathed a sigh of relief once they cleared the island of Sazan. Following the March exodus, Italy closed its ports and many feared that the Italian government would deny them entry. Baci says the ship was well stocked with food, and, as they watched Italian television on board, debate raged among the migrants about where to land.
“In those days, many ships landed in the southern Italian port of Brindisi and the migrants were being repatriated,” Baci says. “Out of fear of being turned back, we took the decision to sail to Malta,” he adds. Baci recalls that the people on the ship had little knowledge of the outside world and discussed many options before choosing Malta, including sailing to England or The Netherlands. “At the time, we did not know much about Malta; I can’t recall who came up with it, but it was an option,” he said. Despite the decision to sail to Malta, some the migrants still wanted to try their luck in Italy. When the ships passed close to Brindisi, some jumped overboard and swam the few miles to shore. Baci recalls that the current was pretty strong, so they used a strong light beaming from the top of a factory to orientate themselves. Once the ships arrived in Saint Paul’s Bay in Malta – whose name refers to the shipwreck of the St Paul on his journey from Caesarea to Rome – they were surrounded by the coast guard, which ordered them to leave Maltese waters. “To scare us off, a sniper shot at the lights on the ship’s mast but we did not leave,” Baci recalls. “The ship’s captain talked to the port authorities, saying that he was being held hostage and had no intention of leaving,” he adds. The ships dropped anchor in front of the port and later a police tugboat came and brought them some water. The next day, the Maltese authorities allowed the Albanians on land and sent them to a barracks where they were put under police guard. The following day, the migrants were notified they would be repatriated home. “They gave us $20 each and sent us to the airport; there were 160 of us on the flight,” says Baci. “In Tirana, on the tarmac, a bus was waiting to drive us back to Vlora,” he concludes. Plight provoked wave of sympathy: Although the Albanian migrants who arrived in Malta that August were turned away, their plight provoked sympathy among the Maltese who started to raise funds to help with aid and development. “When the boats came in 1991, Lilian and I thought we had to do something,” recalls Claudia Taylor East, who together with Dame LilianMiceliFarrugia, a former chairman of the Mother Teresa Co-Workers, founded SOS Albania.
The Albanian ship ‘Durresi’ on Saint Paul’s Bay in Malta with migrants on board on 08.08.1991. Photo: Captain Lawrence Dalli
Taylor East notes that at the time LilianFarrugia worked with Mother Teresa, who in 1991 had set up a centre for people with disabilities in the industrial city of Elbasan in central Albania and made an appeal for aid. “So, after the ships arrived in August, and after the government decided to repatriate all of the migrants, we made an appeal for help and that’s how SOS Albania was born,” Taylor East says. In a short time, the charity gathered several containers of food and clothing, which were shipped to Albania and distributed among poor children. “There were children then that did not have shoes and were running barefoot in the snow,” Taylor East says. “Mother Teresa was instrumental in the calls and appeals for help in Albania and she even visited our project and was delighted,” she adds. After shipping dozens of containers with aid, SOS Albania moved to set up development projects. In early 1992, it made contacts in the city of Korca to set up a bakery whose profits would then finance a high school. The bakery went out of business after a year, but the high school is still there. According to the headmaster, Carmel Camillieri, it is one of the best in the country. It was set up with the help of the Society of Christian Doctrine in 1996 and is named after its founder, George Preca. However, only one year later, in 1997, the college was ransacked during a period of anarchy and lawlessness following the collapse of a series of pyramid-like investments schemes in Albania. Its backers had to start from scratch. Since then, 1,063 students have graduated and every year it welcomes up to 75 new pupils divided into three classrooms. “Thank God we are among the best schools in the country, in the top five,” says Camillieri, who notes that half of the first class of graduates in 1997 went on to college in the Unites States.
