In Albania, survivors of prisons and internment camps during the dictatorship, they tell the Voice of America about the many years of suffering and persecution against them and their families.

Although more than 3 decades have passed since the fall of communism they say that, for this affected stratum of society, very little has been done by the state authorities, in the address of historical memory.

In Albania there is still an open debate on the crimes of communism and division with the past, and why more than 3 decades have passed since the fall of the dictatorship.

According to data from the Institute for the Study of the Crimes and Consequences of Communism, for 45 years under this regime, about 35,000 men and women were imprisoned for political motives.

Over 7,000 were executed, killed or died in them.

60,000 Albanians were also interned in concentration camps, 7,000 of whom lost their lives in them.

An 88-year-old survivor, Klara Merlika, the wife of Fatos Merlika, the son of former Prime Minister Mustafa Merlika, was 10 when she was deported from Shkodra with her family in 1945. Her father was a participant in the armed resistance against the communist regime in Mirdita. .

They were first sent to the Berat camp and then to the Turan camp in Tepelena.

She tells VOA about the inhumane conditions in which people died of starvation and lack of medical care.

"Turan has been terrible.

Within 24 hours 25 children died from dysentery.

The graves of children have been lost.

I remember a mother who went and took her baby's bones, and held them under the pillow.

My grandmother has been buried three times.

He was buried for the third time on the shores of Bënçë.

Gjovalin Vasia has made a poem, where I have added some verses - O you mountains that surround me, also

Bënça comes wave-wave, has taken our graves.

You did not feel sorry, you had no mercy, the graves are no longer known.

You took us all to Vjosa - says for the Voice of America Klara Merlika, former political persecuted.

Gjergj Hani, from the city of Durrës, was 16 years old when he tried to escape in 1985, in the east of the country, through the village of Lin in Pogradec.

There he was spotted by the border forces and arrested, convicted and sent to Qafë-Bar prison.

After an amnesty, he is released a year later and again tries to escape, but without success.

He was arrested, convicted again, and this time released after the fall of the communist regime in 1991. He recalls for VOA the brutal violence against him and other prisoners when they arrived at Qafe Bari prison.

"When we got off the bus, policemen lined up on both sides, and when we passed, they hit us with pickaxe tails, blindly.

I have often wondered how it is possible to have such hatred.

Usually man hates you, but he hates you when he has a direct experience with you, who did something to him.

We to them were people who did not know us, had never seen us.

"They unleashed blind violence, which accompanied me all the time," Gjergj Hani, a former political prisoner, told VOA.

Suffering and persecution would accompany Lavdie Nela from the city of Kukës, the wife of the poet and teacher Havzi Nela, who was sentenced to be hanged in August 1988, after 20 years in prison, for attempted escape and agitation and propaganda.

She recalls the beginning of great suffering for her and Havzi in 1967. 33-year-old Havzi Nela was an outspoken opponent of the communist system.

"He was severely criticized at a meeting.

Why rush to do collectivization he told the communists.

He refused to demolish churches and mosques.

When they put the pickaxe in the Topojan mosque, the students also cried with him.

He refused to spoil it.

"That is where our great pursuit of state security began," Lavdie Nela, a former political prisoner, told VOA.

Today, after more than 50 years, Lavdie Nela remembers in her memory a very difficult moment, when she was fleeing with her husband Havzi Nela, through the area on the border with the former Yugoslavia, in the spring of 1967.

"We left, it was a long way.

The snow is melting.

It was April, the most beautiful month.

When we reached pyramid 18 I turned my head from my hometown Shishtaveci.

I had 3 months without going to my mother, for fear of being followed by Havzi.

I can not explain the pain I felt.

I said goodbye dear mother and you father, you will not see me again.

"I saw the light on in the kitchen and I turned my head and left," the former political prisoner continues through tears.

Havzi and Lavdie Nela's attempt to escape failed.

They were handed over by the Yugoslav authorities to the Albanian ones, and sentenced to 15 and 10 years in prison, respectively.

They would travel a long, painful way through prisons and internments.

Havziu is re-convicted while serving his sentence in Spaç prison, while Lavdia is released after two years and interned in Kalimash of Kukës, where he worked in the chrome mine.

After his release in 1988, Havzi Nela tried to escape again and after being caught by the border guards, he was sentenced to be hanged.

Glory fanatically preserves correspondence with him from prison, and several manuscripts of poetry.

It seems her life has stopped there.

The 90s after the fall of communism were full of hope for Albania and Albanians.

But many of those who survived suffering in prisons and internment camps today, after more than 30 years, have this approach, for what they expected with the advent of democracy, and what happened.

"It was incomprehensible to me how many communists became communists and became democrats.

"In relation to what we expected, we are nowhere," said Gjergj Hani, a former political prisoner.

"People can change their name within 24 hours but their spirit does not change.

We are free today to speak, as our minds are filled, but we have not won anything else. ”- Klara Merlika, former political persecuted.

Scholars, representatives of institutions for the crimes of communism, and associations of convicts and political persecuted, have repeatedly raised the concern that the past has not yet been uncovered, and that those responsible for the crimes of communism have not been convicted.

"That concentration that was especially in the 10-15 years before the fall of communism, only in material compensation, in my opinion was not right.

In parallel, systematic policies of punishing those who were persecutors of the politically persecuted should have been worked on.

"By not punishing the crimes of the past, we have installed a culture of impunity, which continues to this day," Jonila Godole, deputy director of VOA, told VOA.

Chairwoman of the board of the Institute for the Study of the Crimes and Consequences of Communism.

In Albania, even 30 years after the fall of the dictatorship, there is still no special museum for the dictatorship, responsible for the crimes of communism, and a central national memorial in honor of the victims.

Albania is the only country in the former communist bloc of the east, where very little has been done to deal with the past and its consequences.

Scholars and analysts say that the efforts of official authorities through symbolic policies are not enough to uncover the 45-year communist past, and bring justice to thousands of innocent victims of that regime./VoA