Skip to main content

Uighur Update

The saga of the five Uighur's moved to Albania from Guantanamo rumbles on. The Toronto Star reported on an interview with Argita Totozani, Albania's National Commissioner for Refugees. According to the paper, Totozani said that the Albanian government did not intend to grant asylum to the men.

"Their future is not here," she said. "There is not a Uighur community (here). They don't speak any Albanian ... There is no integration possibility for them here. We realized their future is not in Albania." Totozani also suggested that the men might be resettled in Canada: "I've heard they have relatives in Canada. There is a good community in Canada for Uighurs."

The Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied that there was any plan to transfer the men, insisting that the process of granting political asylum was continuing and that the authorities were working to integrate the men into Albanian society.

According to one of the local papers, Gazeta Shqiptare, Totozani has now been sacked. In an interview with the paper she said that she had been misquoted, claiming that it was the lawyers for the five men who wanted to have them resettled in Canada.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are still trying to persuade the Albanians to send the men back to China were they are considered terrorists. According to the local papers a high level delegation from China arrived recently for a three day visit. While the case of the Uighurs was not on the official agenda it was expected to be a key issue under discussion.

Comments

Anonymous said…
gjuha e gjate e keqja e te zot'--the big mouth is the drama of the owner
4:03 pm
olli said…
I'm going to learn how to say this and slip it into a conversation at the earliest possible opportunity. Since I won't know what the conversation is about I won't know whether it is appropriate or not, but it is too good to pass up. Thanks.
12:00 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
34 comments
Read more

Kamëz Part 3

For those who want a lengthy detailed report into the election there will, undoubtedly, be a range of them to chose from. In the meantime, here are my brief reflections on the last few weeks. At the heart of the problems around this election is the unwarranted influence of political parties on all aspects of the electoral process. Every institution responsible for organising and facilitating the election is under the control of political parties. The Electoral Code itself was heavily revised only days before the original date for the elections and only weeks before the actual date (Law 9676 13 January 2007). It was these revisions, specifically Article 181/2, that created the overly complicated identification requirements that caused so much confusion, and undoubtedly disenfranchised some voters. Let's be clear though: these revisions were not designed to protect the interests of the electorate. They were drafted primarily because the political parties do not trust each other. The ...
27 comments
Read more

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...
22 comments
Read more