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By Alice Mead, April 30, 1999 The outside world has made no response to this arrest
April 28, 1999, YHRF reported that student leader, Albin Kurti,
age 24, was arrested along with his father, and two younger brothers, ages 20
and 15. The owner of Kurti boy was released and showed signs of beatings. The
arrest was reported to be extremely abusive.
The outside world has made no response to this arrest, nor to a series of
other arrests and disappearances over the past few days.
From August, 1997
until March, 1998, Albin was one of the major organizers of the UPSUP, a
union of Albanian students numbering 20,000, who demonstrated peacefully in
the hopes of regaining access to their school buildings.
During the time of the student demonstrations, UPSUP received broad public
and diplomatic support from the U.S. State Department, which negotiated with
them directly to support their non-violent, democratic approach to the
problem of Albanian educational discrimination.
Now that this young man and his even younger brothers are in dire need of
outside support and a call for justice, the US government officials I spoke
with declare no familiarity with this brief history. Ambassador Gelbard has
been "transitioned" out of his former position.
Alice Mead
Multilingual Human Rights / Children's Rights Across the World |