Italy against Albania. Old history, old stories, including football and footballers, which have marked the controversial relationship between two worlds. Without taking anything away from the honorable general who evokes the world upside down to explain to readers and voters what perplexes him about cosmopolitan democracies and the universalism of human rights, in the Italian-Albanian case the world has actually turned upside down in the last thirty-three years , since the Vlora ship landed in Bari with its human cargo on 8 August 1991.
In the contemporary world, we are the ones who export migrants to Albania, so that they are held there, against their will, against the principles of the rule of law, against the most basic feelings of solidarity and humanity. Today’s world – yes, the Honorable General is absolutely right – is upside down: we transfer irregular migrants to a country which in turn exports immigrants to ours.
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It should be remembered that the Albanian community is the fourth in terms of numerical composition in Italian prisons, after Morocco, Romania and Tunisia, with which it competes for third place. There are 2019 inmates of Albanian nationality in Italian prisons. Quite a few of them are illegal immigrants. And they will follow on TV the fate of their national team, in which one of the many Albanian boys who arrived in Bari with their family at the beginning of the nineties plays, certainly not dissuaded by the images of Vlora and the wickedness of the Italian institutions.
Elseid Hysaj, full-back first for Napoli and then for Lazio, much appreciated by Sarri, arrived in Italy way back in 1994. Three years earlier, in that torrid summer of 1991, the Christian Democrat mayor of Bari Enrico Dalfino had attempted to welcome the country’s refugees of the eagles with the traditional Bari hospitality. Dalfino taught administrative law at the University of Law. «They are people, desperate people. They cannot be sent back, we are their only hope”, this is what he said when he found himself in his squares thousands of men and women looking for a hope of life. And in coherence with his words he tried to operate. Many people from Bari took him seriously. They brought milk, bread, water to those who wandered disoriented in a city they had dreamed of being able to see. Enrico Dalfino, who died young three years later, was mocked, mistreated and vilified by another Christian Democrat politician, until then famous for his eccentric utterances.
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The then President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga called him an idiot. An idiot, he was called, just for trying to organize a welcome service in the name of shared humanity. Since then a dramatic socio-political parable has begun and hospitality enthusiasts have been degraded from idiots to criminals. Thus, with Cossiga’s epithet addressed to Mayor Dalfino, the sub-culture of inhumanity that led to the current migration policies was born. Yet the democratic world has been harshly criticizing Albanian autarchy, on the right and left, for decades. Despite this, they wanted to deny a smile to those who sought refuge in the land of Raffaella Carrà.
Elseid Hysaj is a footballer for the Albanian national team. He arrived as a newborn in Bari in 1994 with his father. They relied on makeshift means, on the smuggler on duty. At a summer party, before the 2021 championship won by Milan and which saw Hisaj’s Lazio finish fifth, perhaps also to remember his story of human struggle, poverty and resistance, he decided to sing, he from Lazio, «Bella Ciao» . Lazio ultras fringes threatened him by stating that there would be no room for an anti-fascist in their team.
Elseid is a defender. We hope that Europeans will continue to defend but also to attack by singing and telling the younger ones what “freedom” means against all the new fascisms that are growing around poor Europe. Whose mythological origin as a princess on the move clashes irremediably with the walls, fortresses and detention centers in Italy and Albania, authorized by a complicit, selfish and inhuman Europe
