Anti-government protests in Albania leave 71 police officers injured and 71 detained

Othree days of violent protests against the Albanian government left 71 police officers injured, including one in critical condition, and at least 71 demonstrators arrested, the Balkan country police announced.

The police director-general, Skënder Hita, reported, in press statements, the number of injured agents, while the police reported, through their website, the 71 arrests and criminal measures against 147 other people, without specifying the numbers corresponding to today's disturbances.

Hita said that very few of the detainees were students, although the mobilizations were led by university students demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister, Socialist Edi Rama.

“ None of the detainees on the first night proved to be a student, while among the detainees on the second night it was found that very few were ", said Hita, according to television A2 CNN.

This profile of detainees contrasts with the fact that most protesters are teenagers, many of them at school age, as the Spanish news agency EFE verified on the ground.

Some passersby even reprimanded agents for arresting minors, for example, after clashes in Skanderbeg Square, where agents sporadically threw tear gas and protesters threw stones off the sidewalk.

The Ministry of Health indicated that 14 wounded were transferred to the University Hospital of Traumatology: eight police officers, four protesters and two other minors.

These are the only data on injured protesters so far.

In the city of Shkodër, in the north, the police commander, Fasil Rama, is in critical condition after a stone thrown by protesters gathered outside the police station has hit him in the head.

In Tirana, the clashes continued for the third consecutive day, with protesters throwing stones at police, lifting barricades with urban furniture and burning containers, as well as destroying banking facilities and other shops.

Throughout the city centre, protesters vandalized banking agencies, mobile phone stores, fast food restaurants, traffic lights and bus stops.

The police prevented a crowd, many of them young and covered-faced, from approaching the Ministry of Education and parliament.

The protests, which extend to other cities, bring together thousands of people who demand the resignation of Edi Rama and more support for university students, who denounce the poor conditions of their centers and high academic fees.

The Prime Minister blamed the conservative opposition for the violence and today released a video in which he visited the burning headquarters of the College of Europe in Tirana, after attacks on several buildings on Wednesday.

“ Everyone must answer before the law, and whoever was part of this chaos will pay for it,” Rama warned.

Albanian President Bajram Begaj called for restraint and called for tensions not to jeopardise the stability of the country.

“In exercising the responsibilities and powers conferred on me by the Constitution, I am at the disposal of all those looking for a space for dialogue and understanding,” he said, in a video published on his Facebook social network profile.

The escalation comes after months of almost always peaceful anti-governmental mobilizations against a controversial tourist project linked to the family of the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

What was initially an environmental campaign became a movement against the alleged corruption of the government of Rama and the conservative opposition, which protesters also consider part of a system that benefits an oligarchy and not the citizens.