‘I know who has harmed me’: The hidden ordeal of Albania’s political prisoners

With the fall of communism Albania amnestied thousands of political prisoners, but they say their persecutors remained masters of the political system and society learned nothing of communist cruelty

Agron Hoxha at Spaç (Photo by Gil Holten)

Five years ago, I met Ivan Denisovich – not the fictional character of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s autobiographical story of life in the Russian gulag, but a former political prisoner from Albania.

Agron Hoxha was 19 when he tried to escape communism. He was caught at the southern border with Greece and sentenced to 22 years of hard labour, drilling blast holes in the copper mines of Spaç, in the mountainous north of the country. While there, Agron lost his father, his youth, and his dream of a life in the United States.

Agron taught me much about why Albania’s political culture remains problematic, and what Greece shares with it – even though it was spared communism.

“The police took us at 6:30 up into the mountains to the mines... I drilled holes and then others – workers, who weren’t political prisoners - put in the dynamite. It was forbidden for us to do so. The drilling made lots of dust. You couldn’t breathe.”

Each blast produced about 40 tonnes of ore. All of it had to be loaded onto carts before prisoners could leave. “We had to finish the work, or there would be a problem with the police,” Agron said. “There was hardly a day when someone didn’t have a rock fall on their head or break an arm… In the 13 years I was here, there were about 30-50 dead.”