One of the darkest parts of our history is the state’s interaction with religious groups after 1948. During this time, places of worship were either converted to secular uses, such as sports arenas or “Mother Party” conference rooms, or were brutally demolished.
As a result, religious Albanians became a target of persecution and torture. Beqir Meta, Afrim Krasniqi, and Hasan Bello detail these events in the Institute of History’s most recent publication.
According to author Afrim Krasniqi, “it was a society that forbade God, a great extreme, and that is why we selected it.”
A society’s psyche can never fully recover from the wounds left by these true stories. A society that, according to academics, isn’t attempting to move past its wounds, where politics often determines the narrative of history, and where schools don’t want to teach students about the realities of the past.
Days of remembrance are days to both transmit and publish such sentiments. Hence, the attendees were urged to keep this bleak report on religion and communism in mind.