Witness Day remembered in Albania

State and policy officials will place flower wreaths before the memorial “Under Albania”, in honour of the fallen in the anti-fascist war.

It is expected that this morning the Witnesses ' cemetery will be visited by government head Edi Rama. While the high opposition structures leading Lulzim Basha are also expected to perform their prayers in honour of martyrs.

Witness Day was decided to be May 5, 1942, the day he was killed by the fascists, Kemal Stafa, a young communist activist of the National Liberation War.

Before the establishment of the Albanian state, the Albanian people remembered their martyrs and kept their legends alive, through epic song, and the heritage of their history from generation to generation.

After declaring Independence in 1912 until 1945, the Albanian state did not create a legal status for the martyrs of Homeland. In 1923 only retirement is legalized for his family as part of the military pension law

During the National Liberation War, the first attempt to honor the fallen witnesses in the battlefield begins. The fallen symbolized the inspiration for freedom fighters. Songs of martyrs, giving names to the martyrs, writing about their act in the press and speeches, swearing before their graves, ceremonial burial, helping families, replacing them in the partisan ranks from near to, and so on, all of these are expressions of appreciation for the act and picture of the witness.

After the liberation, on August 28, 1945, the headship of the Nationalist Anti-fascist Council adopted law No. 109 “Mby the reward of families of the martyrs and disabled of the Nationalist War Antiphascrimist”. This law also sanctioned the treatment of the families of patriots who had fought for their homeland even before the National Anti-fascist War, in the time of the National Renaissance, in the wars for independence, thus marking the first attempt at an integral law on the martyrs of the Homeland.

In the '60s, witness status is further processed and expanded, specifying the term” Witness to Homeland”. This law includes the cemetery of the Fatherland Witnesses, which was built in all surrounding centers of the country, where the tombs of all martyrs focused, except those of Peza and Kuci of Vlora were centered. The Homeland Witnesses' Graveyards were built in Tirana with the monument “Under Albania”

By 1992-1993, with the change of political system, the status of the Homeland Witness also suffered. With a government decision, Mexico, still unpublished, benefits were lost to the families of the martyrs.

In 2000, after many attempts, law No. 8607 date 27.04, “The status of Homeland Witness”, which includes martyrs of all historical periods, even the fallen in 1997-1999, Albania and the Kosovo Liberation War.