Seventh Day of Clashes in Albania as Protesters Press to Oust Edi Rama
Protesters in Albania have fought with riot police for a seventh consecutive day. Many of them are high school and university students, and their stated aim is to oust Prime Minister Edi Rama.
A police station and government buildings in Tirana have been attacked during protests driven by demands for better university conditions, anger over corruption and calls for Rama's resignation. Before Monday's violence, official figures put the injured at 295 people, 186 of them police officers.
Squads of riot police chased the predominantly student crowd through a park.
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Rama's account is that the protesters include young men and women radicalised by dark forces in Europe and the US, and that Albania has become one of the targets of a well co-ordinated attack. He told grim-faced police chiefs, while brandishing a rock thrown at police, that the moment the state negotiates with this, the state has fallen - a definition that makes talking look like surrender.
Sidorela Vatnikaj's own description is harder to fit into either story. She is 27, a masters student, and one of the more experienced figures in a movement without leaders, with eight years in the forefront of anti-government protests behind her. She is uncomfortable with the violence against the authorities even while blaming the police for starting and fuelling it - an angry movement whose veterans won't endorse the stones is a tidy story for no one.