Those spreading the hate have names

Hundreds of tourist businesses in Albania, mainly well-known hotels and restaurants, have come under a coordinated attack from the protest leadership. That leadership is now acting like a self-appointed political bureau, announcing punishments for those who refuse to support it.

After the State Police director said that around 10,000 accounts had been mobilised to attack these businesses with fake reviews, the organisers and their defenders became easy to identify. They are the same people now calling it a scandal that the police are protecting businesses from being damaged at the height of the tourist season, simply because those businesses did not join the protest.

Some even claim that the police effort to protect these businesses is itself a criminal offence and should be investigated by SPAK.

In neighbouring countries such as Italy, this kind of conduct is a criminal offence punishable by up to three years in prison. These are not reviews from customers of hotels or restaurants. They are political attacks ordered by the protest’s self-appointed command group, which has circulated links and addresses showing exactly who should be targeted.

The affected businesses have collected the evidence and filed complaints with the police.

This is a coordinated campaign of political intimidation. The criminal complaints filed by businesses name specific people. The attacks are easy to verify because they took place in the past 24 hours, and in some cases amount to three times the number of reviews a business normally receives over several years.

This is hybrid warfare, but not from Iran, not from a mosque imam, and not from Albin Kurti. It is coming from the people speaking from the protest stage on the boulevard.

Within hours, business owners had the names of those who had targeted them in this way, trying to damage their businesses for political reasons.

They are a modern version of the people who once set ambushes “in the name of the people”. Now they ambush businesses in the name of the protest.

Many of the businesses under attack have no political connection to Edi Rama. This campaign simply pushes them into political opposition to the people drawing up target lists from inside the protest. These are the public faces of the protest, the leaders of small parties calling for businesses to be punished in the name of fighting oligarchy, while imagining that a street mob of loyalists will carry them to power.

Each of them is responsible for every consequence this campaign of political punishment may bring, and for the response it will provoke from business owners.

The campaign has also attracted the usual resentful opportunists: people using the protest to damage business rivals. It has produced tragicomic scenes too, such as a man from Lezha who circulated a list of businesses to be punished, posted Google Maps links for fake reviews, and included in the list a hotel owned by Irfan Hysenbelliu, who is in fact helping keep the protest alive.

That shows the malice behind this campaign has no limit. It is spreading political poison in Albania, and the consequences will last.

In the end, this is an attack on political and personal freedom.

It is happening because those leading the protest cannot accept the political freedom of others in Albania. They want to impose themselves by force. They cannot accept that Albanians will not be led by a group of reckless figures who pour all their resentment into a square and imagine themselves leaders.

They have started targeting people and businesses for political reasons.

This is their downfall, not the downfall of business or of Albanian freedom. Each of them, one by one, should prepare to face the consequences — first through the law.

I also see some journalists who have turned themselves into protest leaders because speaking seems easier to them than writing. They are pleased with what is happening. Some are even sharing calls for SPAK to investigate the police for protecting businesses damaged by the protest mob.

That shows they are part of this dirty operation.

These NGO journalists, who have spent their lives being paid by others, are now attacking every independent newspaper and journalist who makes a living from their own work. They cannot understand that some people survive through their own labour. In their world, someone must always be paying you.

Now they are trying to launch anonymous attacks against colleagues who not only think differently from them, but are also more capable than they are.

Never before has a political protest in Albania produced so much hatred, or such a risk of Albanians turning on one another, as this protest, which was first disguised as civic and peaceful.

Nothing is more hostile to peace than hatred. And nothing pushes a country closer to civil conflict than the targeted intimidation of businesses and individuals.

The people behind this campaign can be named.

They are not really fighting the businesses. Those businesses will survive their fake reviews.

What these people believe is that they can bring Albania to its knees through violence.

Originally published in Albanian as: Urrejtësit kanë emra