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Rama in New York, is awarded the prestigious prize

2022-06-02 14:29:22Politikë SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Rama in New York, is awarded the prestigious prize
Rama during the award ceremony

Prime Minister Edi Rama was awarded the prestigious " Joan Ganz Cooney Global Leadership Award " at the annual Sesame Workshop dinner for the reception that our country gave to Afghan citizens who fled their country after taking power from the Taliban.

During his speech, after receiving the award, Rama said that the answer to open doors for Afghans we find in our story, which is a story of hospitality, a story of respect for people in need.

SPEECH BY PRIME MINISTER RAMA

I am very, very grateful, but I am also extremely sorry that I have to repeat something I have said many times, as much as I feel in position. Do not misunderstand me, it is an honor, a great honor and also a great pleasure to be here today, but I still can not make peace with the fact that what should have been the rule, is the exception.

I have to tell you, since we are here behind closed doors and nobody listens to us, that what I felt in the face of so much hesitation and so much rejection coming from much richer countries to open the door to Afghans has just one name: "Shame".

Many people have asked me: “Why? Why would Albania do this? Why would I make this decision? ” Probably, even in this hall there are people who wonder "why", how it happened that one of the poorest countries in Europe was one of the first countries to open its doors to people, who struggled between life and death.

We find the answer to this question in our history, which is a history of hospitality, a history of respect for people in need, a history embodied in our first constitution, the code of Albanians, which reads: “The house of the Albanian belongs to God and mikut ”. By "friend" was not meant simply the one who was invited, but the one who knocked on the door, because he was in need. According to this code, knocking on the door is the will of God and you must open it. Whoever knocks on that door should be given shelter, care and protection.

Perhaps this is the reason why Albania was the only country in Europe that had more Jews after the war than before it; the place where no Jew, not even a single one, surrendered to the Nazis. In those tragic times, when Jews were leaving their homes all over Europe, Albania became the place where Jews came, they did not flee; came to defend themselves.

There is a story, among many others, that I want to share with you, about the four religious leaders of our country, which is often said to be a Muslim country, but no. We are a place where Muslims and Christians coexist with full respect for each other. These four leaders, who were summoned to Berlin by the man in charge of Operation Final Solution, represented the four religious communities of Albania, the Catholic Christians, the Orthodox Christians, the Sunni Muslims and the Bektashis, the Albanian Muslims. They were asked to sign an agreement with the Third Reich, which had two points: to allow the Nazi regime to take the Albanian gold, which was then in the bank of Rome, and to cooperate with the Nazi regime to capture the Jews. They gave the signature for gold, but did not give it for the Jews.

And so the story goes, to come to us, when we were refugees leaving the country, taking refuge not from a fundamentalist religious regime like that of the Taliban, but from an atheist regime, which had the courage to write in our constitution that the Republic of Albania it is an atheist republic, where religious beliefs were completely banned, where life was a hell and the country, at that time, was North Korea and Europe. So, we left the country, to find shelter somewhere else, thirty years ago and when the Afghans had to leave the country to find shelter and escape death, how could we say "no"! How could we not open the door for them and how could we ask about the color of the skin, about the religion in which they believed or how close or far they were from Albania ?!

No, we could not! We simply said yes. As long as we have a home, that home belongs to everyone in need and we come to their aid and will always come to their aid, not in words, but in deeds. So we did it in honor of our tradition, we did it in honor of our personal history as refugees, but we also did it in honor of our children and our children's children, because, after all, the only wealth we have and owing to our children is memory.

I strongly hope that, one day, Albania will be a rich country, but I beg long ago not to be ranked among the richest countries that have lost their memory. We must preserve the memory.

Thank God, there are many, many people in this country, people of good will, who stand up for what is so valuable and can not be ignored in the name of any choice, in the name of any power, in the name of any particular interest and that is humanism. I am very proud, very honored and I feel very humble to be among you tonight and to have listed myself and my country beside you and alongside many people who have honored the United States of America and honored with deeds, not words, what the United States represents to anyone.

People, as Nazarini told us, are three times more inclined and willing to open their doors to refugees than the government of the United States of America.

Finally, I want to tell you that I am here, because Albania, from today and starting tomorrow, will be the country that will hold the presidency of the United Nations Security Council. It's the first time in our history that we sit on that Council and we would be very proud and very grateful if Sesame together with Welcome US would accept our invitation to come to the Security Council on June 6, to speak to the Council and around the world for the children of Ukraine and all the children of people, families around the world, who are suffering so much leaving their homes, moving.

Sherrie said there were 100 million. Are more! What we did saved several thousand.

I want to conclude by honoring a great Albanian, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, St. Teresa of Albania, who said: "Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle." We lit our candles and will continue to do so.

Thank you very, very much, for something I want to be very modest about and modesty is not my strong point, but I want to be modest because that is the truth. It was not my merit, because it just happened that I was the prime minister, it is the merit of the Albanians, who fully supported the decision and when asked how they felt about this decision, a much larger majority than the one who supports the government said: “Definitely. We went through it ourselves. We know how you feel and we have the honor to open the doors to those who, today, are the Albanians of 30 years ago ".

Thank you.


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