Cases of blood feuds – August

Author: admin 25 September 2015

During the month of August too, Operazione Colomba registered some case of hakmarrje and gjakmarrje. Consulting newspapers and web, Operazione Colomba volunteers, indeed, recorded seven different crimes committed for revenge. Such cases could risk to evolve into feuds between the families involved. The majority of those conflicts arose because of sentimental reasons, debts or property’s disputes. In many cases violence was premeditated.

Cases of blood feuds

Two cases of violence related to money issues took place in Italy, respectively in Alessandria and  Savona.

During the month of August, the Albanian Government has obtained the extradition of three men from Czech Republic, United Kingdom and Greece. The men have been condemned for murders committed between the 1994 and the 1997 and related to the blood feuds phenomenon.

Moreover, a notable case was reported by all the Albanian media and recognized and pointed out as gjakmarrje. On the 4th of March 2014, two men were killed and other two were injured in Laç. They were all brothers. The murderer, probably affected by mental disease, had already been hospitalized  in 2004 in the psychiatric ward. The episode of Gjakmarrje took place on the 4th of August 2015, when a 73 years old man was killed. He was a relative of the first murderer. His family self-imprisoned itself after the murders of 2014. The rival family is therefore suspected to be guilty, but media don’t exclude that the murder could have committed by a hired assassin.

News from abroad

From an international point of view, a few news have to be reported:
– Elvira Dones wrote an article on the Italian edition of Vanity Fair (5 August 2015 – page 30) where she talks about the tradition of Kanun related to the murder of an Albanian 17 years old boy;
– An Austrian school has promoted a raising awareness project against the blood feuds phenomenon (video) in order to support an Albanian-Kosovan family of Asylum seekers in Austria;
– A Swedish organization for human rights, funded in Stockholm in 1982, the Civil Rights Defenders, published in August a Report on the condition of Human Rights in Albania. The report talks about the blood feuds phenomenon and denounce the situation of at least 70 families forced to be self-imprisoned.