When Albanian Migrant Ships Tugged Malta’s Heart

"Looking at these photographs after so many years, it certainly provokes emotions," recalls Ndricim Baci, who was then 22 and had left for Malta with his 15-year-old brother, Avni.

"Twenty-eight years have passed but I still remember those dramatic moments," adds Baci, who together with his family now lives and works in Italy.

After three days on the island, the migrants were repatriated under an agreement between the Maltese authorities and Albania's then foreign minister, Muhamet Kapllani, with the promise that the returnees would not be harmed or persecuted.

Many Maltese people, Caruana Galizia among them, disagreed with the decision to turn back the Albanian migrants. In a later commentary in the Sunday Times, she argued that they should have been offered political asylum.

But their plight hit home, and a nucleus of volunteers launched an effort to gather food and clothes to ship to Albania.

Following an appeal by Mother Teresa - the ethnic Albanian nun now honoured as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, assistance was also provided through several institutions of the Catholic Church and the island slowly embarked on its first overseas development effort.

"Albania became a country that the Maltese would adopt," explains Claudia Taylor East, executive director of SOS Malta, an organisation set up to deliver aid and run projects in Albania.

Exodus on a biblical scale:

The Mary Potter Palliative Care Center in the city of Korca. Photo: Besar Likmeta

Albania's communist regime was the last dictatorship to crumble in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its implosion was precipitated in 1991 by a massive exodus of refugees to the West on ships seized in ports by crowds of young...