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Fadil Daja was 21 years old when he was sent to Spac prison after being convicted of treason.

The young soldier escaped to Yugoslavia in 1975 and lived in a refugee camp in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana for six months, dreaming of political asylum in Canada. But his dreams turned sour when the Yugoslav authorities deported him back to Albania and he was sentenced to death.

However, because of his young age, his sentence was commuted to 25 years and he was sent to Spac prison.

Daja knew that the political prison, built in 1968 in a remote area of Albania, was infamous for the hard labour that its inmates were forced to do in its copper and pyrite mines.

But he soon also realised that keeping up with the workload target set for the captive miners was almost impossible for him.

“We had to fill four wagons of minerals every day, around 1.8 tons each. I was constantly ill. I couldn’t meet the target and as result, I was beaten, tied to pillars in extreme cold, and very often left for weeks in solitary confinement,” Daja told BIRN.

But when Daja and other former inmates tried to get miners’ pensions from the state, they were rejected – the authorities said that although there were records of their imprisonment, there were no details of the work they had done while in the Spac jail.

Digging for dictator’s birthday

Albanian Communist leader Enver Xoxha in 1971. Photo: Forrásjelölés Hasonló/Wikipedia/Creative Commons.

The Spac mine, situated in a deep valley in northern Albania, is the second biggest in the country for copper extraction, and is still operational today.

It was built in 1954 by the Communists, who then came up with the idea of using it as a labour camp and forcing the prisoners to extract the minerals.

This took a toll on the lives of over 1,000 people who were imprisoned there, including Agim Hakcani, who is now 65.

“We would work for eight hours underground in temperatures of 40 degrees Centigrade, get wet from the acid from the pyrite and go out to face temperatures of minus 15 degrees Centigrade. My clothes would immediately get frozen,” Hakcani told BIRN.

Hakcani was a young veterinarian at one of Tirana’s collective farms when he was arrested on charges of ‘economic sabotage’ after some cows on the farm died.

“I have seen with my eyes at least 16 prisoners killed in the [Spac mine’s underground] gallery as result of a lack of safety, or throwing themselves at the electric fences surrounding the prison because they couldn’t bear working as slaves anymore,” he recalled.

Spac was not the only political prison in Albania where inmates were forced to labour in extreme conditions.

The situation was almost identical for around 500 prisoners working in copper and pyrite mines at Qafe Bari, in the mountains around 60 kilometres north of Spac.

Ali Leka, a former army officer who was imprisoned at Qafe Bari in 1977 for trying to escape from the country, recalled how the prison was notorious for the violence used against inmates.

“At Qafe Bari, we were usually asked to fill four wagons of minerals per day, while on special Communist dates they would ask for higher yields. On the birthday of [Albanian Communist leader] Enver Hoxha on October 16, we had to fill eight wagons,” Leka told BIRN.

According to the Albanian Institute for Formerly Persecuted People, during the Communist regime’s 45-year rule, around 16,000 people were imprisoned on political charges and almost 1,000 died while in jail.

Forcing them to do hard labour was a very common practice. As well as working in the mines, they were forced to drain swamps, work agricultural land, and build massive infrastructure and industrial projects for the state.

Evidence of forced labour concealed

Fadil Daja, Ali Leka and Agim Hakcani. Photos: Fatjona Mejdini/BIRN.

In December 2014, the Albanian government passed a law that raised pensions for people who worked as miners, as well lowering the pension eligibility age to 55 if they had worked for at least 12-and-a-half years in the mines.

Fadil Daja, Ali Leka and Agim Hakcani fulfilled these legal requirements and rushed to apply for the pension. They were asked for a confirmation from the General Directorate of Prisons of the exact length of time they had worked in the mines.

To their surprise, the General Directorate responded that it had no data about the work they did while in prison.

“They had only registered the date when we entered and left prison, not a single piece of data or document about the time that we were forced to work. This is because they didn’t want to leave traces of political prisoners’ forced labour,” Leka said.

Daja said that the revelation made him furious.

“I was shocked. Although I worked for over 13 years like a slave in the galleries, technically I was not able to get a miner’s pension,” he explained.

However, they didn’t give up. They formed a group with some friends and started to knock on state institutions’ doors and complain to government internet platforms over what they saw as a grave injustice.

To amplify their voices, they also took the issue to the media. After three years of struggle, the government amended the law on March 28, opening the way for them to claim the pension.

Under the legal changes, the time worked by prisoners will be calculated as double that worked by ordinary colliers. If a prisoner did ten years of forced labour in the Spac mines, this will be counted as 20.

According to a government report on the amended law, a total of 264 former prisoners will now have the green light to benefit from miner’s pensions. The amendment is expected to be approved from parliament this month.

Daja said that many of the men’s prison friends had called him to express gratitude thank their leadership on the issue.

“We are waiting for parliament to pass the amendment and we cannot tolerate more delays,” he said.

“We have suffered a lot, now is time to end the battles and enjoy the pension.”