TIRANA (AFP).- Albania on Tuesday inaugurated a memorial containing a slab of the Berlin Wall to commemorate the victims of former communist dictator Enver Hoxha's regime.

The 2.6-tonne concrete graffiti-covered fragment, donated by the city of Berlin, was inserted in a memorial lying in an area of Tirana that used to be guarded by the army and housed regime officials.

The memorial also includes parts of a former bunker and the concrete pillars of tunnels from the northern mine of Spac where many of Hoxha's opponents were submitted to forced labour and died.

"This memorial is linked to three important moments: the Berlin wall that divided Europe, the bunker symbolising dictatorship and, the most painful one, the prison of Spac, where hundreds of people lost their lives," parliamentary spokesperson Jozefina Topalli said at the unveiling.

"We shouldn't forget our past," said Fatos Lubonja, one of the artists who created the memorial and who spent more than 10 years in communist prisons.

More than 100,000 Albanians were killed, imprisoned or sent into working camps under a communist regime that lasted from 1944 to 1990.



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