Atheism in Europe

The first exhibition by Enver Hoxha, a medical doctor, plastic surgeon and amateur photographer, which is showing at the National Museum of Kosovo in Pristina until Sunday, documents the journeys of several groups of fleeing refugees across Kosovo from March to June 1999.

In the mountainous region of Martanesh, north-east of the Albanian capital Tirana, dozens of abandoned Communist-era bunkers are being used by shepherds as summer huts for their sheep.

Shepherds who come from the Tirana and Elbasan areas have built sheepfolds around the bunkers to ensure a safe haven for their flocks, enabling them to graze in Martanesh's lush pastures.

The head of Albania's main centre-right opposition Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha, on Monday said his party would soon submit a draft law seeking to ban the display of communist symbols in public.

The Democrats' leader said his party was seeking help from German partner parties in order to follow the same model that Germany has, in banning Nazi symbols.

"Sworn Virgin," a play based on US-based Albanian writer Elvira Dones's novel of the same name, is coming to the Athens Festival this year.

The ruling Socialist Party in Albania has won the parliamentary elections and will have between 45 and 49 percent of the vote.

According to exit polls conducted by the Italian agency IPR Marketing, the opposition Democratic Party will have up to 34 percent of the votes.

Hajriz Hoxha, the brother of Ramiz Hoxha, one of two Kosovo Albanian men executed for alleged treachery by the KLA in 1998, told BIRN on Sunday that he had seen the masked men he believed to be the killers and had new information which could reveal their identities.

On Saturday, in the northern city of Shkodra, 38 Catholics killed for their faith under Albania's Communist regime will be beatified in what is being called the biggest single Albanian Catholic event ever.

The Mass that around 10,000 people are expected to attend will be held by Cardinal Angelo Amato, the Pope's Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican.

The Catholic Church in Albania on Thursday announced that 38 Christians martyred for their faith in the Communist era will be beatified in Rome this year.

The Albanian Catholics were executed or died in prison between 1944 and 1969, when Enver Hoxha's harsh Communist regime banned all religions and persecuted those who did not abandon their faith.