Forced Labor

The Spaç prison was a forced labour camp; therefore, it may be defined as a prison-camp, whereas in the files of the former State Security it was called “Re-education Unit No. 303”, but re-education through labour was not in accordance with human rights. Forced labour was not included in any court decision; nevertheless, political prisoners who were sent to Spaç were forcibly exploited as labour power to extract copper and pyrite. Whoever refused to go out to work was punished with physical torture and was locked in isolation cells. Violence and exploitation are also attested by former political prisoners in the audio-visual testimonies that they and their relatives have given to the Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents (AIDSSH).

In 23 years of the existence of the Spaç prison-camp, about 2,200 convicts served sentences. In some pages of the Register of statistical data for production, quality, mining works, and labour force in the mines of Mirditë, the archive of the Company “Albbakër”, which reflected the data of the Spaç Sector, data are given according to production, quality, works, or labour force.Under the entry “production” is named the extraction of the mineral in tons. Under the entry “quality” is noted the percentage occupied by copper in the extracted mineral. As can be seen from the register sheet, the mineral did not have even 1% copper (in this table, in the year 1981 the percentage of copper in the extracted mineral was the highest: 0.84%). Under the entry “works”, expressed in linear meters, is shown the length of galleries opened in the depth of the mountains of Spaç. For example, in the year 1981, 6,416 linear meters of gallery were opened, or 6.4 linear kilometres. Under the entry “labour force” is the number of prisoners who work. In the year 1985, an average of 729 prisoners worked in the mine every day. The number of prisoners who worked is not the same as the number of prisoners in Spaç, because there were always those who did not work for health reasons, etc.; therefore, this indicator is always lower than the number of convicts.

The overviews compiled at that time for the fulfilment of the plan had as their first entry the fulfilment of the plan for prisoners who would work in the mine, an indicator that was exceeded every month and every year. The economic-financial indicators are painful. The daily work norm was the extraction of 6 tons of copper ore per shift or 8 tons of pyrite per shift, for each unqualified worker, simply pickaxe-and-shovel labourers, who filled and pushed the wagons with ore. Work was done in three shifts, that is, day and night. The wage was determined by law: 10% of the wage of a free worker, for the same work performed. The political prisoners of Spaç carried out in 23 years forced labour in the underground of Spaç, 88,388 (eighty-eight thousand three hundred eighty-eight) linear meters of mining works. Every linear meter was opened only by prisoners. Those works served for the capture of copper ore, its extraction, etc. Political prisoners extracted from the underground of Spaç about 3 million tons of copper ore and about 1 million tons of pyrite ore. In the table are the data from the Company “Albbakër” for the production of copper ore and pyrite in the former Spaç Copper Mine, by years, this in order to also show the exploitation that was carried out until the year 1990.

From the copper ore, the copper-percentage of which was about 1%, after its processing about 30 thousand tons of copper were obtained, a quantity which on the exchanges of the time where copper was quoted from 1,900 USD/ton to 3,500 USD/ton, was about 90 million US dollars. Large quantities of mineral production from Spaç went to the Shkodër Wire Plant, where important products for the energy and mechanical industry were produced. Another part of copper production was exported, sold in markets, or exchanged by clearing with various states, for agricultural machinery, etc. Pyrite was raw material in the Superphosphate Plant, where chemical fertilizers for agriculture were produced, etc.