IN-DEPTH: The Voice Is Not About Kindness, It Is About Communism: Albanian Expats Warn

Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney speaks during the NRL Indigenous Round Launch 2023 at Bare Island in Sydney, Australia on May 16, 2023. Matt King/Getty Images

Two expatriates from the former communist state of Albania have issued a stark warning about a contentious proposal to change the Australian Constitution to further entrench Indigenous interests.

“As soon as we heard from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about The Voice, we got flashbacks to our lives under socialism in our country of origin Albania,” said Dr. Zekri Palushi in an interview with The Epoch Times.

“The class system was implemented in order to incite Albanian citizens to hate and fight against each other, and I must admit that the strategy worked very well for the Albanian Communist Party. Because in this way, they managed to keep the people divided while [the party] worked together further pushing their agenda,” he said.

“That’s why we see The Voice not as a gesture of kindness but as a Marxist movement with specific goals that, if successful, will see the good Aboriginal people become the greatest losers.”

Former political prisoner, Saimir Maloku, poses in front of the dormitories on June 23, 2017 near the village of Reps, northwestern Albania, at the former Spac prison, a labour camp established in 1968 by the communist regime of Albania at the site of a mine. Gent Shkulaku/AFP via Getty Images

Dr. Zekri and his wife, Tina, were attending a symposium on The Voice in Brisbane organised by the Samuel Griffith Society on May 17.

The Palushis grew up in Albania’s communist era before migrating to Australia in 1995 due to concerns over their safety.

Dr. Zekri was a top cardiologist in Albania but earned just US$6.50 per month.

Under the Communist Party of Albania, the small Eastern European country—of just three million people—suffered tremendous economic damage and food shortages, leaving many to die from malnutrition, while those with the means fled to the West.

The communist leadership—ruled by dictator Enver Hoxha—also implemented brutal persecution of dissidents, which saw the state build an estimated 39 jails and 70 forced labour concentration camps.

Tens of thousands would die with over 6,000 individuals believed to have perished in custody. Most of their bodies were never recovered or were simply disposed of hastily in rivers or buried in makeshift graves.

Dr. Zekri’s grandfather was tortured and murdered for dissent.

This photo taken on March 17, 2017, in Tirana, shows the entrance of a secret tunnel turned into a museum covered with photographs illustrating the political persecution of some 100,000 Albanians from 1945 until 1991 during the communist regime. Around 212,000 files on more than a quarter of a million persons exist in a country that has a population of 3 million. Gent Shkulaku/AFP via Getty Images

Voice Debate Eerily Similar to Communist ‘Debate’

Later this year, Australians will go to the polls to vote on whether to alter their Constitution to include a near-permanent Indigenous advisory body.

The 24 members of this body will be voted for by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders throughout the country and will have the power to make “representations” to the Parliament, the executive, and the wider public service.

The hope from Voice advocates is that having this extra layer of representation in government will help deal with chronic problems within Indigenous communities, including unemployment, domestic violence, alcoholism, youth crime, and welfare dependency.

Pat Anderson with the Referendum Working Group address the media after the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 bill in introduced to the federal Parliament in Canberra, Australia on March 30, 2023. Martin Ollman/Getty Images

Yet Tina Palushi says public discourse around The Indigenous Voice to Parliament has eerie similarities to that of communist Albania.

“In Albania, there were two groups, those who liked communism and those against it—non-communists. That created lots of division and problems—my grandfather was killed by communists just for his ideas,” she said.

“He loved Jesus and was a very religious person. They asked him to denounce, and he said, ‘I don’t like communism if they don’t let us practice the religion.’ That’s all it took for him to be killed via torture and for my whole family to be stamped as ‘anti-communist.’

“Since I was in grade two, I faced this discrimination,” she added while questioning why recent migrants to the country had to bear the burden of the colonial era.

“What was done to Aboriginal people [during the colonial era] was completely wrong and should be condemned. But what fault have I got now coming from another country to contribute to [Australia]?”

This photo taken in Shkoder on Nov. 1, 2016, shows the plane tree in the Rrmaj cemetery, where it is believed that some of 38 martyrs of the catholic church were executed by Albania's communist regime. They were tortured to death—strung up by their feet, shot, and thrown into quicksand. On Nov. 5, 2016, Albanian Catholics celebrated the beatification of these believers. Gent Shkullaku/AFP via Getty Images

Tina also took issue with the Labor government’s lack of detail over the nuts and bolts of The Voice and how it will actually operate.

“The government is not explaining anything about The Voice, just saying, ‘Oh, we’ll explain later, you‘ll have to just vote yes.’ If you don’t vote yes, you’re marked as a racist or not caring—which is completely wrong,” Tina added.

“So that’s the same thing the Communist Party of Albania did, ‘I’m telling you to do this, you just have to say yes and vote for it.’”

Prime Minister Albanese has been repeatedly criticised by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for not providing enough detail on the extent of the power of The Voice and what limitations will be placed on it.

“I’ve spent literally months, like many Australians, trying to understand what it is the prime minister is proposing. We can’t get the basic detail out of him, and I think that is a deliberate strategy,” Dutton said in April.

Albanese said this was a tactic to delay support.

“We know from a republic playbook that occurred last century that it is nothing more than a tactic, and it lacks genuineness to just continue to say, ‘Oh, we don’t have the detail,’” he told reporters in late March.

“No matter how much detail is put out, Peter Dutton will say, ‘Oh, what about more detail?’ That’s the game that’s being played here.”

Meanwhile, former High Court Justice Ian Callinan shared similar concerns with the Palushis about the rhetoric around The Voice.

A photo of former High Court Judge Ian Callinan speaking to the media at Parliament House in Canberra on Sept. 3, 2007.
AAP Image/Andrew Sheargold

“There’s a nasty feel about this,” he told attendees of the symposium. “But in addition to the nastiness, there’s a kind of presumptuousness, condescension, [and] a paternalism.”

“All of you and I have been told by the Yes side that we must vote ‘yes,’” he added.

“What surprises me is that companies, law societies, and bar associations are telling their members how they should vote,” he said.

Fellow speaker Warren Mundine said four similar models to The Voice were tried in the past and failed. Eventually, Indigenous people simply stopped voting for candidates for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

Gary Johns, former Labor minister, warned that an additional layer of government bureaucracy would likely be a boon for lobby groups and more political horse-trading. Johns added there was a need to overcome the emotional arguments of the Yes proponents of The Voice, which was appealing to younger generations.

The West Hoodwinked by Marxism

Eric Louw, an expert on affirmative action policies in South Africa, said The Voice campaign effectively mixed rhetoric from past Marxists whose ultimate aim was to undermine major capitalist countries.

“The Voice seems to be primarily the outcome of liberal ‘white guilt,’ but this guilt is now mixed with the discourse around victimhood,” he told The Epoch Times via email.

“Marxists have a long track record of using victimhood. Early Marxists told workers they were victims and they should be angry at capitalists,” said the former member of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.

Louw said that nowadays, the theory had “mutated” to include a broader range of “victims”, resulting in movements like Black Lives Matter, as well as campaigns against colonialism and Indigenous oppression.

“The Voice taps into all three of these fashionable ideologies,” Louw added. “It does not make Yes activists ‘Marxists’, but they are heavily influenced by neo-Marxism, even if they don’t realise it.”

Meanwhile, the Palushis said many in the West simply had no real on-the-ground experience living under socialist and communist regimes.

“It is easy to love socialism and communism while living in America and Australia. Let them try to live there and see how it is,” Tina said.

Dr. Zekri said those in the West could not be blamed because education systems were now teaching socialist, left-leaning ideologies.

“Sixty percent of my patients favour socialism ... they really do not believe me when I tell them the stories,” he said.

“But we pray that the Australian people never really try this system and that The Voice does not succeed for the benefit of the country.”

Dr. Zekri Palushi (L) and wife, Tina, who are both survivors of the Albanian communist regime and now reside on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. Courtesy of Dr. Zekri Palushi