TV Photo: Supercream

Writing about the "event", any event, demands further intuition and exploration. It demands, as Foucault suggests (1994), "real existences" that one can refer to them by date and place. Behind the names mentioned in the "event", names that were never known or names that might have been forgotten, there were men who lived and died under particular conditions, men whose lives encountered "power", the power of interpellation, categorisation and segregation.

The event under examination originates from the category of "news" purely for the double reference the category suggests: to the rapid pace of the narrative and to the reality of the events that are related. It demonstrates how a criminal act exercised by an illegal immigrant worker relates to the concept of migration, mobility and borders in a post Cold War context and how national identity and masculinity are (re) articulated within that context. 

On the 28th of May 1999, Flamur Pisli, a 24 year old Albanian migrant worker, hijacked a public bus in the small northern Greek town where he had lived and worked for several years. After a twenty hour chase from Northern Greece across the border to Southern Albania, Pisli and one of the Greek hostages, Yiorgos Koulouris were shot dead by Albanian police snipers near the city of Elbasan.

As if reproducing the media discourse on immigration and criminality, the hijacking of the bus as an event exploited the anger and resentment that had been gathering during the first decade of Greece as a host country of immigrants¹. Although the figures of the "Albanian" and of the "immigrant" are the usual sites for expressing anger and hostility, the hijacking of the bus provides another site where anger and hostility can be directed at, that of the Greek employer - the Greek boss. For Albanian migrant workers in Greece, Pisli's story has proved a relevant reference point for their personal experiences of labour exploitation, racial abuse and dreams of self realisation. The incident has functioned as a workday allegory for some of the central issues posed by the contemporary experience of Albanian migration to Greece: work hierarchies according to ethnicity, the role of states in regulating the labour market, the legal and cultural dimensions of citizenship and belonging, and above all, the multiple kinds of violence exercised by individuals as well as institutions through which new asymmetrical social relationships are being forged in the Balkans today.

While the circumstances that led Flamur Pisli to hijack the bus remain a subject of controversy and they are open to interpretation by the two socially and culturally constructed sides of "us" and "them", and will remain so in the absence of an official investigation, there is some consensus regarding the core narrative of the incident as reported in the newspapers and television channels.

The 10:30 am public bus drew up at the usual stop in the centre of Kato Scholari, a village located in the agricultural cum industrial periphery of Thessaloniki, the biggest city of Northern Greece. Flamur Pisli was among the passengers who boarded the bus and a few minutes later he ordered the bus driver, with the threat of a Kalashnikov and two grenades (one of them with the pin removed), to drive the bus to the police headquarters in Thessaloniki. At the police headquarters, Pisli accused a security guard, a policeman and a local shoe factory owner of setting him up on a charge of dealing and possessing weapons and having him sent to jail unjustly where he claimed they sexually abused him. According to Pisli, the aforementioned men turned against him because of his brother's relationship with the shoe factory owner's wife. Pisli's allegations failed to convince the police and the bus begun its journey to Albania surrounded by police vehicles, ambulances, journalists and private cars. In the meantime, Pisli demanded the three Kalashnikovs associated with his allegations, 50 million drachmas and a free passage to Albania where he would set the hostages free after having coffee with them in Tirana. When Pisli was given the money and the guns he rebuffed the latter, explaining that they were not the same ones he has been imprisoned for. Using a hostage's mobile phone, Pisli declared to the public: "I am innocent. They charged me unjustly… I want to recover my honour. I don't want to do anything bad to the passengers on the bus" (adapted from Papailias 2003)². Around midnight, the bus crossed the Greek-Albanian border with Pisli and nine hostages including the bus driver.

The hijacking of the bus was just another contribution to the already negative relations between Albania and Greece. Apart from the issue of migration, the NATO bombings in former Yugoslavia strengthened the negative perception of Albanians especially the Greek public opinion (unofficially) was aligned with the Christian Orthodox Serbs.

As soon as the incident of the hijacking came to an end, Albanian authorities claimed that Pisli shot the Greek hostage, Koulouris and then committed suicide. Even though it was clear from the television coverage that Albanian snipers shot Pisli and Koulouris, it took the Albanian government two years to officially apologise to the Greek state and the family of the dead hostage. In the meantime, the Greek government, which was severely criticised for the way it handled the incident, attempted to "make up" by ordering "sweep" operations (massive deportations) of all illegal immigrants. The Albanian foreign minister at the time, Pascal Milo, accused the Greek government of further destabilising Albania's economy and relations with neighbouring countries, as it was receiving large numbers of Kosovar refugees and added that he would consider going back to his original promise not to send refugees to Greek-Albanian inhabited areas, namely Southern Albania.

The Greek media presented the hijacking in an unrestrained manner by associating the "criminal nature" of Albanian migrants with the inability of the state to police the borders. Opinions about the actual hijacking of the bus were more varied than might be expected. Many Greeks viewed the incident as a media fiasco by denouncing the involvement of the journalists in the negotiations with the hijacker. Others sympathised with Pisli (including some of the hostages), perceiving him as an exploited migrant worker who is fighting for his rights. Indeed, what makes the hijacking a significant incident within Greek-Albanian relations and in Balkan politics in general is its cultural power to articulate the Greek view of immigration and criminality and at the same time the Albanian view on (cheap) labour and migration in Greece. In an interesting reversal, the Pisli hijacking which in Greek mainstream media discourses stood for Albanian brutality and lack of respect it represented for many Albanians an evidence of Greek savagery.

In the aftermath of the hijacking, Dimitris Koulouris, the father of the dead hostage enjoyed a short yet vibrant presence in the Greek media, commenting on Greek-Albanian relations, issues of immigration and the Greek state's inability to deal with these issues.

The hijacking, thus, proved to be yet another input for the construction and articulation of national categorisation of the type "us" and "them". While the diplomatic relations between the countries were provisionally improved, the issue of immigration and its perception provided a cause and a ground for argued conflicts and violent behaviour between the two "ethnic categories".