ALBIN KURTI
Thursday, 15 November 2007

This panel of judges has no right to make any decisions regarding neither me nor anyone else. In addition to the reasons I outlined in my statement of September 19, I object to this panel because of your conduct during and since the court session that day. As pointed out by e.g. Kosova’s Ombudsperson and CDHRF, the September 19 session contained a number of unacceptable irregularities.

First of all, I was not informed about the new indictment with which Judge Salustro opened the September 19 session. This new indictment has not been confirmed, and I have not received a copy of it. I have the right to be informed about the charges against me and defend myself against them. The reading of the new indictment violates my right to a fair trial. Since neither my so-called defence council was informed about the new indictment, the reading of it on September 19 also violated the equality of arms principle.

Among the judges in this panel, I direct a particularly strong objection to Judge Salustro. His interruption of my statement – after asking me to read it – on September 19 violated my right to be heard and not to be interrupted while speaking. The way Judge Salustro cut me off, in an undignified and unprofessional manner shouting “shut up”, also represented misbehaviour in breach of judicial ethics: Judges are supposed to interpret the law and not act above it. I have the right to a fair trial. I have the right to be presumed innocent. I have the right to be treated with respect. Judge Salustro’s behaviour is even more problematic since I am prevented from seeking remedy – in Kosova under UNMIK there is no mechanism through which I can initiate a procedure against Judge Salustro.

During yesterday’s session, Judge Salustro again interrupted me after asking me to speak. I object to this pattern of activities, as I object to this Judge presiding over this session and as I object to his panel.

I also object to the panel for not allowing my so-called defence council immediate withdrawal from the case. I never accepted the defence council, and when he finally realised he should resign, this panel should have let him do so. Additionally, I was never properly informed about this court session – I only learned about it when it was mentioned in the decision to prolong my house arrest, six days in advance of the session, not eight days in advance and not on a separate paper, as required by your law. Furthermore, the decision to prolong my house arrest was made by judge Salustro without me being informed that he is still the presiding judge in my case.

I will also repeat that I object to you because of your lack of independence and lack of impartiality. You are appointed by and represent UNMIK, which is also listed in this case as an offended and prosecuting part. UNMIK’s undemocratic and neocolonial rule and the status negotiations with Serbia will bring Kosova nothing but more misery and bloodshed. I see it as my duty to stop this from happening by non-violently opposing UNMIK’s power in Kosova. More and more people realise that I am right in this, and that a referendum on independence is the only way Kosova can gain real freedom, dignity and a healthy political and economic development. Only self-determination can facilitate a just justice.

Since UNMIK is the target of my non-violent opposition, it is clearly in UNMIK’s interest to prevent me from continuing my work, by isolating me and trying to silence my voice of dissent. Rarely has this been crystallised clearer than when UNMIK Judge Salustro shouted at me to “shut up” in the September 19 session.

I object to this panel of judges, I object to this court and I object to this case. The undignified case proceedings and this panel have consistently violated my fundamental rights. This case should be dismissed, and I should be released immediately.

   1.  You are not impartial – as I will explain, the case proceedings show that you are favoring the prosecution and already presuming that I am guilty.

   2.  You are endorsing the discrimination and procedural irregularities in this case violating my fundamental rights and freedoms.

   3.  You are not independent – you are appointed by and have sworn your oaths before the SRSG and UNMIK, both of whom are listed as offended and prosecuting parties in this case.

More concretely, my rejection is based on the following:

First of all, I object to this panel evoking the principle of impartiality enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (EDHR), Art 6.1; the right to a fair trial, Art 6 of the same declaration, and Art 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); as well as the principle of presuming innocence until proven guilty enshrined in Art 11 of the same declaration.

As the International Helsinki Federation (IHF) has pointed out, the legal proceedings in this case seem to favor the prosecution. The partiality of the court became evident already during the case’s initial phase when the judge approached the prosecutor without my presence and asked: "WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO NEXT". Amnesty International (AI) has reaffirmed that international judges in Kosova tend to favor the prosecution and that impartiality is not even attempted.

By being here, each of you judges show consent to the indictment and approval of a number of false and biased premises and allegations, indicating that you already have made up your minds about me. It appears that the trial already happened and you already have reached your verdict – guilty:

For example, while the indictment states that "Mr Kurti is not criminally responsible for those deaths caused by the actions of the police" on February 10th, both the prosecution and judges in this case have consistently and from the beginning implied that I am responsible. Special Prosecutor Robert Dean’s interim report of April 17 clarified that Romanian policemen were responsible for the deaths on the 10th, and his final report of July 2 identifies a breakdown in the chain of police command and unclear operational responsibilities as additional causes. Despite this, on 13th of February the prosecution refers to the danger of me "organizing another violent protest leading to loss of lives". Incredibly, four months later, on 13th June – notably two months after the interim Dean report and nine days after the indictment says I am not responsible for the deaths – Judge Peralta continues to link my alleged crimes to the deaths.

On February 13 the prosecution alleges, and the judge accepts that I represent "a pattern of activities" that is to "cause danger and damage to property and lives", and that this pattern "is getting worse and worse". This offensive claim is made without explaining what my alleged "pattern" consists of – I have never hurt or been accused of hurting anyone ever before in my life. Nor have I ever caused general danger or damaged property on a large scale. By making this misleading allegation, the prosecution is falsely portraying my previous activities, and using this false image to prejudice my character and predict my future actions.

An utterly false premise for the indictment is to draw conclusions about my actions, even guilt, based on my presumed guilt in the demonstration on November 28 2006. This link is sometimes made directly by the prosecution, sometimes indirectly. I have not been tried, certainly not sentenced or proven guilty for anything related to the November demonstration. Even according to the standards of your system, this event cannot be used as "proof" in this case.
My second reason for rejecting this panel of judges is that by being here, you approve of the discrimination and numerous irregularities in the case proceedings against me. The proceedings have violated the right to equality before law, enshrined in Art 7 of the UDHR; freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, Art 9 of the same declaration; the principle of presumption of innocence until proven guilty, Art 11; and the right to just detention and a fair trial, Art 9 and 14 of the ICCPR.

I am not represented here by anyone but myself. My so-called defence council Ahmet Hasolli is appointed by you, and I do not recognise him. The case material suggests that this non-recognition is mutual, and that Hasolli’s commitment to me and my case is weak: he was absent from the examination of several key witnesses, in other examinations he leaves half-way through, and the few times he is present he poses very few, and feeble, questions. Additionally, this violates the equality of arms principle.

AI has repeatedly, since February 15 expressed concern that the hearings in my case have been closed to the public, that they initially took place without charges being declared, and that I was not allowed to attend them. While I was in detention, IHF was denied access to visit me, while another human rights organisation (CDHRF) was allowed to visit, however only once monthly. Other people, like William Walker, were immediately allowed to visit me to put pressure on me to not organise more demonstrations.

The IHF has been concerned about the legal basis for my pretrial detention. Significantly, there appears to be no justification for the severe restrictions of my house arrest. I am the first person in eight years who is detained in house arrest with two 24-hour police guards outside the door. In the first house arrest, I was not only denied movement outside my home, but also contact with media, VETËVENDOSJE! activists and all other people except three of my four family members. These restrictions violated my right to a just detention (Art 9.3, ICCPR), as well as my freedom of speech and association. As AI has pointed out, detention under such strict conditions, especially before I was charged, was tantamount to deprivation of liberty.

As pointed out by the IHF, it is unclear why I have been categorised as an "A" prisoner. Even more serious is the fact that I (nor my so-called lawyer) was informed about this categorisation and its implications. This violates the equality of arms principle. I am not allowed to appeal the decision, as I am not allowed to appeal the final verdict in this case, not even to the European Court.

Most important, I should have been judged by my own peers. You international judges have little or no knowledge of Kosova’s politics and culture, the history of demonstrations here and their political effects, or our post-war society. Nor are you familiar with my own decade-long non-violent struggle for freedom from Serbia and my coherent political platform. You are foreigners also to my history, and the history of my people – your power enables you to suspend that history.

My third and most important reason for rejecting you, this panel of judges, is that you are not independent. This case is tainted by a serious conflict of interest and violates several of my fundamental rights: the right to equality before law, Art 7 of the UDHR; the right to a fair trial, and the principle of presuming innocence until proven guilty, Art’s 10 and 11 respectively of the same declaration; and Art’s 9 and 14 of the ICCPR, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention and the right to a fair trial. The court has complained of my disdainful attitude towards UNMIK and the courts. But actually, it is the "justice" officials in this case who have shown contempt toward me by violating my fundamental rights.

Each of you has sworn your oaths as international judges before the SRSG, who is also listed as an offended part in this case. The SRSG is the one who appointed you, as he appoints all international judges in Kosova. This case is thus tainted by a severe bias and conflict of interest, as UNMIK is represented as an offended, prosecuting and judging part. The judicial system in Kosova is part of UNMIK’s First Pillar and thus intertwined with the executive. There is no separation of powers, one of the basic democratic principles. As pointed out by the IHF and Human Rights Watch, Kosova’s judiciary is not sufficiently independent, accountable or transparent. None of you judges (nor the Prosecutors) are accountable to people of Kosova. All of you are immune from the laws you apply to me. There is no independent accountability mechanism overseeing your actions. Such an arbitrary power cannot be legitimate.

The very focus of my work is to object to UNMIK and the SRSG as the highest expression of an anti-democratic order. I see it as my responsibility to challenge the imposed UNMIK system, to show dissent, to non-violently oppose and confront its repressive organs and non-representative authorities. This makes it impossible for me to get a fair trial within this system.

Since the February 10 demonstration, numerous local and international authority representatives have made defamatory public remarks about me and VETËVENDOSJE! and portrayed our actions as damaging the process for status of Kosova. Already the first Unity Team declaration after February 10 said "the violent protests enticed by Albin Kurti and Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! where two persons lost their lives (...) create special tensions against stability and general interests of Kosova." The head of the British office in Prishtina David Blunt stated to the media that the Contact Group was concerned that the VETËVENDOSJE! protest had endangered the personal security of police and the Assembly building, while Naim Maloku from the Assembly Committee for Security lied on TV and said that the demonstrators had used Molotov cocktails.

As late as in August KPS spokesperson Veton Elshani stated that I had "led a violent protest" and implied that I was responsible for the two deaths. What these officials actually mean is that my non-violent democratic opposition is damaging them, the authorities issuing these statements. During this period of status negotiations, to which I strongly oppose, it is in the interest of the authorities, including UNMIK to silence my voice and isolate me from people who potentially could join me in opposing them. As the German Institute for European Politics has pointed out, UNMIK has created a "culture of systematic repression" of criticism in order to portray Kosovo as a success story.

You, the judges and prosecution are part of UNMIK. You have not only accepted the false allegations made in the press, you have even incorporated them into your own approach to this case. For example, on May 7 the prosecution explicitly used my political engagement to argue for continued detention. During five months in prison the prosecutor interrogated me only once (on 1 March) for half an hour, which shows that isolation has been a greater priority than investigation. The Dean report on the February 10th event, determining the police reaction as disproportionate, avoidable and unnecessary, i.e. illegal, has not been considered in my case. Despite the Dean report’s conclusions about the uncontrolled police reaction and police violence, it is me, and not the police who are accused of creating general danger and calling for violence. All this illuminates the judiciary’s bias and lack of independence.

The lack of independence on the part of the judges and prosecutors is also evident in this case’s portrayal of VETËVENDOSJE!. Systematically and from the start VETËVENDOSJE! has been presented as criminal, vandalistic and dangerous, aiming for nothing but destruction and instability. This misrepresentation is intended to criminalise me and marginalise the movement by portraying it as extreme. In reality, VETËVENDOSJE! is a non-violent, voluntary political movement. No one is paid or forced to be in VETËVENDOSJE!. Our main concrete goal is to arrange a referendum for the people of Kosova, making Kosova’s status the people’s decision, and not a decision of unaccountable bureaucrats. Our focus is to problematise the political system by opposing the neo-colonial UNMIK administration and not other ethnicities. Especially during this politically sensitive time we believe people’s social and political dissatisfaction must be democratically directed towards the regime and not other ethnic groups.

The aim of our protest on February 10 was to show political dissatisfaction with the status negotiations with Serbia and its result, the Ahtisaari package, which we believe will bring Kosovo nothing but renewed conflicts and large-scale crimes. Until February 10 no one has ever been injured in VETËVENDOSJE! demonstrations, and that day it was the police who caused general danger, damage, injuries and deaths, not us. The participants in our actions have always respected the principles of our movement, including calls for nonviolent conduct. These principles are included in the prosecutor’s case material.

Freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of movement are accorded to us by the UDHR, Art 20 and the ICCPR, Art 21. Suppressing these rights, as well as the other universal standards I have evoked here, for the sake of political interest or political convenience is unacceptable. In the demonstration on February 10 these rights were denied us collectively. In this case, universal human rights have been denied to me individually.

I do not accept you, the judges in this panel. I do not accept the prosecution or the lawyer appointed to me. I do not accept this court. You are not impartial, nor independent. By accepting this case you are complicit in the discriminatory process against me, violating my fundamental rights and freedoms. I call for this case to be dismissed.

Prishtinë, 19 September 2007

Albin Kurti

Introduction
1. The announcement of new negotiations, including direct talks, for 120 days is a ploy to paralyze people in Kosova in an endless atmosphere of ‘waiting’. It is likely that this 120 days will be extended once again, and that these new negotiations will result in new concessions. They have made up these 120 days to pretend that they are doing something, but in order to ask people to do nothing, i.e. to wait.

2. The elections planned for institutions without sovereignty are in vain. They are also being planned in order to channel frustration into the pre-election campaign, and not against the political process. This is because they want to control frustration and use it just before an international conference on Kosova in order to force more concessions.

3. The Negotiation team will have no new mandate or duty in the next 120 days except to justify the negotiations and to justify any solution as a step towards independence. In the same way, they justified the acceptance of the Rambouillet Agreement in 1999, by promising that it offered a ‘referendum’ after three years. But in reality this document is the source of many of Kosova’s problems today because:

I. It trampled upon the oath of the KLA solders and the referendum of 1991
II. It degraded the liberation war into an armed conflict
III. Accepted the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia
IV. Categorized the Albanians in Kosova as a national community, the same as Serbs who were at the most 8% of the population
V. It certified the absence of state security for Kosova
VI. Treated Kosova as a part of Serbia – it should send 20 deputies to Serbia
VII. Did not mention the KLA anywhere. It was considered as groups and other formations
VIII. Agreed to the disarmament of the KLA
IX. Defactorized completely the representatives of Kosova so that they were never consulted about the Kumanova Agreement or Resolution 1244
X. Gave strong authority to municipalities which made Kosova’s territorial integrity brittle and made possible autonomy inside autonomy
XI. Made impossible the independence of Kosova’s economy, resources and control of its borders
XII. Made impossible the right of Parliament to change the constitution
XIII. And from this time, every document about Kosova is based on the Rambouillet Agreement.

4. The Kosova negotiators have regularly lied to the people so why should things change now?

5. The first man who signed Rambouillet was Veton Surroi, and now he is leading us towards new negotiations. He is a man of agreements, and this new agreement will be somewhere between the Ahtisaari Package and Serbia’s position of ‘more than autonomy, and less than independence’ which means only autonomy.

6. In the new negotiations, the politicians of Belgrade will profit, and they will be joined in this profit by the local internationals (UNMIK’s bureaucrats) and the international locals (the bureaucrats of non-governmental organizations). They will give funds to ensure that the people of Kosova do nothing, but observe them. It is not in vain that they have worked hard to create a civil society that is a network of these NGOs, the media and ‘intellectuals’ who a priori denounce any kind of resistance and ‘violence’ of protestors. They declare that ‘life and security, law and order are above all’ – this is because their lives are good and they want to maintain them, whilst the people live in difficult and without security.

Alternatives
1. While they were trying to approve a new Resolution for Kosova in the Security Council, international factors argued that there were only 2 options for Kosova: a resolution, or partition, the latter which would lead to a new war. This meant that there was only one solution: The Resolution. They reduced our alternatives into the possibilities they wanted to display, and in order to embed in the minds of the people the idea that there is only one right solution. When they realized that Russia would not compromise, they conceptually proposed a return to the past – negotiations with Serbia, but in reality they were proposing a continuing of the process, to negotiate for status, which in the end will not even be supervised independence, but a form of federation with Serbia. Once again, they are using the threat of an alternative of partition, to serve as a threat for those with a dilemma about the continuation of negotiations.

Partition
1. Everyone is now writing about partition. All those analysts who wrote that independence was about to come, are now writing that partition is about to come. They were wrong then and they are wrong now, firstly because they do not understand that Kosova is already partitioned, and that negotiations will not unite it, and second, if Kosova is legally one entity then it cannot be divided through negotiations.

2. Only if Kosova became close to independence, would Serbia support partition in order to prevent losing everything. Now it can win much more through legal processes, rather than by means of a massive intervention in Kosova.

3. At this time, Serbia wants partition only in the meaning of internal division. In this way, she can blackmail the independence of Kosova by creating a Serb enclave in a federation of Serb municipalities according to the Ahtisaari Plan. The International Community will accept this as long as it fits with their paradigm for regional stability: the internal division of Kosova must not be reflected in western Macedonia and the Valley of Presheva.

4. Although Kosova politicians say they will not accept partition (before they used to say there won’t be partition!), they took our pulse when they accepted the changes to the border at Debëllde. These politicians will make an agreement with Serbia, including all types of partition of Kosova. It suits Serbia to have a peaceful partition of Kosova, in which they control 30% of the territory, and the future International Civilian Mission (ICM) the remaining 70%.

5. In this manner, Kosova will be constituted of two parts, one Serbia and the other in a sort of federation with Serbia, under the ICM. The Albanian part of Kosova, will be similar to the Republika Srpska of Bosnia, and thus there will be an Albanian Republic in Serbia (which obviously will not be called that). Serbia will then try to equalize the issue of Republika Srpska with this Albanian Republic in Serbia, by arguing after a few years that if the Albanians seek independence or unity with Albania, then Republika Srpska should have the same right. But it is unlikely that this exchange will take place. This will establish the dynamic that for many years, Albanians will demand that the international mission not leave, because that will mean their complete and final partition from the north and east of Kosova.

6. And how long will Kosova remain divided under the ICM? Until Serbia and Kosova enter the EU together in a decade or so, or longer if we bear in mind the example of Cyprus. The EU is not the solution or the replacement for the solution of conflicts given an ethnic character. Instead it has two other goals:

a. To leave us on purpose crippled so that we call for their help and for their governance. For example, they will not allow us our own army, so that we have to rely on theirs to protect us from Serbia; or they advance and privilege those who can be easily corrupted, in order to create the impression that there are no honorable people from Kosova who can govern.

b. Second, the ICM wants to create a pro-European elite, not a pro-American elite. It wants Serbia because it is anti-American, and it is disillusioned with those east European states that turn their heads more to the US, than the EU. They want to reinforce the unity of their foreign policy from the time when Rumsfeld could divide them along the lines of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe.

War
1. Without doubt, war is always one of the alternatives, but I do not believe that is such now in Kosova. Russia, at the suggestion of Serbia certainly, has refused the drafts of the new resolution favorable to Serbia, knowing that Albanians have had their fill of waiting. This tells us that Serbia has a plan for how to respond to an Albanian explosion. Western hesitation proves two things not so different linked with this. First, they are aware that Serbia has a plan. And second, that only Serbia does actually have a plan. It is not difficult to predict what this plan is based on the model of the rebellion of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s when they declared autonomy and independence by blocking roads and installing military government, which is far easier in Kosova. Serbia will not accept that it has intervened in Kosova, as Milosevic did not accept that he had intervened in Bosnia, saying that local Serbs were dissatisfied as they were discriminated against and endangered. Naturally Serbia will send them additional arms, and officers and strategic plans, although you will not see this on television. KFOR will put itself between Albanians and Serbs, and the eventual Albanian attack will be used by Serbia as a reason to build walls around the enclaves as they are now building walls around the monasteries of Deçan and Peja. The Palestinianization of Kosova will be smoothed over and the conflict will be perpetuated. This scenario is also possible in the case of a declaration of independence by the government of Kosova without preparing the defense of Kosova’s borders and her territorial integrity. There will be no time to reactivate the KLA. Serbia is not intending a war like the time of Milosevic, but the organization of Serbs, and if she does have to intervene, all will occur in the form of a blitzkrieg of several days, like that of the Israelis in 1967 or the Turks in 1974. For this reason, Serbia’s investment in her army is dedicated mainly to infantry and the necessary arms.

2. UNMIK has not sat on its hands for the last 8 years. The part of the KPC that it could not control it has weakened. The commanders and well-known members have been sent to prison, and when they came out they have abandoned the KPC and entered politics. This is just the continuation of Rambouillet when having signed up to the end of the liberation army, its former leaders became civilian officials in the Provisional Government before forming their own political parties. Then they gave up their arms, and entered politics. Now they give up their uniforms, and enter politics. These 8 years have served to disperse and to dry up the revolutionary potential for uprising in Kosova. Not only in Kosova has politics been the court, and the courts political. Even the Hague Tribunal while not being independent, compensated for this by ‘impartiality’: equally indicting politicians and soldiers from all sides of the war in former Yugoslavia. In two ways, this struck the KLA severely: first, in the process against Fatmir Limaj, due to his weak defense and portrayal of the KLA as an organization with a weak structure; and second, in the process against Ramush Haradinaj they claimed that the KLA was criminal. The core of a new state of Kosova would have been considered precisely the KLA, but after they disarmed the KLA, they have slowly but surely degraded its image from a liberation army into a disorganized groups of criminals. Thus, according to them, since there was no war and liberation army but a conflict and armed rebellion, there will be no independent and sovereign state, but a federation with Serbia and even with a municipal Serb federation inside Kosova. The Serb formula ‘autonomy inside autonomy’ can be transformed maximally only into a ‘federation inside a federation’.

3. All the work of illegal movements throughout the XX century in Kosova culminated in the KLA. And what did the Albanian delegation do at Rambouillet? They threw a bucket of water into this liberation fire. They accepted their disarmament and thus their gradual expiration. Our martyrs gave their lives in order to continue the war, but Hashim Thaçi stopped the war in order to save his life. Its not accidental that Hashim Thaçi in Peja a month ago said that had nothing against ‘supervised independence’ and that he was in fact frightened of full independence! He was right and knew exactly what he was talking about: He fears full independence because he fears for himself. In general, the ICM lengthens the life of these Kosova politicians, whereas independence ends it. Because in that case they would not have an international supervisor over the people to defend them from the people.

4. The origin is criminal, said Freud. The Negotiation Group was formed so there would be no traitors. If they are all traitors, then no one is a traitor. They will collapse not because they have failed, but because they have had success. They will make an agreement with Serbia. Negotiations with Serbia are taking us to Serbia. This is why Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! from the start, with its name and idea, with strategy and action, pointed to the principle and not the outcome, pointed toward the method and not the result. Thus its concept is strong – a concept of right. It marks the opposite approach to that of official politics. No negotiations (with Serbia) but self-determination (of the people of Kosova). Above all, it is not possible to achieve the necessary result – however much it is wanted – with a mistaken method. The issue of Kosova is not so complicated. With the method pursued in dealing with it they are complicating it. It is not a Gordian knot, but it can be transformed into one.

An explosion of violence (for federation)?
1. Currently we are moving into a very painful phase: The International Community in Kosova is working to reduce the expectations of the people of Kosova. UNMIK (and not just them) are not worried about the quality of the definition of status. Since we have been declared a unique case, now no principles or criteria exist for us. The problem is viewed in terms of the possibility of managing the eventual explosion of the situation. There is no concern for the contents of future status, but for controlling dissatisfaction! In its intention to control everything, UNMIK will try to destroy the anti-colonial and anti-imperial spirit that Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! is building. They know that our movement has struck them where it was necessary, problematizing the political system and not ethnic differences that are simply fed by the political system. In its war against us, UNMIK will not hesitate to make plans for new ethnic and religious conflicts. UNMIK without doubt is interested in Albanians and Serbs hating each other in order that they do not hate UNMIK and so that it has work here forever. If Serbia profits from a violent conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosova because it can fortify enclaves, which is in Ahtisaari’s Plan as well, UNMIK will profit because it can continue its life here for at least another decade. There is another reason why a violent conflict inside Kosova is necessary for UNMIK and Serbia. A new agreement between the Negotiation Team of Kosova and Serbia for a federation of Kosova with Serbia, will not be easy to sign due to public opinion in Kosova. If there is a chaotic explosion, as on 17th and 18th March 2004, without political leadership and organization, then acceptance of a federation will be much easier. It will be easier in an emergency situation, at some point after 120 days, to have negotiators locked in an international conference like Dayton or Rambouillet. The united federal institutions will not be much since Serbia does not want Kosova inside Serbia, as much as Serbia wants to be inside Kosova. Serbia wants to be very practically and concretely inside Kosova, whilst Kosova is just formally part of Serbia and formally in Serbia.

What should we do?
1. No one brings you freedom. You have to win it yourself. For the sake of the past (those who were killed and disappeared in our country) and for the sake of the future (those who will be endangered if we continue to stay silent), we must confront and not stop.

2. Now under the Bush Administration, the US is not as ‘for’ the independence of Kosova (despite their declarations) as Serbia and Russia are ‘against’ independence.

3. We should not have to wait anymore. The weeks, months and years until independence are just weeks, months and years extending the mandate of the Kosova negotiators and their governance. They do not worry about our collective loss, but about their individual profit. If we are silent this autumn, the ICM will be installed in the spring. If we are silent in the spring, autonomy under Serbia called a federation with Serbia will wait for us in the autumn of 2008. Since the ICM will be established without independence for Kosova, it will try to compensate for this with what it has a lot of: money and donations. The obligation of the ICM will be politically criminal. It will make preparations for the culmination of the denial of the will of the people of Kosova in a new agreement with Serbia which only as such will pass the Security Council of the UN. In the first half of this year, the issue of Kosova was in the UN Security Council, but they removed it throwing it back to the Contact Group. It is clear: the UN security Council wants to tell itself a success story and seeks prior reconciliation between Kosova and Serbia (and Russia); and second, the UN Security Council does not want to deal with an issue that is not urgent: everyone was remaining quiet in Kosova, except VETËVENDOSJE!.

4. Independence cannot be achieved in a completely dependent manner as they pretend in Kosova. Montenegro did not seek recognition but organized a referendum. Only after the referendum, did they declare independence and seek recognition. The referendum makes concrete collective freedom. And if our Assembly were to declare independence, this should take place after a referendum, because then the decision is legitimate and all-powerful, not just from the politicians but from all the people.

5. The ‘Will of the people’ must be seen and work. Politics deals with works. The US, even if it were completely on our side, would never demonstrate for us. Our will is ours. It must be expressed in strikes and boycotts, in demonstrations and protests, in the disobedience of citizens. Then we will be a people because we will become a people. In opposition and in confrontation with the regime that is denying the will of the people.

6. We are not strong, but when you are not strong, you have only one option: to become strong! Politics without strength remains a tragic opinion. Strength in politics can be an army, economy or the organized mass of the people. The third is most important. Only that secures the endurance of the former two (when they exist).

7. The organized mass of the people usually is peaceful. Not only in manifestation, but also in demonstrations and protests. Not only when they are content with the situation, but also when they are angry and try to change it. In addition, in the situation in which Kosova is entrapped, as street politics is necessary, so is its peaceful nature.

Why nonviolence?
1. With nonviolence should be understood strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, protests and demonstrations. The International Centre for Nonviolent Conflict explains that the majority of those who use nonviolence do not have nonviolence as their goal. They are not motivated by a desire for peace or to be nonviolent. They want to fight for their rights and interests, but they have chosen other means than arms and bombs – because they have evaluated that violence will not be useful or because they do not have arms in their disposition.

2. We have no arms, nor enough military experience. In the last 15 years, as little as 1% of the population and those for less than one year have experience of armed confrontation. 70% of the population are under 30 years of age. They do not know what an army is. But what do we have? We have many people. And we have many young people. This all we need to start. If Serbia has experience with war, Kosova has experience with peaceful resistance.

3. Kosova has a chance in a war with Serbia only if Albania and Albanians in the Balkans come to help Albanians from Kosova in a final confrontation – Albanians against Serbia. If they impose war on us, then there is no other option but to fight. But, it will be painful and a great loss of people and territories if just the Albanians of Kosova fight. Important international factors will not be too concerned if a new war explodes in Kosova while it remains controlled by having obedient commanders and confined within the borders of Kosova.

4. Between the waiting which is enfeebling us toward a collective agony, and the war for which we are not prepared, is the road of demonstrations. Their form should be as in the years of 1988, 1989 and 1990. When the institutions are divided from the people, then the people must join each other in the street. The people must block nonviolently the institutions of this government and regime that has lied and stolen. Social misery, economic stagnation and political disillusionment are becoming the same. Demonstrations of all the people are the right method and the optimal method. Those demonstrations must openly say no to negotiations with Serbia and to be against the Negotiation Group of Kosova. Those demonstrations should be for self-determination of the people of Kosova, and for civil rights and freedoms, for well-being and equality. Those demonstrations should articulate the current separation between the people and the regime, and to demand to inverse the relationship between them: not the people to exist for the sake of the government, but the government to exist for the sake of the people. Each demonstration which is not categorically this, will degenerate into a carnival. Popular demonstrations should be against those that are responsible for the situation in which we are and for the freedom that we should have. Self-determination is this freedom. But it is more than that. Self-determination is also a right and universal value.

Self-determination
1. External self-determination that means self-determination until secession is a norm according to the documents of the UN. The Declaration on Granting Independence to colonial countries and peoples, as a Resolution of the General Assembly, 1514 (XV), dated 14th December 1960, speaks of ‘the passionate yearning for freedom in all dependent peoples and the decisive role of such peoples in the attainment of their independence’; it states that ‘the process of liberation is irresistible and irreversible’; it states that ‘the increasing conflicts resulting from the denial of or impediments in the way of the freedom of such peoples, which constitute a serious threat to world peace’; and it states that, ‘Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.’ Etc. Etc. Opposing Serbia in our country, we take and we give an example from all and for all of those peoples which are not free. While opposing the UN mission in Kosova, the UN is defended in all the world.

2. The opposite of self-determination of the people of Kosova are precisely these negotiations that are being made with Serbia over the fate of Kosova. They are negotiations between unequals: Serbia is a state with a real government; Kosova is considered just a province, with a fictive government. They are negotiations without reciprocity: they are made just for the territory of Kosova, not also for that of Serbia. They are negotiations to rehabilitate Serbia: Yet Kosova has to fulfill standards and conditions for negotiations and not Serbia! They equalize crime and genocide (the state of Serbia) with the victims (the people of Kosova) and likewise aggression with liberation war. They are deceptive: Kosova does not lack status, but the people of Kosova lack freedom. And they are damaging: they mean readiness for compromise and with their beginning they marked the end of independence and sovereignty as a possibility.

3. However, even external self-determination remains a formal freedom if there is not also internal self-determination that means the choice by the people of their political system, for the government and the manner of government. Hurst Hannum wrote ‘the internal aspect of self-determination can be seen as fundamental for two things: political democracy and economic development.’ The second requires our control over our natural resources (which is denied us by the KTA) which is also codified in Resolution 1803 (XVII) of the General Assembly. The UN declared, ‘the right of peoples and nations for permanent sovereignty over their natural riches and resources.’

4. The realization of these two aspects of self-determination represent the enduring foundation for development and progress.

After Self-Determination
1. Demonstrations for radical change in the current course of politics must not be just massive, but long term if necessary. And as long-term as is necessary. Those demonstrations should demand the final deadline of UNMIK in Kosova in accordance with a referendum for the people of Kosova, as an exercise of the right to self-determination, as a concrete political act of collective freedom, and inauguration of democracy that opens the road for the rule of the majority. Meanwhile, a constitution of Kosova should be written, and preparations to make the KPC into an army and KPS into a policeforce. NATO will stay and should stay in Kosova, but in agreement with Kosova (“Status of Forces Agreement’ – SOFA as in the case of Albania and Macedonia), and not as KFOR is here now on the basis of the Agreement of Kumanova (9 June 1999) made with the criminal Yugoslav army which Serbia inherited. Each mission and international presence in a free Kosova should be here in agreement with us. Kosova needs international help and advice, but not international rule. Not a ruling UN mission in Kosova, but a diplomatic mission of Kosova in the UN. Not a tutor mission from the EU in Kosova, but a mission of Kosova as a member in the EU. These two, only self-determination makes possible. The future mission of the EU will be violent if it is not in accordance with the will of the people and without asking them, whereas the entrance of Kosova into the EU would not be violent or a limitation on its sovereignty. As Hurst Hannum wrote: ‘adherence in an agreement is not a limitation of sovereignty; rather it is precisely a sovereign act.’ Self-determination of the people confirms the will and interests of the people.

2. After self-determination of the people of Kosova, new and free elections must be held for a true government in a sovereign Kosova. Only then can we have elections that are truly free and democratic and political pluralism with parties with serious ideology instead of these insipid parties that tease each other. These parties that we have now, and new parties, will continue but with new leadership. The current leaders are of the ‘status quo’ of this situation that suits them. The movement of Kosova in the direction of a new compromise with Serbia, or in the direction of the independence of Kosova will cause earthquakes inside the parties. It will impose other leaders born in the death-rattle of the political backstage and improvisation. Parties that do not change will disappear.

Conclusion
1. War and bloodshed will occur in Kosova in two cases. First, if the people remain silent and wait too long, on which occasion the realization of decentralization in the terrain will bring people before a fait acompli when they will have to react extremely in the form of a saltomortale (in which case it will be too late). And second, if the impatience of the people will result in a violent explosion or armed conflict that remains confined, and controlled from outside and short in time. Bearing in mind the current situation Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! thinks that we should not wait and see but also that work should be organized and nonviolent, against the regime and not against other ethnicities. The independence that comes from self-determination of the people is the destination of the road of freedom and independence that unites a divided Kosova. Independence that comes from a formal declaration made by the Assembly of Kosova, will only provoke the declaration of independence by the enclaves, an independence that will be much more real than that of the government of Kosova. In the manifestation of the its will in demonstrations, the people should prove this will but also transform it into strength that changes the situation directly in accordance with that will.

2. The people of Kosova are not suffering from narcolepsy nor are they a flock of sheep. The people of Kosova wait and endure but not because they are ill, tired or weak, but mainly because they are deceived. And, the people of Kosova have been deceived precisely because they are good, because they easily believe others. The belief of the people makes possible also the lies of others. Thus, the action of the people is lacking because of the inflation of its belief in its liars.

3. Enough has been made of the over-valuation of the international diplomats and international missions. Enough has been made of the under-valuation of ourselves. When we respect ourselves, then we can win the respect of others. Recognition of the other cannot be more important than oneself. Recognition of the other can follow the being of ourselves and not precede it. Even less should we live for the sake of recognition of others or waiting for it. In the start of the 1990s, LDK disdained the fact of the brutal reality under slavery and sought international recognition. At the end of the 1990s, the politics of the KLA joined with the LDK. They threw away the facts for recognition. In order to be accepted internationally, they signed the surrender of arms at Rambouillet. They were recognized by international factor on the condition that they should not exist!

4. The time is now, and not later. Later could be too late, irreversibly late. Desired things do not happen (by themselves). Needed things happen when they are considered necessary and when you become determined to achieve them. Others later will say that they were inevitable.

The Police Inspectorate of Kosova has published a damning report on UNMIK’s ‘Task Force’ investigation into the deaths of demonstrators on 10th February 2007.

Something you didn’t know about Kosova?
- Those under 25 comprise about 57% of people facing extreme poverty (classifed as living on under 0.93 euros a day).
- 14.6% of Albanians and 13.9% of Serbs in Kosova live in extreme poverty.
- Extreme poverty is highest by proportion in the Ferizaj region, (about 29% are in extreme poverty). There are very high rates of extreme poverty in Mitrovica (24%) and Peja (22%). One out of every four person in extreme poverty lives in Mitrovica.
- 50% of youth want to leave (source:UNDP)

This report clearly shows that UNMIK did not use the opportunity that it had to inve-stigate, interrogate and thus collect evidence to prosecute those under suspicion for killing 2 young men in the demonstration of 10th Feb-ruary. Still, no legal procedures have begun against any of the Romanian police officers involved. And with every report that damns the police action on the 10th February, so Albin Kurti‘s arrest and indictment become more and more ludicrous. He is being held in house arr-est, charged with participating in and leading a crowd which committed a criminal offence, a call for resistance (with force), and participating in a group obstructing official persons perf-orming official duties. If convicted, Albin Kurti could spend up to 10 years in prison for these ‘crimes’ which all the independent invest-igations of this demonstration clearly demon-strate were committed and caused by the international police response, in particular that of the 9 or 10 Romanian police, all of whom UNMIK has allowed to leave the country.

This report identifies the following serious failures in UNMIK’s investigation:

1) Despite the fact that it was clear by the 12th February, that the deaths were caused by the RB1 plastic bullets used only by the Romanian police, all of the Romanian team were inter-viewed as witnesses to the event, and not as suspects. Consequently by law, none of their evidence is admissible in court. (7)

2) Despite the fact that PIK demanded that the investigation team not include any Romanian nationals, the interviews of the Romanian police unit were conducted by two Romanian police officers. The report identifies a number of discrepancies between the hand-written note taken of the interviews, and the English published version of the evidence given. (6)

3) In the interview process, the Romanian po-lice were not asked the basic questions critical to justifying the use of force: for example, the threat they faced from the protestors and what other options they had available to them (4)

4) The Romanian police were never interv-iewed by the International Prosecutor despite being the key suspects (7)

5) PIK and the Ministry of the Interior were advised of the departure of the Romanian police unit only when they heard UNMIK’s press release on the media on 23rd March. (7)

6) PIK argues that there was a complete failure of command and control in the international police operation. ‘Altogether 232 plastic bullets were fired during the protest, the majority of which were shot after 4 people were injured due to being struck with plastic bullets above waist-height and so it was not possible for the UNMIK commanders not to be aware. The absence of command and control of police ope-rations becomes even more sombre because of the clear evidence that shots were fired ext-remely close (less than 30 meters), were targeted at head-height and as the crowd was withdrawing. These facts suggest that the FPU police and UNMIK did not have control and direction from their official commanders.’ (8.2)

7) PIK states that they have not been able to discover who was responsible for leading the operations on the ground. ‘Contrary to the repe-ated requests made by the PIK to the Task Force, for the names and title of the Comman-der who had led the police operation in Mother Theresa Street, it has not been secured’. (8.3)

8) ‘According to the opinions of the PIK the possibility to question as necessary the 10 police (Romanian) during the 5 weeks in which they remained in Kosova, according to the disposition of the Provisional Criminal Proce-dure Code of Kosovo (PCPCK), was extremely weakly exploited and managed by the Task Force. It is the opinion of the PIK that enough evidence existed during the weeks of the fatal shooting for the Public Prosecutor to take into questioning the 10 police as suspects on the basis of the (PCPCK)’ (7.8)

Albin Kurti: ‘What is happening, where are we going, and what should we do?’

This week Albin Kurti published an in-depth analysis of the political situation in Kosova. In this article, he argues that Kosova was told first that it had only two options: A resolution or partition. Now it is being threatened with two other options, more negotiations or partition, both of which will damage Kosova.
Partition: He argues that Serbia will not support partition as an idea unless Kosova does come close to independence. At the moment it has too much to gain from negotiations. Serbia, he argues, is currently aiming at internal partition of Kosova: the creation of an Albanian entity run by an international mission, and a Serb entity covering the remaining 30% of Kosova, run by Serbia. Both entities would be part of a federation with Serbia, whilst the Albanian entity will be presented by Serbia as the equi-valent of Republika Srpska in Bosnia. In the future, should Albanians in Kosova seek to unite with Albania, Serbia will use this as a pretext to argue that Republika Srpska should also have the right to secede and join Serbia.

War: He writes that Serbia has successfully sought to delay the process resolving status in order to put such pressure on the Albanian population of Kosova that they will explode. Serbia needs a war which it can present as defensive so that KFOR will help to separate the future Serb entity from the rest of Kosova as they did in Bosnia, thus legitimizing formal internal partition. UNMIK in the last 8 years, he argues, has successfully weakened the former Kosova Liberation Army, transformed into the Kosova Protection Corps, portraying it as a disorganized group of criminals, rather than lib-eration fighters. UNMIK has also supported and protected Kosova’s current leaders who are be-traying Kosova in these negotations. They need supervised independence to retain their positions and be cushioned from the people.

Explosion of violence (for a federation): Albin Kurti argues that it serves the final goal of all the negotiators to have a controlled explosion by the Albanian people in Kosova in order to force them to accept a painful compromise. This compromise he argues will be a federation with Serbia, and not independence.

Conclusion: The way to stop this outcome, Albin Kurti concludes, is to demonstrate non-violently. Demonstrations should be for self-determination, civil rights and equality, and to transform the people’s relationship with the government: so that no longer do the people exist for the sake of the government, but the government exists for the sake of the people. What after self-determination? Albin writes that UNMIK’s departure should be demanded in accordance with a referendum to be held on Kosova’s status, as an expression of the right to self-determination. Meanwhile, the consti-tution should be drafted, a Kosova army formed from the KPC, and a police force from the KPS. NATO troops should remain in Kosova, but at the invitation of the Kosova government and according to a SOFA agreement, as is the case with all other states. He writes regarding a future international presence that Kosova needs international help and advice, but not international rule. After a referendum, and only then, can free and legitimate elections be held to elect parties, leaders and deputies that represent the will of their people.

Conclusion: He concludes that people in Kosova have consistently overvalued inter-national missions and undervalued themselves. Only when they respect themselves, can they win the respect of others.

The problems in Kosova do not derive from ethnic borderlines, but from the wrong premises adopted by the international community. The idea is that a satisfied Serb nationalism is the most passable way to heal the region. Yet, both reason and experience teach us the opposite.
In history lessons all around the world, pupils are taught about a boy who perfectly incarnates the characteristics of the Serb nationalism. One of 3 children who survived out of totally 9 born in a peasant family, he was thin, shy and tuberculose. Rejected from the gymnasium after a abortive admission test, and rejected from the Chetnics for his poor health, he gained global fame at the age of 20, having killed a marital couple. His name was Gavrilo Princip, and in June 28 th 1914, his victims were the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sofie. The assassination jumpstarted the Great War: it was the most costly private therapy in the world history. Dedijer wrote that Gavrilo Princip's personal complex was "the main cause that drew him to do something extraordinary brave, to demonstrate to others that he was equal".

Gavrilo Princip is an emblematic figure for anyone striving to understand Serbian nationalism. It doesn't take much to understand what attracted a shy and unhealthy boy, stuck behind his friends in almost every aspect, to vitriolic nationalism. Scholars view Serbian nationalism is a perfect example of an East-European nationalism, complete with its lack of statehood traditions, its provincial intellectuals fascinated by Blut und Boden, its tribal patriarchate, and its romanticism of male violence, plus an acid doses of religious Messianism. The ideology that inspired Obrenovic and Karadjordjevic dynasties, the pre WW2 radicals of Pasic and those of Seselj today, and that was embraced by Milosevic, Karadjic and Mladic after the collapse of socialism, is a factory which continues to spit out Gavrilo Princips: in there, you can find complete or partial reasons behind almost every bloodshed in Balkans since the creation of the Serbian Principate in 1804. Let's add this, too: this nationalism makes out the core of Belgrade politics even today. Vojislav Kostunica isn't knocking in the doors of Europe to embrace "European values", but dreams of saving Europe with "Serbian vitality"!

Serbian nationalism resembles other East-European nationalisms, but also differs from them in several decisive moments. First of all, it is more exclusive than other nationalisms, since it is charged with an unforgiving tribal religion. A nationalist Croat must be Catholic, but a Catholic can be other than Croat. An Albanian nationalist might very well be Orthodox, Sufi, Sunni, or Catholic. While nationalist Serbs may only be Serbian-Orthodox, or they'll be traitors. Second, Serb nationalism is essentially rural. Croat nationalism was born in the Austrian empire. Founding fathers of Albanian nationalism grew up in Osman metropols, where they served as governors and intellectuals, and glorified "Western culture". While Serbian nationalism is fascinated with Blut und Boden and advocates the Messianic mission of the Slavic peasant. Third and most important, Serbian nationalism is a cold-blooded serial killer. Croatian nationalism has killed when threatened. Albanian nationalism has killed in vengeance. Serbian nationalism is the only single nationalism in Balkans who has made elaborate and cold-blooded plans to exterminate co-habitants of the peninsula, and occupy their properties. As many other psychopaths, even this one acts on a mandate from God. It's not a coincidence, hence, that Croats and Albanians have been able to confront their past better, while the Serbs are stuck in denial. A serial killer has no remorse; in the contrary, he only gets mad when stopped in half.

Problems in today's Kosova do not derive from natural divisions between Albanians and Serbs, although the latter really suffer from nationalism.
True to be told, even Albanians still have open wounds; when all is said and done, they experienced exodus less than a decade ago, and healing takes time. But a state of law, citizens' equality regardless of ethnicity, religion and/or gender, and economic growth, make an effective medicine to heal troubled societies. As any other social diseases, the ethnic hatred in Kosova would absolutely heal - although not easily, and not quickly - if it just received proper cure.

Problems in today's Kosova derive from international community, which as created a so-called "solution" which confirms unequivocally every prejudice of maniac Serb nationalism. That Serbs and Albanians can't live side by side. That Kosova historically and culturally is a Serb dominion, occupied treacherously by Albanians in a moment of weakness. That Albanians are a primitive nation who should be ruled by civilized others. That Albanian self-determination is a threat. And that only Belgrade (read: Serb unitary nationalism) has the mandate to represent the Serb community in Kosova. This public confirmation of all Serbian manias has only served to legitimize theses of Serbian nationalism. The serial killer can calmly lay back and fantasize about a new opportunity, convinced that the world supports him.

It's not hard to understand why this black-out of reason in Kosova.
International community ( i.e. the U.S. and its allies) are too busy elsewhere. Therefore, the high cost of rehab for the madman of the Balkans makes it all a low priority. For now being, the therapy adopted is simply to avoid making him angry. And that is why he is left alone with his latest bloody victim, Kosova, to continue play with it. Some are perhaps even lured by a foolish hope, that the madman might get better if kept in a long leash.
All experience and reason teach us the opposite, but egoistic interests can be blinding. As far as the Albanians are concerned, their only option is to resist peacefully as much as possible, and keep hoping that the West will open up its eyes before anyone else gets hurt.

Shqiptar Oseku, VETËVENDOSJE!

U.S. Chief of Mission in Prishtina, Mrs. Tina S. Kajdanow, has given a number of harsh and somewhat contradictory judgments on the police brutality against a peaceful march in Feb 10th in Kosova which left 2 protestors dead and 83 more hospitalized. The incidents, she has said, should not be exaggerated. The incidents pose a serious threat to the process. Protestors were ill-willing, possibly foreign. Riots started upon attack against institutions. We do not wish to see any more such protests. Mrs. Kaidanow has gone so far as to out right blame the police killings of Mon Balaj (3) and Arbën Xheladini (34) on the NGO VETËVENDOSJE! which had organized the protest.

Mrs. Kajdanow is propably sincere in her last issue, i.e. the wish of the actual U.S. administration to avoid any more protests. There are lots of arguments - even before her insensitive show - that the administration is eager to wrap up the Kosovar scandal as soon as possible.

But, with all due respect, she's grossly wrong on all other issues.Criticism against police brutality on February 10th has not been exaggerated, it has been suppressed. It is exactly the faults of the status process that have caused "the incidents". Protestors are dedicated to Kosova, ideals of civic democracy, and in fact US, albeit they do mind being sacrificed just to make life easier for president Bush (as far as the claims that they were not locals, I'll just refrain from any comments, out of respect). They didn't attack any institutions, but were attacked themselves by the institution entrusted to govern the monopoly of violence: the police.

Mrs. Kajdanow holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Philosophy degree in Political Science from Columbia University in New York. She knows that US universities still study incidents of police violence during civil rights movements in South, although they occurred more than half a century ago. She knows very well how the American public would react today if the police would kill 85 dogs - never mind citizens - during such a political march. Maybe mrs Kaydanow will do us the honors and tell us more about this sometimes in the near future, without exaggerations. Or perhaps she'll wisely decide to let this issue be.

Anyways, that's the prerogative of diplomacy. But her statement in Kosova's public service TV were definitely not such a case - they comprised a showcase of excessive American diplomacy.

The peaceful march of Feb 10th was organized by a NGO oposing the Ahtisaari peace plan on Kosova. VETËVENDOSJE! says the plan rewards Serbian nationalism, cementing ethnic cleavage of Kosova and creating a new Republika Srpska in Kosova. Instead, VETËVENDOSJE! has called for the creation of a citizens state in Kosova, fully equiped with a Bill of Rights according the American model, which would protect all citizens regardless of faith and ethinicity.

A brutal police intervention against the march left Mon Balaj (30) and Arbën Xheladini (34) dead and 85 other Kosovars wounded. Police tactics have been condemned harshly by leading human right NGO's. One of the most prominent Kosovar NGO's, the anti-corruption group Çohu!, states in February 11th that "police violence was the culmination of a long process of repression" against dissidence in Kosova. "Claims that police intervened upon attempts to assault institutions are based upon prejudice. It's cristal clear that the police had orders to break the protestors physically and mentally... The pretext of protestor's violence is, at best, a gross exaggeration", Çohu! says, and adds: "No police or other officer, neither local nor international, has ever been injured in any of the demonstrations organized by the [protesting] VETËVENDOSJE! movement". Çohu! is an NGO that has enjoyed US training and support in a number of occasions.

CDHRF is the most serious and internationally well-known hr-group in Kosova.

Its materials have been invaluable to the tribunal in Hague and are regularly used by the Department of State in its annual surveys of human rights. In February 10th, CDHRF was called in to monitor the protests. It did so with 11 members in its central HQ co-ordinating scores of activists out in the field. In its statement in February 12th, CDHRF says unequivocally: "UNMIK police and Kosovo Police Service seemed well prepared and deliberate in their intent to exercise violence."

CDHRF states vigilantly that "during the march, protestors walked by the ministries of Sport, Youth and Culture, as well as that of Public Service.

Had they wanted to take them, they could have easily been taken", and adds:
"Many protestors were wounded while trying to escape the police. Police officers hindered bypassers from helping out wounded protestors in many occasions. Most of those who tried to help out wounded protestors found themselves being arrested by the police". The staf of CDHRF is highly professional and has received, among others, extensive training in hr-practices from American expertise.

The incidents of Feb 10th were noted even by Amnesty International."Tear-gas was used to disperse the largely non violent procession, some of whom had sat down in the road in front of the police", AI said. "One eye witness told Amnesty International that the tear-gas was released after about an hour. As she turned around to escape the tear-gas as soon as it was released, she was shot in the back with a plastic bullet."

AI has asked the UNMIK to investigate the killings of peaceful demonstrators "in accordance with the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal Arbitrary and Summary Executions". It has asked that: "UNMIK police officers suspected of unlawful conduct should be immediately suspended; they should not be repatriated but should remain in Kosovo until the inquiry establishes whether there are grounds for a criminal prosecution. In this case, the SRSG should immediately apply to the UN Secretary General for a waiver of the immunity from prosecution granted to members of the UNMIK mission, and the suspects suspended pending indictment".

In the light of these facts, it's crystal clear that criticism against the police hasn't been exaggerated. In fact, Albanian criticism has probably been moderated because of regard for the political moment we're going thru:
Albanians do wish to safeguard the interests of Kosova and, indeed, of our American friends. But it's a bad omen that police officers are abusing this situation to mischief. And it is definitely unwise that a member of US diplomatic service offers a blank check to such officers to continue their abuse. History should have taught Mrs. Kajdanow that unholy deals with crooked cops in the third world always tend to end badly.

Let's just say this in plain language. Albanian opinion, including the VETËVENDOSJE! movement, are fully aware that the US has her hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore, none of us cheer on the prospect of disrupting our American friends back in Europe. But citizens of Kosova feel a natural skepticism when the current administration uses us as small change to clear off its bad accounts in other parts of the world. Albanians shall always remain indebted to a country which helped us get rid of Milosevic's thugs. And we strongly believe that we didn't do that only to have them replaced by our own domestic thugs.

15 February 2007

http://web.amnesty.org/
library/Index/ENGEUR700022007
Amnesty International is calling for full transparency in the conduct of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) police inquiry into the killing of Kosovo Albanians Mon Balaj and Arbën Xheladini during a demonstration on 10 February 2007, called by the NGO Vetëvendosje (Self Determination).

The two men were killed during a demonstration in Pristina against the recently published proposal on the future status of Kosovo issued by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

A third man is reportedly in a coma at US Bondsteel, while according to Vetëvendosje several other persons remain in hospital, some of them in a critical condition. Some 80 persons, including five police officers, were reportedly injured, including by tear-gas.

Some 500 Kosovo Police Service (KPS) and UNMIK civilian police officers, including special police units from countries including Romania and Ukraine, were deployed to the 3,000-person demonstration. The shootings reportedly occurred after protestors had been prevented by the police from approaching the government buildings. Tear-gas was used to disperse the largely non violent procession, some of whom had sat down in the road in front of the police. One eye witness told Amnesty International that the tear-gas was released after about an hour. She turned around to escape the tear-gas as soon as it was released; as she turned, she was shot in the back with a plastic bullet. Four different types of rubber bullets or plastic covered steel bullets were reportedly collected after the demonstration from the site.

According to UNMIK Deputy Police Commissioner Trygve Kalleberg, the investigation will be conducted by an investigative Task Force including both international police and KPS not deployed during the demonstration. According to the UN Special Representative of the UN Secretary General (SRSG), Joachim Reucker, an international prosecutor from the UNMIK Department of Justice is also involved in the investigation, which will be observed by the Police Inspectorate of Kosovo, responsible for the oversight of the KPS.

Amnesty International urges that this investigation is carried out in accordance with the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal Arbitrary and Summary Executions, which sets out the necessary elements of an effective, independent and impartial investigation. The investigation should comprise an analysis of all physical and documentary evidence and statements from witnesses and be carried out by persons of recognized impartiality, competence and independence. It is of particular importance such an inquiry should be independent of any institution, agency or person that may be the subject of the inquiry. In these current circumstances it is therefore essential that the panel should include independent experts in forensic pathology, ballistics, crowd control and crime scene investigation.

The organization regrets that the withdrawal of the competency of the Office of the Ombudsperson over acts and omissions by UNMIK in early 2006, and the failure of UNMIK to constitute the Human Rights Advisory Panel, intended to review complaints against UNMIK, have resulted in there being no body within Kosovo with the competency to conduct a fully independent and impartial investigation.

The investigation should look into the circumstances in which, and the extent to which, UNMIK police resorted to the use of force. In particular, the investigation should assess whether the use of force and firearms was consistent with UNMIK's own guidelines on the use of rubber bullets or plastic-coated bullets, and consistent with national law and international human rights law and standards, including the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. In particular, the investigation should examine the rules of engagement, including the risk assessment made in advance and resulting in the deployment of forces armed with plastic bullets, and orders given to the UNMIK police units involved.

Amnesty International urges that the inquiry should be conducted promptly and impartially, and the results made public as soon as reasonably possible. Any UNMIK police officers suspected of unlawful conduct should be immediately suspended; they should not be repatriated but should remain in Kosovo until the inquiry establishes whether there are grounds for a criminal prosecution. In this case, the SRSG should immediately apply to the UN Secretary General for a waiver of the immunity from prosecution granted to members of the UNMIK mission, and the suspects suspended pending indictment.

Amnesty International notes the resignation of Interior Minister Fatmir Rexhepi on Monday, accepting "moral responsibility" for the deaths. The organization also notes the resignation of UNMIK Police Commissioner Stephen Curtis, in response to a request by the SRSG. The organization urges both former officials to fully cooperate with the investigation into the deaths.

Amnesty International is also concerned at reports, including by the Institution of the Ombudsperson, that proceedings against Albin Kurti, leader of Vetëvendosje and one of the organizers of the demonstration, were closed to the press and public, including Albin Kurti's father. According to information received by Vetëvendosje, Albin Kurti has been charged with inciting violence and will be detained for another 30 days, pending investigations. The organization urges UNMIK Department of Justice to ensure that wherever possible -- bearing in mind the rights of the accused and the rights of victims and witnesses -- all trials are open to the public, and that all detained persons are afforded the rights guaranteed under applicable law

Background
Rubber bullets are kinetic impact devices, which may in certain circumstances have lethal force, and should therefore be treated for practical purposes as firearms. They should be used only by trained firearms officers and then strictly in accordance with the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officers. This states, inter alia, that "Law enforcement officials shall not use firearms against persons except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury". According to police sources, UNMIK's own guidelines state that these bullets must not be used in close quarters situations, nor should they be aimed above the waist.

UNMIK police should institute strict rules for the issuing of such weapons and ammunition, and monitoring by them, of every round fired; they should also require that regular reports of such use are made by law enforcement agencies to the legislature. They should also have procedures in place to address the lack of a forensic ballistics trail in plastic baton rounds and rubber bullets in order to allow for adequate monitoring and, where necessary, investigation of human rights violations by law enforcement officials when using such equipment.

Amnesty International has previously raised concerns about the use of excessive force and firearms by both UNMIK civilian police and the Kosovo Police Service, including to the former Police Commissioner, Kai Vittrup, and in the organization's July 2006 report to the UN Human Rights Committee.

Copenhagen, 2007-02-14

Open letter to the Danish minister of foreign affairs, Per Stig Møller,
the EU-coordinator of foreign affairs, Xavier Solana,
and the general secretary of UN, Ban Ki-moon

Since the war in 1999, UNMIK has been in charge of the affairs in Kosova. In actual practice, their policy has been to let corrupt and mafioso politicians handle the situation.

Over the last few years, the population has shown its ever growing dissatisfaction with foreign rule by demonstrating almost daily. These demonstrations culminated February 10th, when people were out in the streets all over Kosova to voice their rejection of Martti Ahtisaari’s plan. A huge manifestation took place in Prishtina, arranged by the movement Vetëvendosje
(Self-Determination) and its leader Albin Kurti (former leader of the Albanian students), and with Adem Demaci, head of the authors’ union, as its main speaker. Demaci is a political hero after his 29 years of political imprisonment during the former Yugoslavian rule. (He has often been called Kosova’s Mandela.) Over the years, he has with peaceful means fought for the Albanian people’s rights to democratic freedom and self-determination.

The peaceful manifestation was met with great brutality by the police. 2 were killed, 80 wounded, and c. 200 were arrested, among them the leader of Vetëvendosje, Albin Kurti.

The Albanian population’s resistance against the Ahtisaari-plan is a protest against the fact that foreign authorities decide about their future. They want the same right as people everywhere else, to decide about their own lives by democratic means. But the Albanian representatives in the preparatory committee in Vienna were not democratically selected, and they do not express the people’s wishes.

The people of Kosova has suffered unspeakably in the 1999 war:
More than 14.000 were killed,
more than 3.000 are missed,
more than 20.000 women were raped,
more than 185.000 houses were demolished, more than 850.000 persons were made fugitives.

Kosova’s economic situation is desperate, because the Serbian military pillaged banks, pensionist funds and private valuables. After all this, nobody accepts that the Ahtisaari-plan privileges the 5 % Serbian minority as against the other minorities and the 90 % Albanian majority.

Vetëvendosje demands
self-determination for the population of Kosova by means of a democratic vote rejection of Ahtisaari’s plan rejection of a decentralized municipal system giving too much power to local authorities Serbian economic remuneration for the war

With this letter, we support the demands of Vetëvendosje and request that the population of Kosova is given its right to self-determination.

Xhemil Zeqiri
Minna Skafte Jensen
Menneskerettighedsaktivist
Menneskerettighedsaktivist Talsmand for Vetëvendosje i Danmark
xhemil@hotmail.com

A prominent human rights NGO in Kosova says the local government and the UN administration in Kosova are to blame for the bloodshed in Kosova in Saturday’s demonstration, February 10th.

“The police interventions was definitely deliberate in order to obtain certain goals. The police and their political heads are responsible for the escalation of the violence”, Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Liberties said today, Monday.

“The intervention was shaped to eliminate the VETËVENDOSJE! movement from the political scene of the country”, CDHRF said.

Another prominent NGO said the killings in Saturday took place to convey the message that resistance against Ahtisaari’s package is untolerable.

“Killings of two protestors of VETËVENDOSJE! by the police in Saturday is the culmination of a continual physical and medial repression exercised against all dissidence in Kosova”, Anti-Corruption NGO Çohu says.

“Arguments that the police intervention has taken place to prevent protestors from forcefully entering institutions are built upon prejudice.

It is totally clear that the police had orders to brake the protestors physically and psychically, in order to convey the message that any resistance against Ahtisaari’s package is intolerable. Pretensions that VETËVENDOSJE! has exercised violence are a gross exaggeration by the officials. No policeman or any other member of the Kosovar administration, local nor international, has even been injured in any of the demonstrations arranged by VETËVENDOSJE!" Çohu says.

"VETËVENDOSJE! has never posed a challenge to the security situation in Kosova, but it has challenged the official version on the future of Kosova.

Killings of unarmed protestors and declarations from officials and political leaders that the use of force against VETËVENDOSJE! has been proportional poses a failure of the institutions. This is a moment to reflect over the totally undemocratic ways in which this country is being governed. In this situation, the normal procedure would be to sack PM Agim Çeku, interior minister Fatmir Rexhepi, head of the Kosovar police force Sheremet Ahmeti, and the international commissionaire of the police, Stephen Curtis”, Çohu says.

Interviewed, Mentor Dukagjini

1. Mr. Adili, how do you see the actual situation and how do you predict the situation in the future in the entire Albanian territories?
Answer: By judging on the base of all the analyses that have been made regularly by the Decision-making Secretariat of the Central Presidency of the Albanian National Unification Front in the entire space of the Natural Albania, round it and further, I can freely say that more than always before, the situation is impregnated with very big dangers for new conflicts in the agitated Balkan region, which has been and continue to remain a “powder keg”. Our national public opinion knows that in Serbia will be elections on 21st January 2007. On the basis of the information that we have gathered, it is very possible that the ultra-nationalist forces of Šešeli to win in Serbia and together with the ultra-chauvinistic forces of Milošević to create the government of Serbia. These forces continue to consider Kosova “the Heart of Serbia” and when it is known very well the fact that this was introduced also in the new Constitution approved through the Referendum organized in the past, we can wait the Serbia’s attempts to re-conquer and re-colonize Kosova Protectorate of UNMIK until now and of EUMIK in the future. So, I consider that the permanent danger is the break of a new war in Kosova. I apprised this before through an interview published in the Newspaper “Epoka e Re” from Prishtina (summer 2005), when I said between other things: “WAR IS UNAVOIDABLE” . And I have argued this ascertainment through the fact that, if the international community will recognize Kosova as sovereign and independent state, Serbia will begin the war. On the contrary situation, if the international community will treat Kosova in the future as an integral part of Kosova - how it is labeled by the UN Resolution 1244, we must and we will begin the war, because a new conquest and colonization of Kosova can not be endured even by the martyrs of the nation.

2. But what is the Albanian reality and how behaves the official politics from Tirana and Prishtina - how you call it, Mr. Adili, the institutions and the political parties from Tirana and Prishtina?
Answer: Unfortunately, I have to repeat once again our before mentioned ascertainment, because this is our misfortune and tragedy. The slogan of our enemies has been throughout centuries: “divide and conquer!”. As a result, we, the Albanians are the single nation in the world that has more than 150 political parties. In the Eastern Kosova, in three communes, we have four political parties and some societies. At the same time, I have said about the leaders of the political parties from Tirana, also from Prishtina, Shkup, Presheva, Ulqin and Chameria continue to remain politicians of business, which are not interested at all in the Albanian national issue, even that they are slobbering through their statements for the Albanian national issue.
These gentlemen are able for their paltry interests of clans and parties and in order to get into the saddle to burn and to destroy Albania, as they did in years 1991-1992 and 1997 in Londoner Albania. As well as those from Prishtina who agonize for the power without power, when it is known that the power has belonged to UNMIK and EUMIK or how are acting those from Shkup, Presheva and Ulqin, where the power belongs to Serbs, Montenegrins and Slavic Macedonians and the Albanian politicians are their vassals and servants. These gentlemen not only that don’t love the Albanian national reunification, because they treat the situation from their slogan “better the first of the quarter, than the second of the village”, but they also combat this major idea. This secular aspiration and real historic right of the Albanians, sanctioned also in the Preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of Albania is represented and glorified only by the Albanian National Unification Front (A.N.U.F.), which has the task to realize the embodiment of the Albanian national reunification’s idea within the large popular masses from all the Albanian territories of Natural Albania.
While concerning the inter-Albanian scission created by our enemies through the creation of more than 150 Albanian political parties, A.N.U.F. has been trying regularly to minimize this inter-Albanian scission. Actually we can not eliminate this inter-Albanian scission, but we have the unshakable belief that we will achieve to minimize it and to create within the folk the Albanian national unity.

3. How much do you have support from the governmental and non-governmental political parties in all the Albanian territories?
Answer: Except from many patriotic individuals that are also in the presidencies of these political parties or are deputies of the Parliament in Tirana, Prishtina and Shkup, not only that we don’t have an official support by the governmental and non-governmental (from opposition) parties, but the political parties (governmental of from opposition) combat us more than they fight against Serbia. And we don’t know at all why they fight not against Serbia and on the contrary, why they favor it, how is the case if the privatization in Kosova, where Serbia realize it more than 80 % through its fellows from Kosova, who are enriched since the time of presence of Serbia.
Instead of tracing the spies of Serbia in Kosova Protectorate (more than 70 thousand) these gentlemen are tracing the A.N.U.F. members from Zone Nr. 2.
And, why happens this?!
Because these are the orders of those that Serbia stepped on tail with judicial trials organized in Prishtina or in Hague. But these lemons are squeezed by their masters and the Albanian people don’t trust them anymore.
And, when a lemon is squeezed, it is thrown to the garbage can. So will be the end of all the politicians squeezed as lemons.

4. How do you comment the last events about the masks appeared in the last period in Kosova with emblems and falsified uniforms, how did you stressed before?
Answer: A group of bandits composed from 10 persons, ordinary thieves from different zones of the Natural Albania (from Londoner Albania and Kosova Protectorate and one from Shkup) - with black uniforms, two of them having (one on the left arm and the other on the forehead) a falsified A.N.A. emblem, has not appeared in Kosova how do you say, but only in a village of the Gjakova’s district.
This is a scenario prepared before by the foreign anti-Albanian segments, supported also by foreign anti-Albanian segments inside Kosova Protectorate. They learned these thieves of hens not to loot the people and to create the impression that A.N.A. has more factions! But, when we shown up the masks of these miscreants, their masters retreated, their number one left in Italy. They (the thieves of hens and cows) began again to loot the helpless and poor villagers, as well as they had acted other times before, during 2003-2004, when they had looted a sister of two martyr brothers from the Plain of Dukagjini.
When our structures arrested in 2002-2003, in Tetova, 3 persons with A.N.A. masks and uniforms, we came to the result that they were ordinary burglars, organized and put into action by the chief of the Slavic Macedonian police. I don’t remember his name for the moment, but this is registered and archived in the documents of the A.N.U.F. intelligence services.
This kind of cases will occur also in future, because the aim and the mission of the enemies has been and will continue to remain their attempt to disparage the idea and the mission of the A.N.U.F. armed wing, the Albanian National Army, in the same manner how they had operated with Kosova Liberation Army (K.L.A.). But now they will fail shamefully and will not succeed how they achieved until a point with K.L.A., because K.L.A. unfortunately did not have a leading political formation, how A.N.A. has the Albanian National Unification Front. (A.N.U.F.).

5. Mr. Adili, you accused that behind the masks is the leader of Democratic Party of Kosova (PDK/DPA), Mr. Thaçi. On what arguments do you base and how do you achieved to identify some organizers of the masks before KFOR, UNMIK and KPS and to mention their names and surnames?
Answer: It is not at all true that I said that behind masks is the PDK/DPA leader, Mr. Hashim Thaçi. Please read well our statements. I said that the principal organizer of masks is supported by some segments of the Democratic Party of Kosova of Hashim Thaçi, party that has begun to accuse the Government Çeku of staying allegedly behind the masks.
I said P.D.K./D.P.A of Hashim Thaçi, because if I would have said only P.D.K., it hadn’t be known if is about the Democratic Party of Kosova with leader Hashim Thaçi, about P.D.K (Christian-democratic Party) from Republic of Albania, whose leader was before Nikolla Lesi and now is Nard Ndoka or about P.D.K. (National Democratic Party) from F.Y.R.O.M.
And anti-Albanian segments exist within every Albanian political party, not only in Kosova Protectorate, where are more than 70 thousands of spies of Serbia, but also here in Londoner Albania, a state (even if is truncated and mutilated) with a history of 90 years. This happens because the political parties are electoral parties, where the vote of the traitor and of the patriot are equal and don’t differ with anything. And parties are not organizations of liberation as A.N.U.F., where on the preliminary stage is done verification and then the acceptance within the ranks of A.N.U.F. and its structures.
But my personal opinion is that Hashim Thaçi proved himself very naïve and through this naivete he has confirmed his ill careerism when he went running to the administrator of Kosova (Ruecker) - who has the right to say to the Premier to quit – and accused Çeku’s government that allegedly is behind the masks.
The simplest logic of every Albanian and international representative, who has two nuts of mind in head, can not believe this kind of absurd and stale accusation made by Mister Thaçi. Because it never happens that the government party to organize turmoil, because it is not at all interested to endanger its sweet power achieved after so many attempts, how is the case of Mr. Çeku.
As well as in the case of Kondova near Skopje, the turmoil were not initiated by the Democratic Union of Integration (D.U.I/B.D.I) led by Ali Ahmeti, party in collaboration with Branko Crevenkovski, how accused at that moment Menduh Thaçi. The case Kondova was created by the Democratic Albanian Party (D.A.P/P.D.SH.) of Menduh Thaçi, who tried through a inter-Albanian massacre to endanger the power without power of Ali Ahmeti’s D.U.I. and to get Menduh Thaçi himself in the governance together with D.A.P.
While about your question how we achieved to identify them before KFOR, UNMIK and KPS, I answer to you very shortly, as follows:
1.The Albanian National Unification Front (A.N.U.F.) in Zone Nr. 2 (Historic Kosova) is very well organized, first with a very wide A.N.U.F. Council of Zone Nr. 2. Within this council are the presidencies of 7 councils of the A.N.U.F. inferior zones (Prishtina, Mitrovica, Peja, Prizren, Ferizaj, Gjilan and Presheva). These have councils throughout the cities and villages of these inferior zones and we can say freely with this occasion that A.N.U.F. has changed from a nationwide front into a front of the whole people.
2.All these councils have as principal task to discover Serbia’s spies and those of all foreign secret services, very well represented in Kosova and all evildoers, burglars and bandits that are hiding from their folk with masks and plunder and torture it. Because they aren’t loved not only by the villages and quarters where are living, but also by their families, who bore and educated them. And, after their detection, to highlight all the information and to sent them through the leading structures of the Presidency of the Council of Zone Nr.2 (Historic Kosova) to the Decision-making Secretariat of the A.N.U.F. Central Presidency, inside of whose is also the A.N.U.F. Political Adjunct, task that actually I (former A.N.U.F. Chairman) exert, since Second National Assembly (16 September 2005), beside that of Chief of Diplomacy (for the internationals).

6. It can be observed that the original A.N.A. (the A.N.U.F. military wing) brings over big support in Kosova and in other places lived with Albanian population. Do you have to the same belief?
Answer: First of all, there is not any original A.N.A and another false A.N.A. It has been and will always be only an Albanian National Army (A.N.A.), so that A.N.A. that is the military wing of the Albanian National Unification Front.
Before the A.N.U.F. foundation, some political leaders of Kosova Protectorate (which have called himself leaders of the political parties originated from the war), were regularly trying to take over the A.N.A. and to use it as they had used the K.L.A., and worse than this to wash their immense swaddles used before the war, during the war and after the glorious K.L.A. war. So, A.N.A. can not be called the burglars with masks that are looting and terrorizing our people, burglars that must be killed as the dogs of roads. Secondly, it is very true that A.N.A. has brought over big support, not only in Kosova, but also in all the territories of the Natural Albania. This support is created by A.N.U.F. and is structures and between them is also A.N.S (Albanian National Security), which is the vanguard of all our achievements in the terrain of our enemies.

7. Do you believe that all this support is the result of discontent regarding the actual situation in general or because the original A.N.A is giving chase to the false A.N.A?
Answer: It is also the first variant, the discontent regarding the actual situation and the disillusion experienced by the people towards the politicians that are calling themselves politicians came from the war. But it can be what do you say, even that I mentioned before that a false A.N.A (how you call it and it is possible to call a part of the people, as the result of the lack of information) does not exist. But I believe above all that this is the result of the indefatigable work demanded by me to my close collaborators, the high A.N.U.F. leaders, approximately three years before. This demand was transformed in decision of the Decision-making Secretariat of the A.N.U.F. Central Presidency (April 2004), that we, the most devoted sons of this heroic suffering people, that we have to sacrifice and to suffer for our bread and under no circumstances to gather aids and financial instruments from the people, because nobody was bring to book in front of the people for the sweat flown in different funds. So, slow but very sure, with much effort and sacrifices, we are achieving to convince our people, which bore and raised us, that we are those real idealists, who never betrayed the oath made with our comrades of ideal passed into immortality, who took the highest grade – Martyrs of the Nation. And on the other hand to return the trust into the heart of our brothers and sisters, that implies to return the trust to the internal factor, the principal factor in the mission of the final and fortunate solution of the Albanian national major issue, factor that determines also the secondary factor, the international factor.

8. The A.N.U.F. Intelligence Structure, the Albanian National Security (A.N.S), which firstly had found the photos of the so-called Serb Army for Liberation of Kosova (S.O.V.K. - Srbska Oslobodilacka Vojska Kosova), published also through a Press Conference held in Tirana on 25 October 2006 and then achieved to procure also a secret material (the Register of the fighters from the voluntary units of Kosova - Toplica installed in north of Kosova). How much time was necessary for this discovery and how did you achieved to have a Secret Service so strong and organized at a professional level?
Answer: The first doubts for the existence of the so-called S.O.V.K. (Srbska Oslobodilacka Vojska Kosova) of the A.N.S. (Albanian National Security) high officers appeared during the popular revolts of 17 – 18 March 2004, in which 15 Albanian boys were killed. The official politics even today didn’t bring into regulation their status, but are forgotten, as if the blood of those boys were water. So, when the revolt of the whole people was denigrated by the burn of the churches that we, the Albanians, not only that we didn’t burn but we have been preserved them also during the last war in Kosova, churches and houses burned by Serbs themselves in order to give the impression that they were burned by Albanians, we came to the conclusion that in reality, this was a scenario fabricated very skillfully by «Crna Ruka», which even today is very active, not only in Serbia, but in all our Albanian territories. Since that time until when A.N.S. achieved to procure not only the photos, but also the entire S.O.V.K diagram (its General Staff is in the North of Mitrovica and the Operative Staff is in Shtërpca), all the A.N.S. activity has been concentrated into the terrain of the Slavic-Greek conquerors and colonizers. According to some information that I have, in concordance of how much I have the permission to know, I have the unshakable belief and the big trust that this indefatigable work of these most devoted Albanian boys and girls has been intensified more and more and will end successfully with other much major successes, which will amaze not only the Albanians, everywhere who they are, but also the international factor.

9. The Albanian National Unification Front is the principal initiator for formation of the Organizational Council of the Albanian Nationwide Convention. According to your opinion, what role will have this Council?
Answer: On the Founding Summit of the Organizational Council of the Nationwide Assembly held in Tirana, on 25 November 2006, where took place 75 delegates from all the provinces of the Natural Albania and from the Albanian Diaspora, it was defined between other issues the role and the tasks of the Organizational Council of the Albanian Nationwide Convention. I have to explain them, as following:
Firstly, we have to prepare all the projects of documents that will be approved in the Albanian Nationwide Assembly, which will be organized only when the Organizational Council will ascertain that all the conditions and circumstances are fulfilled for organization, elaboration and holding with success of an Albanian Nationwide Convention and not a superficially one.
Secondly, the Albanian Nationwide Convention must not fail, how happened with the initiative of years 1991-1992, when it had existed the attempt to organize the Convention of Conciliation and National Unification, which denigrated later in Tetova 1 and Tetova 2, as well as the Convention of Intellectuals from Istanbul.
Thirdly, beside the Commission for Preparation of the Project – Documents of the Albanian Nationwide Convention, as are the Project – Theses of the National Unification and the Statute of the Albanian National Assembly (commission comprised from the Academies of Tirana and Prishtina), it was created also the Commission for contacts with all the stately institutions and the both Academies of Tirana and Prishtina, as well as will all the political parties, patriotic societies, the (Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox and Bektashian) clergy and will all patriotic intellectuals from all the territories of the Natural Albania and from Diaspora. In the direct contacts will all these factors, this commission will demand their statement for or against the Albanian Nationwide Assembly. This Commission is divided in three inferior commissions:
1)The inferior commission of Tirana led by the Chairman, General Kudusi LAMA and the Adjunct Chairman, Prof. Dr. Hulusi HAKO, as well as by other three members of the Organizational Council of the Albanian Nationwide Convention from the Republic of Albania;
2) The inferior commission of Prishtina, led by the Adjunct Chairman, Colonel Sejdi VESELI and Adjunct Chairman Colonel Shyhrete GOSALCI, as well as by other three members from Historic Kosova, and
3) The inferior Commission of Chameria, Vardar Valley, Malësia e Madhe and Diaspora led by me, the Secretary General of the Organizational Council of the Albanian Nationwide Convention.

10. What is your request for the Albanian people in general?
Answer: To brawl as littlest as possible between each other, how have happened during the last 15 years and to occupy at maximum with our enemies and their devilish anti – Albanian plans, because brawling between each other, not only that we are continue to scission and to divide ourselves after the affiliations of parties and province, but also we forget our enemies. And they continue to work day and night against us, in their internal political and military domain also on diplomatic and international level. Let’s take aside our divisions that take into account the parties, the clans, tribes, provinces and religion.
Finally, once and forever, our common religion and ideology has to become Albanianism. Its authentic representative is the Albanian National Unification Front (A.N.U.F.) and its adequate structures: A.N.A. (Albanian National Army), A.N.S. (Albanian National Security) and A.N.F. (Albanian National Fund), which must be helped by all the popular strata, without difference of province, religion ideology, because A.N.U.F. is the single nationwide formation that works, operates and fights for the national reunification of all the Albanian territories and of the people that is living there into a single national state, with the name ALBANIA.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year 2007!
Be this the year of turns and of the major victories for our Albanian national reunification!
Thank you for understanding!

Mr. Gafurr ADILI,
Political Adjunct of the Albanian National Unification Front and Secretary General of the Organizational Council of the Albanian Nationwide Convention.

Tirana, 20 December 2006

Dritëro Agolli was born in 1931. By 1950 he had become an established writer in Albania. Of working class background, he completed studies at the University of Leningrad and embarked on his career in journalism and writing when he returned to Albania. He began by writing poetry and in 1970 began writing prose too. Although he had feelings of hostility toward the then Soviet Union in the sixties, Agolli was Chairman of the Writers and Artists League from 1972 until 1992. Both as a member of the communist nomenclatura, and as a public figure, Agolli retained respect even after the collapse of the communist regime. Still a prolific and popular writer, in the 1990’s he took a seat in the Albanian Assembly at the outset of the transition of the Socialist Party.

- Mr. Agolli, as a writer you are a long standing favourite of the Albanian public and your books have also been published abroad. Your life time has spanned a good part of the socialist phase of the country and these years of radical change. First of all we would be interested to know what values have been important to you in your life?

It’s quite difficult to talk about oneself. For this description to be a little more objective, it should be done by others. Usually when you speak about yourself you are embarrassed to reveal everything, so you leave things unmentioned, or perhaps you are even prone to boasting.

As a writer and like the rest of my generation, I was formed in a period that is now past history, the period of socialism. All of us have acquired positive and negative features pertaining to that system. You could perhaps say that we are like row boats encrusted with shell fish and seaweed, dragged up onto the sands to be scraped clean. That was a difficult period.

Everything was heavily censured. Of course literature and the institutions and instances of culture and politics were no exception. It goes without saying that this period, the system, and the society left indelible marks behind.

These things are reflected in my works, particularly from a critical angle. My works are not mere volumes of praise for the system, but more like a critique of it. This is the reason why several volumes I wrote were prohibited or even reduced to pulp. In 1964 my first book of short stories was printed. It was entitled, »The Rustle of Winds of the Past«, and was immediately banned from circulation because it allegedly diluted the heroism of the characters. This was the terminology used at that time. The play, »The White Age« and the book, »The Splendour and Downfall of Comrade Zylo« also disappeared from circulation following their first publication.

This last book was published again in 1973. It was regarded as being critical of society and it focused on power and the individual and how power transforms the individual. This novel received acclaim in other European countries.

- You mentioned that censorship made things difficult for literature and politics in socialist Albania. What sort of a relationship did you have with politics at that time?

I am not a professional politician. I am a writer who dabbles in politics - inasmuch as any other citizen does when he goes to the polls to vote.

When a citizen casts his vote he also dabbles in politics; when he doesn’t vote, he doesn’t dabble in politics, that’s the extent of it. Aristotle was right when he said that, »man is a political animal«.

I am a kind of political animal, seeing I am also a writer, I have worked this ability to perfection, because every writer is the mirror of the society he lives in. Therefore I was a member of the Party of Labour, I was a communist, and even a member of the Central Committee of the Party.

But I was also Chairman of the Writers’ and Artists’ League for a long time. Subsequently I could do far more, as I did, like Ismail Kadare and others Irrespective of the conditions of the time, we did reflect that reality. When the time came and the regimes changed I joined the Socialist Party, which emerged from the Party of Labour, changing in name only.

In the first years it carried over many dyed-in-the-wool communists, but slowly these elements dropped out of its ranks. I also changed and shed a lot of useless deadweight, although some things still remain.

- You speak about a kind of purging, which the country, your party, and also you yourself have undergone. Did this occur without problems? Was this cleansing process obstructed by certain issues?

I remember a verse by the Greek poet Seferis, about an island where there was a Church and a Saint. One day many serpents appeared on the island. The Saint called the cats on the island and the cats devoured the serpents. The island was purged of all the serpents, but at the same time all the cats died too. Why? Well, because they had consumed so much venom.

In our society today too, people have consumed a great deal of venom. With this venom you could eliminate an opponent, occasionally even an old friend who has become your opponent. But this venom has also done its work on you, I mean one’s self as well.

This is precisely the kind of society I come from too. I was admitted into the Socialist Party, I was elected to its forums, first to the Executive and then to its Steering Committee. Then I wanted to leave the Party. This Party now is more modern, which means it has offloaded a lot of the past dogmas of the period of socialism. It has drawn closer to other European parties in kind. There have been a great deal of polemics and debates, and in the time when I was involved fully in politics, I was always ready to talk about the flaws of the Socialist Party. Over the last eight years I have frequently raised my voice in criticism, writing articles and in interviews, perhaps even more than its own political opponents. Anyway, I did not drop out of the SP and no one made the slightest effort to have me expelled. I have always been a writer and their firm supporter.

- This means that you joined them, and you have sought confrontation in a party sensitive towards changes-which in the meantime you even thought of leaving, as you just mentioned. Does this differ from the stand you had towards the communist Party of Labour?

What I would like to explain is the fact that one should always speak up about the good and bad even when referring to a political party you are a member of. A contemporary French philosopher Bachelard once said, »Before you get to know a person you must first quarrel; you must oppose the person so the truth emerges; without quarrelling or without debate you can never get to know anyone, because the truth is not the daughter of sympathy, it is the daughter of discourse.« I always bear this in mind.

When the Chairman of the Socialist Party stated, »The Party resembles a marshland«, I opposed that and said he himself was bloated like a swamp toad. I was never shy to speak out when it came to the truth and within my limitations I have done a great deal of criticising. However, I have always been in support of the party. Like everyone else, I too have my pet foibles, I have my good sides but also my weaknesses. Perhaps I should have criticised somewhat more in the past system, but the conditions were such…and not only that, but you create a family and you certainly don’t want anything bad to befall them. One piece of verse says that in the time of Galilee, there were also other Galileans who could have come out and said the truth, but they had families. They also knew that the Earth was round, but if they had said this in public they would have been burnt alive at the stake. This is also the case with writers who lived during that system, they knew so much, they also knew the Earth was round, but they also had families. I am one of those individuals.

-What ideals do you regard as being fundamental in the field of politics and society? Although you do not consider yourself a politician, are there any foreign or local politicians who have had such a special impact as you have?

I grew up and was moulded in a socialist society, and at that time we had communist ideals. We were sincere in these ideals and like many other intellectuals in the world, talented writers such as Aragon, Paul Éluard or even Picasso and Majakowskij, embraced this idea of communism. We also believed that the world could be changed. We believed that there could be more equality between people; that poverty could be eliminated; that there could be greater solidarity, and a more complete freedom. These were the ideals we had and which influenced our formation. Philosophical figures like Marx, as well as political figures like Enver Hoxha did have an influence on me. This was our ideal, and our generation cannot deny this.

For some time it was the same ideal, but as the years went by the enthusiasm began to wane, because we could see there were so many flaws in our society.As a writer I idealised Naim Frashëri, because he was a poet inspired by the West and in particular by the French Revolution. He was very humane, he loved freedom, he worked for equality between people but also fraternity. His work helped me a great deal to create my own opinion on the development of society. From this angle, Frashëri became my idol in my creativity and other political issues. He was my idol, not only as a writer because he was also a distinguished politician, but especially regarding his approaches to issues of the country and how he fought the evils perpetrated against our country. He also wrote in Greek and one of his most famous poems is entitled, »The Albanians and the Greeks«. So there is also an international side to his spirit. Another idol I had was Fan Noli, one of the finest socialists. I believe so because he headed the June Revolution. Although he only governed for six months, he jump started development in Albania, bringing it closer to Europe. That is what the people wanted and what I wanted for my country. From outside of my country, Marx and Lenin and later on Willy Brandt were figures I respected. I thought highly of Brandt as a socialist and as a person with his own views. By this time I was an adult so I was not greatly influenced by Brandt, but I thought he had charisma at the time. The same went for other socialists of the epoch such as Mitterand. Naim Frashëri, Fan Noli and Enver Hoxha were the individuals whose work influenced me the most.

-It is obvious that drawing closer to Europe has always had significance for you. Today, Europe is no longer merely a geographic and cultural notion; on the contrary, this now means social-economic and political structures. Do you believe that Albania has the maturity needed to become part of these structures?

No, I don’t believe it has. First of all, to be able to approach the more developed countries, we must have a developed economy. That goes for the social side of the coin, including cultural and educational levels.

People must show greater tolerance with one another, and also towards politics. A political debate should not automatically lead to a fight and to hostility, as if every change of government resembles the installation of a new invader. What I mean by this is that we lack a developed democratic and political culture. If, hand in hand with economic development, democratic culture also increases, and if tolerance is predominant in the debates on issues, then dogmatism and intolerance are avoided. If there is no longer any revenge in society, then yes we will be mature enough to enter Europe. This hideous ulcer of our society, revenge, must be eradicated.

- How can the International Community assist Albania? What do the Albanians themselves have to do to be included in the process of becoming part of the EU?

Representatives of the EU who come to Albania should carefully study the conditions of this country. They should not all come and go with the same approach they have had towards other countries. On the contrary, they should have studied and know the nature of Albanian society. They should know what customs and traditions there are, and what the positive sides of the Albanians are. They should know the country’s spiritual constitution. It is worthless if intelligent people come and go who do their work well in Bulgaria or Rumania, because even though we have many things in common with other Balkan countries, we are also different in many ways.

- Where do the differences lie? From a socio-psychological angle, is there any such thing as an individual type of Albanian?

Albanians are very intelligent and they are people with a great deal of imagination. But they are also very impatient and lose interest in their work very quickly. If a job takes ten years to do, they want to do it in one year; they want to complete in one hour something that takes five months to do. If someone who would know the psychology of Albanian society well came to work in Albania, this person would do a great service to the country.

However, first of all the Albanians must build their own country themselves. Unfortunately, we are used to others doing our work for us - but this is a very bad lesson. It depends on our psychology: when others direct us, we appear to be very clever. For example, in Turkey there were thirty Prime Ministers and who knows how many commanders, soldiers and statesmen who were remarkable individuals of Albanian origin. Or Take Greece as another example - how many heroes of the Greek Revolution were Albanian?

The Albanians are exceptionally resourceful if they are led by others, but if they are the ones at the helm they are forever at loggerheads. Only the Albanians themselves can change this psyche. First of all they must fight to do their own chores themselves and not perpetually depend on others on the journey to Europe.

So, the Albanians must work themselves to reach Europe. At the same time they are resourceful, but impatient and badly coordinated. Is this the gist of what you said?

Within a very short period of time, the Albanians have made major changes, particularly in the cities. They have the energy and limitless imagination in all fields. But they are also very masterly at being the Mafia - on this point they have even surpassed the Russians and the Italians. In the case of the Mafia, they make their way to the top very quickly. So they are not only very capable in just the one direction, but on many planes. This is why they need skilful leaders. A leader should never shirk work. Here people develop rapidly and well and they pick up things better and quicker than the leader, who understands very little or pretends he does. This means that the people are more advanced and skilful than the leaders.

- The political future hinges a great deal on the future politicians. How do you conceive the young people of today?

It seems that during these last few years, the youth are being left out of politics and its commitment is decreasing.

Previously, young people were active in politics. Young men and women wanted to make change and progress. But it is as if the youth of the country has shifted to slow motion mode because the party leaders have failed to encourage younger people to join; only the senior membership remained, who never really understood the youth properly. This very weak policy became obvious when the Socialist Party split and all the young people went with the Socialist Movement for Integration. Only if party leaders offer qualified young men and women leading posts in society, in the economy, in the party and in culture and education, will they get the chance to come in and make their contribution. And in the final account, these are the young people who have studied and know how to operate so they should be activated and not left idle.

- Do you consider the epoch of communism in Albania as time wasted?

No, I don’t. Irrespective of the enormous flaws of the socialist camp and in that system, there were very positive sides too. I would mention here, in the moral-political field, the solidarity, which was extensive, because people lived in collectives. The emancipation of women also proved a huge help. Women were isolated in the Balkans and their emancipation helped in developing schooling, culture and similar fields. In the time of Ahmed Zogu and up until 1944, there were only seven secondary schools in Albania. During the years of socialism 370 secondary schools were opened and 12 Universities. There were no universities at all previously. We even had a Ballet and Opera Theatre, a People’s Theatre, and Film Studios that produced 14 features films per year and many other institutions.

To this day, Albania is fed by electric power generated by the same hydropower stations of that period. Music and literature benefited the most in cultural development. Prior to the socialist period, not a single one of the works by our authors was ever translated into any foreign language, so the world could come into contact with them. But in this time, our translations and literature became known in countries like Germany. This reveals a high level. Books from the beginnings of literature in the Middle Ages or of the time of Ahmed Zog up until the epoch of socialism were translated. This played a very important role.

- According to what you have said above, the socialist period was therefore a phase of development of the country in the direction of modernization. But at the same time it was also a time of isolation, to a far greater degree in comparison with the other countries of East Europe. Could Albanians communicate with the rest of the world seeing that this was so restricted and irrespective of the fact that this could only be realized through the works by Albanian authors?

You are quite right regarding Albania after 1960. Isolation was exceptionally stringent. However, there was trade with other countries in the West as well as the Eastern Bloc. Although through mediation of a third party, there was communication with the world. Our artistic ensembles, such as the State Folk Song and Dance Ensemble all performed overseas. Archaeological exhibitions were opened in Paris and Rome. In other words, there was a level of communication.

Unfortunately we are used to thinking only in back and white and the rest we discard. Some even ask whether people fell in love in the years of socialism. If people had not loved, there would not have been children. We were so sick of such questions about those times. The only question that was not asked was whether or not there were children in socialism?

- In other words, you keep on differentiating about the period of socialism. Does that mean that this period produced values that are of importance to you?

Yes, socialism also had its good aspects. The backward customs of the Middle Ages were eliminated and there was no longer any fratricidal killing.

People were not confined behind the four walls of their homes for fear of being tracked down and killed; these things do not exist in a dictatorship.

Families were more consolidated than today. There was greater equality between people and the huge ratios of differences between incomes did not exist. Without doubt this led to a level of backwardness when you look at the levels the rest of the world enjoys today, because the ratios are hugely different in pay scales in capitalism. At that time the solidarity between people was something positive and led to a situation where everyone worked together. In the time of socialism, the communists tried to play on the positive sides of our people, like solidarity, which was demonstrated in certain moments of our history. Today, we harshly criticise that system because of the existence of a dictatorship and Enver Hoxha.

At the founding congress of the Socialist Party, where the name changed from the PLA, I was the first to stand up and attack the system, Enver Hoxha and the dictatorship. All the delegates turned on me. Naturally, this was painful for me to do. Why did it have to happen this way, why were so many things so futile? But not the entire period of socialism was futile. The Middle Ages were not a waste either. In every system you can find positive elements. In the Middle Ages, there would not have been a Cervantes, but he emerged with Don Quixote. There were the Niebelungen of the Germans; artists of genius emerged from that time and not from today’s modern times. Socialism was a system that was established over half of Europe. Similar things occurred in the time of Charles the Great. Did Charles the Great bring Europe together through war? /Bjoerna.dk

Author: Albin Kurti
© VETËVENDOSJE!

In the end of the fall of 2000, Vojislav Kostunica won the elections in Serbian in a contest against Slobodan Milosevic. After the so-called peaceful revolution of October 5 th, Milosevic conceded his defeat and Serbia got herself a new government.

The cause of Kostunicas victory was as clear as it was simple. He didn't differ from Milosevic. In fact, he resembled Milosevic more than all other heads of parties who constituted the so-calle d "democratic opposition" of Serbia. The opposition had a chance only if it didn't represent a true change. Milosevic could be challenged only by someone like him. I.e. by Kostunica, the actual head of Serbia. A decade and a half ago, the Serbian hegemony looked for an aggressive and militarist leader in order to become stronger, and now this hegemony looked for a replacement of Milosevic in order to save itself, to avoid being washed away by democracy. Vojislav Kostunica became the substitute for the sake of continuity, the new face of the old Serbian hegemony.

Kostunica's candidacy against Milosevic was, thus, more a tactical step of the Serbian nationalism, a necessary adjustment to new political conditions.

Kostunica was elected because greater Serbian expansionism had to survive and fight another day. Kostunica was the man to rehabilitate an essentially unchanged Serbia – to accomplish her adoption into international bodies and institutions, despi te the fact that it hadn't changed her stance towards the past, nor her plans for the future. In fact, when Kostunica and his allies criticized Milosevic, they never made any mention of Serbia's crimes and genocides. Instead, they criticized Milosevic's "mistakes" in politics.

Shortly, they were not opposed to his bloody wars, but to their insufficient efficacy!

No wonder, therefore, that Serbia some six years after the fall of Milosevic still hasn't shown any regret, remorse, apology, justice to her victims, nor compensation for the losses of the Kosovar people under slightly less than a century. No wonder that Serbia still wants to reestablish her rule over Kosova, after decentralizing it, after usurpating its culture and history thru "protection zones" around orthodox shrines. Contrary to Milosevic, though, Kostunica is truing to achieve this and dodge an open conflict with great powers.

In fact, Kostunica himself is an undisputabl e argument that Kosova's problem was and remains Serbia itself, and not only Milosevic's regime.

Serbia remains true to her original expansionist project, which, in the case of Kosova, materializes time after time in the shape of a murdering army. If you try to find any essential differences between Milosevic and Kostunica, you are wrong and unjust to both of them. And yet, precisely this is the main goal of UNMIK, under the premises of the SC R1244. And precisely this is the stance adopted by those Albanian political leaders who head Kosova's fake parties and institutions.

When you say Yes to Kostunica's visit in Kosova under these premises, when you say No only to Milosevic's regime, than you say Yes to autonomy under Kostunica's "democratic Serbia". This is what (PM) Agim Çeku, (minister in charge of decentralization) Lutfi Haziri, and (head of the PDK opposition party) Hashim Thaçi have done. This is what (speaker of the parliament) Kolë Berisha has said No to. His opposition, though, was only verbal. Therefore, no measures were taken against him. The opposition from the VETËVENDOSJE! movement, from the parties of LPK, OBK, and IQLL, and from two organizations who represent mothers of those who disappeared during the war, "Mothers calls" and "26 March", were concrete and active. Therefore, we were subjected to rough police brutality and political trials.

The visit of Kostunica, together with his broad and high-ranking state delegation, at the twofold anniversary of the battle of Kosova and of the Milosevic speech that heralded the downfall of Yugoslavia, was no private visit. Nota bene: Çeku, Haziri and Thaçi may not travel to the northern part of Kosova even privately. Kostunica's speech in Gracanica was surprising only to the naïve or the ignorant. The government of Kosova, which said it had believed that Kostunica would behave, that he ouldn't abuse h is visit, only tried to sell demagogy and avoid doing something – and now they behave like nothing has happened! Please try to imagine how Paris would react if German chancellor Angela Merkel would visit Alsace and Lothringen and cry out that they are holy German lands!

Çeku's, Haziri's, and Thaçi's nonsense that Serbia is a neighboring country, while she still owns nominal sovereignty over Kosova and controls 25 percent of her territory, unveil only their own vanity, and an impudent attempt to deceive the people in order to prolong their own life in power. If you state that Serbia is a neighboring country, you state that Kosova is already an independent and sovereign state. Well, if it's true, what the heck are these politicians doing in Vienna!? Why are they still negotiating with Serbia, since we already are sovereign!?

The truth is that they choose to negotiate with Serbia, since this is the dictate of UNMIK and of the SC R1244, and since they have chosen to be obedient and keep their chairs. They choose to baptize the existing order in attractive but false names, and then cry out that the goal is reached to justify their lie. The truth is that our local politicians are nothing but a normalizing authority for injustice and oppression. The role of our local politicians is to tuck us to sleep. Nicolas de la Mare said once: "sleep if the image of death". Let's wake up and start living.

July 5th, 2006

Imprisoned members of VETËVENDOSJE! opposition movement have gone on hunger strike in jails in Kosova, movement sources report. Meanwhile leading Kosovar hr-group in accuses UN-administration for “an organized campaign” against the movement.

Members of VETËVENDOSJE! opposition movement have gone on hunger strike in jails in Kosova, according to a press-release today (Wednesday) from the movement. Imprisoned activists protest against unlawful and offensive treatment from jail authorities, press-release said.

“Prison authorities have denied our members any contact with their families, in spite of the existing law and international human right obligations undertaken by the UN mission in Kosova UNMIK”, press release said. “In addition, all other inmates other than VETËVENDOSJE! members are allowed to receive visits from their families”.

VETËVENDOSJE! also sta tes that its imprisoned activists are subject to offensive treatment.

“Members of VETËVENDOSJE! have consistently been served meals which contain products made in Serbia, although authorities know our activists boycott all such products. Until today, our members have refused to eat these meals. Starting today, they have decided to go on hunger strike altogether”, press release said.

The strike adds pressure against UNMIK, which has been criticized for rough play against the opposition. Leading Kosovar human rights group Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Liberties CDHRF accused UNMIK yesterday for running “double standards” and organizing “an orchestrated campaign” against the opposition.

“Identically worded verdicts and motivations from courts of law across Kosova indicate an orchestrated campaign against the opposition within VETËVENDOSJE! movement”, said Bexhet Shala, Secretary General of CDHRF.

“UNMIK appears ethnically biased and running on double standards. Main traffic junctions and highways have been blocked before in Serbian enclaves without violent repercussions from the police”, Shala said, adding that UNMIK has violated human rights of imprisoned opposition members.

“They [the police and the courts of law] have violated human rights by refusing to inform family members on whereabouts of the imprisoned opposition members”, Shala said.

The VETËVENDOSJE! movement has pledged to increase its pressure against the UNMIK despite “brutal arrests and psychological pressure”.

“We are determined to fight the injustice irrespective of the brutal arrests and the psychological pressure from the regime. It is thru these acts that UNMIK reveals its uggly face. We won’t stop our fight against it until self-determination”, VETËVENDOSJE! says.

Shqiptar OSEKU
Qendra për vetëvendosje, Stokholm
Centrum för självbestämmande, Stockholm

June 2006

Freedom is not given. It is an unmediated right and a bare necessity. Freedom is not negotiable; it is the unhindered development of one’s possibilities. A people is its own possibility: freedom is self-development; the free choice of the path for building a collective future. Self-determination of peoples – freedom of the individual. The opposite is the denial of the essence of the human being as a social being. Not being free is alienation.

For centuries our country has not been free. After the Ottoman occupation, came the Serb occupation. The latter has been not a conflict between people, as much as a creation of the Serb intellectual and political elite. The history of this elite in relation to Kosova is a history of a series of projects for the massive expulsion of Albanians from the lands where they lived and their extermination. From the project of ‘Nacertanja’ of Garashanin in 1844, until the memorandum of the Academy of Sciences of Serbia in the year 1986, they have maintained the same objective. Only one thing has changed during this time: the methods for implementing these hegemonic plans. They have become more sinister.
Each government of Serbia has been nationalist and chauvinist because Serbia always had occupied lands and oppressed the people who lived there. In addition, they have always considered that Serbia is too small and must become greater. This has been the paradigm of Serb politics and its mission. Particularly, Albanians were in their sights. Twenty-four different programs were drafted and carried out for the expulsion of Albanians, their assimilation and colonization of their territories which they populated with Serbs afterwards. This expulsion occurred silently in a time of peace through discrimination, persecution and repression, whereas in the time of war, it was massive and quick through ethnic cleansing, massacres and terror. The most infamous programs were "Nacertanja" from 1844 by Ilija Garasanin, the First project of Vasa Cubrilovic "Migration of Arnauts" from 1937, the Yugoslav-Turk Convention for the Forced Migration of the Albanians to Anatolia in the year 1938, the projects of Ivo Andric and Ivan Vukotic in 1939, "Homogenous Serbia" by Stevan Molevac in 1941, Vasa Çubrilovic’s Second Project, "The minority problems in New Yugoslavia" from 1944, and then the year 1953 brought the Gentlemen’s Agreement of Tito-Kyprili for the Forced Migration of the Albanians to Turkey, all the way to the Memorandum of the Academy of Arts and Science of 1986 and the Yugoslav Program for Kosovo of 1988. From Nikola Pasic, Petar and Aleksandar Karadjordjevic, Milan Stojadinovic, Dragoljub-Draza Mihajlovic, Aleksandar Rankovic through to Slobodan Milosevic – they all just brought to life these projects and programs.
When it was sure that the World War Two would be won by the anti-fascist alliance, the Serb-Yugoslav leaders violated the Resolution of Bujan (Bunjaj) of December 31st 1943 – 2nd January 1944, which was unanimously agreed, with the participation of Albanians, Serbs and Montenegrins, and was drafted by the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council of Kosova and Dukagjin. The resolution stated that after the conclusion of the war, the right to self-determination including secession would be granted to the Albanians of Kosovo occupied by Serbia since the year 1912. After World War Two, the people of Kosovo were unjustly denied the free expression of their will. This ‘will’ was falsified as the desire of the people of Kosovo to be attached to the Yugoslav federation. Within the federation, our country had an unequal status with the six other federal units. Kosovo had the least freedom. As a result, Kosovo was the least developed. Because what else is a people, if not the free exercise of the possibility to develop itself politically, economically and culturally.
The current borders of Kosovo were specified in the year 1947. Three decades later, the constitution of 1974 guaranteed some sort of half-freedom. Since the end of Word War Two, this was the moment when our people were furthest from the influence of the Belgrade regime. Therefore co-habitation between Albanians and Serbs during this period was better, because there was less repression. But, half-freedom is not freedom. Furthermore, our country’s constitutional position was advanced, through offering it half-freedom, in order to transform it from a classic colony to an internal colony.
This period was brief: after the death of the dictator Tito, the balance of power within the Federation was destabilized. The domination of Serbia began. The increase of the oppression of Kosova stood in proportion to the strength of Serb influence inside the Federation. The termination of this half-freedom occurred after Milosevic’s rise to power: the autonomy of Kosova was revoked in 1989. This is the moment when Kosova was closest to Serbia’s rule.
Not surprisingly, during the next ten years, the repression escalated to war between the Serbian military and police apparatus and Kosova’s people. The Serbian State during the last war in Kosovo killed more than 12.000 people. Over 95 % of them were unprotected civilians, mostly children, women and the elderly. More than 3,000 kidnapped are still unaccounted for. Most of them were sent to Serbia. There were around 20,000 raped women, 740.000 people deported by force, 120.000 houses destroyed by the Serb military, and the economy destroyed. All this bitter chronology is due to the lack of the right of a people to self-determination. After the NATO bombardment ended and Serbian sovereignty over Kosova was suspended, the installment of the administration of the Interim International Mission of the United Nations, UNMIK, took place.
The UNMIK administration of Kosova is a non-democratic regime. What else can happen with a system, when the essence of its actions is the denial of people’s will? The indeterminate duration of UNMIK’s rule has become unbearable. Its presence is the antithesis of our self-determination. That’s why we do not have freedom today. The Provisional Self-Governing Institutions are, at best, an integral part of legitimizing this manner of governance. By becoming a cog in UNMIK’s machine, they are not rightful representatives of the people’s interest, because the fundamental interest of the people is the realization of its will. The fulfillment of self-determination would mean UNMIK administration leaving Kosova. International presence in our country (except for the Diplomatic Offices) should be reduced to a few necessary mechanisms for the protection and monitoring of minority rights. Self-determination is the foundation of a citizen’s status. But Resolution 1244, treats every individual as an inhabitant, or as a resident, a status that can also be had by a refugee. Self-determination includes, as such, the self-proclamation of the citizen.
There is no substitution for self-determination. It secures the roots of the individual within the socio-political process. Only freedom makes it possible for us to transform from an ethnical community to a political one. We want to be able to decide on our identities as citizens and not be separated and categorized collectively from the government. For our country, internal self-determination is invalid, if it isn’t accompanied by the external one. We do not need pseudo-institutions because their sort means at the same time, no right to decide for ourselves. Every blockage of the peoples need for being a source of sovereignty will be manifested with a growth of rebellion, and a danger of regeneration of continuous crisis, new wars. Kosova is a case of freedom. Its tragedies, while impossible to stay isolated, have had negative implications in the region, and are just obvious consequences of a people deprived of its freedom. This has happened always when others decided on Kosova’s behalf, and not Kosova itself. And, since Kosova’s problem has never been solved when others decided, especially Serbia, non freedom of our country has regularly meant a hegemonic and chauvinist nature of Serb regime.
The 1974 Constitution was not a solution because it let the possibility for Kosova, by being so weak, to be always exposed to the risk of being oppressed. That is why the culmination of the Serb oppressing regime in ways of exterminating thousands of Albanians, was not by chance. The same thing applies to the other wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. By leading on the principles that the evil won’t hesitate to happen as long as its path is clear, the freedom will come to life only when these possibilities are shut. To this day, when governmental changes in Serbia even after the fall of Milosevic, are mostly cosmetic and not qualitative at all, the self-determination of Kosova opens the way for the democratization of the government in Belgrade. This can be achieved through self-determination: the government in Serbia can be democratic only when the Kosovo matter is not left in the conscience of the rulers there. Kosova’s independence from Serbia includes the Serbia’s emancipation from Kosova, because it gives a strong blow to the chauvinist projects, colonial thinking and to the aggressive Serb nationalism.
Self-determination as definitive secession is also an altruism, a priceless contribution for normalizing the century-old bad feelings amongst neighbors. It would be a guarantee for calming the region. This is highly on the EU’s interest, because EU can only add to its European family union the democratized countries where its people decide on their fate. Kosova’s case can not be decided by investing on the democratization of the Government in Belgrade. The problem will be solved not when the internal opinion in Serbia is changed about Kosova, but when Kosova ceases to be the object of this opinion. Projects that see the solution as part of the changing of the Serb political elite in Belgrade, are destined to fail. When the former opposition accused Milosevic for his policies towards Kosova, violation of the basic human right abuse was not the problem for them, the bad managing of the war was. This former opposition is in power today. Why should we wait from them to be fair and just towards our country?
Therefore, solution has a name: Self-Determination. Collective freedom is a fundamental condition for the individual one. When there’s no collective freedom, the success of the individual freedom is only accidental. The progressive effects of the freedom of the individual can become a common phenomenon only when there’s a total freedom of the society. It is exactly for the reason of the lack of the collective freedom that the trend of the living standard of our people is falling. There are 300,000 people hungry in Kosova. When there’s no freedom, equality and justice, the lack of food is inevitable. Without freedom, regress is guaranteed. Bringing to life the right for self-determination is not necessary a guarantee of success, but surely it represents creation of conditions for the free development of possibilities; and, it also means taking the responsibility, so the success becomes a strong motive while the failure a lesson toward improvement.
Self-determination, because this is the minimum of the moral compensation for the centuries-old injustice, continues oppression, everlasting offense of the identity, hundreds of thousands of violations, tens of thousands of killings, destroying and general damages.
Self-determination, because no boundaries can be set to people for their own freedom, and because every nation has a right to decolonization, to absolutely determine the ways of developing its own possibilities; its own economic resources, its natural goods; to be able to determine freely its identity and to cultivate unchallenged its authentic cultural spirit.
Self-determination, because it is something natural: it should be expected for us to decide on our own interest, much more than what would someone and everyone else decide for us.

Self-determination! Unconditional! Until the final break away. Until the complete liberation of our country.


WHY SELF-DETERMINATION FOR KOSOVA
- Self-determination, because every nation has the right to freely choose it’s path into the future.
- Self-determination, because it is the basic condition of freedom. Anything less than self-determination is not freedom.
- Self-determination, because collective freedom is essential to individual freedom.
- Self-determination, because the only source of sovereignty is the people, and nothing less.
- Self-determination, because all nations have the right to be free from colonization.
- Self-determination, because whenever others took decisions on Kosova’s behalf, we were oppressed.
- Self-determination, because a free Kosova is the cure for the “Balkan Problem” and freedom will only exist when it is not left to the conscience of the Serbian government.
- Self-determination, because it will encourage the end of fascism in Serbia.
- Self-determination, because it is basic compensation for centuries of injustice, continuous repression and humiliation, hundreds of thousands violated, thousands killed, and widespread damage and destruction.
- Self-determination is natural and inalienable. People make decisions in their own interest more effectively than anyone else can do on their behalf.
- Self-determination! Without conditions. For Kosova’s final separation from Serbia. For Kosova’s final liberation.

WHY NO NEGOTIATIONS WITH SERBIA
- Because negotiations only make sense when they are held between equal parties. Kosova is not yet regarded as equal to Serbia because Kosova’s statehood is not yet recognized.
- Because Serbia continues to act in Kosova illegally and illegitimately.
- Because in Kosova we have the UN over our head while Serbia is at our throat. Kosova is governed and ruled by the unaccountable and undemocratic regime of UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosova).
- Because the so-called “democratic” institutions of Kosova were established and are controlled by UNMIK, and thus will necessarily be led by corrupt and blackmailed leaders.
- Because through negotiations Serbia is attempting to justify its ambitions to reestablish de-facto control of our population and territory, even through partition.
- Because negotiations are being planned for Kosova, not for Serbia. UNSC Resolution 1244 will be offered as the basis for negotiations. This resolution is used to preserve nominal Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo and encourages the de-facto restoration of this sovereignty.
- Because the negotiations will not seek compensation from Serbia for 12,000 killed, 3,000 kidnapped, 20,000 raped, one million expelled and 120,000 houses destroyed. Negotiations seek to complete the rehabilitation of Serbia at Kosova’s expense.
- Because the negotiations will equate Serbia’s crime and genocide with it’s Kosovar victims, and equate their aggression with our war of liberation.
- Because the negotiations should be conducted without conditions. Kosova is being conditioned: we have to fulfill imposed standards and accept arbitrary non-negotiable principles.
- Because Serbia was never identified as the aggressor who exercised repression and terror for more than a century. On the contrary, after the fall of Milosevic, Serbia was rehabilitated automatically (without fulfilling any conditions) and was admitted into international institutions and bodies.
- Because Kosova does not lack “status”, the people of Kosova lack freedom. A prisoner can not truly negotiate.
- Because they inevitably imply willingness to compromise basic freedom. Freedom cannot be a compromise. One is either free or not-free. Freedom is non-negotiable.
- Because these negotiations can be portrayed as the end of Kosova’s chance at independent statehood. For Serbia, this is enough, because then negotiations will be concerned with the territorial autonomy of the Serbian population in Kosova. This will legitimize existing Serbian enclaves in Kosova, their expansion and the establishment of new enclaves. This has already started with the decentralization process.
- Because many issues can be negotiated with Serbia once it accepts the non-negotiable precondition – the will of the people of Kosova.

FREEDOM IS NON-NEGOTIABLE

SELF-DETERMINATION FOR KOSOVA!
Vetëvendosje! means self-determination
www.vetevendosje.org
vetevendosje@gmail.com

I am honored and glad to have the opportunity to speak here. Kosova Action Network (KAN) from Prishtina, is an organization which recently advanced into Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! (SELF-DETERMINATION! Movement). KAN was founded in 1997 by a group of international activists lead by American writer Alice Mead (now Alice W. James). Its goal was to support citizens who were struggling against the suppression and dictatorship of Serbia in Kosova, such as students demanding to regain access to occupied university premises. KAN continued with the documentation of crimes committed during the war and reached its highest peak during 1999 and 2000 with A-PAL (Albanian Prisoner Advocacy List) to free the war prisoners. In July 2003, KAN became based inside Kosova and created a network of activists. KAN activities were seeking to establish an active citizenry in Kosova dedicated to the promotion of universal values of human rights, equality and social justice. Education, Culture and Art were also KAN’s preoccupation. Our actions focused on the missing persons issue, art as a vehicle for social change and linking Kosovar students studying abroad. On 10 June 2004, on the 5th anniversary of the Resolution 1244, KAN organized a protest which represents the conceptual foundation of the SELF-DETERMINATION! Movement. Resolution 1244 of the SC of UN, recognizes and affirms the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia (now Union of Serbia and Montenegro) over Kosova. This sovereignty is at present suspended by International rule and presence, but not abolished. This is why around 1000 people gathered around the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) premises. With music, showing red cards and whistling toward UNMIK they protested against the Resolution 1244. They declared themselves Citizens and Activists. (In Kosova, we are considered as residents or inhabitants, a status equal to a refugee status!). They read the Citizens Declaration and promised to fight the antidemocratic regime of UNMIK. Later, there was an organized tour through Kosova: the protesters projected phrases and slogans against the UNMIK regime on the walls of UNMIK (buildings), local government and public buildings. Afterwards we continued with similar actions from petitions to road blocks.

At present, Kosova is passing through the process of definition of its status. This was an additional reason for us to begin the concept and project of Self-determination, and the movement for its realization. But, I can’t start here. The problem has its history. And, it is not only political but social as well.

UN Resolution 1244 and the political system and process implemented by UNMIK in Kosova are not in compliance with the will of the people. UNMIK is doubly non-democratic. First, non-democratic in-itself (UNMIK is an authoritarian structure of pyramid form and top-down command); and second, UNMIK is non-democratic in Kosova since Kosova with its institutions and representatives in an inclusive and absolute way is subordinated to UNMIK. The police and judicial system, local administration, institution building, and economic reconstruction are the so called four pillars of UNMIK, all of them under Special Representative of Secretary General of UN (SRSG) and together with him above domestic law. Laws once passed by our Assembly wait for approval of the SRSG and finally become UNMIK regulations. Even the Constitutional Framework is an UNMIK regulation - Regulation 2001/9. In Kosova, Albanian politicians are accountable to UNMIK, UNMIK is accountable to New York, and Serbian politicians in Kosova, in fact, are accountable to Belgrade.  People don’t feel represented, their interests are not defended. The Government of Kosova, in Lacanian terms, is deprived of real substance, doubly. It doesn’t have a ministry of foreign affairs, ministry of interior, ministry of defense, ministry of justice, or ministry of information. Each ministry doesn’t have real responsibilities and control: for instance Et’hem Ceku, minister for energy, has no control over KEK and Trepca, which are big socially and publicly owned enterprises in the hands of Kosovo Trust Agency (KTA). Kosova has about 40 political parties, but stateless pluralism has been neither constructive nor productive. Even Milosevic allowed political parties in Kosova in the ‘90s. Because when one is oppressed and without your own state, then through pluralism the fight with the real adversary is being replaced with internal political futile competition. In addition to this, businessmen got into politics; politicians became businessmen. We have weak political parties with strong leaders, where the hierarchy is the measure of corruption. However, the corruption is inseparable from the antidemocratic character of the system. You can’t fill a non-democratic system with honest people.

Besides being an unaccountable and antidemocratic regime, UNMIK is also a neocolonial administration. Officials there do not live the consequences of their decisions. They come to Kosova because they get double the salary they’d get at home, long weekends, they don’t pay taxes, their career advances rapidly, their expenses are low and they have no responsibility toward the local population. They all have jeeps, not small ordinary cars, because driving a jeep makes them feel superior to others and in the case of a car crash, it is the other party who is likely to get killed. The jeep is a symptom. For UNMIK, Kosova seems sometimes like a desert and sometimes like a jungle, where jeeps are needed. The real problem has to do with the fact that Kosova is being transformed into the prejudices of its ruler. It is not even up to administrators whether to be privileged or not. They are thrown into privileged situation. There is codification of privilege. Once they finish their mission, they should be isolated for a while, because they have got used to being privileged and might be harmful to their societies back home.

The buzzword in Kosova for the last 6 years has been “multi-ethnicity”. Meanwhile, its meaning has no definition; there are no models we are supposed to pursue, and no concrete examples from experience or history we should rely on. Likewise, there is no idea how to measure the achievement of “multi-ethnicity”. Yet, it seems they thought simply by repeating a meaningless phrase it would suddenly become meaningful. Just as it tried to build democracy in an authoritarian way, from the very beginning UNMIK tried to accomplish multi-ethnicity in an ethnically based manner.

Since the year 1999 onwards, the approach as well as the starting point was ethnic.
UNMIK identified, like in a terra nullius: Albanians, Serbs, Romas, Turks, Egyptians,
Bosniacs and Ashkalis. Therefore, it started from ethnic belonging, from differences, not
from what is in common, what is universal among people – not from their need for
freedom, dignity, job, qualitative education, health care, social insurance. No wonder. For
all these, development is needed. And UNMIK has not developed and certainly
continues to be a mission that cannot develop Kosova. Quite the contrary.

Enormous underdevelopment characterizes Kosova in all aspects. Three things are increasing there: poverty, unemployment and dissatisfaction. 15% of the population is in extreme poverty, another 40% are poor and unemployment is over 60%. 44.072 people were registered as newborns in the year 1986. They became 18 last year; became mature and unemployed. GDP per capita is 964 Euros which is 22 times less than in Germany! There is no economic investment or any significant domestic production. The trade deficit is huge: the export/import coverage is only 4,38%. In the year 2004, imports were worth 1.030 million euros, while exports only 45,1 million euros. Before we used to export people – asylum seekers. Now they are being deported back. Instead, poor Kosova exports money to EU: 74% of bank deposits of Kosovars are in two foreign banks, 85 million Euros of Pensions Trust Fund are also abroad, as are nearly 200 million Euros of Post and Telecom of Kosova, all this namely for some security reasons. There is a status quo in Kosova, but this status quo is only for the people in power, not at all for the majority of population which is regressing economically. Lack of development means lack of future. Politicians talk about fulfilling standards while the standard of living for the people of Kosova is disintegrating; it’s sliding from bad to worse.

In the first two years after the end of war we had the phase of the return of near 1 million people who were deported by Serbian police and military forces and reconstruction of 120.000 houses destroyed by Yugoslav Army. After this humanitarian, emergency and peace-building phase we should have passed into the development period. This didn’t happen, still hasn’t and moreover there is no idea nor plan for it. For six and a half years now UNMIK has been an interim administration without a deadline even though it is precisely a deadline that constitutes it as interim. There is no document in UNMIK where the year 2006 figures. Because there is no vision, there are no plans for the future. UNMIK has generated some processes and now waits for them to define the future including its own. And, development is the key factor to integration. Despite all this, in Kosova except for most of the Serb minority, 5 other minorities are integrated. An important digression, is needed here. In Kosova, in fact, there are no minorities. There are only ethnic communities. Minorities are typical for nation states – Kosova is neither a state nor a nation state. We can talk about a Serb minority in Croatia, but not in Kosova. The legal status for all the communities is the same and therefore in the legal aspect there are no minorities in Kosova. Also in the democratic aspect there are no minorities in Kosova. Because there is no democracy: there is no rule of majority. Actually, Kosova is ruled by the newest minority that we in Prishtina in our jokes call domestic internationals. Well, why then the category of minorities is pushed forward? It has to do with the status of Kosova and the fear of the domino effect, not only in the region, which creates a cosmic viewpoint for Kosova, a viewpoint from the planet Mars from where you can see at the same time also Taiwan, Tibet, Chechnya and other crisis. Again: no wonder. Kosova, a small place in Europe, has a planetary address: Security Council of UN. A century ago we had to convince one empire – the Ottoman Empire. Now, we have three Empires. Obviously, this not very humane perspective regarding us is being rationalized with the discourse of minority rights. There is far more concern about possible chain reactions elsewhere in the world than the actual circumstances and situation of minorities in Kosova. The category of minorities and the worry about minorities is a psychological substitution, therefore a diversion. 2,5 billion euros were poured by the international community into Kosova since the war. How come there are still Serbs and Romas and others in extreme poverty? If international organizations (especially UNMIK and KFOR) would cease for only one month to put billboards all over Kosova, with that money the social and economic position of poor minorities would improve substantially. (One billboard costs 400 euros – twice the average salary.) But no; poor people from the minorities are invited to different conferences and seminars where they eat fancy meals in fancy hotels and then they go back at their homes, where they hardly have bread and milk.

The lack of integration of the Serb minority is not related only with the bitter past, but also with the future. All neighbor countries of Kosova want an independent state of Kosova or at least are not bothered by it. Except Serbia. Serbia is present in Kosova with its parallel structures. Serb teachers, doctors, officials receive two wages: one from the budget of Kosova and another from the budget of Serbia. The parallel structures of Serbia in Kosova have their annual budget line in the budget plan of the Serbian government. The highest level of integration of Serbs with Albanians has taken place regardless of the law: first, in endless UNMIK and KFOR offices throughout Kosova where Albanians and Serbs have worked together as local staff without a single incident for six and a half years now; and second, in organized crime and informal business. This high level of integration does not happen because it is situated outside of the law, but because where it is happening, there is development, there is well being and there is shared feeling of progress among the people. Precisely this feeling of progress enables peace, stability and security. Unfortunately, security in Kosova is a term which is exclusively understood in military terms. Consequently, we have militarization of security in Kosova. With the very same logic, for UNMIK, a ‘crisis’ is only the explosion of crises, not the crisis of the daily life experienced by the people. Once people feel they have the chance that tomorrow will be a bit better, they are far more peaceful. At the edge of existence, when survival is the issue, even brothers and best friends become hostile to each other. If Albanians, Serbs and others would work, for instance in a factory, with 300 Euro per month salaries then they would communicate and cooperate. It is important to have the right to vote, but even more important is to have enough food and a job. Especially since by voting in Kosova one does not really choose; one rather legitimizes the system. On the other hand, SEE University in Tetovo, Macedonia is an example that qualitative European education integrates communities: there were no Macedonians in the beginning in this university, now they are 15%. Multi-ethnicity, as cohabitation and cooperation of people from different ethnicities, cannot be achieved ethnically. Furthermore, multi-ethnicity cannot be achieved simply by aiming at it, but can be achieved only as a consequence, by starting with and emphasizing what is in common, what is universal, what we share. Instead of adopting universal values, particular standards were imposed on Kosova. This was possible because Kosova was defined as a unique and special case in the world, and since experience teaches us nothing, experiment got established as method. Improvisations and ad hoc measures are the two most distinguished forms of experimenting. UNMIK seems like a club of scientists that treats Kosova with detached objectivity.

Even nowadays, UNMIK does not see human beings, individuals, citizens, pupils, or students etc. in Kosova. It sees only Albanians, Serbs and other communities. Individuals to UNMIK are random samples of particular collectivities. In addition, there is an obvious political discourse of UNMIK, and not only of UNMIK, that discriminates against other communities by only talking about Serbs. As a result of this, to a large extent the existing dualism, Kosova–Serbia, has been replaced with Albanians–Serbs. Power categorizes and labels, and people over time become those labels. Young people in Kosova, during the ‘90s tried to tell Milosevic that they were students but Milosevic told them: no, you are Albanians. We all know how he told them that. Therefore it is Milosevic that wanted desperately to make the conflict ethnic and strangely this continues still today. The new coined dualism in Kosova, Albanians–Serbs, is linked with the tendency to represent the conflict in Kosova as inherently ethnic. This is wrong and very harmful. Wrong, since the conflict appeared as the result of the hegemonic aspirations of Serbia, which were turned into aggression and terrible crimes by the regime of Milosevic. And very harmful, since if the conflict and the problem is ethnic, then this absolves Milosevic. And moreover, the solution should then be ethnic, i.e. partition. Ethnic dualism pleases UNMIK. In this way, UNMIK absolves itself from the present difficult situation in Kosova and informally claims that it is doing a wonderful job by keeping two sides apart. Anyway, today in Prishtina the argument for UNMIK is negative: there are no words about what we gain by UNMIK presence, but only what could get worse by its absence.

On the other hand, Belgrade wants to make the independence and statehood of Kosova impossible; just that. This is exactly the meaning of the formula “more than autonomy, less than independence”. And then to replace the talks about final status of Kosova with negotiations over the territorial autonomy of Serbs in Kosova. This shouldn’t be a surprise: in Kosova the demand for more competences, for more responsibilities and for more political power dominates, in Serbia for more territories. Just as it was demanded and fought for in Croatia and Bosnia. The precedent of Bosnia, where the prize for preservation of external borders was the creation of internal boundaries, represents a real threat to Kosova, too. Milosevic wanted Kosova, but especially in the year ’99 wanted it without Albanians. Now Serbia wants Kosova’s parts that mainly are not populated by Albanians and eventually to increase them a bit. Decentralization, before status, is the first and most important step toward partition. Miroljub Labus, Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia, on 6th November 2004, in the newspaper Politika, wrote that Kosova should have an Albanian and Serbian entity, mentioning in details municipalities and parts of municipalities that should belong to Serbian entity, including here the eastern part of Kosova in order to encircle the southern part of Serbia – the Presheva Valley mainly inhabited by Albanians and to isolate it from Kosova. President of Serbia, Boris Tadic, reiterated this after his recent meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The Government of Kosova can give half of the ministries to Serbs of Kosova, but even that won’t satisfy Serbia. Serbia wants territories and for this goal, she uses as a tool Serbs of Kosova, even the refugees. The proof for this is Minister Slavisa Petkovic in the Government of Kosova. He said for B92 and Beta on 5th March 2005: “In one month, 85 families have returned to Kosova. That’s more than Nebojsa Covic achieved in five years.” Belgrade claims that there are 220.000 Serb refuges from Kosova living in Serbia. Belgrade is deliberately bad at math: now it appears that there are more Serb refugees from Kosova in Serbia, than ever lived in Kosova! According to Republican Statistical Institution of Serbia there were around 190.000 Serbs living in Kosova in the year 1991. European Stability Initiative in one of its reports mentioned that there are 130.000 Serbs living in Kosova and 60.000 Kosovar Serb refugees in Serbia.

We always have to bear in mind that besides the fragility of everyday peace due to negative social and economic trends in Kosova, Serbia and Kosova still do not have a peace agreement. Serbia has one with NATO in Kumanovo, but not with Kosova. This, in fact, makes peace reducible to ceasefire. The international community opposes the return to the year 1999 and emphasizes that it would be unacceptable. Yet, this only confirms that that return is possible.  While in case of Bosnia the peace agreement of Dayton was represented as solution, it seems that in case of Kosova solution is supposed to be peace.

This solution is the solution for the status of Kosova. Even though, negotiations in the form of shuttle diplomacy began, presently, we still have the concept of ‘standards before status’ which anyway comprises negotiations as the tool for addressing and resolving the status of Kosova. Since the beginning of its invention this concept didn’t represent a vision but rather revealed the lack of any vision. ‘Standards before status’ was merely created to buy time. Since its origin, this concept was patronizing toward the people of Kosova and their representatives. Indeed, ‘Standards before status’ was a deadlock as well: in order to have more competences and power one is supposed to fulfill standards that cannot be accomplished without having these competences and resources. In addition, ‘standards’ introduced as a term what they banned: the “status”, and established negotiations as means for its determination. We were told that fulfillment of standards would allow status to become a topic. In this way, what should be an inviolable right of the people of Kosova, has been substituted with an unknown gift called status which has to be deserved. The idea of merit affirms certain authority. In this case, it is mainly UNMIK which subordinates Kosova. It might be there are still many ambiguities in different legal documents regarding Kosova, but it is obvious that Kosova is not a factor in clarifying those ambiguities. Moreover, instead of putting arguments concerning this concept of ‘standards before status’, the concept became an argument. For instance, we are told that decentralization must take place now because it is one of the standards! More than a year ago, the term ‘standards before status’ was replaced with the term ‘standards for Kosovo’ for the sake of psychological effects: ‘standards before status’ sounded restrictive while ‘standards for Kosovo’ far more positive. The name changed in order to maintain the same content. Nothing else. Mr.Kai Eide, special envoy of Kofi Annan, was recently in Kosova. He did not evaluate the fulfillment of standards. He evaluated whether the necessary political and social environment has been created for future talks between Prishtina and Belgrade about status. Therefore, a positive evaluation concerning standards did not precede beginning of negotiations. The opposite was true. These standards have nothing to do with principles and the language around them proves this. In the beginning we had “to fulfill the standards”, then “to meet the standards”, then ”to meet the standards sufficiently”, afterwards “progress toward standards” and in the end “priority standards”. The political game of absolute political power, by politicizing everything, becomes social engineering as well. Standards in themselves may even look good, but the wrong context in which they were put undoubtedly corrupts them. If standards came before independence and statehood, and not before status, even though neither this would be fair, then 90% of the population of Kosova would get encouraged and mobilized to fulfill them.

In particular recently, status has become the only issue. Saturation has taken place. What was not political status has become political status since everything now is being measured by the effects on final status. Even inter-ethnic relations. Negotiations have already started for quite some time now but within the international institutions. These negotiations resulted in the non-negotiable part of future negotiations between Prishtina and Belgrade. Those non-negotiable basic premises are the most important part of the negotiations. Especially because they are linked directly with the status of negotiators.

The status of Kosova continues to be independent. Independent as an issue. The status of Kosova has lost its nativeness. It has been put in the context of regional stability and the possible effects elsewhere in the world. The right question is not what status for Kosova, but what status for the people of Kosova. Kosova does not lack status, but its people and citizens lack freedom, freedom to choose for themselves and their future, freedom to develop and for development. This freedom has a name. Its name is self-determination. The status of Kosova is a political problem that has a democratic solution: namely, to respect the will of the people of Kosova. Self-determination is collective freedom, which is essential to individual freedom. Self-determination is the basic compensation for centuries of injustice, continuous repression and humiliation, hundreds of thousands violated, thousands killed, and widespread damage and destruction. Self-determination is the restoration of the principle of the unfinished disintegration of former Yugoslavia. Montenegrins want to be free from Serbian domination too, even though they fought on Serbia’s side in all the wars throughout the former Yugoslavia. Milosevic is in the Hague, but his project didn’t ultimately fail. Kosova and Montenegro must exercise self-determination. The EU imposed Union of Serbia and Montenegro represents an improvisation that lacks the consent of the people and has proved to be ineffective. In his report, Kai Eide mentions 46 times the expression ‘future status’, and never ‘final status’. ‘Future’ stands in relation to ‘final’ just as process stands in relation to act. Process is in the in the interest of the stronger, while act is in the interest of the weaker side. We need act, we need a referendum as an act of liberation, as act of freedom. With negotiations with Serbia it is very likely that another set of standards may be imposed on us. The self-determination needed is both external and internal: external toward the Union of Serbia and Montenegro; and internal toward UNMIK.  Self-determination is not a guarantee but certainly is a precondition and chance for any kind of progress. The solution and the peace for Kosova will only come with a deadline for UNMIK, a referendum for Kosova and plans for economic and educational development. Kosova wants to go forward toward interdependence within EU, but truthful interdependence has to be preceded by independence.

The constitution of 1974 guaranteed some sort of autonomy for Kosova, some sort of half-freedom. Since the end of World War Two, this was the moment when Kosova was furthest from the influence of the Belgrade regime, even though our country’s constitutional position was advanced in order to transform it from a classic colony to an internal colony. However, the co-habitation between Albanians and Serbs during this period was better, the best so far, because there was less repression. The worst relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosova were during the ‘90s, during the period of Milosevic, when Kosova was fully under Belgrade control. Therefore, the relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosova can be measured by the distance of Kosova from Belgrade.

SELF-DETERMINATION! Movement already has several thousands members in 17 centers all over Kosova. It is growing: expanding and getting stronger. There have been 186 arrests against our activists in five months time. We do protest actions on daily bases. We have our weekly newspaper and biweekly radio show which is broadcasted by 30 radio stations throughout Kosova. In building up our movement we are preparing for massive and long-term demonstrations.

We can talk with the Serbs of Kosova but we cannot negotiate with Serbia. Through negotiations Serbia is attempting to justify its ambitions to re-establish de-facto control of our population and territory, even through partition. Those negotiations are being planned for Kosova, not for Serbia. There is no penitence nor regret in Serbia’s establishment for the 12.000 killed, 3.000 kidnapped, 20.000 raped, one million expelled and 120.000 houses destroyed in Kosova. There has been no justice for the victims. Negotiations seek to complete the rehabilitation of Serbia at Kosova’s expense. Serbia was never identified as the aggressor who exercised repression and terror for more than a century.  On the contrary, after the fall of Milosevic, Serbia was rehabilitated automatically (without fulfilling any conditions or standards) and was admitted into international institutions and bodies.
There are many issues which can and should be negotiated with Serbia, but only once one non-negotiable precondition is accepted – the will of the people of Kosova. For this last our movement will be fighting in the future months and years.


Albin Kurti
London, 24 November 2005

Albin KURTI: Panel Objection (interrupted speech) (15/11/2007)

I do not accept this panel of judges because:... (19/09/2007)

Albin Kurti’s article: ‘What is happening, where are we going, and what should we do?’ (17/08/2007)

Report by Police Inspectorate of Kosova on 10th February (08/2007)

WRONG THERAPY IN KOSOVA (17/03/2007)

A SHOWCASE OF EXCESSIVE DIPLOMACY

Amnesty International calls for full transparency in UNMIK inquiry into deaths of Mon Balaj and Arbën Xheladini (15/02/2007)

Self-determination for the population of Kosova! (13/02/2007)

KOSOVAR KILLINGS “POLITICAL”, NGO’S SAY (12/02/2007)

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW FOR “ALBANIA TODAY” WITH MR. GAFURR ADILI, POLITICAL ADJUNCT OF THE ALBANIAN NATIONAL UNIFICATION FRONT AND SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE ALBANIAN NATIONWIDE ASSEMBLY (20/12/2006)

Dritëro Agolli: Rethinking the past (08/2006)

Warnings from a forewarned visit (05/07/2006)

Imprisoned Kosovars go on hunger strike (06/2006)

Movement's manifesto

Status of Kosova and Self-Determination! Movement (24/11/2005)

Open letter - Who is in charge of the future of Kosova? (05/10/2005)

Open letter to the Minister for Foreign Affairs Per Stig Møller (14/07/2005)

Open letter - “The law of compromise” in settlement of Kosova's final status would never ever bring peace and stability in Balkans… (30/05/2005)

Calling the Forbidden Fairy - Review of Xhemil Zeqiri’s latest book on the Albanian Question (09/04/2005)

Open letter - To the Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller (29/11/2004)

Open letter to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan (01/06/2004)

Open letter,
directed to Mr. Nicholas Burns, US State Department Undersecretary,
to the Commissions on International Relations from US Senate and House of Representatives,
to the Secretary of State Mr.Per Stig Møller,
and to Mr. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General

Who is in charge of the future of Kosova?

In a few days time a report prepared by Kai Aide and Koffi Anan, abt. the situation in Kosova is expected. The said report will investigate weather the Albanians has met the demands laid down in the so called standards towards democracy and human rights, which UN decided to attach to the question of the future status of Kosova. I fear that this repport may cause a further delay in obtaining a just and lasting solution of the problems of Kosova.

It is now 6 years ago the agreement in Rambouie has been signed in disrespect of the Albanian population and without any public debate. The Albanian representatives were
then forced to sign this agreement bat the told afterwards that the problem of the future status of Kosowa has been solved.

Instead of a solution the expel of 1 million Albanians and the subsequent war on Balkan was brought about. 120000 houses were burnt by Serbian militsia.20000 women were raped.12000 was killed. After the war the UNMIK became the de facto power in Kosova. and none whatsoever of the promises given to the albanians has been redeemed. Instead Kosova suffers under the control of the UNMIK. 3000 albanians gone missing has still not been found.

Today the rate of unemployment in Kosova is on 60 per cent.That is far more than in any other part uf Europe. According to the World Bank Kosova is to-day the only place in Europe where there is no economical growth. The educational system is disintegrating. In spite of the fact that to-day there are more youth there are fewer students enrolled for an advanced study in Kosova for the terms 2004/05 than was in 1998/1999, where Serbian police participated in daily scuffles with albanian teachers and students. Simultaniously the economical break down evokes organized crimes to thrive under the nose of the UNMIK.

The trend in Kosova is moving towards a very wrong direction. I have a deep knowledge of Kosova and still I`m not able to point at any field in which the Albanians has obtained improvements. Frustration is spreading and the consequence may quickly again give vent to huge demonstrations as in 2004, where many Albanians lost their lives.
Let me draw your attention to the fact that the then chief of UNMIK Mr.Hari Holkeri subsequent to sanguinary clashes, promised the Albanians to appoint an impartial investigation of the popular accuses against the police and the military of having behaved with fiercely brutality against peaceful demonstrators. Nor this promise from NUMIK has ever been fulfiled.

Repeatedly the UNMIK has proceeded with immense roughness against the peaceful demonstrations and public activities of the Albanians, many of those has been arrested by the UNMIK only for mere demonstrations or just for vindicating their opinion – all acts which in Denmark are protected by the constitution.
But who is protecting the Albanians in Kosova?

The great question pending on the world to answer is still abt.who can decide the future of Kosowa. Any time the boundaries of Balkan has been changed one has neglected to ask the people of Albania. The other groups of people in the former Jugoslavia gained their right to decide their own destiny through a referendum.The Albanians did also claim their freedom according to an almost unanimous referendum carried through in Kosova, however the Great Powers refused to recognize the claim. Since then the development has let things slide, and thus the situation in Kosova has deteriorated.
Why is Denmark not supporting the Albanians right to self-determination through referendum su that they can declare the way Kosovas future shall be organized? This is the only foundation for a lasting and just solution.
- At the referendum in Kosova under 50% of the population did vote which by different spectators has been described as undemocratic due to the fact that one could not freely decide on which of the political candidates one should vote – one was only allowed to vote on parties.That trick would newer have passed in Denmark.

As a result of the now being situation a movement has been established towards self-determination in Kosova and under the leadership of the at that time existing student-movement in 1997/98 and its head Mr.Albin Kurti. He was however abducted by the Serb police in the middle of the NATO bombardments, bus released after the war. Mr.Albin Kurti and the movement he is heading is undoubtedly expressing the majority-opinion of the Albanian people as for their wishes for Kosova.
More negotiations within narrow groups of chosen politicians is not needed, but instead we call for that the people of Kosova - for its first time - is listened to concerning the way in wish they want to form their own future.

Kind Regards
Xhemil Zeqiri, Chairman of the counsil for the defence of human rights and freedom in Kosova
Copenhagen the 05th October 2005

Dear Sir,
I take this opportunity to address you being a human-right-activist from Kosova, who – together with thousands of my compatrics - has fled the Serbian terror to find a sanctuary in Denmark
To my knowledge the future status of Kosova will be subjected to discussion within the UN security Council in a short time. As Denmark for the time being is a member of the Security Council I take this opportunity to call your excellency and your governments attention to the growing discontentedness and fustration among the population of Albania
concerning the lack of clarification with regard to the future status of Kosova.
UN has, in its resolution no.1244 introduced the idea of standards for its status. That means demands towards the Albanian population in Kosova to the end of fulfilling a board arrange of vague conditions especially concerning the rights of the Serbian minority.
It is fundamentally a plan of utter absurdity, which will postpone the prospect infinitely for a lasting and just solution of the problems.
It must be up to the UNMIK (and not to the population of Albania) which has de facto power in Kosova and therefore the decisive influence on both the oeconomical and the political development in the area.
How can such demands be made on the population of Albania – a population which has been deprived of the most elementary rights in to-days Kosova.?
May I remind you, Sir, that down there, the Local Council does not even has the rights to establish a bus-station without the permission of the UNMIK.
It is however not even the UN Security Council which has authority to demand that development should take place in respect to certain standarts. The people of Albania demands that the UN bases its relevant decisions upon the right for self-determination of the Albanian population.
The question of self-determination is the core of the whole problems in this area.
The Albanians are the 3rd. largest element of population in the former republic of Jugoslavia, but was, however ,removed from their rights to self-determination, a right, which in accordance to the constitution of Jugoslavia, was clearly granted them.
When Jugoslavia desintegrated, the Albanians in Kosovo was left to their own fate and to a brutal Serbian oppression. In spite of countless warnings abt. an impending genocide, Kosova was primarily subdued to the atrocity of Milosevic, making brutal rounds of ethnical cleansing.
All that is irrevocable history, but the idea is to learn from it, not to commit the same mistake again and again such as has happened during the historical injustices against the Albanian population, which in their turn has been deprived in deciding their own destiny as the Great Powers of Europe has split-up big parts of the geographical areas where the Albanians have been living for millenniums between their neighbours.
I beg you to remember, that when the State of Albania was born in 1912/13 it had a minority of Albans and the bulk of their lands ended up outside the borders of Albania.
Serbian leaders is now talking abt. giving us more autonomy and lesser independency, but that is thoroughly tactical manoeuvres to avoid the possibility that the Albanians may be able to decide their own future.
Kroatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia detached themselves from Jugoslavia in accordance to plebiscites.
In South Jutland the boarders was drawn in accordance to referendum, while the referendum of the Albanians was ignored.
Why are we still denied the same rights as have the other populations of Balkan?
The Albanians whishes to co-exist in peace with all the people of Kosovo. We do not want to expel or surpress the Serbians, but we wish to construct a free and democratic Kosova without any form of ethnical oppression, which never before has been possible.
The Albanians therefore demands:

1) that they be given the right to self-determination

2) that all Albanians who have been kidnapped by the Serbs, before they withdrawed their forces from Kosova, shall be released immediately.

3) that the corpses of all the Albans killed in the war are handled back to Kosova to be buried by their families.

4) that the government in Beograd is ordered to return all money they seized or stole in Kosova, hereunder pension-funds, and all other valuables described by e.g. an independent commission.

5) that Serbia pays war-compensation to Kosova for all destructions and atrocities perpetrated on the population of Albania.


With kind regards
Xhemil Zeqiri
Copenhagen the 14 july 2005

Open letter, directed to Mr. Nicholas Burns, US State Department Undersecretary, to the Commissions on International Relations from US Senate and House of Representatives, and to Mr. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General

Ladies and Gentlemen,
As citizen of Europe, I can’t remain indifferent towards the countless sufferings of the Albanian people of Kosova and other ethnic territories that are still being conquered and colonized. Allow me, for this reason, to address to you, deeply worried about the manner in which the international community has began to project the settlement of the delicate problems of the colonial issues of Kosova Protectorate, territory of Ethnic Albania.
I welcome the fact that you thought about beginning this process after so much lost time and that this means a scission from the previous situation of Belgrade’s direct oppression. However, I have to remind you that Kosova’s “file”, now lost somewhere in the drawers of UN Security Council and Contact Group, has begun to be written since 1912, since the cruel Serb army’s invasion of Albanian territories (historic Kosova), at the beginning of the First Balkan War. Belgrade knew very well that the ethnic composition was including no more than 15 percent of Slavic population (and this percent is also exaggerated), but it took the decision to interfere and to act for the defeat of the anti-Ottoman Albanian revolt, aiming at the conquest and the assimilation of the Albanian people, in full accordance with its plans of territorial Pan-Slavic psycho-pathological expansion!
So, Serbia had occupied since 1912 half of the Albanian territory.
The Albanian territory inhabitated bt the Albanians is much larger than what we call today the Albanian state
Tito divided then the Albanian territories through some political and administrative “fireworks”, through the creation of the artificial “republics” like “Macedonia” or “Montenegro”. The territories that are stretching now outside Republic of Albania, are conquered by Serbia (Presheva Valley, Toplica – Nish zone, ethnically cleansed, after 1878…), by FYROM (Vardar Valley), by Montenegro (Malesia: Ulqin, Plava, Gucia, Tuzi, Hoti, Gruda, Rozhaja, so on) and Greece (the territory named Chameria, no ethnically cleansed from the Albanian population, exiled in 1947 as a consequence of the Greek general Napoleon Zerva's command ).The narrowed Kosova is remaining half-conquested (Belgrade is involving in its affairs, with UNMIK acceptance) and its future is still seriously endangered.
This glance within history is necessary in determination of historic Kosova's real situation: a territory under the savage colonization of the Serb and its artificial sisters, which have not respected even for a second the life of the Albanians and their historic rights for living in a full freedom, in a single national state. I thing that only starting from this historic basis you would really appreciate how it must be solved the status of Kosova Protectorate.
It is also a common mistake to call the conflict that arises from this unacceptable situation as interethnic, because all the communities (Albanian, Serb, Slavic-Macedonian, Montenegrin, so on) have been living in peace and quiet, even that the cudgel of Slavic administration is still brandishing over Kosova, over Presheva and Vardar Valley, over Malesia and until Chameria. And to this cudgel we can reply, in the beginning, with political and diplomatic arguments, but also with popular resistance and anti-colonial war, taking into account the dreadful crimes and the behaviour of this government which promoted the idea of genocide. The Slavic regimes not only have adopted a policy of discrimination of Albanians in their ethnic territories, but also have brought crimes, expulsions, ferocious repression and terrible massacres upon the colonized Albanian people.
All these tragic events could have been avoided if the Serb and Montenegrin conquests of historic Kosova and of Malesia had accepted through “the law of compromise” between the opposite European alliances, at the Conference of Ambassadors from London (1913).
This was an “achievment” against the will of nation and of its legitimate representatives that had gathered in Vlora, proclaiming in 28 November 1912 Albania’s independence and the unification of all Albanian territories within this state. Maybe this decision of the European states delayed with one single year the beginning of the First World War. Although, these absurd events and decisions have opened one of the most terrible and lasting conflicts in Balkans. Conflict that you, like your forerunner diplomats are trying to settle, using “the right of compromise”. And this doesn’t reflect the principle of correctness or the desire of creating a real peace in this zone of powder and blood.
It is more than visible that Russia, with China and France, are asking with all their force and political-diplomatic arsenal be maintained Serbia’s colonial conquest on Kosova, also encouraging Belgrade to have a harsh voice against a status that could be favorable for the majority of the Albanian people in Kosova.

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen,
You have to accept that for this reason the international community’s dialogue with “parts” is unilaterally. The Serb “diplomats” have been opened many international doors, enabling them to express openly. Meanwhile Albanians must always have the mouth closed and accept all the orders arisen from the “scientific researches” of the omnipotent UNMIK…
Serbia is not a permanent member in the Security Council and also it hasn’t there a temporary mandate, but Serb politicians came there several times with a policy of beating with the boot on the table for the respect of the “sovereignty” of the Serb colonial metropolitan above its former colony, Kosova, in many meetings of this UN organism!!!
Anyway you have to know and not to forget who are your Serb interlocutors, because they aren’t “pro-western democrats”, but they are trying to appear at such a high level, where the future of the Albanian people is being decided…
Let’s take a “noisy” example; Serbia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Vuk Draškovic, former “dissident” given the dictator and sometimes supporting him had during the ‘90-ies a “rebellious” position only in some aspects of the Serb interior politics. But referring to Kosova and to Albanians, it should not be forgotten the fact that “the Knife” savagely animated the Serb public opinion with a rhetoric containing some completely anti-Albanian “literary theories”. He demanded publicly at a precise moment that the Yugoslav government would have to apply some discriminatory measure against the growing birth rate of Albanians in Kosova, allowing them to have only four children. “If you want five or more children –said Draškovic to Albanians – you will lose all the material profits that the Yugoslav state gives to the families with four children. And more, you will pay a double tax if you have five children, a treble tax at six children, and so on. If you come and say to me that Allah had obliged you to have ten children for monopolizing the Serb state, I answer to you that also Allah to pay you for this” (!)
This hurricane of anti-Albanian floods is still alive even today, exactly because some people of this kind achieved after Miloševic’s collapse, so highly in the Serb state’s hierarchy, becoming presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers of this country. In the future months this will turn into a big hindrance in your attempts to re-orient Serbia to a real European course. And, how do you think you could do this, when Serbia has in its essence a political and psycho-sociologic substratum (collective stereotypical thinking and non-rational behavior) that can be very easily manipulated, that is still having its nationalist-aggressive anchor thrown in the emotional myths and legends of Kosova as “Serbia’s heart”, “cradle” or its “Jerusalem”? But, if you encourage these Serb chauvinistic personalities to be your interlocutors, even if the Serb political system is still the hostage of the anti-Albanian romantic and chauvinistic legacy that bring huge blockages in politics, economy and in the interethnic communication, you are doing a very big mistake.
Belgrade manipulated the reality about the situation of the Serb minority from Kosova, convincing you that Albanians living there want to revenge on this minority and that this false thesis really happened at the time of the popular protests of March 2004. I wouldn’t wonder if Belgrade itself ordered to its paramilitary units from Kosova or to some Albanian-speaking elements to burn the churches and the Serb houses during the time of protests, judging the political capital won by Serbia for this reason.
A real inquiry, based on facts, is still not being done.
UNMIK began foolishly to arrest innocent persons, while Serbia was rewarded at a international level for this cunning plan that was used on terrain. The same feudal and arrogant UNMIK didn’t tell any single precised word (as well as the entire international community) for the fact that Serbia is helping with money and logistics the Serb paramilitary bands, bringing them also an enforcement of Serb regular army’s units and of the secret service, BIA (and at Belgrade it was publicly declared by Serb officials the presence in Kosova of BIA agents) This Serb militarist presence is a full disregard on the Kumanova Agreement (signed between Serbia and NATO) in 1999 and represents an aggression against the Albanian people of Kosova. And Belgrade encroaches upon it with both legs, because the armed troops of this aggressor state, not only have the aim to prepare the terrain for scission of the northern part of Kosova, but also they are making incursions in its territory, kidnapping Albanians. The last case is the kidnapping reported by local police in zone of Peja, where two Albanians became victims of this form of Serb state terrorism!!
These troops are also the Belgrade’s guarantee of the fact that Serb minority wouldn’t integrate in the society and in politics with the lack of the Serbia’s administration order. So, without taking harsh measures against the different kind of troops “made in Serbia”, the demands of the international community for return of the Serb minority would be perceived in Belgrade only as chatter that aren’t to be taken into account. (!)
I cannot understand how can UNMIK come in this situation with a policy without correspondent in reality, and to inaugurate the dialogue Prishtina-Belgrade!!!
Belgrade has never proved that is sincere and it will discover cunningly, with this “democratic step”, a manner to imply in Kosova’s affairs, after the achievement of its final status. In case of a second Albanian state’s creation, this would have its head into the pot of a old-styled “coexistence”, namely of the Tito’s modernized “brotherhood-union”, taking into account the existence in Kosova’s politics of some different collaborationist elements, which have served to Belgrade during and after its direct rule.
But Prishtina’s political class is now educated by UNMIK to do only the things that are commanded to it, although there are also absurd decisions and proposals.
One of this is the game with the policy of standards.
The men of UNMIK thought to apply the principle “bread and circus”, they have to give some trouble to the Albanian politicians, for stopping them to come with actions from their initiative, for the future of Kosova. “Standards” had the role of delaying of the situation of Kosova Protectorate, until its doomsday.
This chaotic situation is convenient for Nebojša Covic and for his Centre for Coordination for Kosova, how his speech from the Security Council’s meeting is proving. But this is not for the sake of the Albanian people from Kosova or of the international community, which pumped during this period a lot of money for the functioning of the UNMIK administration.
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen,
Concerning this point of standards it must be affirmed a thing:
neither the classical slogan of “standards before status”, nor the new concept of “standard with status” it is not and it can’t be a realist idea. Simultaneously, this is not a legal idea, taking into account that the UN General Assembly has approved some resolutions, where it is very clearly said that the level of development in different political, economical, social directions cannot be used as a blocking wall in the determination of a status for a territory under trusteeship. See for this the text of the General Assembly’s resolutions 648 (article 3 and 4), 742 (article 6 and 7), 1514 (article 3).
Kosova had been for approximately a century a colony of Serbia and after NATO’s bombardments against Yugoslavia it came under the UN trusteeship’s mandate. This mandate should have been as short as possible, like in other territories in the same situation and it should have the role of preparing the terrain for organizing a referendum, in which the people of Kosova should decide alone for their future.
For equalizing the balance of powers at an international level, without any judgement for the situation, things were delayed…
I know, really, that pragmatism is needed for renouncing now at this irrational hindrance, in order not to put the settlement of status into a labyrinth of “examinations” and “reviews” referring to the implementation of standards, which is endangered to be overcame only with the speed of a paralyzed snail.
The policy after the motto “do not solve today, let it for tomorrow, maybe it won’t be necessary”, enforced also by the establishment of standards, could prove a turn against the initial goals of the international community, because unseen storms are hiding under the cloths of quit and “stability”.
The protests of March 2004 have proved that the affairs in the international policies have to be settled in time and not when a unreachable situation of crises explodes. The analysts have predicted what could happen with the entire region, if they continue not to take into account the real situation, the general atmosphere and the future tendencies
And also you are aware that something must be done for hindering the escalation of this situation in this part of Balkans.
Unfortunately, not even one international organization or any country with inffluence in the world’s politics hasn’t been thinking about finding a lasting settlement to the Albanian issue, part of whose belongs also a decision about Kosova’s status. “The law of compromise claims only the achievement to a compromise between the blocs that are in opposition at this point on the global level, respectively with a dialogue between Serbs and Albanians on a Balkan level. Through this dialogue you are also equalizing the victim (Kosova’s Albanians) with the aggressor (Serbia), while the mocking political games can be reflected even now, through the conditions that the Group of Contact have put with the aim of maintaining the status-quo that will result after the end of the process.
Having as a “analytical basis” the International Crisis Group’s report Nr.161 for Europe, you will not achieve to find peace and stability in Balkans.
Actually the region is stigmatized by some phenomena that mustn’t have happened, especially by a foolishly status quo, in which Albania is bordering upon its territory and people.
The phenomenon of globalization has appeared in the entire world and because of it, states are in a growing interdependence. In Balkans, the greatest enemy of this process is the aggressive nationalism that supposes also the colonization of the Albanian territories. And it cannot be made any step forward towards the integration in Euro-Atlantic structures in this situation, even less through the policy of “centralization–planification” of a part of the international community, which desires to maintain the Serbia-Montenegro and FYROM’s colonization on Albanian territories.
The most coherent and adequate settlement for the issue of Kosova it is suggested by a significant quote from the book of M.S.Korowicz “La souverainete des Etats et l’ouvenir des droit international” (page 945):
“States, in order to be interdependent, must be independent, but to depend on the international law”

Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is what the administration of Belgrade and Skopje, with their traditional allies (Russia, France, China), with International Crisis Group and those who signed the Rambouillet agreement (Rugova, Thaçi, Qosja, Surroi) for stopping the changes of the borders between Kosova and Serbia, want to avoid. This agreement, which is included in that “famous” Rambouillet agreement, must be annulled because it is obsolete. The international and the local representatives said at that moment: “after three years the people of Kosova will decide for its future”, while, until now, 6 years have passed and nothing happened. Really, where it is the international justice for the Albanian people, that it has suffered so much?!…
And now, “the law of compromise” is coming into play and this includes an “examination of standards” and “a negotiated solution” for Kosova. How much do you think the Albanian people can endure?!…
A just decision of the international community referring to Kosova Protectorate and to other Albanian territories would necessarily include stipulations, which strictly respect the international law – the right of self-determination and of de-colonization. You have to permit to the Albanians of Kosova Protectorate, of Vardar and Presheva Valley, of Malesia to organize an inter-Albanian referendum, in which they would decide what they want for their future, if they want to live divided into five states, with two Albanian countries and a growing implication of the Slavic-Greek neighbors into their affairs, or to live together in a state, in the Reunited Albania?!
For the achievment of this purpose is also necessary your determination, so we could say “goodbye” to the “law of compromise”, which has characterized the international relations in the last century, bringin so much suffering, tragedy and wars in the violent Balkans.

With great respect,


Mona Agrigoroaiei
Romania, 30 May 2005

In an old Albanian tale, a shepherd goes astray in the Damned Mountains and finds suddenly the dance lodge of the fairies. The fairest of them falls in love with him, and helps him out. She asks the shepherd to keep their relationship a secret, so that they can meet by the lodge every moonless night. But the shepherd can only keep the secret for a while, and then tells his mocking villagers about it. When he goes to the next rendezvous, the fairy never shows up. The young shepherd finds out that the lodge has disappeared, and that, to his horror, he has forgotten the path back home. As the story goes, mountain winds still carry shepherds calls, crying out his fairy’s name.
It’s a common myth from the Balkans, passing over a message as ancient as it is still topical. That man has always recognized – and feared! – the danger of telling the truth. Yet, that man at times is compelled to tell the truth, despite dire consequences, in order to retain his self-respect.
Perhaps this is more obvious to small nations, who have had to fight to survive tidal waves of history. Who have had to linger under the tyranny of the mighty, and have had their stories, and indeed their entire existence, questioned.
No wonder, therefore, why that experience has obtained the sanctity of a myth among the Albanians, the persecuted natives of the Balkans. Indeed, there are no other nations in Europe (except, perhaps, of the Baltic under Stalin) who have had to pay a higher price for telling their story. No other nation has had so many of its rhapsodists killed for singing historic chants; so many intellectuals jailed for writing down forbidden ideas; so many students beaten and electroshocked for having red them; and so many parents house-searched because of, and interrogated on, their children’s readings.
The author of this particular book, Xhemil Zeqiri, is a Dane of Albanian origin, one of those hundreds of imprisoned Albanian students who fled former Yugoslavia in 1980’es. He was fortunate to get asylum in Denmark before it sharpened its refugee stance to today’s quick deportation policies. He is quite known to the Balkan connoisseurs in Denmark for his outspoken views, having published tens of articles in numerous Danish newspapers, and an intriguing book on the Albanian Question.
In his second book, we get to understand what has happened in Balkans after NATO intervention in 1999. In many ways, this is the tale of what followed after the official “happy ever after”.
Mr Zeqiri has a story to tell, and tells it frankly. Reminder of the shepherd, his is the story of a humanist who’s seen the humanity running down the gutter in Balkans (even) after the NATO intervention, and sounds the alarm. Mr Zeqiri has a plain truth to tell us: namely, that the disenfranchised and shattered Albanians are being neglected and abused once again, this time, though, not by local culprits, but by very democracies (including Denmark) who stepped forward vowing to change things.
Articles, transcripts of meetings, and letters of Zeqiri (among others, to the actual Danish foreign minister and his EU homonym) vary each-other to comprise an integrated and original book, which also reveals the painful conditions of an non-profit lobbyist dedicated to a hushed cause. Having lobbied myself for the Albanians in the neighbouring Sweden for years, I feel quite fitted to fully understand the desperation that oozes between the lines of Zeqiri’s book. International standards and conventions, even basic human decency, don’t seem to apply whenever the Albanian Question is discussed – no explanation needed nor given!
It is precisely this self-evident and unquestioned stance, this “I am I” of real-politics in the Balkans, that alarms Zeqiri. To all appearances, it seems that the Albanians have been judged, in a phantom trial, by an invisible judge, to be the “unworthy victim” of the old continent. It’s a grim sentence, which always and unmistakably has pointed out “the other” in a region: Jews in Germany, Chechens in Russia, Kurds in the Middle East, Tutsis in Africa, and unfortunately – even after the NATO intervention – the Albanians in the Balkans.
Zeqiri calls upon Denmark, as a member of EU and NATO, to take its responsibility and act within these organizations, to promote a new, humanist – and indeed rational! – perspective towards the Albanians. He calls upon EU and NATO to realize the plain fact, that one can’t build a lasting architecture of peace in the Balkans, without addressing the Albanian craving for freedom. For freedom is not something that can be portioned out cautiously, as in pills or from the dropping bottle, but an universal and absolute category: you either are free, or you’re not! How we address Albanian cry for freedom in the Balkans today, he warns, marks out values that our own children shall inherit in the future Europe.
Charming plains of Denmark don’t house any mountain winds. Still there is a cry out there, from Xhemil Zeqiri, calling a forbidden fairy’s name. Let’s hope that someone hears him, for the sake of all of us, before it’s too late!

Shqiptar Oseku
09-04-2005

Copy to The International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Yesterday once again there were demonstrations in Prishtina in Kosova. According to the Albanian media they were the biggest demonstrations in many years with ten thousands of participants. The reason was the trial of Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Bala and Isak Musliu, which began in the Hague. They were commandants in the Albanian Army of Liberation UCK. They all have a large place in the hearts of the Albanian people, because they, bravely and with no fear for the consequences for their own lives, took part in protecting our people against the Serbian terror, which rushed through Kosova in 1998-1999.

The most known of those three members is Famtir Limaj who after the war was elected in the parliament of Kosova. He became the president of the parliament group in the Democratic Party of Kosova. He have been arrested without his parliamentary immunity being lifted.

The trial in the Hague has with this taken an absurd turn. While more of the notorious murderers walk free around in the Balkan, three Albanian heroes of freedom have been charged.

This absurd trial is once again threatening to turn Kosova upside down. This is not only because the Albanians feel that their national pride is put on trial. The head counsel for prosecution del Ponte has placed the victim on an equal footing with the executioner. Her burden of proof is based among other things on hooded so-called witnesses, which for obvious reasons creates doubt about a just legal proceedings.

The Albanians are incensed because this trial once again puts focus on the painful fact that there has not been found a permanent solution for Kosova´s future and there are still foreign powers, who decide which of the Albanian leaders get a seat in the parliament and which sit in prison.

There is still chaos and haphazardness in Kosova. The former chief of UNIMIK, Steiner, initiated a dangerous process by insisting that in Kosova there should be so-called standards carried through. This was a condition for changing Kosova´s present status as a protectorate under the UN.

Steiner has gone into details how Kosova should be like according to his own interpretation. There is not that international regulation or standard, all from human rights to democratic standards, which must be fulfilled, before the Albanian majority may have decisive influence on their own future. The problem is that such a course is just impossible.

How should the Albanians be able to build a society where there are equal rights for both Albanians and Serbs, when UNIMIK holds on to the whole apparatus of the state? How should the Albanians be able to build a democrat administration when the Albanians cannot even build and administrate a local bus station without UNIMIK giving green light?

It is the iron grip of UNIMIK on Kosova that is preventing the development. The newly held election is a striking example. The Danish and western media has focused only on the low Serbians election turn out. This is due to the pressure, which is laid upon the Serbs from Belgrade. What the media has ignored is the fact that half of the Albanian population also stayed home on the election day,
The leading, intellectual Adem Demaci, who was imprisoned for 28 years in Serbian prisons as political prisoner, encouraged his countrymen to boy-cot the election. He called attention to the fact that the new elected parliament would not get the fundamental responsibility for Kosova´s administration, development and future.

Both UNIMIK´s focus on the so-called standards and the absurd trials against the three Albanian national heroes in the Hague is contributing to postpone the absolutely necessary clarification of Kosova´s future and creates deep frustration and bitterness among the Albanian population.

A very used argument against allowing the establishment of a proper self government in Kosova is that the Albanians must ensure the Serbs rights. I do not believe that anyone denies that there has been some mistakes towards the Serbs, but one has to see these as inevitable consequences of the genocide, which for decades has been committed against the Albanians. Deeply in the Albanian population there is a well-rooted wish to live peacefully with all of their neighbours, both inside and outside Kosova´s borders.

The Albanians deeply understand that the Serbian population in Kosova are entitled to equal rights, because we know the apartheid-like policy from our own body through generations. We also know that today 500,000 of our brothers and sisters live in Serbia, who are still suppressed. It is our hope that we by ensuring a living democracy for everyone, also can be able to ensure that Albanians and Serbs can live together on equal basis.

It is about time that the international society live up to the resolution 1514 from the General Assembly of 1960, which emphasises that all people have the right of self-determination and to determine the direction of their own economic, social and cultural development. This right must also apply to the Albanians.



Yours faithfully
Xhemil Zeqiri
Copenhagen 29.11. 2004

Copy for Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller


As a long time human rights activist and chairman of the danish department of Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms (hereafter CDHRF) in Kosova, I am appealing for you to turn your attention to a number of serious problems in Kosova.

Recent events in Kosova once again exemplify the deeply felt frustration of the Albanian population stemming from the lack of permanent solutions to the Albanian issue.

The Albanian issue is not new. It goes all the way back to the London Conference of 1912/3, where the bigger countries decided to tear the Albanian nation into pieces. When the borders of the Balkan were closed, the majority of Albanians found themselves outside Albania, having become a part of the neighbouring countries without ever being a part of the decisionmaking process.

Three million Albanians lived in the former Yugoslavia, principally in Kosova and Macedonia. They never acheived the same status as the other peoples of Yugoslavia, in spite of them being the third-largest ethnic group. While Slovenians, Bosnians, Croats, Serbs and Macedonians had their traditions secured and gained their own republics, the Albanians never got the same treatment. In fact, they were brutally repressed and Kosova became the poorest region of Yugoslavia.

There can be no doubt that the lack of solutions to the Albanian issue was an important factor in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. When the different republics tore away from Yugoslavia, part of the reason were plebiscites, where the peoples expressed their wish to become separate states.

The Albanian people also almost unanimously expressed their wish for a sovereign state in a such vote. But the international community ignored the wishes of the Albanians. It has had dire consequences, culminating in the NATOattacks on Serbia.

Albanians hoped for a permanent solution in accordance with their wishes.But nothing happened. In spite of many years passing since the war ended, the situation basically has not changed. Therefore, the Albanians have grown critical of the UN administration in the Kosova (UNMIK). UN resolution 1244 has in reality turned Kosova into a prison for Albanians. In reality Kosova has been made a canton. Whereas Serbian enclaves are outside UNMIK control, Albanians must answer to this authority. It is a still more common attitude that Albanians are disfavoured compared to Serbians. Albanians feel that the historic injustice continues.

Recent events in Kosova show that tension is growing and could spontaneously combust, if Albanians feel they are treated unfairly. Responsibility for the violent incidents in Kosova is put on the Albanians, even though Jim Moran, the KFOR spokesman, has recognized that all actors, including KFOR, UNMIK and the political parties, all had a part to play.
Therefore, I beseech you to commence an independent inquiry into the background of the recent tragic events in Kosova, in an attempt to stop the continuous violence.

The Albanian population of Kosova wants to live in peace with its neighbours. They have no interest in driving out Serbians or others from Kosova.On the contrary, they feel a strong urge to secure the rights of all ethnicities. This is the only way to ascertain lasting solutions, not only for Kosova, but also for the hundreds of thousands of Albanians living in Serbia, and the almost one million Albanians in Macedonia.

When the UN Security Council discussed the question of Kosova on May 4. of this year, in light of recent turmoil in the region, once again a decision was made without the Albanian people being heard. The UN has claimed "standards before status" and decided on a long list of demands to Albanian people, before the process of sovereignty can begin. This is impossible. How will the Albanian people be able to turn Kosova into something resembling paradise on earth, in a situation where they are deprived of even the most basic human rights.

The Albanian people wish, like the other peoples of the former Yugoslavia, the right to decide on their own fate. There has been too much hate created and too much blood spilt. Both are at the heart of the great sorrow the Albanian people feel. There are no easy solutions, but the current UN course is a dead end, which will invariably end in disaster.

I beseech you to work for a solution according to the wishes of the people of Kosova. Albanians are not a minority. We comprise 95% of the population of Kosova. People here have the same right to determine their fate, as the other peoples of the former Yugoslavia. This is the only way to create lasting peace, where the peoples of Kosovo can live together in peace as neighbours.

Yours sincerely,


Xhemil Zeqiri
Copenhagen, 01.06.2004