Written by: Visar Zhiti
Now, from The Hague, came one of the most serious claims, not only for international justice, but also for the historical memory of the liberation war of a people in Europe, of the Albanians in Kosovo.
The prosecution requested 45 years in prison for Hashim Thaçi, 45 years in prison for Kadri Veseli, 45 years in prison for Rexhep Selimi and 45 years in prison for Jakup Krasniqi. 189 years in prison. It is not yet a court decision, but the Hague prosecution has gone crazy, only the symbolic weight of this request weighs as a preliminary verdict not only on the chronicle of the time, on the present and history, but also on the future.
And the chronicle of history is not just a legal file. It is pain, blood, displacement, nameless graves, but also perseverance, sacrifice, dreams and resurrection, etc., etc.
I once wrote: Not Kosovo in The Hague, but The Hague in Kosovo. And then: What about the Hague trial, is there another trial?
Today they seem more relevant to me than before.
JUDGMENT OF HISTORY OR HISTORY OF JUDGMENT?
The Kosovo Liberation Army was not created as a crime, but as a response to crime. It was born from a darkness of state repression, from a reality where Kosovo Albanians experienced systematic exclusion, imprisonment, violence and ethnic cleansing. In such circumstances, resistance for survival and the calling of generations, of those who had fled and those who would come.
To judge its leaders today by detaching the war from its time, from that historical context, is an operation that risks producing a justice without memory. And justice without memory often turns into another crime, into the formalism of an inhumane policy.
It is acting to judge exclusively a single structure of the conflict. The question that naturally arises is: can justice be complete when it is one-sided?
The documented crimes of the Serbian state apparatus are known to the world. Massacres, mass deportations, systematic violence are part of the archive of European conscience. But history seems to be entering an artificial balance, where a symmetry of guilt is sought even where historical reality does not recognize it.
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD AND THE SHAME OF TIME
The Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, called this process “an absurd theater of shame”, adding that “history is not rewritten with handcuffs for those who brought freedom”. It is not absurd theater, – I add – it is the theatrical absurdity of another crime. Meanwhile, the President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, declared that the KLA was the shield of the people and that no court can tarnish the liberation war.
They are not political statements, but an expression of a broad sensitivity of a people in Europe, with a European history, "defenders of European civilization."
In this process in The Hague, not only 4 people at the top of the KLA are being tried, but an era, a collective (European) memory, and an identity.
THE RISK OF MORAL DISPLACEMENT
When the victim and the aggressor are placed on the same scale, in the classic scale of Justice, history begins to lose its moral direction. Justice is not simply a legal response, but also a distinction between cause and effect. If the liberation war is reduced by this Hague to a criminal episode, then we risk creating a narrative where the peoples who are protected are punished, while the state structures that exercised violence escape in the fog of relativism, whether by this Hague or another.
Kosovo and Albanians in general must maintain prudence and unity. Defending the liberation war does not mean denying justice, but demanding full, non-selective justice.
What is this, justice or a biased political judgment?
Unbelievable! The request of the Prosecutor of the Specialist Chambers in The Hague has caused deep shock in Albanian public opinion.
It seems like a unique case in international justice for a court specifically created to try only one party to the conflict, the Kosovo Liberation Army. No other tribunal has built such a selective mechanism, where the state aggressor, Serbia, with its documented crimes, remains outside this trial.
Justice that chooses only one side is not neutral, but neither is justice, I dare say it is a continuation of the crimes of those who are not in the dock.
Although we know that in the practice of international courts, the request for maximum sentences is often used as an instrument of political and psychological pressure, not necessarily as a reflection of the real weight of the evidence, here we have something more, the construction of a narrative where the liberation war is treated as if it were a criminal project. This shift of blame from the state structure that exercised violence to those who resisted it is dangerous and has consequences.
The KLA, Mrs. Hague, was not an army that was born in peace. We repeat, it was born from the denial of human rights and of a people, from state violence, schools were closed, parents and citizens were imprisoned, massacres were carried out and Albanian life was being massively expelled from its land. To judge outside this reality means to commit not only legal injustice, but also to commit moral falsification of history. In my opinion, there are several possible readings of this backstage in the absurd theater of The Hague:
– Artificially creating the impression that “all parties are equally guilty”.
– Diplomatic relief for Serbia and not just by relativizing its state responsibility.
– A formal, sidelined justice that closes chapters without really resolving them. What should be done?
– Full transparency and ongoing public debate, not silence.
– Institutional and social support for the accused, without prejudice, but defending the principle of equal justice.
– Historical and moral counter-narrative, clearly articulated in the international arena.
– Rejection of moral equality between aggressor and victim.
Justice is not simply the application of the law, but also memory, conscience, and historical responsibility. When these are absent, the law turns into cold anti-procedure, into a “banalization of evil.” Should we not post Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” in The Hague?
I ask again: For the Hague trial, is there another trial?
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