Deviated from the mission of justice.
This is how former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi described the trial in The Hague against him and other former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, in a written interview for the show “Opinion” with Blendi Fevziu, quoting American professor Daniel Sewer. He said that the court should provide justice and not"revenge based on deception."
Thaçi expressed confidence that, after hearing the prosecution and defense witnesses, the judges will issue a fair and meritorious decision. He recalled that this process is not only related to his personal fate, but also to the history of resistance and freedom of Kosovo.
Speaking about life in The Hague, he said that he is spending his sixth year in solitary confinement without a court order, while describing his stay there as a long separation from family, public and institutional life.
Blendi Fevziu:
Mr. Thaçi, it has been five years since your arrest and transfer to The Hague. How is the process going?
Hashim Thaci:
I am spending my sixth year in solitary confinement without a court decision. As American political expert Daniel Serwer recently pointed out, this process has deviated from its mission. Justice must be provided, not revenge based on deceit. For my part, I have nothing to add to this statement.
Blendi Fevziu:
What are your observations regarding the developments in the process?
Hashim Thaci:
It should be transparent, accountable, with a guardianship mechanism, respecting the equality of the parties, human rights and, above all, the legislation of Kosovo, on the basis of which this court was established. The criminal prosecution should respect the fundamental principles of the code of ethics, so that the truth is followed wherever it leads, including exculpatory evidence.
Blendi Fevziu:
Do you believe in your innocence, especially after you became familiar with the presentation of the prosecution witnesses?
Hashim Thaci:
Absolutely. The history of Kosovo's freedom from the early 1980s to the present day is the essence of this process. I am only an instrument in this legal experiment. The issuance of the verdict is in the hands of the judges, but I am confident that, after hearing the witnesses of the Prosecution and, in particular, those of the defense, of the highest international profile and credibility, they will issue a just and meritorious decision. Much regarding the legitimacy of international criminal law depends on the outcome of this process.
Blendi Fevziu:
How is your day in isolation for six years?
Hashim Thaci:
Currently, my mouth is closed to speak and my hands are tied to write what my heart desires and my mind tells me completely. In this regard, Blendi, I will try to do the best I can for the circumstances I find myself in.
Serbia has been dealing with me for a long time. It sentenced me in absentia to many years in prison. Continuously, from 1993 to 1997, it raided my house, mistreated and arrested my father, mother, sister and brothers. In revenge, it also executed Luma's brother, Haki, in the massacre of the village of Studime in Vushtrri, in May 1999.
In June 1999, the war ended. I belong to the world of surviving Albanians. Today my only fault is that I am alive. I do not belong to the category of people who say that prison is for men. This expression seems annoying to me. I am not altruistic or ascetic. I have lived my life, I have not hidden from it. I have followed the rhythm of the marathon.
My path was neither fate nor coincidence. It is a purpose that springs from the depths of my world. It is tangible and transparent. From an early age I had placed my entire being in the service of the idea of freedom.
Loneliness naturally gives me emptiness and offers me futility. I try to give life to the environment in my cell. The 24 hours of the day and the 365 days of the year are the same. The calendar message of life is lost. The days and nights seem to pass without dates.
I have reflected on Kosovo, on Albania and the Albanians, on the behavior of the world at the beginning and end of the 20th century in relation to us. We often forget how oppressed and trampled upon we have been. We are often treated as Ottoman remnants. While today, how high we are in the rise and consolidation process as a nation with Western thinking and status.
Freedom and prison never go together. It is not just the physical wall that separates them, but the emotion, the thinking and the way you see, feel and live the world. Isolation is a cage with a lack of horizons and an elevator. This physical, and I believe, can even blind you, not by the level of your diopter, but by the confusion or the way things were.
Time and distance take their toll on everyone, no matter how resilient they are. But, thanks to God and self-care, I'm still fine. For almost six years I haven't had the flu, a fever, a temperature, or even the slightest cold, except for Covid-19.
I feel blessed to have walked the valleys and slopes, to have trodden the heights and lowlands of our mountains during the best stages of my life. I have physically and emotionally experienced the brilliance of the sun's rays, the frost with wind and snow, the downpours of rain on muddy paths and alleys.
I took these steps at one time as a sacrifice for freedom and later out of passion for nature. I know them almost palm to palm. The air, the spirit and the energy of the homeland sustain me. This has made me feel life, my birthplace and still a dear friend even more deeply and broadly. I experience it in full horizon. For me it is health, love, faith and pride.
But a healthy life requires restraint. I lack that now. In isolation, I am attacked by thousands and thousands of flickers of thoughts that swirl around. They don't know where they come from, how to stop them, and in what direction to direct them. I try to make ideas and the real world match each other.
I have cultivated the individual experience of psychological freedom even in circumstances of physical constraint. I respond to every bad feeling with emotion, with an alternative mind. I try to give them substance, form and good direction. I maintain my compass by managing time and situations as calmly as possible.
I immerse myself in thoughts that enlighten me, but at times they can also cloud my mind or change my perspective. With self-discipline, I avoid venting my anger, shaking my character, and even becoming corrupt.
I do not treat loneliness as hell, anxiety, a curse or the end of me. I face difficult difficulties, but I concentrate more on the minimal possibilities that exist in this suffocating reality. I visualize the experienced memory of good things. In parallel, I develop my imagination for a better future.
The diversity of life experience has left me stunned, listening and believing with respect, but also being lied to and enduring in silence. Hope in isolation is God, wife and child, mother and father, sister and brother, neighbor and friend. It is life itself.
I do not escape from myself nor do I move or become alienated in the world where others tried to throw me. Although even meetings and conversations with family members do not have the normal emotional experience or warmth. Here the smile does not come from the depths of the soul, heart and reason. The food I eat, the coffee or tea I drink, do not have the original taste.
Everything seems temporary, artificial, superficial, but in reality there are years of profound disconnection from free life. I sleep comfortably, but it does not bring me enough of a sense of mental or physical regeneration.
With true human feeling, I experienced the pain, the tears, and the sighs, even watching my father's funeral on TV. Every handful of dirt thrown into his grave weighed a ton on my head in the cell.
Serious behavior or silence in this environment is interpreted by others as boredom. On the other hand, indifference as arrogance or even stupidity. In reality, almost everything is false and deceptive. Even atmospheric changes pass without leaving a trace.
Walking and getting fresh air at the sports field, where we behave and re-behave every day, is like taking the sack off my head, where every pore of my body absorbs and experiences deep breathing.
When I open my eyes in the morning, I listen to music without lyrics. I replace any dreams I have at night with reading a book or newspaper story from the world of film, art, tourism, history and culture, sports, and more. I treat every morning dawn as a new opportunity.
The tree placed in the detention center for the holiday season gives me inner warmth. I also follow the progress of new book publications, some of which I order through family members.
I continue to drink coffee, which has remained more as a gesture from work meetings in Prishtina than a need for caffeine. Cooking breakfast gives me pleasure and relaxes me. I try to prepare things as healthy as possible. It has now become a ritual for me.
One of the goals of those who brought me here is to make my separation from normal family life, uproot me from the memory of the civic environment and make active institutional life impossible. In short, to replace the previous memory with a new memory. People do not say for nothing: out of sight, out of mind. This is a slow and gentle deprivation.
However, Kosovo is the subject of this process and I am only the object. The core of the subject is being hit day by day, harder and harder. But something is forgotten: the Kosovar resistance is the highest point of national and state identity. The resistance stopped the further flow of slavery.
Its legitimacy stems from the will and righteous intention of citizens for freedom. It is a consequence of history with socio-economic, cultural, political-military, national and international causes and circumstances. It has substance, it has a living image and memory, local, Kosovar and international.
Unable to use modern technology, to face Serbia on an equal footing, we diplomatized the resistance movement and won.
The history of Kosovo's statehood is not a dogma or something mechanical, nor a slogan, a slogan, a wall newspaper or a scribble on a blackboard, which can be easily scratched or erased. It is not letters written in the sand, which are covered by the waves of the sea or scorched by the rays of the sun. There is no weather that freezes it or dries it.
Unable to erase history, the collective memory of resistance, I read things and hear voices in their aim to change it, to make it flesh and blood or at least dilute it, so that they can more easily disorient people, to balance value and anti-value, good and evil, useful and harmful.
To pretend to draw parallels between resistance for freedom and the spirit of submission is like equating light with darkness. The lived testimonies of citizens are testaments to heroism, pain, and the spirit of freedom.
The process we are going through neither glorifies nor minimizes the personal role of the leading actors of state-building. It only proves that it was not the journey of a few wicked or desperate people. On the contrary, it gives their cause an even higher, even broader historical, political and diplomatic dimension, a successful, unprecedented and unrepeatable profile in the history of our nation.
Freedom fighters do not need to obscure or hide from the truth of resistance nor have dilemmas about the future. They have cemented the narrative of success, I follow them. They do not suffer from the syndrome of a deficiency or inferiority complex. They have no resentment or breakdown of conscience with themselves in the face of children and family, simply biological and national heritage.
The value of resistance is embodied and integrated within our entire society. They are values of national and democratic continuity. The memory of resistance for freedom and statehood is parchment in the Albanian consciousness, then in the archives of Washington, NATO and several other Western countries. Unfortunately, the archives in Belgrade, Moscow and elsewhere in our spaces are also filled with dirty and false files.
Resistance belongs to history. Today we live the reality created by it. It has a crystal-clear beginning and end. It has its own time, circumstances and characters to understand without any evasiveness the path to freedom and the state of Kosovo. See the story of General Wesley Clark during his testimony in The Hague. There anyone will find the right presentation of our cause, the values it represents today, the message and the message of our resistance for the wider future of the free world.
In the cell I am not a living national pain or sin. I am living proof, even though I am paying for it with my soul and in my skin. I am not to be consoled. I have never taken freedom for granted. I have given direction to my journey myself. The realities created have confirmed to me the right choice I have made in life.
I have challenged through trials. I have cultivated some that are as fast as lightning and some that are long and exhausting. For a long time I had become a bridge. I have tolerated many things passing through my body, without getting wet or hurting my feet. Once I cross the river, then you know: they have closed their ears so they cannot hear, their eyes so they cannot see, their mouths so they cannot speak. The call of the homeland for freedom and state justified it all.
t7 live
