Nait Hasani, the Ambassador of Kosovo to Albania, was invited on Euronews Albania to discuss events that took place 22 years ago and that saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians to Albania. Hasani said that “Albania and Kosovo are a single nation” and that “there can be development without one another”.
“Albania was our home in 1999”, said Hasani. “It defended the nation, and its brothers and sisters and it took care of them while the KLA was waging the war”.
The exodus began on the 27 of March and ended on the tenth of June 1999. The first to be displaced were citizens from the commune of Prizren and the village of Krusha, while it is believed that the total number of people that were driven out of their homes is around 1 million.
“The dislocation was a result of the ethnic cleansing committed by Serbia on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and this wasn’t the first time that it happened. It began first in 1878 from the Nis region to Kushumli, Vraja, Pazar, etc. The second dislocation was in 1912, during the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and then the fourth was after WWII, leading to the fifth and last one that included a massive war” said the ambassador in an emotional recollection of these events.
“The Albanians of Kosovo are particularly thankful to all those that gave their support during those difficult days”, said ambassador Hasani, adding that so far no one has been held responsible for the dislocations, attacks, and murder of the innocent civilians in 1999.
The ambassador said that the war of Kosovo’s National Liberation Army cannot be compared to the violence and atrocious crimes committed by Serb paramilitary forces as the former was “a battle for liberty”.
“Serbia is defending them to this day, it hasn’t put them in front of the justice for the crimes they have committed […] Saranda Bogujevci, deputy speaker of the Assembly was only a child when she sustained dozens of wounds, she was called to witness in Belgrade, but the perpetrators weren’t convicted”, added the Ambassador of Kosovo.
During the interview with anchor Loneta Progni, Ambassador Hasani said that the national unification thesis was the genesis of the war in Kosovo, but that the political circumstances that ensued led to the establishment of a separate state, but despite that, this did not impede the two states from settling close ties.
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