Pristina, 18 September 2008
Lladrovci family,
Krasniqi family,
Families of the fallen,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Mr Adem Demaçi, symbol of the independence of Kosovo
On 22 September it will be ten years since the heroic death of Major General Xheva Krasniqi and General Lieutenant-colonel Fehmi Lladrovci.
Their names are bywords for life and sacrifice for the freedom of your homeland.
We mark this anniversary of their death, the tenth anniversary, for the first time in the independent, sovereign and democratic state of Kosovo which they worked for and sacrificed themselves for.
Some people are special, because they don’t contribute to an individual life, but to the life of all, comprehensively and entirely in the realisation of their high ideals.
And so from birth they are general.
Fehmi and Xheva are names full of meaning, of the names of a couple, a fated connection, a connection of an individual’s fate with the fate of their homeland and their nation.
They were always thinkers together, workers together, fighters together, crowning their life by dying together heroically in the thick of war.
With every year, every decade that passes, and hundreds of years from now, the true extent and glory of the war of liberation will be understood more deeply and more clearly.
With the passing of the years, the bronze of eternity is ever more noble to them, and pride grows in future generations.
Xheva Krasniqi and Fehmi Lladrovci lived the destiny of Kosovo.
Xheva, the professor and activist, brought together two important dimensions within the arc of her life: loyalty, the mythical expectation of her husband, and the historic example of Shota Galica – of the fighting wife.
The life of Fehmi Lladrovci brought together three key elements of life in his homeland, in Kosovo. Prison. Emigration. War.
In all periods of his life, Fehmi Lladrovci showed his iron commitment to the path of freedom.
He placed commitment to Kosovo above all personal things.
Youth and maturity.
Whether in Kosovo or abroad he made connections and friends.
Fehmi was in illegal organizations, in the military, on hunger strike, in the creation of the KLA and in its command structures.
He was in the places where battles were developed, at the cultivation of humane and political ethics, wherever he was needed in the field, shoulder to shoulder with the soldier, with the citizen.
Fehmi Lladrovci was one of the soldiers of the legendary Commander, Adem Jashari, commander of the soldiers of 114 Brigade, to which he gave power, reputation and honour.
Fehmi Lladrovci is one of the great commanders who fell after Commander Adem Jashari, increasing the praise for the war of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Fehmi Lladrovci and Xheva Krasniqi died on 22 September 2008.
That week the entire KLA Brigade were confronted with offensives. The morale and determination of our soldiers, the stamina and resistance of our people in the cause of the freedom of their homeland was stronger than any brutality of the Serbian military and police machinery.
The death of Fehmi and Xheva was a great loss.
It was a death which, through pain, was transformed into force, determination, inspiration.
The Kosovo Liberation Army was to continue its political-military battle, even more determined, even more tempered.
And other commanders were to die on the altar of freedom. Many soldiers were to die, many citizens, before the twentieth century was brought to a close.
If others around us lived their dreams of forming a state one or two centuries before, the twentieth century was the century of division, disintegration, and the servitude of Albanians.
Thanks to the war and the political vision of the KLA and civil resistance, Kosovo changed its historical course.
The dreams and the sacrifices opened up a view of the century of freedom.
The twenty-first century is the century of Albanians.
The century of Independent, Free, Sovereign and Democratic Kosovo.
The century of the integration of Albanians in euro-atlantic institutions.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Those of us who had the good fortune to know Fehmi and Xheva Lladrovci, we who survived and triumphed, when we developed the diplomatic battles for the creation of the state of Kosovo, we had it easy, being faced with Belgrade’s politics.
Fehmi Lladrovci and other well-known soldiers were a model for winning the moral and ideological battle, the military and political battle against our occupiers.
This approach accompanied our every step, our every decision.
So, we are proud that together with our international friends we have brought to a close a process to which an entire generation, with all their members, contributed.
You, the honoured Krasniqi and Lladrovci families, are part of what we are proud of in Kosovo’s freedom.
Praise to Fehmi and Xheva Lladrovci!
Praise to the fallen!
Last modified: July 31, 2022