Prishtina, 26 October 2026
Honourable Speaker of the Assembly of the Republic, Ms Albulena Haxhiu,
Honourable Members of the Assembly,
Honourable Deputy Prime Ministers and Ministers,
Dear citizens,
One of our fellow citizens sought, but did not receive the protection she needed to stay alive. Arlinda Zekaj was murdered yesterday. The brutal murder of Arlinda Sylaj Zekaj is deeply shocking to us all. Three days before she was killed, Arlinda had approached the Prosecution, warning of the danger to her life. These circumstances require a full and immediate investigation, while the perpetrator remains at large. In other words, he has not yet been arrested. The Prosecution and the responsible institutions must clarify how her reports were handled, why the warning about the danger to her life was not followed by concrete protective measures, and whether there was negligence or inaction on the part of the responsible officials. Every violation must be brought to light, and every responsibility must be addressed in accordance with the law.
I extend my most sincere condolences to her family. Her murder compels us to demand accountability at every level of the institutional chain and to examine our own social conscience. What are we protecting when, in the name of family, we demand a woman’s silence; when, in the name of honour, we judge her choices; when we regard her endurance in the face of violence as a virtue, while treating her resistance as a fault? A society cannot call something a value if it is preserved by violating a person’s dignity and life. I strongly condemn this crime. For Arlinda, I demand justice and that every responsibility be brought to light; of all of us, I ask for a willingness to challenge the mindset that still measures a woman’s worth by her submission.
To challenge this mindset, we must be clear about what makes a value worthy of protection: respect for human dignity. Family, tradition and social order lose their moral legitimacy when they are used to demand that a person endure humiliation. No woman can be expected to preserve them at the cost of giving up herself. Her dignity does not depend on obedience, patience or a willingness to sacrifice; it belongs to every human being.
To love ourselves as free people means to want others to be free as well. This requires us to recognize freedom even when we cannot control its outcome. A man who considers the right to make decisions natural for himself, but treats it as permission that he may grant or withdraw from a woman, has placed himself above her. This is precisely the inequality we must challenge: the claim that one person can determine the lives of two.
A woman’s existence cannot be reduced to the roles she fulfils for others. She has her own thoughts, ambitions and right to a life in which she can know and realize herself. Being a wife, mother or daughter does not diminish this right, nor does it give anyone else authority over her body, conscience or future. Being close to her creates responsibilities towards her; it does not create power over her.
The acceptance of this equality is put to the test when a woman disagrees, seeks change, refuses or decides to leave. If she is recognized as free only for as long as she chooses what we expect of her, or what someone other than her expects, then we have granted her only the space to obey. Neither disappointment, jealousy nor a feeling of rejection makes an attempt to force her to stay legitimate. No one can demand that a relationship continue by denying the other person the right to leave it.
Violence imposes precisely this obligation: that a woman organizes her life around the fear of her abuser. Control over money, work, movement and family ties can gradually restrict her ability to act. When any objection may be followed by a threat, silence itself becomes a means of self-protection. An institution that fails to understand this, risks interpreting as consent what may, in fact, be an attempt to survive.
The killing of women is a consequence of the patriarchal mindset, which, unfortunately, is also present within institutions, where it fosters negligence and inaction in the face of violence against women. This is why, when we investigate, we must also investigate the investigators; when we demand action from prosecutors, we may also need to bring charges against them; and when dealing with judges, we must also consider who will hold them to account.
Eight women have been killed this year. We need a public debate on how society and the state treat women who seek divorce, independence, and their rights to property and inheritance. In my firm conviction, this is the core issue. We have a difficult relationship with divorce and gender equality when it comes to inheritance and property ownership. We must discuss how women’s legitimate demands for their rights become a source of conflict, how control over their lives and decisions becomes normalized, and how, instead of being supported, women are often left to face violence alone, while the institutions responsible for protecting them fail to do so.
Therefore, the question of why a woman did not leave cannot be asked without considering what leaving would have cost her and what protection would have been available to her. Staying, returning or hesitating to report abuse does not make her responsible for the violence. These circumstances oblige us to better understand the danger and the obstacles she faces. Responsibility for the violence lies with the person who perpetrates it; responsibility for protection must be fulfilled by the institutions that have undertaken to provide it.
This is where freedom becomes a concrete matter of governance. It is not enough to tell a woman that she has the right to leave if doing so leaves her without shelter or income and still exposed to threats. Recognizing a right obliges us to create the conditions necessary for that right to be exercised. Otherwise, we are asking a woman to do alone what the state, with all its capacities, has failed to make possible for her. This is why women’s employment, access to property and economic support are directly relevant to their safety and independence. Having her own income can give a woman the ability to refuse a dependency that leaves her exposed to violence. The policies we have introduced have been strengthened with this objective in mind: to ensure that women have real opportunities to make their own decisions and that the need to survive does not force them to remain with the person who endangers them.
Honourable Members of the Assembly,
The power to adjudicate and prosecute is an extraordinary public responsibility. Society entrusts this authority to people from whom it expects professional competence, moral conscience and a sense of honour rooted in serving others. Independence protects them from pressure and interference, but the exercise of that independence remains subject to the law and accountability. No one may interpret independence as a right to avoid accountability while citizens are left to bear the consequences of negligence. Public authority requires humility before human dignity and the courage to fulfil one’s duty, even when doing so brings difficulty, threats or personal risk. No one has been given a seat of power so that they may receive an abused woman by asking her: “What have you done to your husband, madam?” Such a question uses the authority of the state to place the abuser’s blame on the victim and deepen the subjugation she is trying to escape.
The state has entrusted judges and prosecutors with part of its own authority to deliver justice. We must understand the weight of this trust. In the exercise of their duties, their decisions can determine whether a person is protected from violence or remains exposed to it. Such responsibility demands professional dedication, moral conscience and the integrity to face the consequences of one’s actions. The authority, status and remuneration that accompany these positions have meaning only when they serve this duty. Appointment to the judiciary does not place you above the citizen; it entrusts you with the responsibility to listen, to protect when protection is needed, to establish the facts and to deliver decisions that, above all, safeguard fundamental human rights and freedoms.
I have heard the words “judicial independence” so many times, particularly when I have criticized or commented on matters relating to the justice system. Being independent of external influence does not mean being independent of responsibility, professionalism, integrity and the wisdom that anyone exercising authority within the justice system must possess. In cases such as this, when a victim seeks protection and you fail to give her complaint the full weight required by your responsibilities to your position, the state and yourself, you have undoubtedly failed. That is when you demonstrate how independent you are and how you choose to act when your position is put to the test. In the justice system, you have not acquired the right to act as a sovereign over the citizen. You have been entrusted with the duty to serve the law that protects them. The measure of your worthiness for the office you hold is the seriousness with which you treat the life, safety and dignity of every person who comes before you.
Therefore, honourable Members of the Assembly, I, too, join this initiative and propose two concrete measures.
We should task the Ministry of Internal Affairs with organising, through the competent police structures, an urgent review of active high-risk cases within 72 hours. For each case, the security measures must be documented, along with the official responsible for monitoring them and the coordination with the relevant central and local institutions, including police enforcement of protection orders and responses to alerts from electronic monitoring systems.
Furthermore, within 72 hours, the Ministry of Justice should submit a detailed report clarifying the response—or lack of response—at every stage of the institutional chain in this case.
Dear citizens,
The idea that our freedom obliges us to respect the freedom of others carries particular weight in our society. We know what it means to demand that our lives not be subjected to someone else’s arbitrary will. We must apply this conviction with the same seriousness within our families, in society and in our institutions.
For Arlinda, we have a duty to deliver justice. For women who are living under threat today, we have a duty to ensure timely protection. For each of them, we have a responsibility to ensure that the dignity recognized by law is experienced as safety and freedom in everyday life. Only in this way can we treat freedom as a right that unites us and that each of us is obliged to respect.
Thank you!