Pristina, March 5, 2025
Honored Deputy Prime Ministers, Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
Dear citizens,
Honored employees of the Prime Minister’s Office and the media,
Today, 27 years separate us from the most glorious event, of which we find the most complete definition and will learn its most accurate dimension through the years of our achievements as a society and as a state, as people and as a nation. We have called those three days of March the Epic of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The event that is summarized under the word Epic, just like the name given to it, has set the rhythm of our contemporary history for more than a quarter of a century. This means that it has determined the rhythm of our political thought, action and beyond. The names Shaban, Adem and Hamza have become our absolutes. The women of the Jashari family have become the symbol of the relationship between the woman of the indigenous people and the nurturing of the feeling of patriotism. The children of the Jashari family are now the greatest symbol of the historical mass of sacrifice of our people. On that meadow of Prekaz, the names Jashari and others who rest with them are the absolute names of freedom. And on that date when the great Adem was born, on the most historic date of Albanians, November 28, the Kosovo Liberation Army is also publicly declared.
It is up to us, as a people and as a society, in governance and development, to maintain that rhythm of history-making. Our time distance from these exemplary days filled the time of maturation of a generation. Today’s 27-year-olds were born in the year of the Epic.
What do we mean when we say that the epic has determined a rhythm for us? What is this rhythm? We find it in the words of Baca Rifat on the 25th anniversary of the Epic, in front of the troops of our army, when he said “Above war and blood, let us find a common language”. In the Assembly, Baca Rifat articulated it even further, I quote again: “to be of one language… to separate once and for all from Serbia and then we have time to deal with everything else”. So, Baca Rifat reminded us once again of the rhythm of complete freedom. I believe that in our governing mandate, honorable colleagues, we have had the highest determination in developing this line, in maintaining this rhythm. State as sovereignty, for the freedom of the people, in a territory with integrity.
The Epic of the Kosovo Liberation Army has only one address: freedom from the Serbian occupier and only one horizon; our unification. And since it has an address and a horizon, therefore a sign and a vision, the great event of March 1998 is the perfect event. A perfect event that does not allow any hesitation for anyone. It is the event that completely defines our field of action. We cannot be one ourselves if we do not adhere to this determination. Since that day, every policy of ours has been determined in principle. Well, the name Epic for such an event is not only the name for those three days, but for the entire freedom-loving and state-forming time that remains faithful to the liberation declaration announced on March 5, 6 and 7, 1998.
Every nation has its holy places that become historical dates. If a people and its government follow the path determined according to these holy places, then their state history is in accordance and coherence with national history.
Prekaz as a monument of the will for freedom, constitutes one of our most important achievements. This monument presents the foundation stone of the liberation of our country and the world example of sacrifice for freedom. With full responsibility, we have worked to ensure that the project of preserving and presenting the memory of the Jashari family and historical Prekaz in the Memorial Complex is carried out with professionalism, and a high scientific and artistic level. The Master Plan project for the Adem Jashari Memorial Complex in Prekaz is currently being drafted by a team of international experts with many decades of experience and we as the Government will spare no effort to build an internationally important memorial complex, which will transform the memory of the heroic deed of the Jashari family into eternity.
Dear colleagues,
Any compromise with the epic and its definition is a compromise and a bargain with being, with our freedom, which brings less freedom, therefore brings slavery. The liberation of a people and its state sovereignty constitute the freedom that is gained and the freedom that is defended. Sovereignty is an emancipation. Every concession on the border or in the north was only a corruption of sovereignty in the past. We have declared our commitments, both for the past mandate and for the future one, to fight corruption and organized crime. The greatest organization of crime has its source in countries where a compromise has been made with the freedom of determination of a state, with its sovereignty. Therefore, today I am proud as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo to declare that we are on the path determined by the Epic, and that we have walked for four years of governance at its pace and in the perspective opened by it.
I must also say one more point regarding the meaning of the Epic. The event is so great that its power gave rise to a bright war with the greatest Alliance in human history, NATO, in the most democratic time of this Alliance, a freedom waited for a century by the people of suffering and persecution up to genocide, a belief that we can orient the fate of Albanians in the region and in the world.
This event brought about the highest and most complete Albanian activism, including the Republic of Albania and hundreds of thousands of Albanians living outside it and in the Balkans, but also outside the Balkans and all over the world. The more we develop, the more we will understand the Epic of March 1998. The names of freedom are infinite because of their act, which is infinite. Therefore, we also consider them absolute.
The declaration of the public character of the Albanians in the three days of March is so great that it no longer allows, and at no moment, compromises with the future history of the Albanians. First, no policy and no government can amnesty the criminal history of the former Yugoslavia and Serbia in Kosovo and over the Albanians in general. Second, no policy and no government can compromise with their future history. Because we, as thought and as action, are surrounded in our activity, on the one hand by the rhythm that was determined for our political history on the dates of 5, 6 and 7 March 1998, and on the other hand by the ideal projected thanks to the great sacrifice of Prekaz for our future. It marks the growth of our powers because it places the entire long-term action under the history that the Epic carries according to the definition of this word: a long poem that puts in one flow the most prominent events and figures of a nation. So, the name Epic was correct, because it is the name that the resistance of the Jasharis has imposed on itself and has entrusted to us.
Only in this way does the great event remain a matter that opens up to our boundless political understanding in the future. Every narrowing of our politics to regions and provinces is an attempt to corrupt this Epic. Every appropriation of the Epic and the war is a corruption of the ideal of the Epic. The Epic must be the moment, in the true sense of the power of a vector to determine further history, that is, the moment of sublimation of the sacrifice and suffering into the pride of an entire people from all regions. The Epic of March is so high that, through the bodies that today rest in Prekaz, it defined an entire people. Not even Kosovo has the right to appropriate the heroism of Prekaz alone. Prekaz belongs to all Albanians who bear this name, but also to all freedom-loving peoples, of all humanity and throughout history.
Thank you!
Last modified: March 6, 2025