UNMIK ON AIR

INTERVIEW WITH ADEM DEMACI

By Zoran CULAFIC

Hello and welcome ... this UNMIK ON AIR weekly interview, I’m ....

Our today’s guest is well know figure in Kosovo and all the region. It is enough to say – the Balkans’ Mandela ... or Adem Demaci.

The whole his life Adem Demaci was fighting against communism, and therefore he spent 28 years in jail as political prisoner – one of the longest prison political sentences so far in former Yugoslavia. Although many citizens never had a Communist Party membership card, Demaci beleives that even today huge majority of people in the region are influenced by that ideology, the fact which is slowing down the democratic processes in Kosovo too.

CUT - DEMACI – It is not so easy to get rid from all of that ... it is gloated on human’s mind when you spend too much time surrounded with all these offices Unfortunately, today we have remains of this mentality; despite the fact that we have a multiparty system now, a democracy, a free thinking environment ... However, some people from that generation still occupy certain positions and they cannot change their minds so easily.

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Introducing democracy is not an easy task, Demaci said, because one has to listen to the others, to understand others, to understand that there are not only your interests but rather interests of the others too. UNMIK ON AIR ask Demaci - is there a real democracy in Kosovo today?

CUT AD – Kosovo is not a democratic now... Kosovo is heading towards a democracy, Kosovo loves democracy, and would like to join all the democratic countries in Europe ... but they request from us some preconditions, some standards, and these standards are very closely linked to the fact that we lack a democracy here ... we lack the competences, we lack the state ... When you don’t have a state you don’t have safety, no opportunity to get foreign loans, therefore you cannot develop your economy, and that’s why today we have the situation that Kosovo is producing only some three percent of goods, while importing more than 97% of all goods.

Q – all your life you were defending human rights ... however, some political circles, particularly from Belgrade, claim that you were not loudly speaking and defending human rights of minority groups in Kosovo.

CUT AD – Probably you do not have some information. We have established in 2001 a Committee for tolerance and living together. And that Committee was active up to last year. We visited enclaves, I was a head of RTK Board and I succeeded that every Wednesday minorities have a 45 minute program in their language. they could come in front TV cameras and say whatever they want, what they need, what they lack .. we visited communities in MItrovica, Suva Relka, Prizren and Pec and Djakovica etc ... helped some returnees to come back to a village near Pec and Novake village near Prizren

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CUT AD - We tried to change the approach to these people. We wanted them to understand that we do not want to make same mistakes that were done by the others, who lost historically because of such mistakes. We wanted to show that we want to do it on our own initiative, not to wait for someone to get on our shoulders to force us to recognize minority rights ... and most important, and I was often saying it publicly, there could not be a freedom only for Albanians. The freedom would be for all; otherwise all of us would again face the hell. Because, unsatisfied Serbs could make problems to us, satisfied Serbs could be our friends. And by that we would extend our own freedom, by recognizing and accepting the rights of the others, not giving them rights, but recognizing it as their right.that every man has from the day of birth ...

Adem Demaci believes that the actual struggle for power between political parties in Kosovo, makes some obstacles in establishing the atmosphere in which all citizens that lived in Kosovo for centuries could try to forget the past, and as he said, to change the way of behaving, to find a real language between the communities, particularly between Serbs and Albanians.

CUT AD - The standards are excellent and everyone would like them to be implemented but, there are no real conditions for the standards to be implemented so fast. Why ... because always there is anxiety, fear, mistrust ... what they (Serbs) want with these reforms of local self government, what is in the background ... what Serbs want, do they want to create their own enclaves, some ethnically clean territories ... to chop Kosovo ... etc ... that are the fears ... and you cannot get it out of people’s mind. You can say whatever you want, but still this remains as a difficulty

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CUT AD-If Albanians have a feeling that there is no any fear that someone is going to deny their independence, and if we create a climate here that Serbs could feel totally as living in their own country, which is actually the fact, all the Serbs and all the other minorities lived here for centuries and this is their homeland, as well as it is a homeland of Albanians ... but Serbs should cooperate with Albanians, and not to wait for orders from Belgrade.

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CUT AD – In the moment when Serbia realize that they need a friendship with Albanians, rather then trying to keep Albanians by all means under their authority, at that moment when they accept Albanians as equal partners, and accept freedom and independence of Kosovo, at that moment all roads would open for us to have very soon, very soon, our nations back to normal relationship. Surely, the past cannot be forgotten easily, but normal conditions make normal people.

With this we end today’s program on UNMIK ON AIR. Our guest was Adem Demaci, prominent Pristina human rights activist. Thanks for listening us and stay tuned.