UNMIK ON AIR
JEHONA GJURGIELA –
INTERVIEW
By Zoran CULAFIC
Hello
and welcome to our UNMIK ON AIR program.
Today
we present to you an interview with Jehona GJURGIELA, a 26-year-old Kosovo
Albanian girl who graduated with political sciences and received a masters
degree from the University of London, in the United Kingdom.
Jehona
is fully aware of the advantage of getting an academic degree from London
University, but she believes that students in Kosovo too, despite many critics
of the local university, have good chances to get a solid education.
Music
in and under ...
CUT - Jehona – Of
course, I don’t think it’s easy to manage to study outside and it’s not easy to
graduate from these universities outside, but in the same time I do think that
it demands hard studying here to graduate from Pristina University. I can say
that receiving a diploma here is also a huge success and I would not dare to
say that only graduating outside is a success.
Q
– You have lived for a long time outside of Kosovo, you have experienced the
way people live in London what is that
you miss here in Pristina the most ?
Q
– From that perspective, how do you see all this political relations here how you see the cliché of Serbs, Albanians
and other minorities
JG – Well ... I think
that talking about interethnic relations many things are not sincere, not
frank. In Kosovo, as I see it, Serbs and Albanians very rarely say to each
other what they really feel, because they are afraid how that could be
perceived by the other person.
Music
in and under .....
JG – I’m pretty sure
today that extreme groups on both sides are absolute minority, those who would
like to see more conflicts, but it seems to me that people here are afraid that
maybe such person could be somewhere around to hear if they say, for example,
that not all the Serbs committed this or that, or to say that we the Albanians
are not totally innocent and such a
things ...
Q
– You mentioned insincerity, do you think that people here, Serbs and Albanian
particularly, do know each other well ... or are the stereotypes so dominant
among them?
JG – I see that younger
generations are not obsessed by the issue of Serbs and Albanians, which is good
from one side there are some people,
some are Serbs, some Albanians, some have curled hair, some blue eyes and many
young people do not care about this.
Music
in and under ...
JG – I think that slowly
we are coming to the point that we are less and less afraid that Belgrade and
Milosevic will come back to Kosovo and return us in 90’s, and as this fear
decreases, the fear from Serbs in Kosovo decreases too. At least, that’s my
impression.
Q
– How do you picture Pristina and Kosovo in five or ten years? What
would you like to see here, what way of life?
JG – I can explain it
through the feeling that I’ve had very often walking down the London streets –
you have a real feeling of the freedom, of safety, not only in the basic
physical meaning, you can be whoever you are, you can do whatever you want and
none cares, as long as you are not endangering freedom of the others.
Music
in and under ...
JG – That’s the feeling
I hope to have here ... to live in an
environment where the issue of who you are and what you origins are, is not
going to be anymore on everyday public agenda. And all of us are not going to
discuss only that topic, rather we are going to discuss about the recent
theater piece, about the opening of a new “Olympic” pool ... and such different
constructive and funny issues that make your life richer, that’s particularly
important for the young people here.
Q
– At the end, can you imagine that an Albanian girl falls in love with a Serb
guy and they would not be forced to hide that relation here in Kosovo, to be a
normal relation?