Kurti and Haxhiu pay tribute at Prekaz, honouring the sacrifice of the Jashari family
On the occasion of Kosovo Liberation Day, acting President Albulena Haxhiu and acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti paid their respects at the Memorial Complex in Prekaz.
Haxhiu said that there can be no 12 June without the March of 1998, and no 12 June without the resistance of legendary commander Adem Jashari, Hamza, Shaban, and the more than 50 members of the Jashari family who fell in battle and never surrendered.
"Today, on 12 June, on Liberation Day, we are in Prekaz — the place where it all began. There is no 12 June without March 1998. There is no 12 June without the resistance of Commander Adem Jashari, Hamza, Shaban, and the more than 50 members of the Jashari family who fell and never surrendered. They did not defend only their doorstep — they defended the land of our ancestors, which was, is, and will always be Albanian. They defended the idea that our people can never be defeated. Their sacrifice became the foundation upon which the Kosovo Liberation Army and our free Republic were built. That is why every joy of this celebration begins right here, beside these graves. The freedom we enjoy today is their legacy — a charge to us, as institutions and as a society, to love our Kosovo and to honour it always through actions that strengthen it every day. Glory to Commander Adem Jashari, glory to the Jashari family, and to all the martyrs of the nation," said Haxhiu.
Acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti said that once again this year, on 12 June, they were in Prekaz as heads of institutions — a place he described as the capital of the contemporary uprising of the Albanian people and the site of the Kosovo Liberation Army's epic stand.
Kurti said that by returning to Prekaz and commemorating the sacrifice of the Jasharis, they best honour their fidelity to liberation and emancipation, independence and unity, development and progress.
"As every year, on 12 June we come here as heads of institutions to Prekaz — this capital of the contemporary uprising of the Albanian people, which also marks the site of the KLA's epic stand, for it was on 5, 6 and 7 March 1998 that three generations of Jasharis stood firm, fought and sacrificed themselves for the freedom of our people, for unity, for statehood and for independence. The epic battle of the Jasharis — of uncle Shaban with his two sons, Hamza and Adem, with their wives Zahide and Zarife, Feride and Adile, and all the others who did not yield for a single moment — lies today at the very heart of our people's history, and not only as Kosovo and as a democratic Republic, but simultaneously as the Albanian nation in the sense of Albanians wherever they may be, and in the sense of a span that reaches beyond the present, from the ancient past into the future, where, as the Albanian national anthem declares, 'we shall live on'. Therefore, by returning here time and again, by remembering and commemorating the sacrifice of the Jasharis, we best remain faithful to liberation and emancipation, to independence and unity, to development and progress. Glory to the Jasharis and to all the martyrs of the nation. Happy Kosovo Liberation Day," said Kurti.
