I thought that the civilian population should withdraw from the village, more precisely, I thought that the young people, who could be the target of  Serbian forces, should be the first to leave. ..I went to the population in the valley where about 700 people were gathered…I appealed for young people to come with me, leave; some of those who were present but unfortunately are no longer among the living, said, ‘But we are civilians, unarmed, we are with women, with children, with pregnant women, with young brides, with babies,  why would we be a target of Serbian forces, when we do not pose any risk to anyone?’ I answered, ‘Because you need to understand the fact that Serbs have traditionally attacked the civilian population, Serbs have traditionally attacked unarmed and defenseless people, so I think it is better if we leave.’  …After a couple of weeks, we heard the first news …through a small transistor radio… that over 100 Albanians had been killed in Krusha e Vogël.

There was constant pressure because, from time to time, for example, they would come to the schoolyard and ask, ‘What curriculum are you using? Who is the principal here?’ It was a form of patriotism, in a way, to say, ‘The principal isn’t here. We’re in class.’ But schools with only Albanian students had it a little easier than the schools in the city, where both communities were in the same building.

 

[…] When the schools were closed, the teachers started organizing classes in homes. Lower-grade teachers would take the students into their own homes, while teachers of higher grades, from sixth to ninth, as well as high schools, started organizing in home-schools, which was very difficult. This situation lasted for about six or seven months.

I was four years old when my mother passed away. And this is… I’ve written a book Rrënjët e familjes (The Roots of the Family), where my grandfather is the main character. I suspect that a Serbian activist killed my mother. My mother was killed. I only remember the blood {touches her stomach}, a pillow, because they would remove us from the room. My father quickly rode a horse to the city and brought a doctor. […] I suspect she was killed, they threw a bomb into the chimney, at the fireplace where they used to cook. […] And when they came to take our wheat and corn, this Serbian woman entered the granary, and they took the wheat, but also the granary and the corn. And my mother grabbed an axe and, standing at the granary door with the axe, said, ‘As long as I’m alive, you’ll never leave here alive, because you’ve already taken the flour and the wheat, and now you want the corn too, leaving my children without bread.’ She [the Serbian woman] got very scared and told my father, ‘Take your wife away from here, I give you my word that I won’t take a single grain of corn.’ And my father somehow signaled my mother, as he later told me, and said, ‘Go, go to the house because the children are crying, or the bread might be burning.’ As soon as she left, the Serbian woman came out and ran away. However, she knew the entire layout of our house. And I believe that… because in ‘50 my mother was killed. She [the Serbian woman] threw a bomb, as my mother and the stepmother were there. The stepmother was slightly injured, but my mother was severely injured and died because of it.

That shaping of ours, and especially since I might have been the kind of guy we call bold, more advanced, or however you want to put it. […] The idea came to me to establish the Association of Albanian Students in Belgrade.

 

This wasn’t simply a cultural-literary association. It was, in a legal sense, an organization through which we would then carry out our underground activities. But we needed this legal aspect of the organization as a shield, not the underground one. You might say that I thought it through well. At first, I discussed it with the most loyal and devoted friends. They agreed. They accepted the idea of establishing it. A meeting was held, it was during a literary session. I stood up and presented the concept, the idea, and the proposal to create the association. It was approved by everyone.

 

To avoid it seeming like we were just a group, we formalized it on paper and had everyone sign their agreement for the establishment of the association. Additionally, Setki Imami was there, an experienced worker in Belgrade. I’m not sure if Anton Çetta was there, I don’t quite remember. Dančetović, who was the head of the department, did not sign it.

During that period, it was more difficult to go… also due to the nature of the play. It wasn’t like we staged it in a cultural hall because it was a performance that, in a way, was unacceptable to the regime of that time. However, we performed it in, let’s say, halls, in schools that were improvised. In the physical education hall, if there was one. They were somewhat larger halls, if I can say so, or, for instance, when we were invited to villages, all over Kosovo, not just in Drenas.

 

It happened that we performed even on tractor trailers that had been set up and improvised in schoolyards for their performances, and we used them. Or in school corridors, where they were longer, desks were set up, and on top of the desks, so to speak, the play was performed by us, the actors, while the audience sat on seats, chairs, desks, or even stood. Children, teachers, and often even villagers from the surrounding houses would come to see a performance in Albanian.

At that plateau, Osman [Dumoshi] started but couldn’t continue, so Skender Kastrati took over. Then the police began attacking us, along with firefighters, using batons. They hit one of our friends so badly that he was disoriented, wandering back and forth because they had struck his head. Then they took him somewhere, as he no longer knew where he was. At that point, the demonstration began to escalate, becoming more intense. Shop windows started getting smashed. They even took the firefighters’ water hose because they were trying to disperse us with water. They managed to take that away from them, and we continued up to the Faculty of Philosophy.

 

Mark Krasniqi and a few others came out, trying to calm the situation. There were demands, we had demands, ‘Come on, let’s talk.’ […] At that time, one of the figures was the chairman of the Prishtina Committee, Rrahmon Bakalli. It seems he said, ‘Let’s call those students, let’s talk to them, see what they want, where they’re headed.’ We didn’t want to negotiate. We knew that was just a ploy to calm things down.

 

We went back, and the friends were cheering, saying that some had been arrested. […] Later, it ended, and the arrests started. By morning, they had arrested Osman Dumoshi. Then the others followed. I was the last one to be arrested, nearly a month after the demonstrations, on December 25th.

Afrim Loxha and I took two revolvers from Sabri Novosella. Uncle Metush decisively told both me and Afrim, ‘Don’t shoot at the army or the police because they’ll kill you. But be careful from the sides so they don’t kill you.’ He was one of the greatest visionaries I’ve ever known, Metush Krasniqi.

 

[…] Now these nine people were imprisoned. I was friends with all of them. I was talking about what to do, to carry out an action, damn it. I thought, I’ll throw a bomb at the District Court one night before these guys go to trial. In Hogosht, I got a bomb that I still have today, I mentioned this at the symposium for the 50th anniversary of the ‘68 demonstrations.

 

But Uncle Metush decisively told me, ‘No,’ he said, ‘because then they’ll be sentenced twice as harshly as terrorists.’ I had prepared the whole area behind the court since I used to pass by there day and night, I knew the alleys where to enter, and I was 28 years old, playing in the Second Central League of former Yugoslavia in football, meaning I was in good condition. I had calculated where to hide everything.