Part Three
Gani Osmani: When we came after the strike, they took them to prison, they started to call for division. I remember as if it was today {points left} the doors were closed. For example, Gani Osmani can’t work, this other person can work. And during the strike we always said, “One of all…” There was also that request, “One for all, all for one.” And we said, “Either all of us will work, or none of us.” We all stopped working. So, even those who could continue working didn’t, they boycotted work. They called a small number to work.
Then there was formed a… after we were fired, a syndicate was formed, an independent syndicate was formed where the workers could go to, because back then, the directors, some of them were imprisoned, some went abroad, most left, because they were fleeing from the police, from… and some on the workers were at no one’s mercy, unemployed, no salaries, families needed food, you couldn’t find a job in private firms. And the independent syndicate was formed, Xhafer Peci, Xhafer Nuli was the head of the syndicate, with a group of engineers and technicians. And the syndicate started working, aids were sent from all over Kosova and from abroad.
Anita Susuri: Before we continue, I wanna ask you something about the strike. When you got out of the strike, you were there for eight days, what was it like when you went outside, can you tell us about that experience and when you went to your family…
Gani Osmani: Look, I, I remember when we left the strike… because when you get into that cage of people, when the last one goes in, at the door, comes first. I know I went in last, and I can guarantee there were around a hundred or two hundred cameras. There was interest… the opinion was interesting because it was huge. But I know the moment I went out, they covered my eyes because doctors said, “They’ve stayed in the dark too long, they could get blinded by the light.” The moment we got out, they covered our eyes and held us because there was also the change of the air. There were doctors who asked, “Do you want to go to the hospital or home?” If you were sick, many didn’t go home. There was an improvised hospital, so they went there.
But I know that I saw around ten or fifteen ambulances there. And I said, “I want to go home.” They took us home, I went home. Now, when I went home, I was welcomed more (smiles)… Some stayed here, some went home. They didn’t let us come to work anymore, or… The next day, to tell you the truth, the next morning I came here, to Trepça, but they didn’t let me in, because we wanted to see them… and after, now after a day or two, the police got in… because a neighbor of ours was there in the hospital and special units got in, took them out. They said, “Go home.” And they removed everything, the beds, the supplies, cleaned everything out.
They didn’t let them stay there even for two days and the police got rid of the traces so no one wouldn’t see anything. So, it ended like that, then unemployment. I told you since the strike ended until the war ended… my village Dedi is here {points left} we went there and we didn’t dare get on the bus. They got people on buses, we were all convicted. Never, I had to walk because the police checkpoint was here at Tuneli i Pare or at the graveyard in the entrance of the city. So in some more important places, they went onto the bus with the register. If they saw your name, they would take you and not ask any questions because you were convicted. So, every one of us was sentenced to 60 days in prison and arrested, in some way, arrested like…
Anita Susuri: Each person who was in the strike was sentenced to 60 days?
Gani Osmani: Every one of us. I know our friends who went to prison after four, five years. They didn’t get me, I didn’t go to jail. When I had to go to my village I went by car or something up to the river, I went behind the buildings, I went through Tuneli so they wouldn’t get me. So, evey striker had 60 days. Now, they interrogated them, they might have gone there for 60 days, and stayed two or three years. But all of us were convicted for 60 days.
Unemployment was huge, we didn’t have… we have to thank the diaspora because they helped us a lot, I had a brother and he… I told you, he worked in the factory of equipment processing in Trepça, he left, because someone had to go, someone had to stay here with the parents, with… he went, and I am thankful to him, he helped us as much as he could. In the beginning, they didn’t work, we have to be thankful to the people of Kosova, Dukagjini also helped us a lot at that time, I’m thankful.
When the syndicate opened, I was monitoring the syndicate in Shipol. I had the list of mines, around 107 or 108 miners lived in Shipol. I had their names and the aid that came to Kosova, which came from miners of Trepça, each neighborhood has its number. For example, I had a hundred miners, some had, for example Shutkovci or smaller villages, 50, as many miners that you had, that’s how much aid you got, you had to distribute them without falling into the hands of the enemy.
Nënë Tereza was in Shipol, I was in the headship of Nënë Tereza, I was a supervisor. So, they collaborated, the syndicate and Nënë Tereza collaborated. We left the aid that we distributed to the miners in a warehouse. So, I had the list, sometimes they even gave money, a big sum, and out of a hundred miners, ten were in worse conditions, they gave each of them one hundred marks. Yes, work clothes, food, the “Family helps family” campaign, every person who came with “Family helps family” came to me, and then I went to the person who accepted the aid.
There was, I had contact with people… after the war, there was a person who took care of 20 miners. He is from Deçan, he took care of 20 miners, he gave 2,000 marks each month at that time. The most dangerous part was bringing the money here, the one who gave the money, he was abroad, he is the richest Albanian, he was in America… he had a friend here who arranged these, “You will go there, you will distribute them.” So, every month he gave two thousand marks. Maybe it’s good to mention his name, Muharrem Gecaj, we have pictures with him, I was at his mother’s funeral. Muherrm Gecaj came and distributed the money to 20 miners. He gave me a, a book, he took care of someone in Shipol, some in Shala, some in Drenica, because there were miners, so he took care of 20 miners. We shouldn’t forget this, because it wasn’t for that…
He brought food, he even butchered a sheep or lamb, he kept half for his children, and gave them half. It even happened that I was in a financially bad place. There was a guy from Istog, Shaqa, I only remember his name, Shaqa, to take care of another family in Shipol. But when he came to Shipol he said, his brother was in Switzerland, the one from Shipol, he said, “I will help you.” Because he wanted to take care of a family, he said go tell them, “When the guy comes to bring the money, you said, ‘Take another family, thank you very much, but help someone else because my brother helps me.’”
And he came, he said, “No, I came to bring you one hundred marks, take them.” He came and told me, the one who refused them, not refused them, but didn’t need them, he was a policeman. We also worked in Nënë Tereza. It’s not about the miners, I just wanted to take an example. And he came and said, “Can you come with me Gani?” A person from Nënë Tereza in Shipol, “We’ll explain it to him, we tell him,” he said, “what’s happening” he said that, “my brother wants to help me.” We went there, took two people from the headship, we went to their oda, they welcomed us.
We told them, “This is what’s happening, thank you for taking care of them, but his brother told him, “I will help you’, you can help someone else.” He said, “I swear to God, I might be financially worse off than you, but when the campaign started they gathered us, I was the oldest.” He said, “Financially… I don’t have any income, but I had to not separate from my friends,” and said, “and I took part in that, thank you.” So, there were cases when they weren’t financially well off and still wanted to help the miners. They helped… I said I went over to miners, there were professors from Prizren, Dukagjin, so all of Kosova stood in solidarity with us, and helped, maybe they shared their bite of food with us. That helped us, because to live and take care of our families without salaries was hard.
Anita Susuri: Were you here before the war?
Gani Osmani: Yes. During the war, I wasn’t involved in the war. But, the neighborhood where we were, was near Vakanica and…. The army barracks that were in Banja had a clear view of us. Anyway, some of my uncle’s sons were involved, but I wasn’t because someone had to stay with the family, the children, my parents were sick. On April 15, they surrounded us, they came from Banja and surrounded Shipol, they took us through a alley, a very narrow alley and took us on the road to Peja. They told us, “Just continue this road.” We didn’t know where we were going.
At that time I had a small tractor, like a motocultivator. I had four kids and my parents, they got in there. Also my wife and my sister, and four guests. So my aunt, actually my father’s niece who came from the city with her daughters and son, I took them too, so when the police surrounded us, I went with them for 36 hours, I have written that… it took us that long to go to Albania with a tractor. So, in that time of war, it happened on that line of cars with us, who and how met with police and paramilitary. In Vaganica, a village near us, the family was with us, when we went to Gjurakovc they said, “Around 50 tractors have to go through Gjurakovc.” They separated them, the others went to Peja, it was very bad for people who went to Peja.
Today, there are three or four people missing from that village, who were in line with us, they’re missing, they killed them, they didn’t even find their bodies. They were behind us, we went the other way, fate. So no one in my family was killed. But, miners were killed. I have the list of syndicalists who… there are also missing, around 38-9 were killed, and 15-6 are missing. There are some who were killed in uniform, but there are also some who were killed in war as citizens.
Anita Susuri: In which part of Albania did you go?
Gani Osmani: I was in… First we went to Kukës and stayed around five days, but then, then they took us mostly to the south of Albania, in warehouses and so on. But, my children were very little, the youngest was nine months and the oldest around six-seven years old. My parents were also very sick, they also had high blood pressure, and we stayed in Durrës. So, we went to a mosque in Durrës and stayed for five days, from there, we went to a camp called Porto Romano, five kilometers outside of Durrës. There were Spanish, Italian and German camps. So, I went to that camp. There were a lot of people. So, I stayed there until June when Kosova was liberated, when NATO forces came in, and then we came back.
Anita Susuri: How did you find out Kosova was liberated?
Gani Osmani: A? Well we… I have never felt bigger joy. So, not just me, it was the dream of all of us. It seemed unbelievable to me that the NATO forces intervened. The world’s biggest power, Kosova was like a drop in the ocean, a point in the world map, there are bigger problems, this is my opinion. There were bigger problems in Europe, in the Balkans and everywhere, but NATO focus-bombed and intervened in Kosova, we knew that we would get liberated. But, we didn’t think there would be massacres after the forces intervened, I didn’t think so.
We were happy when first Prishtina was bombed, we were here also when they bombed Bajr, there was an underground barrack, the windows broke in our house here. We were happy, but we didn’t know the consequences. I didn’t know, I didn’t even think that a power this big would intervene for Kosova. We have to be thankful to America. America got others to join. We have to be thankful to America, and maybe every house of Albanians should have an American flag inside. If it weren’t for America, we would disappear from this earth, we weren’t powerful. So, America saved us, thanks to the Army, also the Liberation Army [KLA], but we have to know that the Army didn’t have power without America, but big states don’t intervene unless there is big torment.
Anita Susuri: When did you first come to Trepça after the war?
Gani Osmani: Look, I have different expectations for Trepça. Some came later, I came the moment NATO forces came in, after a week, four-five days. I thought, “I have to start working. I have a job,” I thought, “In Trepça, if we all go, it will be okay,” I said, “I will start working and Trepça will develop.” I said, “We will work for ourselves.” But when I came here I saw it differently, I saw the destruction. Destruction, like in Albanian, they took us to some factories, some… I said, “How did you do this to your factories?” They had destroyed them. He said, “It’s the same for us and you,” he said, “we’re brothers.” He said, “You will see, you will do worse.” And I thought we would start… I came here from 2000… I started working in 2004.
In 2000 some preparations started but not everything went in order in Trepça, they called some people here and there, there were people who contributed, who deserved it and knew who to do the job, but they went with nepotism. They picked them, “Call this guy.” In the beginning there was UNMIK, they gave them some money, not at first, but later. The important thing was to engage in the job. The zinc electrolysis battery factory. The zinc compound was all in order, the board, everything was in order, just to start. Everything was destroyed… Serbs didn’t destroy it, we did.
In 2004 they called us, a group of technicians came, supervisors, we created a committee and we came and said, “We want to work, either we will also work, or no one will.” Nazmi Mikullovci was the director at that time, and in 2004, they hired one hundred of us. But they also retired some people before their time. I said, I was in the government and said, “We thought something else would happen to miners, not this. We thought the government would care about us, since we were the first people who risked our lives to protect the state, the whole Kosova supported us. We thought that the government will give a dignified pension to miners who are old and sick, and says, ‘Go home, there are the young generations here, you have contributed enough.’”
And it wasn’t a big number, not all 2,300 miners who took part in the strike, I can guarantee around 500 of them died. Some were very sick, also it was 20 years after. It isn’t a big number, I said that I wasn’t against the army, or veterans, but you can find a solution for 60 thousand people, but not for one thousand. They could have made a solution about the pension, incorporate people, new workers and invest in Trepça, develop it. But trust me, in Mitrovica there are pensioners who were part of the strike, who look for cans in trash bins. They don’t have premature pensions, they take 70-80 euros as pension. They suffered and went through so much, and today they look in trash bins and work with carts. The state should have taken care of this… I said, I thought it would be different…
20 years after the war they should have invested in Trepça, to get new workers. So, nothing in Trepça… in Trepça you work and get a salary, there’s no investment, just debt, there’s no development in Trepça. Trepça could have helped Kosova develop, not just itself, but today it can’t even produce enough for the salaries from the concentrate it sells. It could finalize the metals it sells like lead, zinc, there are 30 valuable minerals. Create a mini foundry… but private companies do that, five or six gas stations, they… create a mini foundry, melt these… the richest metals that are here are taken by Bulgaria, Switzerland, Sweden. We sell the concentrate, it has happened that the price went from 2,000 dollars to 300 hundred dollars. They were sold for 300 dollars, there is gold, silver, everything.
The government should have created the foundry, hired people and developed the state. But they’re not interested in Trepça. There are members of the parliament who have no information about Trepça. I went there, made requests, the requests are here {point right} that after the war we work in these conditions in the mine, and no days of work experience are acknowledged, they said, “How is it possible for days of work experience not to be acknowledged?” They acknowledge the work experience of private firms, but not us. Some aren’t even informed because they’re not interested.
Anita Susuri: Now you are head of the syndicate.
Gani Osmani: Yes. In 2016 the leadership changed, there are elections every four years. So, in 2016 we ran in the election, it’s just like the municipal elections, for every ten workers, there’s a delegate from the mine, the assembly is created. Now from the assembly eleven members as headship. In 2016 we were elected by the workers and we made the assembly, and from the assembly I was in the leadership of the syndicate, not the head, just in the headship. Shyqri Sadiku was head of the syndicate, but Shyqa is a production expert in the mine, and he had to go back to the mine as head of production because the production wasn’t developing. Being the head of the syndicate and the head of production is some kind of conflict of interest. And Shyqa said, “I will go and try to increase production. If it works, I will leave the syndicate and you continue here.”
I was the secretary of the syndicate. Shyqa left, production increased around 28 percent in the first nine months, Shyqa was head of production. I was acting as head of the syndicate for those two-three months, then we held a meeting, and Shyqa proposed that I be head until the next elections. They agreed, the proces-verbal is there, they agreed and I continued. We were supposed to have the election in April of this year. But, we couldn’t even hold a meeting because of the pandemic and everything. We held a meeting now, we have to run in the election and whoever wins, wins. So, we continued in the same way.
We are there to protect the rights of the workers, the workers come when their directors don’t treat them fairly, we take written complaints every week. We had a rule to hold a presidency and invite the general director and the director here. We show them the workers’ requests, this and this and this, these have to be discussed, because we aren’t executives to push to remove a ruling, but to push the process forward. We also were in the government and the Ministry of Economic Development, I have it in writing that Trepça will make a comeback, to acknowledge our work experience, to have a dignified pension, which is possible.
We have around 40-50 workers who are sick and can’t work in the mine, just on the surface. We can’t fire them, they got sick here. And in the end, to get their child here to work… the work puts them directly in production and they contribute. We also made that request, they said, “Wait.” A temporary board was formed now, because we are a victim of the governing change. Trepça is a victim, the workers, of governments changing. A government promised they will work for Trepça, bring an expert, then five-six months go by and the next governing is changed, we have to start from zero. So we are victims of this.
[The interview cuts here]
Anita Susuri: You were telling us about the workers and the requests you made…
Gani Osmani: Yes. So, since we started working after the war, we’ve had the same requests. For example, those requests. We asked to acknowledge our pension, 70 percent of the salary, as is the right of everyone. We asked to acknowledge our work experience when they fired us, so during ‘89-‘99. And after the war, from 2018 onwards our work experience isn’t acknowledged. Every one of us… I have worked there for 39 years, if I were to retire tomorrow, I would get the pension of an unemployed person because you have to have at least 15 years of experience. Because it was a very long time, we asked for a family pension. Family pensions had always existed in dangerous workplaces in mines.
After the war, there were four tragic cases in Trepça, two in Kishnica and two in Trepça. So, a tragic case is when a worker dies in the workplace. In the past, there was a family pension his family inherited his pension, 70 percent, and when the child turned 18, or the wife inherited the pension, this doesn’t exist anymore. We asked for state insurance. In the past, if someone got hurt, we took them to Ljubljana, Skopje or Belgrade, they… a worker of mine broke his foot, I took him to the hospital, they said, “If you have 20 euros, you can get a cast, if not, you can go.” In his work clothes, so he got hurt in the mine, and… they see you as unemployed.
Now we have health insurance, it is included in the collective contract. You can make a collective contract and cover all of these. The syndicate has the same requests since after the war. It isn’t very hard, the government can do this. We asked for… we are more unique than the other units, they can’t compare us to… maybe even KEK are miners, they also bring out coal, but there the excavator does the job, they just watch. So, we are… we work underground, we can’t compare with those who work on the ground. The government could have made a law about miners. But, I am not happy with the government’s work on Trepça. Not just the current government, but every government.
But we hope we can move forward. Trepça was the third pillar in Yugoslavia with 22 million citizens, one of the biggest economical pillars. The state took loans in Trepça’s name, it… the slogan then was, “Trepça works, Belgrade builds.” While today in our hands, we can’t even cover the salaries of the miners… My opinion is that the government should pay more attention to Trepça, to make capital investments, work tools, and they can develop not only Trepça, but also Kosova. And not… the miners are worried if… they are worried about that, trust me they call me on the phone, “Is there enough money for our salaries?” They don’t worry about the hard work there. They do their job, but they’re worried if they will get paid this month or not. So, worries that the state can take care of.
Anita Susuri: Do you have anything to add, something you forgot to mention?
Gani Osmani: I would add anything, just an appeal for the government, for the people who are in charge to focus on Trepça, on economic development, because Trepça will develop Kosova, Mitrovica, it will develop the whole Albanian people. They should take new workers, make capital investments, move forward. Let’s not be pitiful. Let them make… they could make the finalization of the ore here, not take it abroad, that is the biggest capital. I have nothing else to add, but God willing things will get better and someone will focus on Trepça.
Anita Susuri: We hope so, too. Thanks a lot, Mister Gani!
Gani Osmani: Thank you for your interest!