I took Adem and Sellma to Prishtina in my car around four or five in the afternoon to take them to Nadira’s family in Bijeljina, Bosnia, which is 140 kilometers away from Belgrade. I thought they should be safe and spared from the horror that was going to happen. I don’t know, whatever happens, happens. When I… I was listening to the meeting in Belgrade on the radio all day long. By chance, like in movies, while I was driving through Belgrade to continue into Bosnia and Bijeljina at Nadira’s family, I heard them [Slobodan Milošević] talk in the meeting and promise imprisonment, this and that. 

I took my children there. The next day I wanted to return to Prishtina. Whatever happened, I had to go back to deal with the situation, you can’t escape yourself and your country. I didn’t have reason to flee, I hadn’t broken any laws. The next day I talked to Nadira on the phone, she said, ‘Wait for me,’ she said, ‘Tomorrow because there’s a colleague of mine Jelena Lavorić from Zagreb here, she’s coming back by car and she will go through Bijeljina. I will stay, then we will come back together.’ ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll stay one more day.’ Late at night they activated the mechanism for imprisonment. They followed me, they knew where I was going and that mechanism was so that if I weren’t Prishtina, a request was made to the Bosnian police to find me in Bosnia, to bring me to Prishtina.

Late at night the Bosnian police come and knock on Nadira’s family door. ‘We’re sorry.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘They told us to bring you back to Prishtina’. I said, ‘I’m going to Prishtina  tomorrow with my car.’ ‘No, they said you have to come with us’. ‘Let’s go!’ Nadira had already left and I couldn’t inform her. I headed from Bosnia to Prishtina in a police car, Nadira was headed from Prishtina towards {explains with his hands} Bosnia with her colleague, Jelena Lavorić’s car. Later we talked about it, we said, ‘We passed each other at some point, we don’t know where.’

We organized a second strike, ‘Either free them, or we will not get out of here alive. We will not get out of here alive!’ On October 27, ‘89, yes ‘89, on October 27, ‘89 the second strike began. […] And we went and broke the cupboards, I said, ‘Let’s go downstairs and break the cupboards there were some stairs there, maybe we will find something. When I went there, I found a kilogram, a jar, a glass jar of salt, and a jar of sugar, and we were happy we found them. We came upstairs and said, ‘We found them, and so on.’ I swear to God I often remember it, I get goosebumps, I get goosebumps like a child, ‘Give me more salt’ {opens his palm]. But that’s what kept us going, the salt, because people weakened without eating, drinking, dark, no water, we drank water from the machinery, from the ground. And we kept going with that salt for three days and three nights until… 

As long as we stayed there, on the second day, they blocked our phones, they blocked them, when they wanted to talk to us, Qazim Shala would come to talk to us, he answered the phone and said, ‘I know how many people are down there, how many workers, your names and last names, I found your documents, you are fired.’ Islam Xhafa said, ‘Director…’ his [maternal] uncles were from Vidishiq, he was from Vidishiq, ‘Uncle,’ he said, ‘Bring us a sack of break down here, we’re not asking for anything else.’ ‘There’s no bread,’ he said, ‘for terrorists.’

[…] There’s a manhole, so another elevator, Germans had built it in the past, it’s up there at Mažić {points right}. We thought someone would come down from there, but some said, ‘It rotted, it’s too old, it’s broken.’ The police got us out of there through that manhole. We thought it was too old, the Germans built it back then.

We were talking and decided that we will not come out alive, until they resign. And we stayed there for eight days and nights. Some were getting ill, they forced them to go out and seek help, some elderly, who were tired and would not go out. They would go out to take a pill and come back to the mine. […] whoever got ill, you know we had a medical center there. They would get very weak and still come back, some stayed at the medical center. Let’s make this clear, the Reconciliation of Blood Feuds Campaign started there inside the mine. A man came up and said, ‘I forgive the blood of the Trepça miners.’ People were in feuds, you know someone killed someone’s family member, and they forgave it. There were women, sorry, a woman came and gave away her jewelry. A man came to the entrance of the mine and tied his cow as a gift for the miners. It was, people gave away whatever they could, we had support, we had support from all over Kosovo, from Albanians, I mean. From the students, the students barricaded themselves in the university departments, there were students who ran a hunger strike in support of the miners, they too did not eat.

Trepça at that time, I am talking about 1924, the research started by the English, yes. And in the year 1927, they began working on the mine, while in 1930 the testing production took place, daily production was 500 tons. The method was exploitation, classic methods, very difficult during which there were many accidents, many people died. We even have the statistics of the years ‘48, ‘49, ‘50, throughout the year, twelve people lost their lives at the mine. The cause of it was safety measures, they weren’t at a satisfactory level and the work conditions were very difficult. 

Now the time during which my grandfather worked, you know he worked somewhat until ‘50s. In the ‘50s, he had the opportunity to leave jobs and he did because of the poor work conditions and the work in the mines was really hard, there were no micro-climatic conditions, air conditioning was weak. The work was physically demanding, the loading was done by shoveling in the trolleys. The trolleys were pushed manually. This is probably something that pushed him to leave that job because he could not handle the hard work in those difficult conditions. 

This was during the Second World War occupation, it was forced labor in the mines. It was wartime and really no one really asked them much, they were forced to work and they did work. […] Yes, actually [Germans] forced them at that time, and you either had to join their army or work in the Trepça mine. To tell you the truth, our family was also politically persecuted by the Communist system. […] Perhaps that is the reason he left the job, such pressures he could not handle, our family was known as a Ballist [National Front] family.

The march to Pristina, the Miners’ March on November 17, 1988, the march began from the mine, from Stantrg. That day, I did not go to work in the morning because I sent one of my children to the doctor. A colleague of mine called me on the phone and said, ‘Come cuz the workers want to go to Pristina.’ I went to join them. […]

Barefoot and poorly clothed in the work uniform, when I saw them I didn’t think they would make it to Pristina on foot. ‘Don’t go boys, you won’t make it to Pristina on foot.’ Swear to God, I said, ‘Let’s try and do something, something, because in Pristina…’ A worker came close to me and said, ‘You mean it?’ To tell you the truth I enjoyed authority among them. He said, ‘But Burhan [Kavaja] says we should go.’ ‘Did he say that?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then go, go!’ I said.

[…] Now the workers had to confront the police. I said to some of my colleagues, ‘Let’s stand in front and lead the workers, because what if… now when they confront them we will calm them down and ask them to stop.’ Because we pushed from behind and broke the police chain and we continued the march. But this happened quite fast because there were some Albanian policemen and the police chain was broken. They did not respond and were not violent with us. They abandoned the police and joined us at the Sports Hall in Pristina.