Linda Rama's speech in Pristina: Freedom and Home

“Albania and Kosovo have already established the fate of their future as part of the European family, and within that perspective have also established gender equality as an non-negotiable value of the European family.

This makes us part of efforts with other European countries for more education, employment, well-being and representation of girls and women”, said Linda Rama, wife of Prime Minister Edi Rama, in a Global Room Club Kosovo 2019.

Linda Rama stressed among other things that “can be said without fear that the history of the post-90s on Albanian soils, in Albania and Kosovo, but also elsewhere where Albanians continue to live for centuries, showed that the women's struggle did not end with the struggle for freedom and democracy, and the house did not become for all women, a space of free breath”.

THE painful truth of the sexual abuse of thousands of women and girls during the war did not leave the country of justice for them even though it came to light. But neither did it mark the end of the abuse of women in the family, an already accepted phenomenon and still sufficiently involved in our lands”, Linda Rama underlined, bringing to the attention the painful and tragic moments of women and girls from Kosovo.

We behave with respect to Vasfije Krasniqi's courage and contribution. It is a contribution not only to any girl the victim of sexual violence during the war, but also to every girl and woman the victim of domestic violence or to any kind of gender abuse and discrimination”, she said. /Attish/

Linda Rama's full word held on Global Room Club Kosovo 2019

Anita's generous invitation to be among you in Pristina brought me back 20 years.

It was a time when Albania and Albanians, after permanently overturning the dictatorship and overcoming the wall of semi-golden isolation from Europe and the world, found themselves in the staggering vortex of hardship and challenges totally unknown to them. As Albania faced the trauma of 1997 and the 1998 posttrauma, we heard unusual news from Kosovo.

We had Kosovo back then, us of my generation, an area of knowledge created by books, random meetings with people of this country, or even confession by grandparents, for Kosovars stationed in Tirana before the war. While the Kosovo woman, my vision linked her to Shote Galica and her legend and the symbol figure of the Paganist nexmije.

The first came from history, through a picture of whiteness, standing next to her husband sitting in front of her camera and bronze in the famous September of Christaq Rama, as well as the colors of several pictures dedicated to her picture. At an all-powerful, warrior for two, after the death of her husband; angelial time, far away, in the night sky cup, from following the landing of her husband's lifeless body, in the pit that should preserve the secret of his death; at the end of the caravan of warriors, stop on the snow with a view far away, perhaps by looking at the field of battle or by remembering the mouth of the han where she left her husband's body, to take with her own mission of his immortality...

The second came from the white screen, like a powerful contradiction with the first one whose weapon had the fascinating sound and target the heart of anyone who was absorbed in her ashes, a vivid monument to the radiant woman, with all the elegantness and strength of the most beautiful human feeling. But not only that, it seemed to come from “out of the state”, as we called them in those times, the special examples of the world that did not belong to us or from “Europe”, as we would say later when Europe was made for Albanians, the personification of all we wanted to be and have.

I don't know why, given these two distinct images of women, I have increasingly thought of Kosovo's wife as an example of both.

But physically, I met with Kosovo in April 1999, one morning the television screen was poured into Tirana and history, legends, wars, stories, dark news, became women, children, and terrorized families, which entered from that screen straight into our homes. The doors to Tirana's dwellings were opened and the photos of heroes, white images of television, stories of grandparents, the books of Rex Qose, the poetry of Ali Podrimas, the proverbs of Ibrahim Rugova, the few contacts of the people of this country by then, were all turned into another homeland; a physical homeland displayed before us through its great wound, until then known whether it was tangible or touching to that extent; a homeland of the same language, with different tones, in our daily space, where the eyes of our women and the eyes of our children, as if they were ever showing what we had never shown what was in our <0).

Tirana was then not today. Not even Albania.

That morning, without anyone asking or saying, we headed for the place called “pishinat”. I was with my colleagues. But there were a lot more on the way. At “the pishinat” the main group was assembled, the largest of the settlers, who looked like getting out of the ground, to illustrate all we had known, read, heard, but never seen with our own eyes. The feeling that led us there was perfectly natural, as an instigation, to meet people who, although completely unknown, were ours.

I'm never going to forget, we were confused, as if numbed by a family tragedy, we wanted to help a little bit and communicate where we were trying to understand, what they most needed, what they lacked most, of the older children, we mostly heard the word “ ”, and women the word <x2 home><3>!

Today, 20 years from that time I would never dare to say, here before you what goes or what goes to Kosovo today. Nor would I ever want to remember, as we say, what Kosovo's men and women should do. But those two words, “, the” and the “home”, have seemed more and more, the most beautiful vision for new Kosovo and perhaps, the most certain definition for Albanian women beyond geographical boundaries.

I've read because of my work, but also a rather special sensitivity since that morning, full of information, studies, opinions and confessions about the woman's situation in Kosovo. It is a mosaic of the dark colors of the past, a part of which have deep roots under the foundations of houses, impressive efforts that have produced inspiring examples of courage, talent, wisdom and devotion to the woman's daughter, as well as new obstacles, a new kind of time that has dried up the terrible plague of that morning, but has opened new wounds and molested others, older than foreign conquest and barbarity to the freedom of the common house of Kosovo.

I believe it can be said without fear that the history of the post-90s on Albanian soil, Albania and Kosovo, and elsewhere where Albanians continue to live for centuries, showed that the women's struggle did not end with the battle for freedom and democracy, and the house did not become for all women, a space of free breathing.

The painful truth of the sexual abuse of thousands of women and girls during the war did not give way to justice even though it came to light. But neither did it mark the end of the abuse of women in the family, an already accepted phenomenon, and still sufficiently in our lands.

We bow with respect to Vasfije Krasniqi's courage and contribution. It is a contribution not only to any girl the victim of sexual violence during the war but also to every girl and woman who are victims of domestic violence or any kind of gender abuse and discrimination.

It seems to me that no one more than a woman herself can fight for freedom at home and for the release of a common house from the fences of new age and the shadows of old age.

The example of President Jahjaga, of some lovely women in conduct and words who have served as Kosovo's minister, deputy or senior ambassador, does not speak of some women, but of a potential still underdeveloped, not only for Kosovo's wife but for Kosovo itself.

Majlinda Krasniqi, I want Lipa, Rita Ora and other stars that Kosovo has given the sky on major international scenes, also not only show some extraordinary girls, but extraordinary potential that requires commitment and development.

Albania and Kosovo have already established the fate of their future as part of the European family, and within that perspective have also established gender equality as a non-negotiable value of the European family. This makes us part of efforts with other European countries for more education, employment, well-being and representation of girls and women. But that makes us also responsible for facing with special strength and might, with the particular past that we Albanian women and our nation share as well.

A few days ago, I read in the media that three girls -- high schoolers from Tirana -- had been declared the first country's winner in a San Francisco California Technology Organisation competition for solving real problems in their communities through technology. The girls competed with an app that comes to the aid of women raped in Albanian society, which offers a phone number menu and advice that raped women can find solutions in a delicate situation.

This is beautiful news, not only because three young women are as talented in engineering as they are universally appreciated, but because it says there is sensitivity to younger women to apply their skills to the service of a cause as women's support and empowerment.

It'll probably take time. It's probably gonna be hard. But in a country where freedom and home are no longer threatened with extinction, there is certainly a future for every baby born a girl.