People and voices
People
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Categories of voices
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- Civilians
- SurvivorsNo profile yet
- RefugeesNo profile yet
- Political prisoners
- Women in the resistanceNo profile yet
- Children of the warNo profile yet
- KLA members
- Medical workersNo profile yet
- Journalists
- Diplomats
- Researchers
- Families of the missing and killedNo profile yet
Two kinds of profile
- Memorial profile: remembers a person who lost their life; contains documented information only.
- Analytical profile: describes the historical role of a public figure, without personal judgements.
KLA members · Commanders
Adem Jashari
Adem Jashari of Lower Prekaz (Prekaz i Poshtëm) in the Drenica region was one of the early figures of Albanian armed resistance in Kosovo and became a central symbol of the KLA (UÇK). During the 1990s his family resisted several attempts by Serbian police to arrest him. On 5–7 March 1998 Serbian special police forces attacked the family compound in Prekaz; Adem Jashari was killed together with dozens of members of his family, including women and children. The attack accelerated the spread of the armed uprising.
Political leaders · Researchers
Ibrahim Rugova
Ibrahim Rugova was a literary scholar and chairman of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) from its founding in December 1989. In the 1990s he became the leading figure of the strategy of peaceful resistance: boycotting Serbian institutions, building parallel institutions and seeking international support. In the parallel elections of May 1992 he was elected president of the internationally unrecognized Republic of Kosova. After the war he led the LDK and was elected President of Kosovo; he died in January 2006.
Political prisoners · Political leaders · Human-rights defenders
Adem Demaçi
Adem Demaçi was a writer and political activist who spent almost three decades in Yugoslav prisons for Albanian political activity, becoming Kosovo's best-known political prisoner. He was released in 1990. In 1991 the European Parliament awarded him the Sakharov Prize. In the 1990s he was active in human-rights advocacy and politics, and in 1998 he accepted the role of political representative of the KLA, from which he withdrew in early 1999. He died in 2018.
Researchers · Educators
Anton Çetta
Anton Çetta was a folklorist and scholar of Albanian popular culture. In the early 1990s he led the movement to reconcile blood feuds, a civic initiative that, with the participation of students, teachers and local activists, brought reconciliation to a large number of feuding families. The movement was seen as part of an effort towards social unity under repression and as an expression of the peaceful character of the resistance of that period. Çetta died in 1995.
Political leaders · Journalists
Jusuf Gërvalla
Jusuf Gërvalla was an Albanian poet, journalist and political activist from Kosovo who, in exile in Germany, became involved in organizing underground groups seeking republic status for Kosovo and the unification of Albanians. On 17 January 1982 he, his brother Bardhosh Gërvalla and Kadri Zeka were killed near Stuttgart. The killing became a turning point for the émigré networks from which the People's Movement for the Republic of Kosovo later emerged.
Political leaders
Kadri Zeka
Kadri Zeka was an Albanian political activist from the Gjilan region, involved in the student movement and later in the political organization of the Albanian diaspora in Switzerland and Germany. On 17 January 1982 he was killed near Stuttgart together with the brothers Jusuf and Bardhosh Gërvalla. His name became part of the memory of the political movements of the 1980s; the public university in Gjilan bears his name today.
Political leaders · Researchers · Educators
Fehmi Agani
Fehmi Agani was a sociologist, a professor at the University of Prishtina and one of the most influential intellectuals and political strategists of the Democratic League of Kosovo. He took part in the talks on the 1996 education agreement and was a member of the Kosovo Albanian delegation at Rambouillet in 1999. He was killed in May 1999, during the NATO campaign, after being stopped while trying to leave Prishtina.
Human-rights defenders · Civilians
Bajram Kelmendi
Bajram Kelmendi was a lawyer from Prishtina, known for defending Albanian political prisoners and for documenting human-rights violations in the 1990s. On the night of 24–25 March 1999, as the NATO air campaign began, he and his two sons were taken from their home; their bodies were found on 26 March 1999. The exact date of death has not been established. Their killing became one of the best-known cases documented by human-rights organizations from the start of the campaign of violence in Prishtina.
Political leaders · KLA members · Defendants in court proceedings
Hashim Thaçi
Hashim Thaçi was a member of the KLA's political leadership and headed the Kosovo Albanian delegation at the Rambouillet talks in 1999. After the war he became one of Kosovo's leading politicians, serving as prime minister and later as president. In 2020 the Kosovo Specialist Chambers confirmed an indictment against him and three others; he resigned as president. The trial opened in 2023; the exact procedural status is shown in the court case tracker. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a final judgment.
KLA members · Commanders · Political leaders · Defendants in court proceedings
Ramush Haradinaj
Ramush Haradinaj was a KLA commander in the Dukagjin region during the war. After the war he entered politics and twice served as prime minister of Kosovo. In 2005 he resigned after the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted him. The trial chamber acquitted him in 2008; after the Appeals Chamber ordered a partial retrial in 2010, he was acquitted again in 2012.
Political leaders · Political prisoners
Azem Vllasi
Azem Vllasi was one of the Albanian leaders of the League of Communists of Kosovo in the 1980s. His removal from the provincial leadership in November 1988 was one of the causes of the Trepça miners' march. In March 1989, at the height of the crisis over the constitutional changes, he was arrested and tried on political charges; he was later released. In the postwar years he remained a public figure and a lawyer.
Journalists · Political leaders
Veton Surroi
Veton Surroi is a journalist and writer from Prishtina and the founder of the daily Koha Ditore. In the 1990s he was one of the independent voices of Kosovo Albanian civil society, and in 1999 he was a member of the Kosovo Albanian delegation at the Rambouillet talks. After the war he became involved in politics and public debate.
Diplomats
William Walker
William Walker is a US diplomat who headed the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) from October 1998 until the mission's withdrawal in March 1999. On 16 January 1999 he visited Reçak together with verifiers and journalists and publicly attributed the killings to Serbian security forces. The Yugoslav government responded by demanding that he leave the country. His statement became a turning point in the international stance on the conflict.
Diplomats
Richard Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke was a US diplomat, known as the chief negotiator of the 1995 Dayton agreement on Bosnia. On Kosovo, he met KLA representatives in 1998 and in October of that year negotiated with Slobodan Milošević the agreement that led to a partial withdrawal of Serbian forces and the deployment of OSCE verifiers. In March 1999 he made the last diplomatic attempt in Belgrade before the NATO bombing began. He died in 2010.
State officials · Political leaders · Defendants in court proceedings
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was the leader of Serbia and later President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. His rise to power in the late 1980s was closely linked to the Kosovo question and to the curtailment of its autonomy in 1989. In May 1999, during the war, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted him for crimes in Kosovo. He died in the Tribunal's detention unit in March 2006, before judgment was delivered, and the proceedings were terminated.