Strasbourg – Prime Minister Edi Rama’s address to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE):

 

Honourable Council of Europe,  

Distinguished Members of the Parliamentary Assembly,

I am very grateful for the opportunity to address this Assembly today on a crucial matter of truth and justice that calls upon us to reflect and act together. 

I represent Albania, but it is not primarily about Albania that I am here to speak, although the subject of the concern I want to share with you is linked to Albania like the soul to its body. Yet it is worth beginning with Albania, since what I am about to say bears on the question of the relationship of a country with its past and what impact that may have for its development in the future.

It also bears on the relations between states in the Balkans and beyond and on what role Europe and European institutions play in how we develop these relations.

Turning a history of conflict into one of cooperation requires not only courage from leaders, good will among citizens and trust between states, but also a shared faith in international institutions.

Indeed, our relationship to each other is mediated by our relationship to European institutions. And if such institutions fail to secure justice, the loss to all of us is as great as the harm caused to every single victim of their errors.

The damage goes far beyond the sum of individual tragedies. It is damage to our whole community of people and nations a blow to all our efforts to turn a dark page in our history so as to write a bright new one. 

If institutions fail, the blow could be fatal!

War is for you all a distant memory. For us, it is a wound that still burns while struggling to heal. And yet, despite our different experiences with war under the large umbrella of this institution, which defines itself as the continent’s leading human right organization, historical memory cannot be taken lightly, facts should never be undermined by power games and resolutions should always withstand.

In the last decades, as you know, international institutions have been an essential factor in mediating conflicts in the Balkans. Like all other states in the region, Albania continues to build the future while struggling with the legacy of the past, to develop future democratic institutions while still haunted by spectres of authoritarianism.  It continues to construct solid relations with its neighbours, including Serbia, who not too long ago was considered a mortal enemy, but is now an important partner in our strategic Open Balkan Initiative. 

It may be difficult to explain those who approach our region for the first time why Europe for us is more than an institutional project, it is an existential one. History has never before been kind to us. We were never able to choose where we belonged: it was decided on our behalf. It was decided by empires, regimes and ideologies that kept us locked away from Europe  in a country that called itself the anti-imperialist lighthouse of the world, but was in fact a dark whole at Europe’s heart.

It was only three decades ago that we could freely change the course of our destiny and turn our gaze towards Europe’s horizon. The faith of Albania in its European destiny is our anchor to the future.  No matter what storms or fogs Europe encounters, Albanians as a whole cannot but imagine sharing the journey even if it turns out to be a tumultuous one. 

This is why we continue to inculcate hope in younger generations, knowing that the harder a crisis like the current one hits all of Europe; the easier it is for the forces of fear to threaten the sources of hope.

Yet, it is especially in moments like these when the future is once more at the mercy of the past and narrow-minded politicians are ready to exploit that past to assuage their citizens’ fear of the future that questions of truth and justice return to the fore.

It is in moments like these that faith in transnational institutions needs to be restored and strengthened. It is in moments like these that small states must not be abandoned, so that big states are not threatened by the cumulative result of their resentment. 

If these three long decades have taught us anything, it is that democracy is always a construction project never a finished building. Nothing we achieve is ever complete, nor is it irreversible. Nothing proves this point better than Russia’s current aggression on Ukraine and the war that followed in Europe, only a few hours from here. 

That country is once more haunted by its past and it is yet another vivid reminder to those of us still haunted by their past of how easily history can be manipulated and exploited by dark forces.

In the Balkans, we are painfully aware of all this. Our new “Open Balkans” initiative is an attempt to realise in-house the aspirations and the objectives of the stilted Berlin Process without delays, without hesitation in a way that reflects our own will and determination.

It is an attempt / to put the ideals of European integration in the disposal of peace and cooperation through the freedom of movement of people, goods, capital and services, through culture, arts and crafts, through joint political initiatives and joint forces on the face of crises bigger than us, through concrete outcomes that can show our citizens how meaningless it is to cling on to the ghosts of the past in a world of increasingly porous borders.

This is how we want to see the Balkans: no longer a powder keg of Europe, but a model of peaceful coexistence; no longer hostage of the past, but an example of how to build a shared future. And yet, how we engage with the past is crucial for all this to be possible. 

The past is not a slate that one can wipe clean. How we evoke the past? What stories we tell? What truths we choose to uphold? How we think of who we are and how others perceive us matters not just to keep a record of ourselves, but to know how to engage in the world, what to follow, who to believe and who to befriend?

And this is where I come to the main question I wanted to raise with you today and why it matters, not simply for those directly affected, but for all of us, for our citizens’ ability to retain faith in politics in lasting peace and in the transnational institutions.

Ladies and gentlemen,

There are nations in the history of the world, who live their entire collective lives courageously, defending their freedom, surrounded by violence, lies and the hypocrisy of an international community, who stands by watching as they are tortured into submission. They hope to resist for as long as they can and for the world to find a conscience.

Such is the Ukrainian nation now. And such was the nation of Kosova a few decades ago. You will no doubt have noticed how eager the current Kremlin tenant is to construct parallels between Crimea and Kosovo. It is far from a stupid effort, although the evidence does not stand up to speculation. There is no parallel between Kosova and Crimea, although there is one between Kosova and Ukraine and,  by the way,  wouldn’t it be wonderful if you here, in this great Council, started by teaching all the other international institutions to spell and write Kosova by its real and official name: Kosova! Not Kosovo. The Republic of Ko-so-va. It is never late to do things right.

And going back to analogies, there is an even stronger analogy between the Tzar that sits in the Kremlin throne in our days and “the butcher” that used to occupy Serbia’s Commander in Chief position during war in Kosova. There are two nations with the right to live freely in their land, with their language, their history, their culture, haunted by the same demons of the past, disguised as special military operations. And there are two desperate tyrants, one dead, and the other one playing with death, clinging to visions of past grandeur to manipulate their own citizens into deadly submission. I will spare you the history lesson. After all, the kind of history we are evoking here is hardly history, it is every European’s living memory. You all remember the devastating impact of the dissolution of Yugoslavia at the end of the Cold War. You all remember how the Western Balkans, the poorest and most explosive corner of Europe, were struggling between life and death. You all remember how decades of tension within a region deeply divided by ethnicity, religion and ideologies culminated in the birth of seven independent countries. And you all remember the ensuing fragile peace process, a process that – as recent events in Ukraine continue to teach us – we would be foolish to take for granted.

I will concentrate my remarks on only one aspect of this human tragedy the last chapter in the breakup of Yugoslavia: the humanitarian conflict in Kosova.

Decades of severe, widespread and well-documented repression, an intentional barbaric military operation of ethnic cleansing, conducted by Slobodan Milosevic, resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced – half a million only in the little Albania. Thousands died, some 20,000 women were raped and, as we speak, some 1600 people are still missing. Those alive are still searching for their loved ones.  The dead have not yet found the peace of the grave. 

It all escalated for decades under the nose of the international community. It took years of repression and bloodshed for the world to find moral principles and to act on their behalf. But it happened. Thank God, it happened in 1999. Kosova’s last scream of despair could no longer be ignored. Its battle for survival aroused the world’s compassion and its biblical human waves escaping butchery triggered the democratic world’s firm reaction. The international community took responsibility and came to its assistance. The first ever full-fledged military intervention of NATO on European soil recognised the struggle of Kosova’s Liberation Army, which resulted in the independence of the country a few years after. Justice was achieved.  Dignity was restored. Reconciliation could start. Or so it seemed.

War is ugly. It is in the nature of war that one presupposes the symmetry of combatants and assumes harms committed by both sides.  But the war in Kosova was no ordinary war. It was the bloody showdown of an ultra-nationalist dictatorship, right in the womb of Europe. It was the democratic West’s conscience rally. It was a desperate call from the center of Europe to redeem the integrity of the international community after decades of ignoring the plight of millions of civilians around the world. And the West rose to the challenge. International Community found its conscience. Europe found its moral compass. And yet, not too long after, that compass was lost. It was lost in this very building.

Those very same international institutions that ended the war in Yugoslavia and gave Kosova freedom peace and dignity, undermined their very own actions and their very own principles. They ended up not only questioning the motives and integrity of Kosovar’s liberation struggle, but assuming through their actions that they had never had any. How could this happen? I will spare you uninteresting speculations. Here are the facts. 

Less than a decade after NATO’s intervention in 2008, Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, published a memoir entitled “Madame Prosecutor”. In that book,  Del Ponte claimed that heinous crimes had been committed by members of the Kosova Liberation Army, including first and foremost human organ trafficking. The book sent shock waves throughout the world, despite the fact that such allegations were vehemently denied in Kosova. The most mysterious question of all was: What prevented a powerful prosecutor, working with a very strong mandate given by the Security Council of the United Nations to inquire further? Her investigations on the matter, including in Albania in 2004, were inconclusive. How did the allegations persist? Again, I will not engage in speculations on the answers, but the questions raised in Del Ponte’s memoir  were interesting enough to draw the attention of Putin’s men here in the Council of Europe. It was one such man Konstantin Kossachev,  the head of the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), who in 2008 tabled a motion entitled “Inhumane treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo.” This is how the occupiers call it, Kosovo. Kossachev himself, an MP representing “United Russia”, Putin’s party, was subsequently sanctioned by the US and the EU. But while the man later fell from grace, his work persisted. Not only did it persist through the Council of Europe and not only did it persist, but it was also further elevated.

His motion was picked up by this honorable body, which blessed a team to prepare a report, who claimed to conduct independent research in the region between 2008 and 2010 on behalf of this very body, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Serbian diplomats later bragged about how such a report was largely based on files supplied by the Serbian war crimes prosecutors. But I don’t want to speculate on this any further. What matters here  is that the report, mentioned by name, high-ranking members of the Kosova Liberation Army and accused them  of committing horrific crimes, including organ-trafficking, during and after the war in 1998-99.

And while the report did not produce then or at any point after any of the evidence – by the way for you to know – the then Albanian delegation was here and it didn’t hinder this and although no evidence were established from what its authors claimed to have obtained during the investigation, it was adopted in its entirety and verbatim by a resolution of this Assembly in January 2011.

I am here today, now in 2022, and there is a reason for this, not because I and we in Albania found out that this was the most appalling fake news disseminated through the honourable hands of the Council of Europe, but because we patiently waited until we came across the official indictment, but will return to that later. I hope you understand, the gravity of all this. They were unverified claims of a former Prosecutor General  seeking to sell its book – and we all know what happens with the people who leave office and write their memoirs – led to a motion tabled by a United Russia MP, which turned into a Council of Europe report, sustained by  highly dubious sources, which turned into a resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly and led to the creation of the Kosova Specialist Chambers to judge those suspected of human organ trafficking,  while fighting their liberation war. 

One of the most famous novels of Albanian, but also European literature,  the General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare, tells the story of a representative of the Italian state, visiting a village in post-war Albania  to search for the bodies of Italian soldiers, allegedly killed during the Second World War. In our case, reality exceeds fiction.

A representation of one of the most well respected European institutions, the Council of Europe, visits several sites in remote Albanian villages, searching for specialised clinics where human organs extraction is supposed to have taken place.

The report places particular emphasis on one key medical site: a “yellow” house in North Albania, where operations were allegedly based. The suspected building, which, by the way, is not yellow at all, but never mind, since this is the least offensive of the author’s fantasies, is in fact not a clinic. It is a bare stone construction of a poor Albanian family. Any of you can visit it at any time. It is one of the many stone houses in these remote areas that are somehow the same. The village itself situated in a remote area of Northern Albania, which was as at the time – listen to this – cut off from electricity and running water, as well as from paved roads, is not exactly an ideal location for complex and sophisticated organ harvesting operations. Imagine it. I apologize for inviting you to this horrible spectacle. Imagine removing organs without electricity, water, transportation, let alone specialized equipment and so on.

Indeed, the villagers who were questioned had never heard of any such things. But for their silence too, the fantasies that were unveiled here in front of the whole Parliamentary Assembly, was explained to your predecessors in written form, by making reference to threats. So local villagers were allegedly threatened by the Kosova Liberation Army, and manipulated by offering them things like – I quote – “free payoffs, free access to alcohol, drugs and prostitutes.” Prostitutes were brought from, I don’t know where, to that remote village to silence these villagers, while it is easy to make up things when it comes to alcohol and drugs since there is an assumption all over the world that all Albanians use them.

This is unfortunately not the only place, where that report resorts to damaging stereotypes in a devastating cocktail that mixes ignorance with arrogance. In ordinary circumstances, the confusion of a tiny traditional Albanian village with the red light district of a Western European capital would make one laugh, at least at the naivety of the observer.  But this is no laughing matter. It’s no laughing matter that young people,  sacrificing their life to free their country,  are depicted as members of a dangerous mafia group dealing with organ trafficking. It’s no laughing matter that Albanians, being from Albania or Kosova, are regularly depicted as inferior people with an overdeveloped loyalty to their clan and insufficient respect for civil society and political institutions. It’s no laughing matter that the report itself admits that in crucial cases investigators had no direct access to their sources.  What have they done?! Did they make up rumors or what?!

It’s no laughing matter that it admits in footnotes there are very interesting footnotes that would have made Franz Kafka and Dostoyevsky jealous and anyone with a vivid imagination to delve into the darkness and depths of human nature.

The report says that some of the allegations could not be supported, but these allegations remain. Google it, and you’ll see it for yourselves. It’s no laughing matter that it emphasizes that the investigators were operating under financial constraints and therefore lacked resources for a proper legal investigation. What are we talking about then?! It’s no laughing matter that throughout the process specialists and diplomats active in the region called for caution and restraint, insisting that there was no sufficient evidence to sustain the allegations. They were just like you. Just like your predecessors sitting here. Dignified and honourable representatives of the international community, but they knew more. And it’s no laughing matter that Bernard Kushner, then the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General , repeatedly emphasised that he found the claims made in the report highly dubious.

Nevertheless, the ghost “Yellow House” made the way to here to capture not only the imagination, but also the rules of procedure, and even a voting session in this very real and not a ghost, but a house of European nations here in Strasbourg. It is a house of all Europeans, ranging from those in the EU to those bearing just the E but not B.

But while Kadare’s novel “The General of the Dead Army” is a fictional creation, whose legacy is to entertain and teach readers about the horrors of the past, the ultimate accomplishment of your very own general in search of a nonexistent army of organs was to make a mockery of the word “human rights” itself. On the basis of that report, and despite a glaring lack of evidence regarding the alleged trafficking of organs, the Kosova Specialist Chambers were founded, leading to the arrest of four individuals, including the sitting president of Kosova,  Hashim Thaçi. Use your imagination just for a moment and imagine the president, prime minister or leader being taken from his office and taken into custody, placed under arrest without any formal indictment.

Someone mentioned Joe Biden. Joe Biden used to call him Kosova’s George Washington. But at this point, it would be more appropriate to call him Joseph K. since like Kafka’s character in “The Trial”, he was arrested by a remote and inaccessible authority, without understanding what he was indicted for.

President Thaçi resigned with grace. He left his office with dignity. He made himself available to justice, because justice is what he has put his life in line for. He is still there, sitting in The Hague. A living Joseph K. Still in detention. Created by fake news that spread and affected international politics and international institutions.

However, don’t misunderstand me. I am not here to question the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and nothing related to a fair trial.

I am here to question the source, the very contaminated and heinous source that triggered whole this wave and I am here to discuss the fact that this man, not an ordinary man, but an acting president, was remanded in custody one year after the official indictment was presented. There is not a single word, not a single one to explicitly or implicitly mention the issue of human organ trafficking, it is a non-existent issue. 

That’s why I’m here today, that’s why I wasn’t a year ago, the year before that or the year before that, because we’ve been patiently waiting to see if something would come out even though we knew nothing could. It is pure fantasy, well fabricated one in the Kremlin and very intelligently trafficked and smuggled into the channels of international politics and brought here to the temple of human rights.

Honourable Parliamentarians,

I understand the question of symmetry. I understand the importance of impartiality. I understand the urge to investigate. It is in the nature of institutions, such as this one too, that things take time and thorough research needs to be done before one can pronounce on any case. But there comes a point where delays, hesitations, bureaucratic manoeuvring lose their necessary administrative character and acquire a second meaning, one that ends up humiliating precisely those the international community is supposed to serve. This damages the international community itself, not because it can no longer continue to do what it has always done, but because faith in the international system is broken.

When the world turns upside down and victims become perpetrators, everything is possible; one abolishes the distinction between right and wrong, truth and lies. And if that distinction is abolished, we are once again in the realm of arbitrary power. And the first victim of that distortion is you. Yes, you all, it’s the international community itself.

A cruel fake news made the way to become a report  that was transformed into a resolution in an admirable effort to serve truth and justice that ended up undermining both.

Your decade ago actions have triggered in good faith one of the most monumental failures of international politics, an ugly distortion of human rights and dignity in the very act of seeking to uphold both. 

But I am not here to blame them, far from it. I am here for you men and women I can look in the eye, who I associate with the European conscience of Justice, the Council of Europe, the world excellence in human rights protection; I am here to tell you that as a result of this Council’s past decision, the world of justice was turned upside down, the victims of the horrendous war crimes were turned into perpetrators.

The search for truth turned into the replication of lies. A young freedom fighter was turned into a mafia gang leader. A peace building elected leader was turned into a war criminal. A heroic struggle of ordinary people rallied under the flag of their Liberation Army, was turned into a gruelling story of organ trafficking. A nation’s quest for dignity was trampled in shameful accusations of mass atrocities. Those rescued through humanitarian intervention were accused of the most dehumanising crimes.

And this is how international justice was displaced once more by international hypocrisy.

But make no mistake,  I am not here to plea for Kosova. The truth of Kosova is known to all who have eyes to see and to all of those having the heart in the right place. 

Without that truth, the international community would have continued to stand by as they had done for decades while the people of Kosova went through a brutal Apartheid. And  they ultimately intervened because truth was on Kosova’s side.

Kosova has applied to join the Council of Europe. It goes without saying that Albania supports that application unreservedly and urges you to do the same. It goes without saying that Serbia should recognise Kosova as a free democratic and independent neighbouring state. But if this major step for Serbia may take time, the admission of Kosova as an equal member of the Council of Europe should not take any time anymore. 

Just do it. Do it now and do it for all of us, for Europe, not just for Kosova, but for Europe that is facing an ugly war. And if you wish for a second opinion, listen to the Ukrainians. Ukraine has not recognized Kosovo. Ask them what do they think now?

Thinking about what I told you before, try to imagine President Zelensky 10 years from now, becoming a part of something as surreal as President Thaçi is today, because the Kremlin and Moscow have already started to say that there is trafficking, organ trafficking activities human by neo-Nazis in Donbas. So, be prepared for that.

In admitting Kosova in this big family of ours we will contribute to peace and to reconciliation in the region;  we will consolidate human and minority rights in Kosova; we will support justice reform and institution building in the youngest democracy of Europe, and we will help Kosovar society keep the government in check.

I am in no doubt that Kosova will continue to make progress on all these fronts. What brought me here is not the concern for Kosova’s democracy, which despite its young age, despite the current crisis, it will do ok. 

It is Albanians strong faith in institutions such as this one that has been shaken with your decision. When the truth of an entire nation is so dreadfully distorted, one cannot help, but only plea: “For God’s sake, don’t let a previous tragic mistake. Become your unforgiveable sin!”

I am here for you. I am here for all of us. I am here as a European, in Europe’s temple of faith in international rights.  And just like Saint Anthony ended up preaching the fish, because the people had lost their faith, I hope tragic mistakes such as this one made by this Assembly with the liberators won’t turn us all into heretics. I am here to implore you to save the face of human rights in Europe, to protect your own integrity, to tell all the oppressed people in the world and all the victims of human rights violations that they can resist without fearing that their legitimate resistance will not one day become a crime, that the victims will not be accused as perpetrators; that the international community will not come to their help only to turn its back again soon after. That it will not degrade and humiliate with such dreadful allegations the very people, whose dignity it was supposed to restore.

I urge you to drop the charges against Kosova. I urge you to accept Albania’s request to adopt a resolution asking for a follow-up report regarding unproven and shameful allegations of organ trafficking by members of the heroic Kosova Liberation Army, a crime that was not committed and should never have been attributed.

But let me end by repeating this: it is neither for the sake of Kosova, nor for that of Albania that you should adopt this new resolution. It is for your own honour and credibility. 

The world is bad enough as it is. Human rights are in danger everywhere. They need warriors to fight on their behalf. But there can be no warriors, if there is no faith. 

May God bless you all!

May God bless the Council of Europe!

Thank you very much!