AFA "Rugova" – Peja

The acting Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, participated in the commemorative ceremony in honor of the activist and former member of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo, Ali Lajçi.

At the beginning of his speech, the Prime Minister stated: “Here it has been a year since the death of Ali Lajçi, the Albanian activist, the active politician who left us on April 28, 2024. In the modern political history of Kosovo, there is a generation of political activists who are often referred to as the Generation of ’81, and who had the fortune to engage politically in three periods so different from each other.”

These periods include the decade of the 1980s with demonstrations and political slogans and leaflets followed by many years of political imprisonment, the decade of the 1990s with the organization of peaceful resistance and then armed resistance up to the liberation war of the KLA, and the two decades of the 21st century, when independence was declared and the republic was state-built.

“Precisely in the demonstrations of 1981, Ali Lajçi distinguished himself as a political activist, for which he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, of which he served 10. During the period of imprisonment, on March 8, 1985, Ali Lajçi was one of the five prisoners who drafted and signed the long letter titled ‘The Events in Kosovo Are Not a Counter-Revolution,’” said Prime Minister Kurti.

The letter signed by Ali Lajçi together with Hydajet Hyseni, Zijah Shemsiu, Bajram Kosumi, and Gani Koci, and sent from the central prison in Belgrade, was described by the Prime Minister as a letter that can almost be read as an emblematic treatise of the time, the most important political testament written by the generation of ’81.

“A full 23 years after they had signed this letter, four of the prisoners would also sign the Declaration of Independence. From one signature to the other there are 23 years in between, all filled with political activism for freedom and state-building.”