Rama in Detroit on The Hague ruling: I do not accept the “burial alive” of four former KLA leaders

At a meeting with Albanians in Detroit, United States, Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama reacted to the latest decision by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. Four former KLA leaders were sentenced to a total of 81 years in prison, while Rama said he could not accept this as their “burial alive.”

He described the situation as one of the most difficult moments for Albanians, calling it also “a funeral for the living.” Rama explained that his position was not intended to call the court’s decision itself into question, but rather the way it affects an entire people.

Referring to developments in The Hague a few days earlier, the prime minister said he had no way of avoiding what had happened. He compared the situation to a huge rock, in front of which words seem futile, just as at a funeral for the living.

Rama recalled that the call to respect court decisions is constantly repeated, but stressed that the main issue is something else: in the name of the people, one cannot accept the burial alive of four people when the people themselves do not see themselves reflected in that decision.

According to him, in this situation Albania can do no more than stand alongside Kosovo. Rama said that Kosovo’s elected representatives would reject the burial alive of those four men.

He added that being required to respect the court’s decision does not necessarily mean accepting its consequences as an irreversible reality. For Rama, respecting the decision does not prevent rejecting it as an unavoidable fate with no possibility of appeal.