| One Americans Personal Tribute to Nekibe Kelmendi |
| Publikuar më 24 qershor, 2011 nė orėn 17:52 ( ) |
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I witnessed Nekibe Kelmendi at her most vulnerable, and she proved to be the personification of soft-spoken courage and dignity.
In 2008, my long-time work partner and I had the honor and privilege of meeting Mrs. Kelmendi while she was still Kosovas acting Minister of Justice. Actually, I pushed for the interview Id read about her familys desperate trauma during the war, and I needed to see how she had survived the unimaginable. I wanted to try to comprehend how she had managed to pick up the pieces of her life, transforming tragedy into an insistent quest for justice in a newly independent nation.
As the interview inexorably moved on to the tragic fate of her husband and two sons, the office setting became deathly still I felt as though I could hear echoes of my own beating heart. I was already all too familiar with the general outlines of the horror-story: how, at the height of the Milosevic terror in 1999, Nekibes beloved husband Bajram, one of Kosovas then most prominent human-rights advocates, had been terrorized and abducted from the family apartment, together with their two sons, Kastriot (age 31) and Kushtrim (age 16). Nekibe picks up the terrible saga:
Bajram and our two sons were taken (by the Serbian police) to the Hotel Herzegovina in Pristina. They called for the executioners. They ordered my older son: Take the gun and kill your father. My older son said, No, I cant do that. They told my younger son, 16 years old, Take the gun and kill your father. And he said, I cant do that.
Then they gave the gun to Bajram. And they told him, Kill your son. And he answered, No, I cannot do that. This was the psychological pressure
Nekibe continues the macabre trajectory, her voice increasingly burdened and shaky:
They started with my older son, and shot him with one bullet in the heart. Then the younger son, also in the heart. And Bajram was screaming loudly, looking up at the sky. And he asked, why are you doing this? and they cursed him and then they shot him in the head with two bullets.
Now the three of them were lying on the floor (Nekibe begins to break down), and they just started shooting the bodies. One of them ended up with 24 bullets in his body, the second with 35. The third was found with 28 bullets. When they shot my older son, they shot off his fingers.
All of these things were reported to me by a witness, an Albanian man
At that point, I really wanted to temporarily pause. For my self-described delicate sensibilities it was just too much; I was emotionally exhausted from so much gratuitous violence, all targeted at one womans loved ones. Once again I felt the lingering shame of voyeurism tugging at my conscience. But Nekibe was not to be deterred. She had begun her story, and she would see it through, despite the tears, despite the nightmares. Here was Kosovas most articulate Woman in Black. Even if she were unable to bring her loved ones back to life, she was determined to reveal their stories, their fates. Pain was just a lingering, necessary companion.
While visiting the Balkans this past April we phoned Nekibe. I knew from Natasa Kandic Nekibes friend and Belgrade s outspoken human-rights advocate that she was suffering from advanced cancer. I spoke with her gracious daughter, in English; my pal spoke with an ailing Nekibe in their native tongue. I prayed somehow that shed improve that when our long delayed book was finally ready for public presentation, she might take her proper place among the highly esteemed featured guest speakers. It was not to be.
Yesterday my friend sent me news that Nekibe Kelmendi had at last succumbed to her illness, and I was instantly transported back to this courageous and compassionate woman. May God bless you, Nekibe Kelmendi, and may you at last find the peace you were so unfairly robbed of in life. Your quiet dignity and determination has been an inspiration to persecuted people the world over.
Robert Leonard Rope
San Francisco
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