The broad attack that Serbia had undertaken in Drenica to eliminate the Kosovo Liberation Army was concentrated in Prekaz, the heart and head of the KLA, surrounding it in an iron siege.
What will happen in early March 1998 will be a living testimony to the civilized world and its political and diplomatic responsible. Indeed, this event, so direct and so powerful in terms of its dimensions of unique sacrifice, resistance and massacre, will raise the issue of Kosovo to the top of the world agenda. Thus, on the night of March 4 and 5, 1998, Prekazi was surrounded by numerous military and police forces. This hints that there will be an iron fence there.
Exactly on March 5, it will be 26 years since the heroic fall of the legendary commander, Adem Jashari, his family and other Jashari people. However, each anniversary makes Adem Jashari more glorious in the history of our nation.
With the fall of the legendary commander Adem Jashari, his family and other Jashari people, Kosovo overcame fear, opening the paths of freedom and the future. And not by chance, in Prekaz, in the neighborhood of Jashari family, the biggest monument of the fight for freedom, for independence and democracy has been erected, and these days and dates, precisely March 5, 6, 7, every year, the attention of the entire Albanian nation returns to the legendary Prekaz, which gave Kosovo a lot for centuries and years.
From 1991 to 1998, Prekazi and Drenica were surrounded by Serbian paramilitary forces. The aim was to kill the commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Adem Jashari, and his family, to extinguish and suppress the resistance that the Jashari family, led by Adem and Hamza, were making against Slobodan Milosevic’s regime.
On December 30, 1991, the first attack on the Jashari family was carried out. While the second attack was carried out by the Serbian paramilitary forces in January, 1998. On January 22, the Serbian forces attacked the Jashari family, but also in this battle, the children and women of the Jashari family resisted. However, in this battle that lasted nearly 30 minutes, Iliriana, the daughter of Rifat Jashari, and Selvetja, the daughter of Hamez Jashari, were injured. After this attack, friends and compatriots came to the Jashari family to show solidarity with them. They asked the head of the family, Jashari, to withdraw the women and children from there. But the women and children had also made the decision to stay, saying that “if the boys are killed, we don’t deserve to live”. And they decided to stay, they stayed to show the world that Albanians do not go anywhere beyond their land and houses.
The third attack, which took place on March 5, 6 and 7, 1998, took the lives of 55 people in the village of Prekaz, 22 of whom were close family members of Adem Jashari. Only Bashkimi, Rifat’s son, survived this attack, who managed to leave the area between March 5-6 and managed to escape the attack, as well as Besarta, Hamza’s daughter, who saw and experienced the horror as members of her family were killed.
The history of the Jashari family and its exhibits are located in the Museum of the Epopee of the Liberation Army of Kosovo.
On the 26th anniversary of the heroic fall of the legendary commander Adem Jashari, the Jashari family, the martyrs of the nation as well as all those who fell for freedom, the Government of Kosovo on March 5, 6 and 7 organizes the popular manifestation “Epopee of the Kosovo Liberation Army”.
Likewise, the Assembly of Kosovo will hold a solemn session today on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the KLA Epopee, with the only item on the agenda to mark this anniversary. /KosovaPress/
