Prime Minister Edi Rama, during a meeting with the Albanian diaspora in Michigan, spoke about the decision of the Special Court in The Hague to convict four former KLA leaders, Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi.
Rama said that respecting the court's decision should not mean accepting it as a "fatality without appeal."
According to him, Albania cannot do more than stand by Kosovo, while the way to react to the decision must be determined by Kosovo institutions.
"You may not agree at all and you may fight with words to defend your position, but it is one thing to do so with respect for the other and another to grab the other by the throat. This democracy is a much longer road than we had imagined at the beginning. Because it is not enough to be free to have a democracy that works for everyone. I have rarely struggled like this time to line up the words of a speech, because I had no way of avoiding what happened in The Hague a few days ago, but I also could not find a way to approach that big heavy stone, for which words seem useless as in a mortuary. A mortuary for the living in this case, a burial of living people and a national powerlessness in the face of an international agreement.
There is a saying that is often repeated to us: respect the court's decision. The problem in this case is not to disrespect the court's decision, but how to refuse to bury four people alive, in the name of the people, when the people themselves find themselves nowhere in that decision, given not only in a foreign language, but also in an alienation of justice itself.
"In the meantime, Albania cannot do anything more than stand by Kosovo, however its people's elected representatives will choose to reject the burial of those four men alive. I believe that the forced and unquestionable respect for that court decision does not prevent the rejection of that burial, as a fatality without appeal."
Rama's statement comes five days after the first-instance verdict was announced. Thaçi and Krasniqi were sentenced to 25 years in prison each, Veseli to 18 years and Selimi to 13 years. The defense has announced that it will appeal the decision.