“Anyone who does not remember the past is doomed to relive it”, so we pray that, ah, this does not happen but we try to make this country better every day and more!

 Alketa Gashi Fazliu

I grew up in pre-war Kosovo. Today, my second daughter is exactly at the age her mother was when she spent her childhood in the beautiful Prizren, but with beauty damaged by the lack of freedom and human rights trampled at that time!

As a child in the 90s, I still keep alive the memory of the protests for the violated dignity in every Albanian alley, the crippled education held in the lodges and basements, only to not ban the Albanian word, not to desecrate efforts to think differently, the word free… just for freedom!

I was about 13 years old when everything in Kosovo changed in June 1999 with the entry into the country of international allies!

Today, when I look back and face the thoughts with my eyes open about the past, I fear we really understand the importance of what we have gone through and the growth and development in every sector! Many questions arise in my mind: Are we really respecting the efforts for freedom? Are we building our modern state properly? Are we becoming those whom Kosovo really needs?

I deal with the past every day, but every day more and more I see this confrontation from the perspective of contributing today to a better future for everyone. The best Kosovo in the future, the best region in the future becomes a reality when everyone, regardless of gender, ethnic background, religious belief, opinion, does not face prejudice, violence or worse.

I work as a journalist on TV, a very powerful medium not only to inform, but especially to educate citizens. I took on this role with great responsibility, knowing the weight of the spoken and written word. Therefore, it is my professional and personal mission to put this power that the media gives me at the service of social emancipation, to contribute to education for peace, healthy practices of dealing with the past in order to build a good future for all of us, the citizens of Kosovo and the Western Balkans.

This is the only way for us, as a society, to overcome the violence and traumas of the past, to build not only bridges of peace, but to create a progressive reality.

What can each of us do to help us become better? This is the dilemma! But it is so simple… to tell the coming generations the past not as chronology, not as oblivion, not as legend, but not as Disney animated films. To face the truths, no matter how painful and unacceptable they are, to feel the suffering of those who experienced them, to calculate the damages and to put this information based on facts and not prejudices at our service, that events such never to be repeated again. !

“Anyone who does not remember the past is doomed to relive it”, so we pray that, ah, this does not happen but we try to make this country better every day and more!

 

Alketa Gashi Fazliu – Journalist, publicist, writer, editor at RTK