Haxhiu: The KLA was the defense army of a people who wanted to live freely in their own country

Assembly Speaker Albulena Haxhiu said that at the foundation of the republic lies the Kosovo Liberation Army and its just struggle for liberation, adding that the people of Kosovo perceive the Special Court as unjust.

"On this important day, I exalt what lies at the foundation of our republic. What originated from the people. Which is both its possibility and its truth. The Kosovo Liberation Army and its just war for liberation. The war of the Kosovo Liberation Army was a war for dignity and freedom. It was a response in the circumstances of a harsh occupation, when systematic violence against the Albanian people was taking on destructive proportions. The KLA was the defensive army of a people who sought to live freely in their own country, without intending to destroy anyone else. And any attempt to detach this war from its historical and political context risks distorting the truth of that time," she said.

Haxhiu, speaking from the podium of the Kosovo Assembly, where a solemn session is being held to mark the 18th anniversary of the KLA, said that the KLA's war was not aggression but resistance to occupation and oppression.

"There was so much faith in the justice of our war that the democratic world intervened at the time and later supported the independence of our country. We remember these truths because the people of Kosovo experience the Special Court as unjust. And this judgment, first of all, because it ignores the very circumstances in which our liberation war took place. Our war was not aggression, but resistance to occupation and oppression, to genocide and ethnic cleansing. A war to protect our land, our doorsteps, our families, unarmed civilian citizens in Kosovo. The institutions of the Republic of Kosovo will continue to defend the historical truth, the value and dignity of the fight for freedom and the fundamental principles of justice, opposing any attempt to distort it," she said.