Written by H. Abdullahu. Translated by Petrit Latifi.
As in many protests, actions and other disobedience of the Albanian people against the Serbian invaders, even in the powerful demonstrations of the past 29 years, which are considered the bloodiest in Kosovo, at the same time the most resistant to the Serbian-Slavic occupation, the brave and great Albanian patriot Ismet Krasniqi was at the forefront of the organization!
He was a great inspiration for the Albanian youth that it is worth being at the forefront of the obligation to the homeland, without sparing himself at all, for which the best proof was his heroic fall in the field of honor on march 27, 1989 in Prishtina.
Ismet Krasniqi during his military service in the former Yugoslav army was arrested and imprisoned, being severely mistreated by the officers of that anti-Albanian army, while in the Zagreb prison he experienced inhuman torture. After returning to Kosovo, Ismet was arrested and imprisoned again, suffering in the prisons of Pristina, Ferizaj and Mitrovica.
He was then interrogated several times. Again, the Serbian UDB had persecuted Ismet. And, five days before his martyrdom, Ismet was arrested by the police, being held at the then station in the Dardania neighborhood in Pristina. There, he was interrogated and asked to give up his activity against the former Yugoslavia and Serbia, threatening him with physical liquidation.
However, Ismet Krasniqi, showing disregard for the UDB threat, was firm in his stance that the resistance for freedom and national unity must be an unstoppable effort until its final achievement, embodying in the work the legacy of the nation’s martyrs but also the will of the Albanians for a common Albanian state.
It was March 27, 1989. Demonstrations began in the center of Pristina, as well as the first clashes between Albanian demonstrators and numerous police forces armed to the teeth. Albanian youth were more determined than ever. The UDB had begun to distinguish the most determined demonstrators and began to arrest some of them. Ismet, thanks to his agility, evaded capture, knocking two UDB officers to the ground.
After this, the Albanian youth took off and began their march against the Serbian police, demanding the removal of the Serbian occupying power from Kosovo, and with strong cheers for the Republic of Kosovo.
Ismet and his friends found themselves facing Serbian criminals, in front of tear gas, tanks and armored cars, cheering for freedom and victory until unification. After the brutal intervention of the Serbian police, the demonstrators dispersed to organize again later even more powerfully.
But then the police, who were also equipped with armored cars and tanks, were assisted by several helicopters that from the air covered the clashes between the fearless Albanian demonstrators and the numerous Serbian-Yugoslav police forces.
And, under the crack of Kalashnikovs, the throwing of tear gas, and the helicopters that were very close to the location of the demonstrators, Ismet and his fearless comrades did not stop calling for freedom and for definitive victory until the liberation of Kosovo and national unification. However, there was no one to stop the courage and ideal of Ismet and his comrades except the bullets of the criminals of the Serbian regime, and thus he became one of the many examples of how one should sacrifice oneself for freedom and the just national cause until the unification of all Albanian lands.
It is worth noting that in the demonstrations of March 27 and 28 in Kosovo, 28 martyrs fell, and hundreds of others were injured and arrested. In Pristina alone, Ismet Krasniqi, Vetim Shala, Sevdat Xhafolli, Shukrije Obërtinca and Mustafa Veselaj were martyred, while dozens of others were injured.
In these powerful confrontations of Albanian youth against the occupying Serbian-Yugoslav police forces, it is also worth mentioning the heroism of the demonstrator Sevdat Xhafolli, who, while trying to crush the Serbian police with the bulldozer he had secured at the Tile Factory near the Llapi Mosque, fell a martyr.
Reference
Balkan Academia 