“It was at that time that the demand for a republic of Kosovo was born and took shape. This generation carried the spirit forward with enthusiasm and brought us along with it.”
Rexhep Ismaili is recalling 1968, a year of hope for change across Europe – and in Kosovo too. At that point, Kosovo was part of the Yugoslav federation and dominated by Serb governance. But its downtrodden ethnic Albanian majority was beginning to demand greater freedom. “These were circumstances that demanded a voice,” Ismaili said.
The summer of 1968 was also when Ismaili first met Ibrahim Rugova – the man who years later would become the first president of Kosovo, after the collapse of Yugoslavia.
Both enrolled in linguistic studies at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pristina. Ismaili and Rugova, who was born in 1944 in the mountainous village of Cerce/Cerca in near the western town of Istog/Istok, became close and decided to share a dormitory room.
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