The ruin of history

Shaban Çupi, a teacher at the "Castle of Knowledge", decided to return to the "place of crime" after 27 years.

The man from Paldenica of Hani i Elez and his friends headed towards Gurrakoc of Istog. Unlike in 1986, when the guard was waiting for him handcuffed, the former political prisoner would open the door himself. It was 2017, writes "Koha Ditore" today.

"It is interesting to return to the prisons, that we do not return to the place of crime, that we have been great idealists. Why great idealists, because if you visit Albania, today's administrative Albania, everywhere you go there are castles. Have you noticed?” - Çupi emphasizes.

"It means a people who have never accepted the invasion, that the castle is a symbol of resistance. In Kosovo we have Artana, Prizren, but we don't have as many as in Albania, which means not that we had fewer castles, but instead of castles we had prisons".

"We did not return to the scene of the crime, but we returned to the castle"

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"And we didn't return to the scene of the crime, but we returned to the fortress," Çupi emphasizes in the premises of the village school, where he continues to work. He has some of the 21 authorial books in front of him. In some cases, dozens of pages cite his testimonies and those of his fellow collaborators.

He had worked with them illegally in the eighties, when Kosovo began to tighten its grip after the 1981 student demonstrations for the Republic of Kosovo.

But the "tangible" history of Çup and other ex-prisoners in Gurrakoc is expected to be flattened. The building, damaged by the lack of government support, has turned into a destitute shelter for many families. The local authorities of Istog have told eight families from the surroundings of Klina and Istog to leave the facility until spring. Urbanism inspectors have recommended the Municipality to demolish the building. This was confirmed by the director for Urban Planning and Environment, Besart Dreshaj, who said over the phone that the two-story building is expected to be demolished due to the high level of damage. According to him, the municipality has also received the support of ministerial levels. Çupi disagrees with the plan of the Western Municipality of Kosovo. "Demolishing prisons is the most short-sighted, most mediocre decision of any Kosovo institution that makes it", he emphasizes. "Yes, it is our heritage. Yes, it's like tearing down a castle, man. Yes, do these people think they wipe their tracks. They are not only mine, they are with hundreds of friends, they are people who have given their blood and their lives for Kosovo". 

"... as if he took me and spoiled them to the Jashars"

Naim Ramadani, a former political prisoner who during the eighties had spent four years in prisons in Kosovo and Serbia for his political activity, says that the country's institutions are not taking care of preserving the material and spiritual heritage.

"In other words, 'everything that is touched, instead of being left with me, you went to visit me as a testimony. When I went, they said: 'That's how many were killed'", Ramadani emphasizes with a smile. 

"With the demolition of the prisons, it is as if I destroyed them (houses and facilities, vj) to the Jashars". The activist Shkëlzen Gashi, who has been vocal in his demands to turn the objects related to the last war into museums, said on Monday in the show "Express" on KTV that the prison building near the central police station of Pristina will could be returned to the museum for documenting the ill-treatment of political prisoners. 

"We have very little sensitivity for the spiritual cultural heritage", said Gashi, adding that the Kosovar society thinks "very little about the spiritual wealth, about the confessions of these people" who have suffered in Kosovo's prisons. 

He has shown how Sarajevo had several museums about the war of the first half of the nineties. "And the first thing that came to my mind is what we tell a foreigner in Kosovo about the last war", he said. 

In the first half of the nineties, Čupi, a survivor of the massacre in Dubrava Prison in 1999, had heard that the Gurrakoc prison had been turned into a shelter for Serbian refugees from Knin, Croatia. After 27 years, he would see for himself that the building had turned into an illegal shelter for eight families from different communities from the surroundings of Istog and Klina. 

“The first impression when I entered: It was a run-down prison. I entered the front door, the iron one, but when I entered, everything was destroyed. I found every family there", remembers Çupi. 

Life is hell 

Lumnije Çitaku's family has been living in the neglected post-war building for nine years. The peasant family lives with 125 euros of social security and 75 euros divided as compensation after an accident of the couple. The cheetahs thought they would spend some time at the zore's shelter. 

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Drinking water can be contaminated, as a pipe constantly leaks from the building. Sewage has flooded the corridors. The bathrooms on the second floor are non-functional. The humidity has collapsed parts of them. Washing two daughters and a son is a big challenge for Mrs. Çitaku. 

"When they were small, I used to leave them in the room, but now they are grown up and I don't think it's reasonable to clean them more than the boy who is eight years older than me. I only need to wash them once a week", she emphasizes in the wet corridor. 

In the stinking environment, she dries the clothes. A few years ago, a former political prisoner had asked the Çitaks for permission to see the rooms where he had served his sentence in the eighties. 

"They came, they said that it was very good here where they stayed, they said it was like a hotel", says Çitaku. Armend Vrankaj, returned from Germany, still does not know where he will house his four-member family after the collapse of the building. 

"I'm a disaster, brother, without wood, without supplies, we are rarely ever invited." I have the social insurance 107 euros. You have nothing to do with them", emphasizes Vrankaj, who had lived in Peja before he was forced to take refuge in Gurrakoc. 

He says that the eight families housed in the former prison facility belong to the Ashkali, Roma and Egyptian communities. There are also Albanians, like the Çitaku family. Vrankaj's rooms have no doors. He divided the corridor with a makeshift door with boards. The air is cold on a mid-February day. The ceiling without a concrete slab has begun to sag in some parts of the rooms. In the corner of the corridor there is a toilet bowl. 

"My son has inhalation. All the wind is coming in. Thuaja de zall flej", emphasizes Vrankaj, showing that he often forces children to beg for alms. Dreshaj said that the Municipality of Istog will take over the temporary housing of two families from the surrounding area. Vrankaj still does not know what will happen to his family from the surroundings of Klina. 

"You want more, brother..." 

Former political prisoners insist on thinking once more before excavators raze the Gurrakoc former prison building. 

"Love more brother, for the stone, for the earth, for the sky for everything", says Çupi. Nuri laughs at him when he says these words. He was twice sentenced to solitary confinement in Dubrava prison after organizing strikes in Gurrakoc in defense of an imprisoned Albanian who had rejected the arbitrary decision of a Yugoslav court to give his land to Serbian settlers. 

In the "Castle of Knowledge", Çupi shows one of his 21 books, where the mistreatment of innocent Albanians in prisons is witnessed. During his visit to Gurrakoc, Çupi had spent a lot of time in the infamous cell of Milik Krsta, killed by Selman Kadria. 

"And when I went to Miliq Krsta's cell, I didn't agree with anything and asked a question, my brother: How is it possible that these institutions of ours don't make that cell and at least a part of the prison a museum?" - Çupi asks the question in front of the flag-emblem of the KLA and that of Kosovo. 

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"We left the skin there. No, it's not a question of my individuality. I have many friends who have given blood to Kosovo".