Socialist Party MP and former Speaker of Parliament, Elisa Spiropali, has returned to the public stage, not to bring the Platform for a New Albania that she had promised to Edi Rama and the protesters, but to protect Albanians from Serbian aggression.
She reacted harshly after the statement of the Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Snezhana Paunovic. The latter stated that if she had been in the place of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 1998, she would have "ethnically cleansed Kosovo."
Spiropali described the Serbian minister's statement as a pure display of barbarism and a grave insult to the memory of the victims of the war. She demanded that the international community and Serbia itself take a stand against this language that endangers peace in the region.
"It's unbelievable to hear from a minister of a government of a country that aspires to European integration to express without any shame the regret that not enough children, women, men and elderly people were killed in Kosovo. God save this monster who applauds and glorifies crimes," the MP wrote in her reaction.
According to her, this attitude cannot be tolerated or passed off as simply a different attitude.
"This is not political opinion. This is verbal barbarism."
The former Speaker of the Parliament has emphasized the need for a firm response from the European Union, underlining that European values cannot coexist with calls for genocide and ethnic cleansing.
"Europe cannot listen to this language and remain silent. Whoever justifies or expresses regret for crimes that were not committed on an even larger scale cannot be a partner of European values, must bear political and institutional, but above all human, responsibility."
Recalling the sacrifice of the people of Kosovo for freedom, Spiropali added that protecting historical memory is the duty of Europe itself:
"No one gave Kosovo its freedom. Kosovo won its freedom with blood. It is Europe's honor and duty to protect the memory of the victims, which constitutes the foundation of the principles on which it is built."
In closing her response, the MP also sent a clear message to official Belgrade, emphasizing that Serbia's European path inevitably passes through distancing itself from the rhetoric of war and peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.
"If Serbia is serious about its path towards the European Union, it cannot remain indifferent to this verbal macabre that, at the very least, shames it, and at the very most endangers its peaceful coexistence with its neighbors," she concludes.
