In 1997, they carried placards asking “Hello Europe, where are you?” In 2026, they carried a banner the size of a building: “In the name of the people, declare them innocent!”
Same city. Same date. Twenty-nine years apart.
On October 1, 1997, thousands of University of Prishtina students marched peacefully through the city under Slobodan Milošević’s regime. On October 1, 2026, Prishtina’s Skanderbeg Square filled again, this time in protest against the Kosovo Specialist Chambers’ verdict against four former KLA leaders.
The date was not a coincidence. The civic platform “Liria ka Emër” (Freedom Has a Name) deliberately tied today’s rally to the 1997 student march, under a slogan aimed squarely at The Hague: “Not in my name.”
In 1997, Albanians in Kosova had been locked out of public institutions for years, including their own university. Lectures were held in private homes and makeshift classrooms as part of a parallel Albanian-language system.
The students had one demand: to return to their university buildings.
The march, led by the Independent Students’ Union of the University of Prishtina, set off peacefully. It was met by riot police and armoured vehicles. Human Rights Watch documented that Serbian police dispersed the protesters and beat many of them.
Placards that day quoted Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The images of students facing a wall of police shields became some of the defining pictures of Kosova’s peaceful resistance in the 1990s.
Twenty-nine years later, the anger is directed at a court.
On September 16, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers convicted former president Hashim Thaçi, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi of war crimes. Thaçi and Krasniqi were sentenced to 25 years each, Veseli to 18 and Selimi to 13. Eighty-one years in total.
The verdict was read “in the name of the people of Kosovo.” Protesters answered with three words.
For 15 consecutive nights before today’s rally, crowds gathered in the same square. On October 1, buses brought people in from towns across Kosova.
“Kosova did not start the war. Kosova was not the aggressor,” Ismail Tasholli of “Liria ka Emër” said on the eve of the protest.
Organiser Çlirim Haziri, whose father Xhavit Haziri has been missing since 1998, addressed the young people in the square directly: “Rini e Kosovës, hallall ju qoftë gjaku i babës tem!” — “Youth of Kosova, my father’s blood was given gladly for you!”
The protesters are demanding that Kosova’s government and Assembly move forward with amendments to the law on the Specialist Chambers. The Assembly has already adopted a joint declaration on the verdict with 99 votes, while Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he is awaiting legal and financial opinions on the draft.
The case has now entered the appeals phase. Defence teams and the Specialist Prosecutor have until November 27 to file their notices of appeal.
The next protest is set for October 10 in Brussels, organised by the Albanian diaspora.
