THE CRIMINALIZATION OF THE KLA – WHEN JUSTICE BECOMES A SERVANT OF SERBIAN POLITICS Editorial By Flamur Buçpapaj

THE CRIMINALIZATION OF THE KLA – WHEN JUSTICE BECOMES A SERVANT OF SERBIAN POLITICS
Editorial
By Flamur Buçpapaj
What is happening today with the attempt to criminalize the war of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is not a judicial process, but a deliberate political act, a belated historical revenge, a brutal effort to overturn the truth and humiliate a people who dared not to disappear. When a court forgets who the aggressor was and who the victim was, it ceases to be a court and becomes an instrument of propaganda.
The war of the KLA was a war for freedom, survival, and human dignity. It was not a crime, it was not terrorism, and it was not a dark political project, as certain international circles—alarmingly aligned with Belgrade’s official narrative—are now trying to portray it. To equate the KLA with Serbian massacres is a rape of history, an open act of cynicism, and a grave insult to the thousands of Albanian civilian victims.
Decisions that speak of sentences of up to 45 years in prison for each former KLA member are not only unjust, but morally repugnant. They do not seek justice; they seek the punishment of freedom. They do not pursue individual responsibility, but collective criminalization. And when justice punishes collectively, it assumes the face of political revenge.
The KLA did not emerge from a desire for power, but from the total failure of the international order to stop Serbian crimes. For years, Kosovo Albanians were excluded from public life, expelled from their jobs, beaten, imprisoned, and killed. Children were expelled from schools, professors were banned from teaching, families were left without livelihoods. In this brutal reality, armed resistance was the last resort of a people pushed against the wall.
Serbia was not simply a party to the conflict—Serbia was the machinery of crime. It deployed its army, police, intelligence services, and paramilitary gangs to ethnically cleanse Kosovo. It burned villages, massacred civilians, raped women, and buried bodies in mass graves to conceal its crimes. And today, ironically, it is precisely this Serbia that watches with satisfaction as the fighters for freedom are tried as criminals.
This is not merely injustice—it is a criminal inversion of historical reality. It is an attempt to declare the aggressor a victim and the victim guilty. It is the sick logic by which the tank and rifle of the occupier are equated with the rifle of resistance. If accepted, such logic destroys the very foundation of international justice.
The facts are undeniable: more than 13,000 Albanian civilians killed, hundreds of thousands forcibly displaced, thousands of women raped, hundreds of mass graves. NATO’s intervention did not occur because the KLA existed, but because Serbia was committing crimes against humanity. That is why the world intervened. That is why Kosovo exists today.
And yet, today, international justice behaves as if these facts do not exist. As if history begins where it becomes politically convenient. As if a war for freedom can be detached from the context of systematic oppression. This is not justice—this is organized hypocrisy.
The social consequences of this approach are devastating. The families of fallen fighters are being retraumatized. The sacrifice of an entire generation is being humiliated. The belief is being reinforced that the international order does not protect victims, but punishes them. A society that sees its freedom treated as a crime inevitably loses faith in any system of justice.
Politically, these processes are a gift to Serbia and its allies. They provide Belgrade with the perfect tool to relativize its own crimes and evade historical responsibility. Instead of reconciliation, the poison of historical revisionism is being sown. And without truth, peace is nothing but a deception.
This must be said clearly and without fear: a justice system that serves geopolitical interests, applies double standards, and punishes only one side is morally corrupted justice. It has no authority to judge anyone. It is part of the problem, not the solution.
Therefore, the demand is direct and non-negotiable: stop the criminalization of the KLA’s war. Respect historical truth. Do not become instruments of Serbian and Russian narratives. We expect their release, not as a political favor, but as a minimal act of justice.
The war of the KLA was just, liberating, and legitimate. Without it, Kosovo would not exist. Whoever judges that war judges freedom itself. And whoever declares freedom a crime has chosen to stand on the wrong side of history.