December 09, 1999

On this trial Flora Brovina, Albanian poet and medical doctor, was sentenced to 12 years of inprisonment by serbian authorities. This is what she said: "I dedicated my whole life to children and children do not choose their ethnicity, children do not know what ethnicity they are if their parents do not tell them. With my patients, I have never divided them according to their ethnicity, according to religion or the ideological choice of their parents. I feel proud because of this and even if I was not an Albanian woman I would have done the same thing. I am one of the persons

most involved in humanitarian work in Kosovo; I have sacrifice perhaps they knew our problems best, and they have presented our problems best. The Albanian women of Kosovo should never forget this.

I am very sorry that the court underestimates the role of women in the world. It is very important that women enjoy the same equality as men. I will never renounce the right to fight for the rights of women. I will always fight for women's rights.

What the court has accused me of having fought for the secession of Kosovo and the annexation of Albania, I repeat: My country is where my friends are and where my poems are read. My poems are read in Switzerland, India,

Brazil, Poland, in each of these countries it is as if I am in their own house. My poems have been published in the Encyclopedia of Poets of Yugoslavia (ex-Yugoslavia) and it is something very important for Albanian women.

The Albanian communityso fought, they have made even larger wars between each other and now they have reconciled."

Flora left the court walking sf us could have been on her place.

Stasa Zajovic

Women in Black

Belgrade, 14. December 99