Taste of Home

Ilir was one of the group of boys, younger and older men who were detained in the Reception Centre for Asylum seekers in Ježevo due to the unlawful crossing of the border. Custody decisions were issued to them in the Croatian language which they didn’t understand. With them was a fifteen year old boy, unaccompanied by parents. They asked for asylum, but remained closed in Ježevo until they were deported from the country. When they were apprehended, they were on their way to Italy in the search of better economic opportunities.

After the defeat in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, at the location not far from today's capital Pristina, Kosovo, the former part of the Serbian Kingdom, fell under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and remained so until 1912 when it was "returned" to Serbia within which it stayed for almost a century, except for the period of World War II when it was under Italian occupation. As the population of Kosovo is mainly divided between ethnic Albanians and Serbs, since 1990 there are two completely separate administrative systems and a lack of communication between communities and their leaders leads to ethnic hatred and fear.

The relations have escalated during Milosevic's rule that put the Albanian population in the secondary position and in 1996 with the founding of paramilitary organisation the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which attacked the Serbian police and officials. Open conflict between the KLA and the Yugoslav and Serbian forces occurred in 1998 and in 1999 UN and NATO joined in on the Albanian side. The independence of Kosovo was proclaimed in 2008, but the International Court of Justice, despite opposition from the Serbian side, only confirmed it in July 2010. Today the country is faced with the problem of poor respect for human rights and freedoms, and the very bad state of the health sector.

It is estimated that some 250,000 of the 1.7 million inhabitants live in exile.