Flora BROVINA

updated: august 2005

President of the "League of Albanian Women of Kosova" (founded in 1992),

Peace activist, eminent paediatrician, poet and journalist

 
 

Biography
Poems
Last words during her trial (1999)
articles in:
The Independant
Germany
More infos
 

To contact her (we shall forward to her)
 

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Born in September 30, 1949, in the town of Skenderaj, Kosova.

EDUCATION

She completed her primary and secondary education in Prishtina. She graduated from the Medical School of Prishtina University. She pursued her postgraduate studies in the Medical School of the University of Zagreb, earning initially a Masters degree and later a PhD specializing in Pediatrics.

JOURNALIST

From 1973 to 1981, she worked as a full time journalist with ìRilindjaî daily newspaper in Prishtina.
She was a member of the editorial board of ìKosovarjaî and ìTeutaî both eminent women magazines published in the Albanian language.

POET

 She has published the following poetry volumes:

• "Give me a Name" (1973) and 1999 in Belgrade in Serbian language,
• "Plant and Voice" (1979),
• "Snowball flower" (1988-Tirana),
• "Carefully Measures" (1995).

Her poetry has been translated in many foreign languages including among others, English, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Romanian, Turkish and Arabic.

ACTIVIST

She is the President of the "League of Albanian Women of Kosova", a non-governmental and non-political organization founded by her in 1992.

After the war started in March 1998, she established the ìCenter for the Rehabilitation of Women and Childrenî where she took care of women and children who fled from the war areas in Kosova. This center was open even during the NATO bombings, and in fact was the only institution in Prishtina that offered help to civilians that were caught in war.  She was one of the organizers of several peaceful demonstrations against the violence and war in Kosova.

Arrested on April 20th of 1999, just before the NATO troops moved in, she was taken out of Kosova, she was sent to Serbia were the Millosevic regime sentenced her to 12 years in prison.
After changes of government in Yugoslavia, after 19 months of imprisonment, on November 1st of 2000, she was set free, and it is important to mention that her release was a result of an enormous international pressure of western governments, human right groups, writers associations, medical groups, many renown world personalities and the whole civilized world.
 

AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS

• In January 1999 (before her arrest), ìMarie Claireî magazine chose her as one of the top three most influential women in the world.
• The Swedish PEN Club has awarded her with the Tucholsky Prize for 1999.
• On the other hand, the PEN American Center awarded Flora with the "Barbara Goldsmith-Freedom-to-Write" award for the year 2000.
• The Dutch PEN awarded Flora for the year 2000 with their annual award.
• In this context it is worth mentioning that Flora is an honored member of many international PEN Clubs around the globe.
• In 2000 in Athens, Flora BROVINA was chosen as "the Woman of the Balkans", an award that was given by the Foundation of Child and Family and UNESCO.
• Also in 2000, Flora BROVINA has won the "Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights", an award presented by many known world organizations, such as Doctors of the World, Global Health Organization, Association Francois and others.
• In Paris she was awarded with the ìLa Fertheî award for "courage to write" for the year 2000.
• In Germany she was awarded with "Heinrich Boll" award for the civil courage for the year 2000.
• The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS with 145,000 individual members and 300 affiliated groups) has chosen to honor Dr. Flora BROVINA for the year 2001, as they say for ìher humanitarian work in Kosovo before and during the NATO bombings, her fidelity to the human rights principles of the nondiscrimination and nonviolence, and her courage during her detention, trial and imprisonment by the Serb governmentî
• Also for the year 2001 Flora BROVINA was awarded with the Millennium Peace Prize for Women, an award given by UNIFEM and International Alert every five year.

(Biography sent to us directly by Flora BROVINA, through her son).

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WORDS OF FLORA BROVIINA TRIAL IN NIS, Serbia
9 of December '99

On this trial Flora BROVINA, a poet and a medical doctor and a leader of the "Albanian Womens League" from Pristina, Kosova, was sentenced to 12 years of inprisonment by Serbian authority for the delict of "organizing enemy and terrorist activities in the times of Marshal law". Present on the trial were some human rights activists among whome Stasa ZAJOVIC, Women in Black, Radmila LAZIC, poet, Natasa KANDIC, "Humanitarian Law Fund", all from Belgrade.

 This is her final word:

"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 I would have done the same thing. I am one of the persons most involved in humanitarian work in Kosovo; I have sacrificed my health in order to help women and children. If I were free, I would have had much work, I would help those that are suffering more now; now it is not Albanians that are suffering the most in Kosova, now it is others, and I would work with all my strength in order to help them, Serb, Roma people.

My duty has been to dedicate myself also as a woman, as a doctor, as a poet to the emancipation of the Albanian woman, to her consciousness, to women's human rights, to help them fight for their freedom, to understand that without independence economics cannot succeed nor can freedom.

In the League for Albanian Women, I have created bridges of friendship in the country and in the whole world. We have cooperated the most with Serbian women. Serbian women have given me the strongest support, 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 community has never behaved in this manner with their neighbors, women, and children. Right now in Kosovo, they have gone back to revenge at the end of the twentieth century. I am very sorry for not being free, for being in jail, for not being able to influence more what is happening now in Kosovo, for not being able to do more to lend a hand, to help those that are expelled, displaced. I believe that they will do it as if I were with them; I hope that they will make it because they are women, I hope that they behave in a just manner. I would do anything for them so that they could return to their houses, I would do anything so that the Serbian community and the Albanians reconcile. The intellectuals of Kosovo should give their support to reconciliation, other communities have also fought, they have made even larger wars between each other and now they have reconciled."

Flora left the court walking slowly; the police showed with harsh and arrogant words to the family and friends of Flora that they were not permitted to have any contact with her. Flora's two sisters that arrived from Kosovo, the poet Radmila Lazic, and I went to accompany Flora up to the police car. For a moment, we succeeded in putting the palms of our hands on the window of the police car. At that moment one of the policemen said with an insolent voice, "She's in safe hands. . ." Two policemen were in the front seat of the vehicle. Before my eyes surged imprisoned women: Leyla Zana, Kurdish, imprisoned in Turkey, Rigoberta Menchu, Aung Suun Ki

 We waved goodbye to Flora until the police vehicle was gone, while we could see it. I was in a state of "black shame," as Ana Ahmatova says, because each one of us could have been on her place.
 Stasa ZAJOVIC, and theirs website: Women in Black Belgrade, 14. december 99

 
THE INDEPENDENT, London, December 10, 1999
 Serb court jails doctor who aided Kosovo women By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Nis, Yugoslavia
 

An Albanian doctor, regarded as a champion of humanitarian causes in Kosovo, was sentenced to 12 years in prison yesterday by a Serbian court. In a ruling which stunned human rights organisations, Flora BROVINA, an eminent paediatrician, was found guilty on charges of "conspiring to commit hostile acts" and "terrorism" aimed at the secession of Kosovo from Serbia and Yugoslavia. The prosecution unexpectedly added charges against Dr BROVINA at the last minute alleging that she was involved in the establishment of "Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] military hospitals when Yugoslavia was in a "state of war". Although now disbanded, the KLA is regarded as a terrorist organisation by the Belgrade authorities.

Dr BROVINA, a founder of the League of Albanian Women denied all the charges. The evidence against Dr BROVINA included a photograph of her with a man in KLA uniform, medical items allegedly confiscated from her properly registered private clinic and wool donated by the British charity Oxfam. The wool was used for knitting sweaters by women who found shelter in Dr BROVINA's vicinity, after fleeing other areas of Kosovo during Nato air raids.

 Additional evidence presented by the prosecution yesterday included statements the doctor made on her arrest without her lawyers present.

 Dr BROVINA told the court that after 18 interrogating sessions each lasting eight hours she would have "signed anything, just to end the questions". Dr BROVINA's case been singled out by the US State Department and the New York based human rights defence organisation Human Rights Watch. She became a rallying point for the campaign to free all Albanian prisoners transferred from Kosovo to Serb jails.

 Dr BROVINA's husband Ajri BEGU, 48, said: "It was not Flora who was put on trial it was the medical profession. It was a trial against all the brave people, humanists, who stood in the way of the regime, be it by accident, be it intentionally, at bad times."

 Dr BROVINA's two sisters cried openly in front of the court in Nis, Serbia's third biggest city.
 Nikola BAROVIC, a Belgrade lawyer and adviser to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said that no valid evidence against Dr BROVINA was presented. "In Stalin's times one got 10 years for nothing. Here one gets 12." Dr BROVINA was arrested at the door of her Pristina home on 20 April by eight Serbian policemen, interrogated at Lipljan prison in Kosovo and later only aim in all her activities was "to help people, as a doctor, no matter what nation or religion they belonged to".

 She added that she regretted not being in Kosovo now, as thousands of Serbs were being expelled from their homes in revenge for atrocities against ethnic Albanians during Nato air strikes. "I would urge all Albanian intellectuals to raise their voices and speak out against violence and in favour of reconciliation. As a woman, I would offer my hand to Serb women as that is what women should do ? build bridges, help."

The physician, poet and human rights activist, Flora BROVINA is known to many Kosovars as "Mother Flora". In the course of their offensive of March 1999, the Serbian troops began to destruct the Albanian health system, to liquidate Kosovar doctors and medical staff and to destroy the medical centres of the Mother Theresa relief organisation. Nevertheless, Flora BROVINA refused to flee from Pristina. She said she could not leave "her mothers and children" to fend for themselves. On 22 April 1999, she was handcuffed and dragged away by eight soldiers of the Serbian intelligence service from her flat. Her relatives knew nothing of her whereabouts for weeks. Released prisoners had seen her in the prison in Lipjan.

 Dr. BROVINA has now been discovered in the prison hospital of Pozharevac in Serbia. She is in a very bad state of health. Contact to a lawyer has been forbidden by the Serbian authorities.
 Flora BROVINA was the president of the independent Kosova Women´s League. She had been active in organizing a series of women´s demonstrations to protest against actions by the Serbian security forces in the Drenica area where she was born and where the war started in March 1998.

 Since she had lost her position as a pediatrician in 1989, she had established a small medical centre where many Albanian women have been able to give birth in a secure environment. During the recent invasion by Serbian troops, each day she led teams into the forests where people were living in hiding.
 Dr. BROVINA belongs to the estimated 3,000 Albanian political prisoners who were transferred from Kosovo to Serbia by withdrawing Serbian troops. U.N. investigators discovered last week that the prisons of Peja/Pec, Pristina, Istok, Lipjan/Lipljan and Vushtrri/Vucitrn have been systematically emptied over the last days. Among the political prisoners missing are Albin Kurti, the organisor of the peaceful student protests in Pristina in 1997/1998, Halil Matoshi, editor of the weekly Zeri, and Ukshin Hoti, president of the Albanian opposition party, Unikomb, who was last said to be held in Dubrove prison near Istok. The Serbian Ministry of Justice claims that the prisoners had been moved to Serbia "for their own security".

 The Society for Threatened Peoples fears that the prisoners transferred from Kosovo will become victims of atrocities by members of the Serbian troops. Many of them will not survive further torture in Serbian prisons.

 Please help us to prevent further senseless atrocities and killings.

 Please turn to  the next President of the Council of the European  Union, Martti Ahtisaari, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, as well as  to the German, French, British and Amercian governments.
 Please demand that the Serbian leadership immediately release the human rights activist, Flora BROVINA and all other political prisoners transferred from Kosovo to Serbian prisons.

This emergency action was initiated by the "Society for Threatened Peoples" International Human rights organisation in consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (category II) P.O. Box 2024 D - 37010 Goettingen Phone +49/ 551 / 49906-0 Fax +49/ 551/ 580 28 contact
 

Flora BROVINA, the paediatrician and humanitarian worker jailed for twelve years yesterday, says her conviction on conspiracy charges was based on statements obtained from her under duress. BROVINA said yesterday that she had been interrogated eighteen times while confined in Lipljan before the trial. The interrogations would begin early in the morning and continue until 5.00 p.m., without breaks for food, said BROVINA, adding that she was often so exhausted that she would admit to anything. The president of the ìLeague of Albanian Womenî denied that she had ever told police inspectors that she was minister for health of the Kosovo Government-in-exile and denied other key points of evidence from her statement which, she said, had not been read to her before she signed it.

The only prosecution witness to give evidence at BROVINA's trial in Nis yesterday, Dobrasin KRDZIC, told the court that he had not personally seen the confiscation of medical materials from BROVINA. KRDZIC also said that any such material would, in any case, have been used in peace time as well as war, adding that Kosovo Liberation Army members had been treated in Pristina Hospital. One of the key accusations against BROVINA was that she had provided medical treatment to members of the outlawed organisation.

MORE INFOS

<http://www.ifex.org/alert/>
<http://www.amnesty.de/de/2914/aikosovo2.htm>
<http://www.khao.org/appkosovo.htm>
<http://www.amnestyusa.org>