Albin Kurti

Albin Kurti (Albanian: ['albin 'kuɾti]; born 24 March 1975) is a Kosovo Albanian politician who has been serving as Prime Minister of Kosovo since 2021, having previously held the office from February to June 2020. He came to prominence in 1997 as the vice-president of the University of Pristina student union, and a main organizer of non-violent student demonstrations of 1997 and 1998. Kurti then worked in Adem Demaçi's office when the latter became the political representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Kurti has been a member of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo since 2010 in three consecutive legislatures.

Albin Kurti was born on 24 March 1975 in Pristina, Kosovo of SFR Yugoslavia. Kurti's father, Zaim Kurti originates from an Albanian family from the village of Sukobin in Ulcinj Municipality, Montenegro; an engineer, he moved to Pristina in search for employment. Kurti's mother, Arife Kurti is a retired elementary school teacher, born and educated in Pristina. Kurti also has two brothers, Arianit and Taulant. Kurti finished his elementary and middle education in Pristina. He graduated university in 2003 in Telecommunications and Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Pristina.

Kurti first came to prominence in October 1997, as one of the leaders of the student protests in Kosovo. Albanian students protested against the occupation of the University of Pristina campus by the Yugoslav police. The occupation had started in 1991 and had led to ethnic Albanian academic staff and students having to use alternative locations for their classes due to them being barred from using university premises by Serbian law. The protests were crushed violently, but the students and Kurti did not stop the resistance and they organized other protests in the following months. In July 1998, Kurti was the assistant of the political representative of the UÇK, Adem Demaçi. These actions made him a target of the Yugoslav police.

In April 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Kurti was arrested and severely beaten by Yugoslav forces. He was first sent to the Dubrava Prison, but as the Serbian army withdrew from Kosovo, they transferred him to a prison in Požarevac on 10 June 1999. Later that year, he was charged with "jeopardizing Yugoslavia's territorial integrity and conspiring to commit an enemy activity linked to terrorism" and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Kurti was released in December 2001 by Yugoslavia's post-Milošević government after being pardoned by President Vojislav Koštunica amid international pressure. Since his release, he worked outside party politics in Kosovo but was a severe critic of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and of corruption. He organised non-violent protests in support of the families of those whose relatives disappeared in the war, and in favor of Kosovo's self-determination. On 23 April 2003 Kurti graduated with a degree in Computer and Telecommunications Sciences from the University of Prishtina. He was an activist for the Action for Kosovo Network (AKN), which was formed in 1997, and was a movement whose mission focused on human rights and social justice, education, culture and art.^{[citation needed]}

On 12 June 2005 AKN activists wrote the slogan "No negotiations, Self-Determination" on the walls of UNMIK buildings. The police, with the help of UN Police, arrested, jailed, and convicted hundreds of activists, including Kurti. AKN then changed its name to the Self-Determination Movement (Vetëvendosje). Vetëvendosje demanded a referendum on the status of Kosovo, stating "only with a referendum as a use of international right for self-determination, can we realise a democratic solution for Kosovo, instead of negotiations which compromise freedom".

In February 2007 Vetëvendosje organized a protest against the Ahtisaari Plan, which according to them divided Kosovo along ethnic lines and did not give the people of Kosovo what they were striving for. The protest turned violent and the Romanian UN Police killed two unarmed protesters and injured 80 others with plastic and rubber bullets. Kurti was arrested. He was detained until July 2007 and then kept under house arrest. Amnesty International criticised the irregularities in his prosecution. He was eventually sentenced to nine months. Kurti was an advocate of "active nonviolent resistance".

Vetëvendosje joined the political spectrum of Kosovo by running in the elections of 2010 for the first time. Albin Kurti was the candidate for prime minister, though Vetëvendosje only scored 12.69% and won 14 out of 120 seats in the assembly, becoming the third political force in the country. Vetëvendosje criticized the Brussels Agreement between Kosovo and Serbia. The Vetëvendosje MPs, including Kurti, were escorted out of the parliament by police for disrupting the session of the assembly.