 Hello, my name is Marcus Brandt, I'm the Head of Mission of International Idea for Myanmar, and today I'm meeting Ulpiana Lama, who has been the Chief of Mission of the Republic of Kosovo in Thailand. We are here today in the Embassy of Kosovo in Thailand in Bangkok, and we would like to speak about Kosovo's experience in post-conflict transformation, but also consolidating democratic structures, and what that might mean for Myanmar. And today is of course the 1st of February, the third anniversary of the military coup in Myanmar, and we have spoken about this before, and you have always told me about how much that brings back memories of your own background of Kosovo's history. And I want to start by asking you, when you watch the events in Myanmar, what does that mean to you from a person from Kosovo's perspective, and in what way can you relate to it? Well, thank you Marcus for being here and addressing me this question. I wouldn't have imagined a few years ago when this happened, a couple of years ago when this happened, that we would be still talking about it. Unfortunately, we are. Fortunately, I see that there are people who have decided ordinary people, citizens, and they deserve, they have earned the right to be called citizens who have claimed their fate in their hands. And it makes me think of what is the function of the state? The state is there to protect the lives, the dignity, and the property of people. And if a state fails to deal with these three, to convey these three to their citizens, to protect them, their life, their honor, and their property, then this state is a failure. And this is unfortunately what we see at the moment. Same as you, I was last night at the event, which was remarking this anniversary, and I was deeply touched by the stories of the people there, of citizens of Myanmar who happened to be there and to attend that event. And it brings memory back. And this is something that I have to talk about, the traumas. Because the traumas are there. And sometimes we do not take control over them. They can take control over us. And yes, there was a traumatic past. We had to go in the Balkans in the 90s. And we see the history repeating itself in a different geography. I witnessed yesterday, last night, the strength of the people, of course the trauma at the ordinary people, but also the strength of those who were talking, who were hard in executive positions now of the resistance. And although they seem to operate in different geographies due to the conditions, I did not notice anger on them. Those who were emotionally overwhelmed, at least in the way they were conducting themselves, they were rational. And that gives me hope for the future of the country. Because after the first moments of the impact of the trauma of what is happening, you need to come to senses. You need to come to, in touch with your rational side. And this is what happened in my country, too. This is what happened in parts of the Balkans, too. So we had a very irrational side, but we also had rational sides. Could you maybe, for our audience in Myanmar, talk a little bit about Kosovo's own history, especially since the 1990s. I see here a picture of Ibrahim Rugova, who of course was a big global star in the 1990s, as an icon, a symbol of democratic resistance and the peaceful civil disobedience movement. So in a way, Kosovo and Burma in those years were both known for a large widespread democracy movement, a civil disobedience movement. So in a way, there are some parallels that go back to the 1990s. Now Kosovo is a young, a new European country. You just celebrated 15 years of independence. Many countries in the region still do not have diplomatic relations. Thailand does. Myanmar, until now, has not had direct diplomatic relations. But what sort of are the key moments that you would like an audience in Myanmar to know about how Kosovo went from a part of former Yugoslavia to the independent European state that it is now? Marcos, this is a very broad question. And I will try to structure for myself and for the audience. Well, shall we start one by one, and with these pictures that you brought up? So Ibrahim Rugova for sure, but then we have Anton Cheta. And I would like to give you a bit of a context. So I am myself the daughter of a former political migrant refugee from Kosovo. Now, Jakova is a town in Kosovo. My father moved to Albania. And then he met my mother, who again is from the same town, Jakova in Kosovo. I was born and brought up in Albania. So for 35 years, my father could not meet his only parent, because he had lost his mother when he was a toddler, and his only parent was his father. But the authorities would not allow him to meet his only parent, his father, for 35 years. And so when I spoke a bit about the trauma, it's also in epigenetics, so what your parents have gone through. And people now who are facing these violent experiences need to know and get prepared that maybe even a generation who is not yet born will be, to some extent, traumatized by what is happening now. And what is happening now in Myanmar is people who are fleeting their country for some safety. And it's a horrendous feeling to abandon your own home. And I'm not saying hows, I'm saying home. And they are now talking about many concepts, like a genocide when you destroy homes, and these are all new concepts. Also but expulsing someone and being without truths or trying, being left without the only country you know, the only country that you know. So this is a traumatic experience. Now, Ibrahim Rugova and Anton Cheta, they were like close collaborators. And they started in the 80, 1989, because we had like a kind of phenomenon at the time which was called the blood feuds. And it was for a sense of honor, et cetera, et cetera, that if you had taken a life, the family would retaliate by taking a life from the family, the other family. And these visionary people, these visionary leaders, and this is what makes you a leader, okay, the vision and the ability to take people to this shared horizon, what future you want. This is the first thing that they did. So along with the, at the time, Association Mother Teresa, they reconciled people. And so we were united before the episodes, the bloody episodes would unfold in former Yugoslavia. So we got united. This is very important to get united. And what makes us together? So what is the thing that makes us together? Because you know, Margo, if you stay at your home or your own home, if I stay in my own home or in your office or in my office, we usually find ourselves in monologue, okay? There is an entire universe in your head, and there is an entire universe in my head. So how could we create like main points of ethical, of moral ground? What do we want for our country? And how shall we start from, and start from somewhere? So at the time, these guys, these visionary people, they talked a lot. And they knew the people, and people knew them. And they had this currency, and that currency was credibility. People gravitated towards what they were thinking, they were proposing as the vision for the future of the country. And of course, we did not rush up at the time in a war, because we were too powerless against that machinery that was like at the time Serbia under Milosevic regime, okay? So and we were building consensus internally and externally. Internally to bring people together, and we had the fund of 3%, all our diaspora who was abroad, they would give a contribution, a 3% contribution so that we could sponsor finance the school system and the education system. But externally as well, because the capitals, the decision makers in the world, they did not know what was happening. So there was not a narrative about Kosovo. What these countries, what is the past of this country, what is the future of this country? So and they built that narrative. They knocked in many capitals, and this is again the sense of agency, the same sense of agency that I noticed last night when people were talking there, the sense of agency. Yes, and we need to go. Now we have a constitution, right? That is our, what we want, okay? But back then we didn't have a constitution because there were two aggression on us done. One was the implementation, and that was done by law. And the one was functioning under special conditions, and the second one is the labor law under special conditions. And what happened in Kosovo back then was that all the doctors and all the intellectuals, they were expulsed from the system. They did not have managerial positions. But as a result, we created a parallel system, and that parallel system was like people offered their homes, their houses, and schools, and they were completely organized so that they could have medical services. And for instance, let me bring you these two photos, maybe as an illustration. We have Dua Liva here and Eritaora. They are both global superstars now, okay? And she's a refugee. She had to flee the country when she was one year old, that girl. And she's a cousin of mine, relative. And her grandpa and Dua Liva's grandpa, they were both expulsed from the works, their jobs. They were, one was the director, movie director, and the other one was the director of the archives as well. So imagine how families improperly are left without any future, without any salary, and we had to organize ourselves, to mobilize ourselves, and we created a new identity, and that identity was volunteering. Back that time, you could be like an engineer, but you had to be a volunteer. You could be a doctor, but you had to be a volunteer. We, the people there were all volunteers. You had thousands of volunteers offering their time and their services in this parallel system. We resisted. So this story of dislocation, displacement, expulsion, trauma is certainly something that people in Myanmar recognize very well, and also the process of forming a new identity and imagining, envisioning, and future for the country and the different communities in the country. Can you maybe just say in practical terms, so during the 1990s, there was essentially like a parallel state in Kosovo that was run by something like an exile government that had representative offices, a bit like the NUG now around the world, trying to lobby foreign governments for recognition and drawing resources and donations from the very large diaspora community of Kosovo around the world, especially in Europe. But then in the late 1990s, a younger generation, an angrier group of young males mostly, decided to basically become impatient with this peaceful resistance and took up arms as a last resort of resistance against the Serbian oppression. And then in 1998, 1999, the war escalated. It led to mass expulsions, 800,000, I think people were expelled, and then only because of an international intervention, it was possible to repel this attack, which was, of course, later on qualified as genocidal at the International Criminal Tribunal. Would you just say a little bit on how Kosovo managed to, let's say, get away from the non-state armed groups, basically the Kosovo Liberation Army that took charge, that took control, that actually waged a war of defense against the Serbian forces? How did that transform into a civilian-led democracy, into a Kosovo police force that is widely respected internationally as one of the best in the region? How was that transition actually managed? What was the role of the international community? And what was the role also of Kosova's who wanted to shape their country from that moment of liberation, essentially, that happened in 1999? I don't know if you have read my CV, but I used to be the spokesperson of the government under the leadership of the former head of that army, General Akim Cekum. So I know a bit about the thing. We had a process of transformation that took place, negotiations for this transformation, in 1999-2000, and that was 1999 mostly, and that was the process. We created a force which is called, in Albanian, Trupad-Breset Kosovo, Kosovo Police Protection Force, Kosovo Protection Force. And of course, at the same time, we created the Kosovo Police, and so we managed to split this force that was like these guys, these young people, motivated people into these two branches. And that is what happened. So it was a peaceful transformation, which was conducted by a series of negotiations, and we had the Kosovo Protection Force, later on, only nine years later on, we had our Ministry of Defense, at the time that was mostly for protection force, for civic purposes. And what do you think is the secret of success of Kosovo's democracy? Kosovo does very well compared with the countries in the region, in our Global Democracy Index, it has quite high rankings, let's say, in terms of rule of law, anti-corruption. What do you think were the key ingredients to make that possible? Awareness, that is, dear Marguers, the awareness not to commit to anyone what was done to us, our responsibility, that we need to protect the vulnerable communities. Has it, have we always gotten that right? No. But it is part of maturity. And fortunately, again, we had people who had that vision and got the best practices of the world, and we have this embody in our constitution, which is one of the most progressive constitution in the world. You know that we have positive discrimination, so we protect our minorities, because now we live in a country, we live in our own country, and that country is 90% ethnic Albanian, and 10% are other minorities, ethnic minorities. But other than ethnic minorities, there are other minorities. So people with mental health or physical health problems or gender minorities, so all this needs to be respected, the choices they make in life, and it is like, let's say, a choreography between being right and just, and also being ethical. This is what we do. Thank you very much. And I think this will be a very good source of inspiration for the people in Myanmar. And I hope that people will actually pay attention and learn more, read more about Kosovo in this region as well. There's probably a lot out there available in terms of stories, and you have certainly played a very important part in telling Kosovo stories in Thailand in the wider region. So thank you very much for watching, and we will share some links to learn more about Kosovo and its story of building democratic institutions based on human rights and the rule of law. And thank you very much for watching.