TIRANA, Jan. 22 – Albania will honour late prominent Kosovo politician and writer Ibrahim Rugova with a statue in Tirana, mayor Lulzim Basha has announced.
“We will erect a statue dedicated to Ibrahim Rugova, a work by sculptor Idriz Balani which will immortalize the gratitude of Tirana citizens and the whole of the national to his immortal works,” Basha wrote on his Facebook profile.
Rugova, a nationalist writer and politician who devoted his public life to peaceful attempts to gain independence for ethnic Albanians in Kosovo died in 2006 at the age of 61.
He was the first president of the Republic of Kosovo, serving from 1992 to 2000 and again from 2002 to 2006, and a prominent Kosovo Albanian political leader, scholar, and writer.
In 1998, he was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Owing to his role in Kosovo’s history, Rugova has been dubbed “Father of the Nation” and “Gandhi of the Balkans,” and posthumously declared a Hero of Kosovo.
