Kosovo refugee Korab Zuka outside his D.C. apartment. (Blade photo by Henry Linser)
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CHRIS JOHNSON
Friday, March 28, 2008
A large blue-and-white poster with the word “peace” written across it covers the front window of Korab Zuka’s Washington apartment.
The Kosovo native put the poster up as a practical matter. While babysitting his landlord’s dog, Zuka went shopping and left the pet in his apartment. When Zuka returned, he found that the dog had chewed through the blinds on his front window, leaving his front room exposed. A poster would have to do as a makeshift blind.
The 23-year-old said he created the poster and decorated it with the word “peace” because, “if people believed in a little more peace, then I wouldn’t have had to go through all the crap that I went through.”
Zuka fled to the United States last year after an Islamic fundamentalist group in Kosovo threatened to kill him for being gay and for leading a gay advocacy group. The State Department granted him asylum Feb. 29.
Zuka’s recent escape was not the first time he had to flee his country to maintain his safety. In 1999, he left a war-decimated Kosovo as Serbian President Slobodan Miloeviç attempted to purge the Serbian homeland of ethnic Albanians, such as Zuka. A 13-year-old Zuka and his family sought temporary safety in a Canadian refugee camp.
“I’ve been put so many times in very uncomfortable situations and the first was the war and [the second was when] I had to leave because I was gay,” Zuka said.
In April 2005, Zuka set up the Center for Social Emancipation, an organization aimed at helping Kosovo gays. The center organized social gatherings and distributed information to keep the community better informed.
The group had about 200 members, but none of them were registered by name because they were afraid of being outed, Zuka said. He said he didn’t know half of the members’ names and instead had to refer to them by nicknames or by letters like X or B.
The center maintained a web site that informed the community about safety practices and legal ramifications of being gay. The site informed people that gay activity is legal in the country and attempted to debunk a common belief in Kosovo that homosexuality is a disease.
Zuka said the site included information stating that “you can play football and still be gay — it’s cool. Don’t kill yourself over it.”
Zuka rented apartments in the area and listed only his name as an occupant so others would not know it belonged to a gay association. Through word of mouth, people would come in the evenings to meet. Zuka changed the location of the meeting place when it became too apparent that gay people were gathering there. He went through three locations in two-and-a-half years.
As head of the center, Zuka also advised the Kosovo police commissioner on gay issues. Zuka was part of a working group with the police that attempted to mitigate the number of gay bashings in the country.
Zuka said the police there had a history of hostility to gays even when they were victims of crimes. Police would often call victims “faggots” and other gay slurs even after their “limbs were broken or their eyes had been smashed out,” Zuka said.
“Every time someone complained to the police, they were sort of further victimized,” he said.
“I wanted the police to not do that anymore.”
Zuka said the police kicked him out of the working group because he often complained about them to local media.
Zuka continued to work for the center until a television appearance forced him to flee the country. Last year, Zuka appeared on a local talk show to discuss the center. He was hidden behind a curtain, his voice was scrambled and his name was not given, but somehow his identity was divulged, he said.
He received death threats and his car was vandalized. Zuka went to the police, but their response was “if they want to kill you, they’ll just kill you, so we cannot protect you,” he said.
Zuka received a message signed by an Islamic fundamentalist group stating that his home and family would be bombed if he did not leave Kosovo. That’s when he decided to flee. Zuka still had a U.S. visa from the time he earned his associate’s degree at the Leadership Institute of Seattle, so he decided to come to the United States.
At his new home in Washington, Zuka still maintains contact with the Center for Social Emancipation, but he says the organization is mostly paralyzed. No one else has had the courage to come forward and be the public face for the organization, he said.
Zuka said hard work and a long period of time are needed to improve the situation for gays in Kosovo.
“I think it’s the Balkan mentality — we pass on hatred from one generation to another one,” he said.
Michael Luongo, author of “Gay Travels in the Muslim World,” said although Kosovo’s Islamic culture plays a role in its hostility toward gays, the problem for gays in Kosovo lies more in the country’s history as a Communist-controlled country.
“The Soviet satellite countries are far behind the rest of Europe,” he said. “So it’s not necessarily an impact of Islam.”
Luongo said Europe should mandate that these nations improve conditions for their gay citizens in order for them to achieve status as members of the European Union.
“These countries have to realize that they will not be allowed in the E.U. … unless they address gay rights issues,” he said.
The State Department’s recently released annual report on human rights violations, which includes information on hostility toward gays overseas, states that although discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal in Kosovo, there were still “reports of violence and discrimination directed against gays and lesbians.”
“Traditional societal attitudes about homosexuality intimidated most gays and lesbians into concealing their sexual orientation,” the report states. “The print media at times reinforced these attitudes by publishing negative articles about homosexuality that characterized gays and lesbians as mentally ill and prone to sexually assaulting children.”
Zuka said he feels sorry for the gay people in Kosovo now that the country is independent and no longer under United Nations control. He noted that when international forces controlled the country, police force leaders would often come from Western countries. Now he expects police leaders to be entirely local officials.
Zuka is now looking for a new job and opportunities in the United States.
He’s taking an online course with the Rochester Institute of Technology and is only a few classes away from earning a bachelor’s degree in project management and online business. For a time, he volunteered at Whitman-Walker Clinic, helping with patient intake and organizing files. He is exploring a possible career in business management.
Zuka said the best thing about the United States is that people are free to express themselves, but he noted that often people take this freedom for granted.
“These are fundamental rights, so you should take them for granted, but not every country has them,” he said.
Zuka also said he misses the “comfort zone” he enjoyed with his family in Kosovo. He said his mother calls him three or four times a week to inquire about his safety.
“There’s nowhere like home — I guess that saying is kind of true,” he said.
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