WUNRN
ALBANIA - KANUN FAMILY "BLOOD
FEUDS" IN RURAL AREAS MAY POSE RISKS FOR WOMEN
By
Nadia Shira Cohen
SHKODĖR,
Albania Aurora Kodra, a pixieish 16-year-old with a wry smile and thick,
black-rimmed glasses, cannot leave her home in the northern hill town of
Shkodėr, Albania.
Outside,
she risks her life wherever she goes, a target in a decades-old blood feud
between her family and another local clan.
Young
women had always been exempt from the ancient code of retribution known as the Kanun,
which is still enforced in the nearly impenetrable mountains of this small
nation on the Adriatic Sea. That changed
with the killing of Marie Qukaj, 17.
Assassins from a rival family shot Qukaj and her grandfather as they harvested corn on their farm in the Dukagjin region. The families had quarreled over irrigation rights, and though killing a boy would have been considered proper according to the code, murdering a girl in the family was a line that had never been crossed.
By Nadia Shira Cohen for
Sapresa Kodra, left, wont
allow daughter Aurora to leave their home in
"The problem with blood feuds today is that people are using their own personal interpretation of the Kanun to suit their needs," says Gjin Marku, director of the National Reconciliation Committee, which is trying to prevent blood feuds.
"They are abusing the laws instead of following the original script, and this is why you see young women like Marie becoming targets," Marku says. "This is a very big problem for us."
The Kanun or the Code of Lekė Dukagjini has been in existence in Albania for 500 years but may date back to the Bronze Age. Albania's version was created in the 15th century by Lekė Dukagjini, an Albanian prince, who based the code on a set of traditional laws that had been passed down orally for hundreds of years. Respected widely throughout the country, the text of the Kanun was forbidden as law when communists ruled the country in the 1970s and 1980s. In recent years, under democracy, the Kanun has seen a resurgence, mostly in northern Albania.
In a nation without effective courts and a government widely viewed as corrupt, the Kanun continues to serve for many as an unofficial constitution, experts here say. Its "eye-for-an-eye" form of justice encourages honor killings for disputes over land as well as for rape and murder.
As a result, the Kanun has left feuding families in conflicts that span decades and have killed off entire generations, Marku says.
The
National Reconciliation Committee estimates that 10,000 blood feuds have
surfaced in Albania since the early 1990s and that 1,600 families are in hiding
to avoid becoming victims to vigilante justice.
According to the Kanun text, one can be killed only outside of the walls of one's own home. As a result, men who have killed often go into hiding or in some cases are jailed by the state. In their absence, elder sons take on responsibility for the conflict, often becoming prisoners of their own homes, unable to study or live a normal life.
Wives step in for their husbands, becoming the household breadwinners.
The Kodra family first became engaged in a blood feud over a land purchase that went sour with the rival Mataj clan of a neighboring village. The feud began in 1940 and lay dormant during communist rule, but the vendetta resumed after a killing of a Kodra family member.
For 10 years, Aurora Kodra's mother, Sapresa, an engineer, provided the family's main income. Aurora's father, fearing for his life, will not leave the house. Her 20-year-old brother has escaped to Sweden to seek asylum.
The Kanun is not supposed to encourage long-running feuds, and its text provides for mediation of disputes but the farther into the mountains one travels, the more people rely on their own interpretations of what the Code of Lekė Dukagjini means.
Although the European Union has not said the Kanun is the reason why Albania's application for membership has yet to be approved, shortcomings in enforcing the rule of law and respecting human rights were identified in a 2010 EU opinion as a main reason for denial of membership.
Marku sighs before answering whether the rule of law will ever reach these hinterlands. He says the Kanun can work as a code of justice.
"I believe that when the original Kanun will rule our country once again, we will be free," he says.
In the meantime, Aurora's parents forbid her to venture out. She passes her days surfing the Internet, watching TV or reading in her small, second-floor bedroom.
"I have friends, but not the ones who I had before," Aurora says. "You know, when the distance gets deeper, love gradually fades away, until it's gone."