The Poet and Publicist Zenel Peposhi Passes Away in Malmö. His Last Wish: To Be Laid to Rest in the Homeland
By Neritan Kolgjini
Zenel Peposhi, known by his literary name ZAP Lusna, a poet, publicist, activist for the national cause, political prisoner, and a well-known personality in Albania and the diaspora, has passed away. Last Friday, on October 3, surrounded by the love of his family and close relatives, he drew his last breath in Malmö, at the age of 90, following health complications. He crossed the gates of this world to head toward eternity. He leaves behind a good name, memories, and his written works.
Zenel was the son of the large Peposhi family from Luma, from the house of Xhepë Rama. He simultaneously embodied a man of resistance against the communist evil that had engulfed the country, a poet of delicate feelings, and a devoted family man.
Raised in a large family with a history of actions against the Slavs, he was conscious of the mission of every Albanian: resistance and commitment to the liberation of Kosova. His entire literary and journalistic body of work clearly reflects the nationalistic idea for freedom and national unity.
Even though his life, from early youth until old age, was filled with great suffering, torture, and injustice under the communist regime in Albania, he firmly preserved the spirit of a poet, like the phoenix that is reborn from its own ashes.
In 1957, Zenel’s entire family fled the country. He went to Kosova (former Yugoslavia). He began studies in social sciences and started writing literary short stories and poetry. He was accused by the Yugoslav authorities of creative work with an anti-Slavic spirit.
Prompted by family members and due to the approval of a supposed amnesty for those who had fled, he returned to Kukës in 1959. He started working at a state enterprise and enrolled in the Faculty of Construction Engineering. As a student in his second year, he was arrested by the State Security, accused of political crimes. One of the accusations was that he had supposedly returned from Kosova to sabotage the agricultural cooperative.
After 7 months of intensive investigation, torture, and psychological terror, the court convicted him of “high treason against the homeland,” without any proof, using false witnesses whom he didn’t know. Zenel rejected all the accusations and refused to accept the court’s decision. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to 25 years in political prison.
In March 1960, after the court’s decision, he was sent to Department 313 in Tirana and was then transferred to several prisons and labor camps like Burrel, Laç, Rubik, Elbasan, Fushë-Krujë, and Vlorë, concluding his ordeal in the Ballsh prison.
He was released on December 17, 1978. His imprisonment lasted 19 years, 3 months, and 10 days.
He was sent under “deportation” to Vashanj, a village in Peqin.
From there, he escaped on May 31, 1979, across the border line separating Kukës from Kosova and Macedonia, through the Çajë mountains.
On June 1, 1979, he finally reached Kosova. He was arrested again by the Yugoslav authorities and sent to the refugee camp in Podinska Skela, Belgrade.
In August 1979, he also escaped from Yugoslavia, reaching Austria, where he received political refugee status.
In October 1979, his brothers and nephews brought him to France.
He started writing for the diaspora press, where he denounced the communist regime in Albania, the crimes and horrors he had experienced, the poverty, political oppression, and the complete lack of human freedoms.
In 1981, he founded the organization “Anti-Communist Resistance Front,” through which he held many protests and demonstrations against the communist regime in Albania, as well as against the Greater-Serbian oppression in Kosova.
In 1982, he permanently moved to Malmö, Sweden, where he married and had a daughter.
He was a member of the “Kosova” association and a board member of the magazine “Besa.” He engaged intensively with articles in various newspapers and media outlets. He wrote poetry and other literary genres. He corresponded with well-known figures of the anti-communist diaspora.
After the fall of the communist regime in 1990, he published the poetry volumes Dhimbjet e territ (The Pains of Darkness) in 1993 and Çiftelia e Lumës (The Luma Cifteli) in 2008. The latter also includes a prose collection titled Ngjyra jete (Life Color).
His prose works include Me qenë a mos me qenë (To Be or Not to Be)—memoirs, 2012; Kronika e një jete në liri (Chronicle of a Life in Freedom)—correspondence, publicism, documents, 2016; and the autobiographical book Dasma e fundit në shtëpinë e Xhep Ramës (The Last Wedding in the House of Xhep Rama), 2023. He also compiled a bilingual Swedish-Albanian dictionary.
Zenel was a polyglot, fluently speaking Swedish, English, French, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian, and could communicate somewhat in Turkish.
He was involved in literary creation since his school days, but life did not allow him to publish and connect with the readership who loved literature.
For his friends and admirers, Zenel was like a mountain covered with suffering and dangers, but also with an artistic trove full of literary contributions, publicistic writings, correspondence, and so on.
Fate willed that he should survive the snares of life, specifically the infernal communist regime in Albania and former Yugoslavia, and testify to what he experienced on his own skin; what he saw and learned. He passed away in peace and honor, as a nationalist Albanian worthy of the name he carried. His last wish was to return to his native land, to his beloved Lusna. There, he will rest near his brother, Kadri Peposhi, who was executed without trial by communist partisans in the terrible year of 1944. The burial ceremony will be held on October 10, 2025, in Lusna.
With Zenel, an eloquent witness to the communist horror also passes away; a part of the living history of this country, during the reign of the communist hydra, dissolves without return.
