Success Stories - Remzi: From a refugee to a Rhodes Scholar

June 2011

Remzi Cej was four days short of turning 17 years old when he and his parents were forced out of war-torn Kosovo. After leaving the country, he and his family spent a year and a half living in seven different refugee camps. Now, more than 10 years later, he has become a graduate Rhodes Scholar and is working as a policy advisor for the provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador. “I belong here. I decided I wanted to give something back to the community which has helped me become the person I am today,” says Remzi.

It was a heart-breaking escape from a country ravaged by war for Remzi. His parents began the long journey by heading toward the Albanian border, only to be turned back repeatedly by Serbian paramilitary forces. They walked more than 270 kilometres in a week with thousands of others. Many were lost along the way, including his uncle who got separated from the family during the mass exodus. Years later, they would get the grim news that his uncle had been identified among many others in a mass grave. A year before their ordeal, his brother had escaped to Turkey. He was not heard from for years until a chance encounter with a journalist a few years ago reunited the family.

Remzi’s family was selected for resettlement by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They applied to both the United States and Canada, not knowing which would accept them. When informed that Canada wanted them and that three families in a city called St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, wanted them to come there, he remembers thinking, “What kind of country must this be where total strangers who don’t even know us want us to come to their community?”

Remzi and his parents came to Canada under the Joint Assistance Sponsorship Program, which enabled community groups and families to partner with the Government of Canada in the resettlement of refugees.

Now 27, Remzi has achieved things most can only dream of. He has a graduate degree from Oxford, speaks seven languages and has a world vision equalled only by his passion for human rights. He could literally go anywhere on the planet to pursue his goals, yet he prefers to remain in St. John’s, on Canada’s Atlantic Coast, because of the people. Nowhere has he found the kind of welcoming community he found here in Newfoundland and Labrador. The people and the landscape are what keeps him here, and as he continues his work for human rights, he believes he can make a difference locally which might lead to bigger differences worldwide. “My background has taught me life is a valuable thing. It can be taken away in an instant.”

Did you know that under the codename Operation Parasol, over 7,000 Kosovar refugees were airlifted to military bases in eastern Canada in May 1999?