Western Sources on Expulsion of Serbs from KiM by Albanians in 1980s

[Novi Pazar]

Let's begin, l'll start with this one:


The Washington Post; April 3, 1981, Friday, Final Edition

SECTION: First Section; World News; A17

1. Yugoslavs Take Emergency Steps In Face of Ethnic Disturbance

By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post Foreign Service

DATELINE: BELGRADE, April 2, 1981

Yugoslavia's communist authorities today imposed emergency measures in an attempt to quell mounting disturbances among the country's politically sensitives ethnic Albanian minority.

Serious clashes between demonstrators and security forces in the province of Kosovo, which borders on Albania, have triggered the first crisis in Yugoslavia since president Tito's death 11 months ago. The gathering unrest reached a climax yesterday when, according to official sources, several hundred people were injured as police firing tear gas broke up a march of at least 10,000 protesters through the provincial capital of Pristina.

Under the emergency measures, all public gatherings and movement by "group of people" are banned in the province -- Yugoslavia's poorest region. Army units have been called into protect public buildings, including Pristina's town prison that was the target of yeaterday's march.

The protesaters, who included university students and miners, were demanding the release of people detained following riots over the last month. Officials said that demonstrators, some of them armed with guns and firing at the police, pushed children in front of them to make it more difficult for the security services to disrupt the march.

Kosovo has long been regarded as one of the weak points in post-Tito Yugoslavia because of its economic backwardness and rivalry between the province's ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority. Years of what Kosovo's million Albanians considered repression by the Serb elite last boiled over in 1968 when violent demonstrations had to be quelled by the Army.

In a nationwide television broadcast, Kosovo's president, Dzavid Nimani, accused the demonstrators of being manipulated by "enemy forces" wanting to destroy Yugoslavia -- a federal state made up of many different national groups. Some of the marchers are said to have chanted slogans calling for unity with Albania, a militantly communist neighbor state, but the main demand was for Kosovo to be upgraded from a province into a republic.

A complicating factor is the reported serious illness of Albania's isolationist leader, Enver Hoxha, 72, who succeeded in breaking away from Soviet domination in 1961. One of the "nightmare scenarios" for post-Tito Yugoslavia is of the Kremlin somehow regaining control over Albania after Hoxha's death and fomenting unrest among the Albanian minority here.

The latest round of disturbances began March 11, when about 2,000 students at Pristina University rioted over poor living conditions and inequality. The riots were suppressed by police and the discontent has now spread both to other sections of the population and other parts of the province.

Serious incidents have been reported in half a dozen towns in Kosovo over the past three weeks, including Pec, where the refectory of a Serbian monastery was burned in mysterious circumstances. This created the danger of a backlash among Serbs, Yugoslavia's largest national group, for whom the patriarchate of Pec has great historical and emotional significance.

Taken together, the latest events reflect the two gravest problems confronting Tito's successors: ethnic differences in the complex multinational state and an increasingly serious economic crisis. Inflation is running at more than 40 percent, there are 800,000 unemployed in a total population of 22 million, and Yugoslavia is heavily in debt.

The economic problems are most pronounced in poor provinces such as Kosovo, despite a program of large scale investments over the last 10 years. One fear of Yugoslav leaders is that economic strains in less developed parts of the country could trigger new political tension.

The comparison with Poland springs to mind, but Yugoslavia is very different. Its multinational make up virtually precludes a protest from a largely united population, as in Poland. Tito, during his 35-year rule, excelled in playing one nationality against another.

In addition, there are more outlets for tension than in Poland. Yugoslavs are free to travel abroad and, to a limited extent, participate in political and economic decision-making through the system of workers' self-management.

Nevertheless, the latest disturbances do represent the most serious ethnic unrest to have erupted in Yugoslavia for a decade. In his televised speech, President Nimani said the authorities were determined to use all necessary measures to safeguard public order.

A statement from the provincial Interior Ministry said the emergency restrictions would remain in force "as long as the extraordinary situation in the province continues." Territorial reserve units, normally intended to serve against an external enemy, have been mobilized to assist the police and security services.

Officials said meetings were being held in factories throughout Kosovo to drum up support for the firm stand taken by the authorities. Local Communist Party branches have sent telegrams to Yugoslavia's collective leadership condemning the disturbances and pledging their loyalty.

Last week officials said 21 students were detained following a 24-hour occupation of Pristina University.

The flare-up coincided with the arrival in the province of a ceremonial baton that youths carried around the country to mark Tito's birthday. The annual event is intended to demonstrate unity and brotherhood among the south Slav nations.

Copyright 1981 The Washington Post

[epirot]

Which means that the Saxons were behind this.

"Taken together, the latest events reflect the two gravest problems confronting Tito's successors: ethnic differences in the complex multinational state and an increasingly serious economic crisis. Inflation is running at more than 40 percent, there are 800,000 unemployed in a total population of 22 million, and Yugoslavia is heavily in debt."

So unemployment was at ..... 3,6% and the debt around 22B $ hmmmmmmm

In western capitalist Greece those indexes are on 30% and 400B $ respectively ...

This means, Saxons just killed the BEST COUNTRY EVER in the region.......

What else to say????

[Novi Pazar]

^ without a doubt, it's the banking elite with her Saxon minions!

[Novi Pazar]

Next article:


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The Economist; April 11, 1981

SECTION: World politics and current affairs; EUROPE; Pg. 67 (U.S. Edition Pg. 49)

2. Jugoslavia; Home-grown bother

Kosovo, Jugoslavia's poorest region, is behaving in an un-communist fashion. Trouble began with student demonstrations on March 11th in Pristina, the capital of the mainly Albanian-inhabited province. They were put down by the police with relative ease but two subsequent bouts of rioting, on March 26th and April 1st and 2nd, were more serious, and spread to a number of Kosovo towns besides Pristina.

Mr Stane Dolanc, a member of the Jugoslav Communist party's top body, on Monday said that 11 people had been killed in the riots so far, two of them policemen, and 57 wounded. Unofficial estimates put the numbers higher. Whatever the figures, nobody denies that the Kosovo riots were a serious affair. Overnight curfews were imposed in a number of Kosovo towns, and foreign journalists were not allowed into the province. Those who managed to get there before the ban were told to leave because the authorities said they ''could not guarantee their safety''. A ban on all public gatherings remains in force.

Mr Fadil Hoxha, a member of Jugoslavia's collective state presidency and a Kosovo Albanian (not to be confused with Albania's leader across the border, Enver Hoxha), spoke the day after the last and most serious of the riots of a ''counter-revolution'' in Kosovo aimed at creating a rift between the province's Albanians on the one hand and its Serbs and Montenegrins on the other. Montenegrins and Serbs are Orthodox Christians and Slavs; most of the Kosovo Albanians are Moslems and non-Slavs. Mr Hoxha called the organisers of the riots ''the darkest servants and agents of various intelligence centres and agencies''. Mr Dolanc was more circumspect on Monday, saying that the authorities would have to be deaf and blind to blame the trouble entirely on ''outside factors''.

Indeed Albania, one potential ''outside factor'', has remained reserved throughout. Frontier posts between Albania and Jugoslavia have remained closed. Official announcements from Tirana have merely noted the outbreak of disturbances in Kosovo. Clearly the Jugoslav policy of keeping on good-neighbourly terms with Albania has paid off.

Could the Russians have been stirring it? Mr Hoxha did speak of Marxist-Leninist slogans used in the Kosovo demonstrations that were strongly reminiscent of ''Cominformism'', which is a Jugoslav term for pro-Sovietism. But it seems unlikely that the Soviet Union would choose this moment to kindle a crisis in Jugoslavia to add to the other crises on its hands. The west, for its part, is doing nothing more inflammatory than praying for post-Tito Jugoslavia to stay stable and united. Clearly the trouble in Kosovo is home-grown.

What the Kosovo Albanians appear to want is not necessarily secession from Jugoslavia but concessions within Jugoslavia: more economic aid and, more awkwardly for the authorities, the upgrading of Kosovo's status. At the moment Kosovo is an autonomous province of the Serbian republic. Kosovo nationalists want it to become a fully-fledged republic on a par with Serbia, Croatia and the other four. Albanian nationalists in Kosovo have argued for years that it is a nonsense for Montenegro, with only a third of Kosovo's population, to be a republic while Kosovo is not. But this demand has been resisted by Serbs unhappy that in Kosovo, once the heartland of the medieval Serbian kingdom, the Serbs are now a minority (18% at the time of the 1971 census and almost certainly less now).

So rather than yield on the demand for republic status, the Jugoslav government will try to offer more economic aid, especially more investment for the development of its lignite and other mineral riches. The university of Pristina, which now has 35,000 students, has been promised more facilities. But all this will cost money, and Jugoslavia will not find it easily in the present tight financial squeeze. Besides, Kosovo already gets nearly half of all internal Jugoslav development aid. If it were to get more still, there would be grumbles from elsewhere, not least from Serbia, which has poor areas bordering on Kosovo which would not be eligible for aid.

[epirot]

The west, for its part, is doing nothing more inflammatory than praying for post-Tito Jugoslavia to stay stable and united. Clearly the trouble in Kosovo is home-grown.

WTF, this is outrageous. They prayed by lets say dropping Dinar from 15 USD to 1,370 USD .... wow that's real praying ...

[epirot]

Kosovo, Jugoslavia's poorest region, is behaving in an un-communist fashion.

The message is clear.

[Novi Pazar]

^ there are plenty of messages in just those two. We even saw from highranking Siptars of outside forces meddling!

[Novi Pazar]

Next Article:

The New York Times, April 19, 1981, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section 4; Page 4, Column 1; Week in Review Desk

3. ONE STORM HAS PASSED BUT OTHERS ARE GATHERING IN YUGOSLAVIA

By DAVID BINDER

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

Josip Broz Tito has not been dead a year, but the Yugoslav ''brotherhood and unity'' he nurtured for 35 years has already developed fissures on a sensitive flank, the mostly Albanian province of Kosovo.

What started March 11 as an isolated, seemingly insignificant protest - a student at the University of Pristina dumped his tray of cafeteria food on the floor - escalated by April 2 into riots involving 20,000 people in six cities. Nine people died and more than 50 were injured. Only last week did authorities relax a state of emergency in the province, lifting a curfew and reopening schools.

There are other multi-ethnic countries with sizable minorities. But none equals Yugoslavia for ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity and is so vulnerable to centrifugal forces. Hence the concern of Marshal Tito's successors over the explosion of resentment among Yugoslavia's predominantly Moslem Albanian minority of 1.4 million, most of whom live in Kosovo. After the riots, Stane Dolanc, a member of the Communist Party Presidium, warned of ''the danger of the growth of other kinds of nationalisms'' in Yugoslavia - a thinly veiled allusion to the traditional and still virulent rivalry between the dominant Serbs and Croats.

The Kosovo rebellion was bad enough news for the Belgrade leadership; it coincided with setbacks that have put Yugoslavia's economy in its worst straits in decades. Industrial production dropped 0.6 percent from February 1980 to February 1981 (Kosovo's dropped 2 percent), while the cost of living rose 40.5 percent, according to official figures. Exports now constitute only 10 percent of the gross national product - the lowest proportion in Europe - and are sinking. The Yugoslavs also spent $1.2 billion more in 1980 for oil imports, despite such conservation measures as gasoline rationing. The foreign debt stands at $17 billion.

''Evidently our economy does not function well,'' acknowledged Milos Minic, a member of the collective party leadership, in a speech to party activists in Zagreb last month. ''Stop the uncontrolled rise of prices!'' demanded Cvijetin Mijatovic, the current President in the revolving succession to Tito, in another grim assessment of the economy before a gathering in Nis.

The Government, having just authorized sharp price increases for alcohol and tobacco products, declared that price rises would have to be held this year to 30 percent at the producer level and 32 percent at the retail level. Belgrade is also looking to revitalize Tito's vaunted system of factory self-management, which has ''deteriorated'' under the pressure of inflation, according to Mr. Mijatovic. He and other leaders have described cases of economic anarchy arising when worker councils have raised prices for their products without considering the common good.

The collective leadership, created by Tito partly because he did not want to be succeeded by one prominent figure, has functioned adequately despite its Rube Goldberg construction. Yet its very dispersal of authority has deprived it of the charisma required to persuade a nation of independent spirits that it is really leading Yugoslavia.

Of course, Tito is a hard act to follow. According to Belgrade officials, the leadership took pains after his death last May to maintain a low profile, but this soon may change. One official said he expected the next Prime Minister, to be elected next year, to play a more prominent role. He also noted that all but one of the eight members of the collective presidency will be replaced in 1983 and he suggested that this might encourage the current leaders to ''become more inspirational because they have nothing to lose.''

Serbs, Turks and Albanians

Outsiders sometimes forget that socialist Yugoslavia was born not only of the war against Hitler, but also of a raging civil war that pitted nationality against nationality and church against church, at a cost of 1.7 million lives.

The nationality problems of the Kosovo region, desperately poor despite considerable mineral wealth, are centuries old and were exacerbated in both world wars. Originally the home of Serbia's founding dynasty in the 12th century, Kosovo lost most of its remaining Serbian population in the 17th century when the Serbs, Orthodox Christians, fled northward to distance themselves from the Ottoman Turks. Albanian tribesmen filled the vacuum; they now constitute more than four-fifths of the province's population.

When the great powers agreed in 1913 to make Albania independent more or less within its present borders, they ceded Kosovo to the Serbian monarchy. It was a blow the Albanians have never forgotten, the more so because their own independence movement had begun in the Kosovo town of Prizren in 1878.

World War II brought more upheavals when Kosovo was handed to Mussolini's Italy by Germany and some Albanians enlisted out of gratitude on the Italian side. Retribution came when Tito's partisans entered the area, massacring suspected collaborators before the horrified eyes of their own Albanian Communist comrades in arms.

Tito Partisans Once Ruled Albania

For a time, Tito's dominant forces ruled Albania and a permanent Yugoslav-Albanian federation was even contemplated. One holdout was Enver Hoxha, who had earlier called for a plebiscite in Kosovo. In 1948, the reversals caused by Tito's ouster from the Cominform lofted Mr. Hoxha into the Albanian leadership he still holds today.

For two succeeding decades, Tito's Yugoslavia held down the Albanians of Kosovo, denying them proper schooling and arresting or killing outspoken Albanian teachers. The repression ended in 1966 with the fall of the Serb leader who was Tito's number two, Aleksandr Rankovic. Since then, federal money has poured into Kosovo at a higher rate than into any other part of the country. Pristina University has grown to become one of the country's largest with 48,000 students. Most of the region's administrators, and its police, are ethnic Albanians. The Kosovars are even allowed to fly the Albanian flag, a black eagle on a red field.

Yet this ''tremendous dynamic of development,'' as Mr. Dolanc described it, ironically has fed unrest. There were riots in 1968 and again in 1975. This time the youths of Kosovo shouted ''We want a republic'' (their semi-autonomous province has almost all rights of a Yugoslav republic except the right to secede) and some even demanded annexation by Mr. Hoxha's Albanian fatherland.

Copyright 1981 The New York Times Company

[Novi Pazar]

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THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR; May 7, 1981, Thursday, Midwestern Edition

SECTION: Pg. 5

4. Kosovo sparking a Yugoslav purge?

By Eric Bourne, Special correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

One year after they assumed office, members of Yugoslavia's collective presidency are facing the first post-Tito jolt to the unity of this multinational state.

The nationalist riots that erupted in Kosovo province, which has an ethnic Albanian majority, in mid-March have shaken the confidence of the new leaders, who seemed to be enjoying smooth sailing as they held to such Tito-established policies as nonalignment.

The unrest also prompted an outcry from a public concerned that officials had supporessed evidence of impending trouble and done nothing to prevent its developing into a full-fledged threat to the federation as a whole. Now the Communist Party chief in the province has resigned amid calls for a purge. Mahmut Bakali accepted much of the responsibility for not heading off the extremist nationalist riots.

Ever since 1945, this backward, onetime Serb "colony" has been the problem child in the effort to forge and maintain a stable Yugoslav union of so many differing peoples, languages, and religions. Anti-Serb demonstrations have flared periodically. Steady federal aid since the 1950s, and the "Albanianization" of the police in 1966, have made little real difference.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Tito's successors are preoccupied with this first menacing threat to his dream of security through "brotherhood and unity." It has even overshadowed massive economic problems --ports still not competitive in the West despite closer ties to the European Community, and a consequent 44 percent dependency on Comecon trade. Since 1974, Kosovo has had autonomy in all domestic affairs. Why not then republican status? It seems a simple enough solution.

The latest unrest repeated the demand that Kosovo be made a republic and incorporate Albanian populations in the neighboring republics of Macedonia and Montenegro.

A Belgrade newspaper calls it absurd to speak of exploitation (as Kosovo) extremists do) of a region that has had so much aid from the rest of the country. But economic gain s have not moderated acute nationalist sentiment or the underlying sense of social-political inferiority.

COPYRIGHT 1981 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY

[Novi Pazar]

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AP; October 23, 1981, Friday, PM cycle

ADVANCED-DATE: October 17, 1981, Saturday, PM cycle

SECTION: International News

5. Minorities Leaving Yugoslav Province Dominated by Albanians

By KENNETH JAUTZ, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: PRISTINA, Yugoslavia

Hundreds of Serbs and Montenegrins are leaving Kosovo Province in the aftermath of rioting that erupted last spring over demands of the ethnic Albanian majority for greater autonomy.

Nine people were killed and 260 others injured in the disorders, during which extremists proposed making Kosovo part of neighboring Albania, Eastern Europe's most-orthodox Communist nation.

Local officials say security has been restored to the province, but the minorities leaving are said to fear for their future in the area.

"We have the situation under full control, but this does not mean hostile activity has totally ceased," Azem Vlasi, president of the Kosovo Socialist Alliance, told visiting journalists recently.

Reports on the number of those leaving Kosovo vary widely. But the newspaper Politika of Belgrade, the national capital, estimated that as many as 4,000 people have left or are planning to leave the province, which has a population of about 1.5 million, 77 percent of whom are ethnic Albanians. Officials here downplay the reports of departures, saying citizens have a right to move about the country as they please.

Nevertheless, a municipal commission, set up in this provincial capital after the rioting to help those moving obtain job transfers and new housing elsewhere, recently has been turning down requests for such assistance. Enver Redzepi, deputy president of the provincial legislative assembly, said 882 Serbs and Montenegrins have formally applied to move from the area since the riots.

"There may have been some other cases of people leaving our area, perhaps nearly a thousand," he said.

Most of those asking to leave say new jobs, better living conditions and family considerations prompted their move, but Redzepi said 147 requests had been turned down.

"We will not assist in departures that are not justified," he said without elaboration.

Politika indicated that many do not give "true reasons," fearing they will not receive official help with their move.

The departures from the province could prove significant for Yugoslavia, since the nation is made up of areas inhabited by various ethnic groups with long histories of rivalry.

In Kosovo, relations have long been poor between the province's Albanian majority and the Montenegrins and Serbs, who used to hold the most important political and economic jobs.

The province is in the southern part of the Republic of Serbia, one of Yugoslavia's six constituent republics. In view of Kosovo's large non-Serbian population, however, the province enjoys a greater degree of autonomy than provinces in other constituent republics.

"It's a real worry for them," one Western diplomat said of the departing Serbs. "It's a part of Serbia, but over the years there's fewer and fewer Serbs."

Serbs have been gradually leaving the province for years. This trend, coupled with an ethnic Albanian birthrate three times the national average, could raise the likelihood of increased Albanian nationalism in the area.

Diplomatic analysts say the Pristina commission, although advertised as a government body to assist in moving, is a way of hindering people from leaving. "The net effect is that it shows they want to keep Serbs there," one diplomat said in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital.

Authorities here emphasize the trouble-free reopening of Pristina University, where student unrest first sparked the demonstrations, but say there have been isolated cases of "nationalist-oriented grafitti." "Nationalism is a state of mind, an ideology," said Vlasi. "One does not fight it quickly, with hostile measures, but over time and with education."

© 1981, The Associated Press