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The colonisation of Kosovo was a programme implemented by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the interwar period (1918–1941) with the aim of altering the ethnic population balance in the region where Albanians formed an ethnic majority. During the colonisation period, between 60,000 and 65,000 colonists, of whom over 90% were Serbs, settled on the territory of the former Kosovo Vilayet captured from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. Along with the Serb colonisation, a policy of forced migration of ethnic Albanians was attempted, enlisting the participation of the Muslim nation of Turkey.
Some Serb colonisation of Kosovo took place during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Government sponsored colonization was initiated in 1920 when the assembly of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia passed the Decree on the Colonisation of the Southern Provinces of Yugoslavia, while the second began in 1931, when the Decree on the Colonisation of the Southern Regions was issued
In 1937, a Serbian nationalist intellectual, Vaso Čubrilović, who had been one of the plotters of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, proposed the expulsion of all Albanians:
"In our examination of colonisation in the south, we hold the view that the only effective means of solving this problem is the mass expulsion of the Albanians. Gradual colonisation has had no success in our country, nor in other countries for that matter. If the state wishes to intervene in favour of its own people in the struggle for land, it can only be successful by acting brutally".
--Vaso Čubrilović, Memorandum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonisation_of_Kosovo
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