The
Assault on Albanian Culture
in Kosovo
(published in German in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, May 5, 1999, p. 9)
By Michael McClellan, Consul for Public
Affairs
U.S. Consulate General, Hamburg
The ethnic cleansing now in progress in Kosovo by the
Serbian regime is the latest phase of an on-going war that the Milosevic regime has been
waging against Albanians in Kosovo since the revocation of Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989.
This war is not over demographics or even religion, nor is it just about politics.
Instead, it is a war of "cultural cleansing" that seeks to rid Kosovo of a
people and a culture that have been there for many centuries.
Serbian apologists will be quick to point out a thousand injustices
done to the Serbs by the Albanians over the centuries–especially during the period of
Kosovo’s autonomy from 1974 to 1989. However true those charges may be, they cannot
in any way justify the full-blown assault on Albanian life in Kosovo that the Milosevic
regime has since waged in the name of Serbian nationalism.
I witnessed this cultural war firsthand during the fifteen months
that I lived and worked in Kosovo as the only diplomat from any country assigned directly
to that troubled region. I had the occasion to meet many Albanian and Serbian
intellectuals, politicians, journalists, officials, religious leaders, and everyday people
during that time, and I saw for myself how the regime of Slobodan Milosevic oppressed the
Albanian people in ways that were both overt and subtle. Serbs, too, were and still are
oppressed by the Milosevic regime, but not nearly to the degree that non-Serbs have been.
On a beautiful sunny day, June 5, 1996, over a thousand people
crowded the street in front of the new United States Information Service office to cheer
the presence of the American flag in Kosovo. In spite of a very heavy Serbian police
presence that attempted to seal off the neighborhood to prevent large crowds from
gathering, Albanians came to witness this historic event by crossing through yards and
gardens, climbing walls, and sneaking through back streets and alleys. American and
Serbian officials, with ethnic Albanian politicians, journalists, and intellectuals in
attendance, participated in the establishment of an office designed to share the American
experience of democracy and a multi-ethnic society with all the communities of Kosovo. The
staff of that office reflected Kosovo’s ethnic make-up, and all those dedicated
workers shared one goal: to make Kosovo a democratic, multi-ethnic society in which
everyone could live in peace with full respect for their human rights. I could not have
imagined that less than three years later our American "outpost" would be burned
to the ground in a fury of Serbian hatred.
My first exposure to the Serbian system of justice came within days
of my arrival in Pristina. Ethnic Serb refugees came to my office to complain of human
rights abuses that they had suffered at the hands of the Milosevic regime. I often heard
from Serbs who came to Kosovo from Krajina and Bosnia about how the Milosevic regime had
forced them at gunpoint or threatened them with prison sentences to go to live in Kosovo.
Serbian men were given the choice of joining Arkan’s terrorist squads as paramilitary
killers, or going to Kosovo to live with their families. Several even came to me asking me
to help them return to Croatia, where they said their lives would be better. Not one of
them ever complained to me of mistreatment at the hands of Albanians, even though I
pointedly asked them if they had problems with the Albanians. Several, in fact, even
commented on how the Albanians had been kind to them and helped them out. Any complaints I
heard from Serbs about Albanians always concerned incidents that had supposedly occurred
in the past, along with the inevitable comment that everything happening now was necessary
to "correct past injustices."
As time went on, I attended trials of so-called Albanian
"terrorists." Young men and women arrested for nothing more than distributing
flyers calling for independence were tortured for weeks into making confessions of greater
crimes; evidence was fabricated and harsh sentences handed down using judicial procedures
that were a mockery even of Stalinist practices. It was in such a trial that I first saw
human rights lawyer and activist Bayram Kelmendi at his best, working side-by-side with
other Albanian and Serbian lawyers to defend his clients. He knew, as everyone did, that
the Serbian system of justice did not permit a fair trial, but it was still his moral and
legal duty to fight for the rights of his clients. On the first night of the NATO bombing,
Serbian police dragged him and his two teenage sons from their home, murdered them
execution-style, and then unceremoniously dumped their bodies at a gas station on the edge
of Pristina.
Serbian government spokesmen and apologists often speak of the war
in Kosovo as a struggle between Moslems and Christians. They have gone to great pains to
try to draw connections between Osama bin Laden and the Kosovo Liberation Army and to
paint the Albanians as a nation of drug-dealers and Islamic fundamentalists. This has been
a recurring theme in Serbian propaganda for years. Their own actions, though, show that
they are fighting not Moslems but Albanians. Albanian Christians in Kosovo–all Roman
Catholics–have been oppressed at least as badly as the Moslems. In the city of Klina,
where some of the heaviest ethnic cleansing has taken place, there were many thousands of
Albanian Christians who had tried for years to build a church. Because their meeting hall
was so small, services were held outdoors. Regardless of the weather, the attendance was
typically over 5000 people.
These humble people, most of them farmers and villagers, asked for
nothing from the government. When they used their own funds to build a church on land they
owned, their first efforts were met with bulldozers and policemen who warned them very
clearly that they would be killed if they tried again to raise a church. The congregation
waged a legal battle in the Serbian court system for the right to build their church, a
battle they won in the Serbian Supreme Court. Rule of law, however, does not apply in
modern Serbia, especially in Kosovo. The church was never built, and even the provincial
governor of Kosovo refused to do anything to settle the issue in spite of repeated
requests from the U.S. and several Western European governments. It hardly mattered to the
Serbian regime that these people were Christians–the only thing that mattered was
that they were Albanian.
This Serbian assault on Albanian culture in Kosovo has now been in
full force since 1989. This war seeks to stifle the intellectual and cultural life of a
people rich in history and culture. This assault began in 1989, when Milosevic stripped
Kosovo of its autonomy, ostensibly to protect a small Serbian minority who he claimed were
being ruthlessly persecuted by Albanians. The following year, the newly-installed Serbian
nationalist president of the University of Pristina–the only Albanian-language
university in all of Yugoslavia–fired almost all of its Albanian professors, and
almost all Albanian students left the school in protest. A Serbian nationalist curriculum
was then imposed on the educational system at all levels, and control of the schools was
put under the Serbian Ministry of Education. Albanians were told they could participate in
the system only if they used approved materials and followed a Serbian nationalist
curriculum.
This new curriculum even went so far as to force children to learn
Serbian nationalist songs, while banning Albanian songs. Naturally, the Albanians refused
to attend school under such circumstances and set up a parallel school system that they
funded from their own pockets while continuing to pay taxes to Serbia. At the University
of Pristina, a huge Serbian church was then constructed in the middle of the campus, next
to the university library, which the Albanians considered a "national treasure."
Although Serbs comprise less than ten percent of the population of Kosovo, they have one
of the biggest churches in Yugoslavia.
I was fortunate to be able to visit many of those classrooms when I
was in Kosovo, both at the parallel university and in secondary schools. I saw the same
scene everywhere. Students were crowded into very small rooms, often with a single bare
bulb providing the light, a small chalkboard or other writing surface for the professor,
and usually benches where the students sat crowded together. There was usually no heat,
and winters in Kosovo can be daunting. Students huddled together in their heavy coats,
trying to take notes with gloved hands, sharing textbooks that were often not books at all
but copies made on copy machines. Yet, in every classroom I visited, the students were
smiling, their morale high, and many of them spoke English, because they were determined
to be a part of the outside world, part of the future. Unlike some other people in the
Balkans, these young Albanians were looking to the future, imagining a better life as part
of a larger world, eager to be a part of the new century.
For the Serbian regime, however, Albanian intellectuals represent
the enemy. A people who want to enjoy some measure of democracy, who want to rule
themselves, who want to enjoy human rights to the fullest could only be considered a
threat to tyrants such as Slobodan Milosevic. A Kosovo Liberation Army was something his
thuggish mind could accept and deal with on his terms. It was vital to him that these
people espousing non-violent resistance be reduced to a fighting force so he could deal
with them in the only way he understood–through brute force. Milosevic and his
minions could not, however, defeat the intellectuals. They could not face these people on
their own terms and deal with them honestly.
A Bayram Kelmendi cannot be confronted on intellectual terms,
because the moral weight of his arguments is too strong for the Serbian regime. A Veton
Surroi who speaks elegantly to the world in perfect English, who speaks to his people
through the printed word, who tries to deal with Serbia through peaceful negotiations is a
threat to the Balkan Butcher. Latest reports from Kosovo indicate that Surroi is hiding
out somewhere in Kosovo while Serbian forces hunt him down, hoping to
"negotiate" with him in the way they know best. After the Rambouillet
negotiations, the Serbian regime has decided to negotiate with Kosovar intellectuals in
the same way they negotiated with Kelmendi--with a bullet in the head.
As the war rages in Kosovo, we must not forget that this is a war
not only against a people, but against a culture. The Serbian regime is seeking to
eradicate (or "neutralize," as Serbian Foreign Minister Jovanovic likes to say)
Albanian life in Kosovo. Through brute force the regime seeks to ethnically cleanse an
area that has been majority Albanian at least since the 19th century, and to
deny the fruits of modern life and democratic values to a people who are struggling to be
a part of the 20th century. Belgrade has had many opportunities to enter into
serious talks with the real representatives of the Albanian people in Kosovo. The
international community fully recognized Yugoslavia’s territorial right to Kosovo and
had never threatened Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity. At every turn, though,
Milosevic has rejected compromise, democratic values, and restoration of the
Kosovars’former civil rights and has rejected any standard of human rights recognized
internationally.
Milosevic has also done incalculable harm to the Serbian people and
the Serbian nation. He has turned a once respectable nation that could take justifiable
pride in its accomplishments, history, and culture into a pariah nation that is now
identified with "ethnic cleansing" instead of civilized values. But at least he
has not sought to practice ethnic cleansing on them as with the Bosnian Muslims and now
the Albanians. Ethnic cleansing, and its partner "cultural cleansing," must be
eliminated once and for all from Europe. Only then can Serbia once again claim a place of
honor in the community of European nations.
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