The Plight of the Albanians in Yugoslavia

by Norberto Steinmayr

Albanian Life No 45; №2, 1989

More than two million Albanians live in Yugoslavia, forming about 40% of the Albanian nation in the Balkans. Within the Yugoslav federation, the Albanians constitute the third largest ethnic entity after the Serbs and the Croats. They are, therefore, numerically superior to the Slovenes, the Macedonians, and the Montenegrins — all of whom enjoy national status within Yugoslavia, having their own republics. The administrative division of Yugoslavia is based on the distinction between ’nations’ and ’nationalities’; each the six ‘nations’ have their own republics, a right which is denied to the ’nationalities’. The two million strong Albanian population is denied republican status, being regarded as a ’nationality’ — a euphemism for ’national minority’. Some Albanians Live in Macedonia and Montenegro, but the majority live, without autonomy, in the province of Kosova, within the republic of Serbia.

Such political discrimination is, of course, related to the fact that Kosova is lagging behind other Yugoslav regions economically, and the gap is increasing. Kosova is about half the size of Wales with a population of about 2 million people, 90% of whom are Albanians. Rich in mineral resources, Kosova has been used as a material base for Yugoslavia’s economy. Its per capita income is the lowest in the country. In comparison with Kosova, for instance, per capita income in Slovenia is 7 times higher, and that in Croatia and Vojvodina 4 times higher. Unemployment in Kosova stood in 1988 at 60%. The province also maintains the highest percentage of emigration and illiteracy.

In dealing with the causes of the problem, certain questions should first be clarified. The Albanians in Yugoslavia inhabit an ethnically compact and continuous area, which includes Kosova, western Macedonia and southern Montenegro. Scientific research in the fields of archaeology, ethnography, history, etc., has proved that the Albanians are autochthonous in their own territories of Yugoslavia; they did not immigrate there some time in the Middle Ages, nor has the numerical preponderance of Albanians in these regions resulted from demographic increase in the Albanian population. In resisting assimilation under the Ottoman occupation, the Albanians in these regions preserved their own language and customs. The vilayet of Kosova was the scene of several anti-Turkish revolts, and the growth of Albanian national consciousness became evident in the mid-19th century with the formation of the League of Prizren. Prominent figures in this movement, such as Isa Boletini, Hasan Prishtina and Bajram Curri, came from Kosova.

The independence of Albania in 1912 was followed by the partitioning of its territory and people. In 1913, at the Ambassadors’ Conference in London, the great powers, arbitrarily and in defiance of any ethnic principle, annexed nearly half of the Albanian nation to the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro — later the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, known officially as Yugoslavia from 1929. Thus what the great powers decided at the beginning of the century has remained in force until today.

During the inter-war period, the Serbian bourgeoisie, headed by the Serbian dynasty of the Karageorgeviches, occupied the dominant position in the new state and pursued a policy of Great-Serbian chauvinism towards other nationalities. This remains one of the blackest chapters for the Albanians in Yugoslavia, who became the victims of a policy of unconcealed discrimination, denationalisation and genocide. Thousands of Albanians were murdered, about 500,000 were forced to emigrate abroad, mainly to Turkey, land and property were confiscated from the Albanians, entire villages were wiped out, while Serbian and Montenegrin colonists moved in. At that time Kosova was the only region in Yugoslavia which had more prisons and police stations than schools.

It was during the anti-fascist liberation struggle that a just solution seemed to have been found for those Albanian territories which had been annexed to Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, the problem of Kosova represented a difficult and complex matter. In 1941 Kosova was united to Albania by the Italian fascists, and so became ’liberated’ from the Serbian yoke. However, in the general context of the anti-fascist struggle in the Balkans, and in view of the fact that Che Communist Party of Yugoslavia had been built and operated on a federal basis, the population of Kosova and the other Albanian regions of Yugoslavia was mobilised under the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. 53,000 partisans from Kosova fought in the National Liberation Armies. Besides, the clear determination of the Albanians in Yugoslavia to solve their national question could give rise to no misunderstandings. At the beginning of 1944, the First Conference of the National Liberation Council for Kosova unanimously resolved at Bujan that

”…the Albanian population… today, as always, wishes to be united with Albania. The Albanian people, too, will have the possibility of deciding their own future through the right of self-determination up to secession”.

But already, at the end of November 1943 in Jajce, the second session of the Yugoslav Anti-fascist Council of National Liberation, with not one Albanian representative out of 142 delegates and in flagrant violation of the proclaimed principles of equality and self-determination, decided to include the Albanians of Kosova, Montenegro and Macedonia as a national minority within the ’new federal Yugoslavia’. This decision marks the beginning of the unjust and chauvinist ’solution’ which was imposed on the Albanians in postwar Yugoslavia. This ’solution’ was just as arbitrary and unjust as the decision of the great powers to partition the Albanian nation thirty years before.

In fact, the Albanians continued to occupy a subordinate position in the new federation as well. Kosova was reduced to the position of a mere appendage to the republic of Serbia. Particularly during the first two decades after the war, the Serbian-dominated security police, headed by Rankovich, imposed a reign of terror upon the Albanians and resorted to mass murder. This police persecution was intensified after the Tito-Cominform split of 1948, when Kosova was turned into a centre for subversion against the People’s Republic of Albania, while thousands of Albanians were forced to leave Yugoslavia for Turkey.

With the fall of Rankovich in 1966, the killing and persecution were partly confirmed by Yugoslav official sources. Tito himself admitted:

“Dogmatic elements… had held a stranglehold over Kosova. The interests of the Albanian nationality had been neglected and arbitrary and impermissible bureaucratic actions had been taken against them”.

In 1968, in parallel with discussions on decentralised reforms in Yugoslavia, some public meetings and popular demonstrations in Kosova, which were violently repressed, demanded republican status for Kosova within the federation. The request for a Kosova Republic was quickly rejected by the Yugoslav leadership.

At the same time, however, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and Albania’s formal withdrawal from the Warsaw Treaty, there were improvements in Yugoslav-Albanian relations and in the situation of the people of Kosova. While remaining under the tutelage of Serbia, Kosova was given increased representation in the organs of the federation; more Albanians were admitted to the administration; more Albanian schools were opened; the Albanian University of Prishtina was set up; the right to display the Albanian flag was permitted; Albanian was made an official language alongside Serbo-Croat; and Kosova adopted the use of the standardised Albanian literary language. In addition, cultural agreements were officially concluded between Kosova and Albania, providing for the exchange of various publications, films, exhibitions, sports teams, etc., as well as joint studies in such fields as archaeology, ethnography and linguistics. In the ten years between 1971 and 1981 240 university teachers were sent from Albania to Kosova.

But despite this step forward in Albanian education and culture in Yugoslavia during the 70s, the Albanians of Kosova, Macedonia and Montenegro continued to be denied basic political rights. Their national oppression, aggravated by the economic backwardness of Kosova and its exploitation by the other republics, stimulated the Albanians of Yugoslavia to stage powerful demonstrations in the spring of 1981, demanding equality, justice and greater freedom. As a result, a new wave of Great-Serbian chauvinism erupted all over the Albanian regions of Yugoslavia. To crush the demonstrations, 60,000 soldiers were despatched to Kosova, where a full state of emergency was declared for the first time in Yugoslavia since the end of the war. Hundreds of Albanians were killed, wounded and imprisoned, causing international outrage. The demonstrators were denounced as ’Albanian irredentists’, ’counter-revolutionaries’, ’enemies endangering the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia’. Many teachers were dismissed, the cultural agreements with Albania were annulled and relations between the two countries rapidly deteriorated. The principal demand, which was rejected out of hand, was neither for secession from the federation nor union with Albania, but for republican status for Kosova within Yugoslavia. However, Belgrade argued that, because the Yugoslav Constitution gave to the republics (but not to the provinces) the right to self-determination including secession, the establishment of a Kosova Republic would open the door to the incorporation of Kosova within Albania.

From 1981 to 1988, the situation in Kosova and the other Albanian regions of Macedonia and Montenegro was kept under control mainly through repression. Now and then special police and military units reinforced the military presence there and, in the meantime, prison sentences were passed on thousands of Albanians, charged on all sorts of pretexts. Since 1981 the ranks of the Albanian intelligentsia have been decimated by the expulsion of thousands of teachers and students from the schools and the university; workers have been made unemployed and Albanian politicians forced to resign. According to official data, between and 1988, in Kosova alone 584,000 people were brought before the courts and police organs on charges of a political nature.

At an official level, in order to cover up the national oppression of the Albanians in Yugoslavia, the Serbian leadership has tried to present the problem of Kosova as one of the migration from the province over the last seven years of some 30,000 Serbs, allegedly as a result of persecution by Albanians. In fact, both Serbs and Montenegrins have left Kosova, but mainly because of the grave economic situation there, that is, for the same reason that thousands upon thousands of Albanians have been leaving the province. During the last 15 years, some 250,000 Albanians have abandoned their homeland: 100,000 have settled in the Federal Republic of Germany, 60,000 in Switzerland, 15,000 in Belgium, 25,000 in other western countries and 50,000 in the northern regions of Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavia has entered 1989 facing its greatest economic and political crisis. The rate of inflation, at over 400%, is the highest in Europe. The standard of living has fallen by nearly 40% since 1982. The country owes almost $23 billion to western creditors and the International Monetary Fund, which has recently imposed austerity measures upon Yugoslavia in return for rescheduling its national debt and granting new loans. Belgrade has agreed to amend the federal Constitution in order to introduce an open market economy, permitting up to 98% foreign ownership of Yugoslav enterprises and banks, while calls are being made for Yugoslavia to join the European Community.

The stability of Yugoslavia’s federal structure has also been severely shaken by national divisions and power struggles, mainly between Croatia and Slovenia on the one hand and Serbia on the other. Recently, the Serbian leadership, headed by Slobodan Milosevich, has reactivated its drive for centralism which has dangerous implications for the whole country. The Serbian chauvinists claim that the withdrawal of the limited autonomy granted to Kosova, with its 90% Albanian population, and the complete domination of the province by Serbia, would ‘unify’ Serbia once and for all. So, at the end of 1988, Serbian demonstrations called for open confrontation with the Albanians, the slogans chanted including ’Kosova is Serbia!’, ’Away with the eagle flags!’, ’We want weapons!’ and ’Death to the Albanians!’.

During the course of this year, a real tragedy has overtaken the Albanians. Kosova and Vojvodina have been deprived of the limited autonomy sanctioned by the 1974 Constitution. Direct Serbian control in Kosova now extends to the fields of the judiciary, ’law and order’, relations with abroad (including those with neighbouring Albania), financial and social planning. A free hand has been given to Serbia to push through any legislation for Kosova and to alter the status of this province again at any time in the future.

The opposition of the Albanians to these changes led, in February, to an eight-day general strike, the first in Yugoslavia since 1945. Kosova was paralysed and the losses to its economy totalled $500,000 a day. The strikes, which were followed by other demonstrations and protests, found the unanimous support of all sections of the Albanian population in Yugoslavia. Miners, workers in all the main industries, women, shopkeepers, students, teachers and even children — all defied the authorities in Kosova and resolutely expressed their opposition to the arbitrary legislation eliminating Kosova’s autonomy and imposing on them the status of second-class citizens. To silence the two million Albanians in Yugoslavia and their demands for equality and justice, Kosova was placed once more under a state of emergency which amounted almost to martial law, with troops and tanks patrolling the streets, with police roadblocks everywhere and with helicopters bombarding the demonstrators with tear gas. A curfew prohibited movement on the streets between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., gatherings of more than three people were banned, together with travel from town to town. Schools, university, theatres and markets were all closed.

Just as in 1945, 1968 and 1981, so once again this year the streets of Kosova have been covered in blood. More than two hundred Albanians have been killed, many others have been injured or have disappeared, and the prisons of Yugoslavia have been filled with Albanian political prisoners. Rankovich or the Karageorgeviches could not have carried out this repression more brutally. But such a flagrant violation of human and national rights is unacceptable in Europe today. As a result, the fascist and racist measures taken against the Albanian population of Yugoslavia will merely postpone any solution of the crisis.

The plight of the Albanians in Yugoslavia also has negative repercussions on Albanian-Yugoslav relations. Socialist Albania has reiterated many times that it has no territorial claims against Yugoslavia, no wish to interfere in its internal affairs, no intention of seeking to export revolution to Yugoslavia. But when Albanians are being killed by the Yugoslav armed forces, when their language, culture, traditions — indeed, everything Albanian — are objects of attack and denigration, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania maintains that it has the duty to raise its voice in defence of its two million compatriots across the border. Tirana has made it clear that it wishes to have friendly relations with Yugoslavia, but that any improvement in these relations will also depend on the treatment of the Albanian population in Yugoslavia.

Today, even more than in the past, the participation of the Albanians in Yugoslav society on equal footing with the other peoples is a necessary precondition for the stability of the federation. The demands of the Albanians of Yugoslavia are more than justified. Their three main points are:

• 1. Republican status for Kosova within the federation;
• 2. The adequate economic and cultural development of the Albanian territories in Yugoslavia; and
• 3. The release from prison of all those accused simply of having stood up for their national and democratic rights.