[Prishtina-E] The Truth Shall Set You Free - by Alice Mead

[kosova at jps.net]

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE
(Special to the Zeri newspaper, Prishtine)

By Alice Mead
May 22, 2002

This past weekend, the tiny island nation of East Timor became independent.
For three years, since 1999, they had a UN interim government much like
Kosova's. Unlike UNMIK, though, their interim administration was designed to
transfer power to the citizens of East Timor as rapidly as possible in large
part because the president of Indonesia was willing to negotiate a
settlement. Now these 800,000 people have their own country. The basis of
this was that Indonesia had forcibly overtaken East Timor and internationals
did not recognize this effort at annexation of a territory by force. The
second step was an agreement by both sides.

International law expert, Hurst Hannum of Tufts University, has written
extensively on sovereignty and self-determination. In an article in Foreign
Affairs, March/April 1998, he states that regions taken by force do not
simply become annexed. Instead, international recognition of border changes
requires a co-signing of treaties by both states involved, votes to ratify
these border changes by the local parliaments, and other ratifications by
transnational organizations.

There are several important questions to ask, while contemplating the
comparison of East Timor to Kosova:

1. How did Kosova become "part" of Serbia to begin with?
2. Were any laws, standards, and treaties violated to make this happen?
3. Was Kosova in fact treated as a colony from the point of annexation?

Fortunately, the answers to these questions can be found in the impeccably
researched Kosovo, A Short History by Noel Malcolm.

The year is 1912 and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire is at hand. The Serb
Third army entered Kosova to fight and defeat the Ottoman army. Prizren and
Gjakova surrendered on November 3, 1912. In Ferizaj the Serb army
encountered fierce resistance. Peje fell to the Montenegrin army. A Russian
journalist named Leon Trotsky cited widespread massacres and atrocities
committed against the Albanians, saying in effect, Quite simply, the Serb
Army is engaged in systematic extermination of the Muslim population.
(Malcolm, page 252) In Ferizaj, only three Albanian men were left alive.

In 1914, the Carnegie Endowment report again cited this systematic effort at
expunging the Albanian population. "Houses and whole villages were reduced
to ashes, the unarmed population was massacred ... with a view to
transforming the ethnic character of regions populated by Albanians." (page
254, Malcolm). The region was then placed under military rule.

In order to legally annex Kosova, Serbia would have had to internally ratify
these border changes in its parliament, called the Grand National Assembly.
This never happened. Kosova was not annexed under international law either.
"But the strange truth is that Kosovo was not legally incorporated into
Serbia" (Malcolm, page 265) either internally or internationally! "All
commentators at the time, and all subsequent historians, seem to have
accepted the fact that Kosova was an integral part of Serbian kingdom."
(Malcolm, page 264). But that is untrue.

Furthermore, there was no attempt to make the Albanians citizens of Serbia.
>From the outset, Serbia saw Kosova as a colony and its populations were
treated as inferior, without equal rights, hopefully to be driven out. Why
bother with citizenship for those you hope to expel?

The purpose of the colonization program in Kosova was to alter the
composition of the population. Serbs and Montenegrins were offered for free
nine hectares of land taken from Albanian property owners. Over 100,000
Albanians fled Kosova between 1913-1915. (Malcolm, page 258). While
Albanians did not become Serbian citizens, eventually in 1928, they became
Yugoslav citizens. But from the beginning, their rights were openly
disregarded by authorities. in 1930, there were no Albanian schools or
newspapers. The Serbs even denied their existence as a minority.

In 1935, another wave of colonization and discrimination was initiated by
Serbia. The infamous 1937 Belgrade University policy paper urged the
persecution of Albanians through burning homes and harassing them legally.
Thousands were deported to Turkey. In 1964, there were no paved roads in
Kosova. In 1995, efforts at repopulation were renewed. Milosevic began the
transfer of 225,000 Croatian Serbs to Kosova. After 25,000 were sent by
train, the UN stopped the forced transfer of the other 200,000 displaced
people.

Throughout the period from 1918-1999, the region remained economically
undeveloped. Serbia and Yugoslavia did not invest in Kosova as they did in
the republics. This history of privation and hardship was the basis of the
Milosevic's renewed efforts at driving out the Albanians through economic
privation and brutality from 1989-1999. It was the basis of Operation
Horseshoe during the NATO war, in which the goal was to reduce the Albanian
population to 800,000 through ethnic cleansing. And it has always been part
of Serbian policy from 1913 to 1999.

The point is throughout the twentieth century, Kosova was a colony, brutally
overrun numerous times since 1912/1913. Like the other 55 colonies in the
world, who achieved independence since 1960, the Albanians want real
freedom, representative government, and equality.

Serb claims that Kosova is an intrinsic part of Serbia are false. They
intentionally kept Kosova as a colony, disregarded the norms of
international law from 1912 on, and every regime since then regarded Kosova
as a source of financial exploitation. Serbs did not protest when the Kosova
parliament was suspended in 1989. They celebrated. They didn't protest the
10 years of brutal apartheid in Kosova from 1989-1999. Most Serbs today
still don't consider Milosevic as having committed war crimes in Kosova.
Instead, they believe he embezzled money from the Serb government. In such
situations where there has been grave and continuous rights abuse, the
central concern of internationals, according to Hannum, should be with the
rights of the people not the facade of sovereignty.

Internationals took over Kosova without a peace plan or treaty to be
ratified by the people. UNMIK inherited without question Serb attitudes and
policy and believed Serb statements that Kosova was the "Jerusalem" of
Orthodoxy. They have not taken the time to research the sad history of this
place. Nor do they understand the yearning for freedom of the Albanians.
Since 1912, the history and destiny of Kosova has been one of nearly
continuous genocide. Genocide is properly defined by Raphael Lemkin:

"Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the
oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the
oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed
population which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after
removal of the population and colonization of the area by the oppressor's
own nationals." (Samantha Power, page 43, A Problem from Hell.)

Denying the Albanians the due process for liberation that is spelled out in
the 1960 UN Declaration of Independence for colonies by imposing both a
heavy-handed interim government without representation to be followed by
continued forced association with Serbia that the Albanians will never
ratify, and to which Kosova is not legally bound in the first place, is a
very grave error of historic proportions in diplomacy, foreign policy, and
human rights. The era of colonization, wherever it lingers in the world,
needs to be left firmly behind as it was this week in East Timor.



- Alice Mead is an American writer and human rights activist.

All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of this article are
expressly prohibited without the written consent of Zeri, Prishtine.