Serbian newspaper Radničke Novine in 1913: Serbian atrocities against Albanians

“Starting from September 12, 1913, “Radničke novine”, at the suggestion of D. Tucović, contained in his letter to D. Lapčević in Belgrade from Vrnjacka Banja dated September 11, 1913, opened a special section entitled “The Third War in the Balkans” and dedicated to the exception – especially clashes on the Serbian-Albanian border. It published, in particular, materials about the attitude of the Serbian army towards the Albanian population in the areas it occupied and about the regime established in new areas.

On October 22, 1913, this newspaper published a small note entitled “Massacre in Lumi” (it was signed with the pseudonym “Devil”, but R. Perovich managed to establish that it belonged to the pen of D. Tutsovich; the same pseudonym was used to sign and his famous “Albanian letters.”

The article refuted reports from other Belgrade newspapers that claimed an Albanian village in Ljumi was destroyed due to the fact that the Albanians barricaded themselves in their houses and stubbornly defended themselves. The author points out that the correspondents of these newspapers “consider it a national duty to conceal the crimes of our authorities and the army and deceive the people in Serbia,” and gives a different interpretation of what happened.

Tutsovich writes that when Serbian troops entered the village, there were no longer Albanian soldiers in it, but only women and children who remained, based on the fact that the Albanians themselves released captured Serbian soldiers, having previously taken away their weapons . As a result of the ensuing massacre, about 500 people were killed in two hours; whose corpses were then dumped into houses and the houses set on fire.

In the same issue of the Radničke novine newspaper, an article was published, “Blood feud of the military” with the subtitle “From Albanian letters.” The main provisions of this article have already been discussed above; however, it also provided specific examples of the Serbian army’s brutal treatment of the Albanian population and described the harsh regime imposed in the areas it occupied.

Tucovic pointed out that what the Serbian “system of suppression” committed before the last Albanian invasion and in repelling it “exceeds all the horrors that were committed against this people in a given year.” According to Tucovic, terror was unleashed on the Albanian population in the cities of Pec, Djakovica and Prizren as soon as the first signs of movement of Albanians towards the Serbian border appeared.

After the publication of the letter, Tutsovich emphasizes, the government must either begin an investigation into these crimes – then this will be “a public guarantee that one day the system of exterminating an entire people will cease to operate”; or step over these open accusations – and then “the enormous consequences of this system before history and the Serbian people will be irrefutably presented to him.

In another article from the same series published in the newspaper “Radničke novine” on November 9, 1913, “Montenegro madness,” D. Tucović points out that such cases are by no means the “privilege” of only Serbian soldiers, because what they can do their Montenegrin allies most clearly show “the burned villages and the destroyed population (Albanian – P.I.)

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