Written by Petrit Latifi
In the Balkan wars, the Serbian army committed numerous crimes against Albanians and Muslims that shocked European reporters, as well as the Serbs themselves:
“Even now, after a long walk through the burning grounds from Ristovac to Lerin and from Durres to Careva Selo, I cannot forget the impression that the red sky left on me from the first burning of the village. During the first weeks of the war with the Turks, we had no nights, because we moved, camped and fought towards the light of the burning Arnaut villages. The fires of burning villages were the only signal by which individual columns of the Serbian army told each other how far they had arrived. ”
And the population of Arnaut – if they had not been killed and could flee – we pushed them in front of us and urged them to give us persistent resistance at Bujanovac, like a desperado watching his house burn, and then to fight like lions with the Turkish army at Kumanovo. The Serbian people paid for this barbaric policy of the Serbian government and the Supreme Command with the lives of many of their soldiers. With the fall of the Kumans, the whole world of the Arnaut population settled in Skopje, which the Serbian army, invading from the north, pushed before them and who, seeking refuge, largely found death there. It was as if the Middle Ages had risen from the grave, when that despot at the Demir Gate amused himself by drunkenly throwing people headlong into the waves of the Vardar. “
References
Balkan Academia 