Authored by Enver. J. Sadiku. Translation by Petrit Latifi.
The establishment of Serbian rule in Kosovo in 1912 was followed by murder, looting, terror and massacres that Serbian forces carried out on Albanians. The most inhumane actions against the Albanian population of Gjilan and the surrounding area were carried out by soldiers of the Third Serbian Army, volunteer units and Serbian committees, who were also supported by local Serbs.
Diplomacy, the international press of the time, organizations that dealt with the consequences of the Balkan Wars, but also the Serbian social democrats themselves, reported on crimes against the Albanian population that humanity had not known until then. Innocent citizens were killed, beaten and mistreated, their homes were burned, their property was stolen and thousands of Albanians of Gjilan and the surrounding area were persecuted.
Serbia’s anti-Albanian and occupying stance was also proven by the occupation of Albanian lands by the Serbian army, and as a result, all that propaganda and hatred towards Albanians, which had been expressed through science, journalism and propaganda activity, was now complemented by the violence of the military, police forces, Chetnik paramilitary units and armed Serbian citizens, who killed, robbed and stole Albanians indiscriminately.
Serbian press and propaganda
This violence and terror, this policy of Serbia, was largely preceded by the Serbian press that was published in the Ottoman Empire. The newspapers “Vardar”, “Kosovo”, “Carigradski glasnik” and other newspapers, which had published various articles on the alleged oppression of Albanians against Slavs. Those articles were staged and sensational that electrified the public, sowing hatred between the Albanian and Slavic people.
This propaganda and hatred towards Albanians had found supporters outside Serbia in international circles. A reasonable resistance in Serbia was made only by the Serbian Social Democratic Party of Dimitrije Tucoviq. This Serbian social democrat emphasized that Serbia’s aspirations to achieve its goals in Albanian lands were evil, because what could only be achieved through friendly agreement and cooperation with the liberated Albanian people, it wanted to achieve against them.
The Albanians of Gjilan and the surrounding area, although they were in a difficult position and under unprecedented terror and pressure, had never bowed down, and this is best evidenced by the words of Idriz Seferi, leader of the Albanians of Gjilan, who even after the occupation had not laid down his arms, saying: “You do as you wish and I, if I am a man, know where to die”.
Immediately after the entry of the Serbian and Montenegrin army into Kosovo, crimes, murders and looting began throughout the Albanian lands occupied by them. Wherever they set foot, in the villages and towns of Kosovo and all of Albania, the Serbs sowed death and destruction. In the first two months of the war alone, in October-November 1912, 25,000 Albanians were killed.
Entire cities, such as Prishtina, Vushtrri, Ferizaj, Gjilan, Kumanovo, Presheva, Prizren, Peja, etc., were subjected to destruction. The villages around these cities were reduced to ashes, while their inhabitants, without sparing even women, the elderly and children, were killed or burned alive in the fires of their homes.
Speaking about the violence that the Serbian army exercised in Gjilan, Noel Malcolm writes that this army used various forms of violence on the Albanians to make them loyal to the new government and when the army could not achieve such a thing, it used the most brutal methods, knocking on the doors of the Albanian houses, taking the men from there and shooting them immediately. In Gjilan, within just a few days, the number of men killed had reached 400.
Countless villages were razed to the ground, countless individuals were massacred in the most bestial way. Where once there were modest houses that generations of poor Albanians had built with great effort, nothing remained but ruins and smoke.
Edith Durham, who was a direct witness to these events, wrote that from the occupied provinces came painful news about the unheard-of atrocities that the Serbs and Montenegrins committed against the Albanian population. According to her, instead of hiding their deeds, they bragged about them.
Part of the population of Gjilan and the surrounding area, foreseeing the massacres, had left their homes, taking only family members with them. In Gjilan and the surrounding area, the local Serbian authorities committed atrocious crimes throughout the city.
The newspaper “Reichespost” published in Vienna, which wrote about the massacres that the Serbian forces had committed everywhere in Kosovo, wrote that in Gjilan, where the Albanians were not protected, almost all the inhabitants were put under fire and under the sword and that only those who had fled escaped alive.
According to the account of Mullah Mustafa Selmani, born in 1902, when the Serbian army came from Bujanovac and Svirca, the population, among them women, children and the elderly, fled towards Ferizaj, thinking that the border could be established on the railway, which was not the case.
The Serbian occupation of Gjilan and its surroundings was accompanied by horror and massacres unprecedented until then, especially in the villages of Gjilan. This chauvinistic enterprise was intended to cause fear in the Albanian population, which from the beginning had made it known to Serbia that it would not agree to the new occupation in any way, therefore, the uprising would be the philosophy of life of the locals. For the ethnic cleansing or disappearance of Albanians, the Serbian army followed a tactic well-developed by specialists and criminals.
At first, the army operated, entering every village, where it captured and executed patriots, heads of families, arrested and burned down the houses of the villagers. After the army left, the military – police and paramilitary forces arrived. These, under the guise of establishing order, arrested, killed and disappeared innocent residents, women, elderly people and children. Under the guise of weapons collection checks, they entered families everywhere, raided them everywhere, and drove them out of their homes.
Atrocities in Kazanë
The press of the time wrote that in Kazanë, Gjilan alone, 29 Albanian villages in the Karadak Mountains were destroyed, 280 Albanian houses were burned and razed to the ground, and almost all the men were killed and slaughtered. A very small number of those who fled survived the devastation, and as evidence of the destruction of Gjilan, only the ruins remain.
Atrocities in the villages of Depca, Myqybaba, Caravajka, Peçena, and Kurexhajt
The villages in the depths of the Kardak Mountains, such as Depca, Myqybaba, Caravajka, Peçena, Kurexhajt, and other villages, suffered greatly from the murderous Serbian army. The men of these villages, after being captured by the Serbian army, were tied up and gathered on the Peçena Hill and massacred in the most cruel way.
In two pits that had been dug, over 140 men from these areas were slaughtered, burned and burned to the sound of drums and flutes. Massacres also took place in the village of Gruhali, where 18 men, women and children who were fleeing on the road were killed. In Pidić, the villagers put up small-scale resistance, and during the fighting there were deaths and in retaliation all the houses in the village were burned along with the barns, stables and livestock, while the killings and burnings continued in the villages along the Karadak Gorge in Haxhaj, Selishtë, Kurexhaj and Zhegër.
In the villages of the Karadak Highlands, most of the dead were buried in shallow graves by the women of the village, because the men had fled to the mountains, while there were also dead bodies left in the meadows.
In Bresalc, after the arrival of the Serbian hordes, Murat Bilalli, who was a strong arm of Idriz Seferi, was barbarically liquidated. He was liquidated along with 26 fellow fighters. Serbia had inherited from the Ottomans the list of fighters, whom it disappeared one by one without a trace. Of the 27 fighters who were liquidated, it is known that only Rrustem Mehmet Haziri and Adem Ali Halimi were shot before being sent to Koretishte and then the family members took the bodies and buried them in their yards, while according to the family members, the graves of the other victims are unknown, but it is believed that Koretishte is the cemetery of most of them, because many Albanians were massacred there. Murat Bilalli is known to have been executed in Gjilan. He was beheaded in the old gymnasium building, but his grave is unknown.
Hundreds of names of those killed in 1912-1913 by Serbs are marked on the memorial wall of the “Hill of Martyrs” Memorial Center in Gjilan. According to the commission that has collected the names of those killed in the municipality of Gjilan on the ground, it appears that during the Balkan Wars, there were those killed in Bresalc, Llashtica, Zhegër, Makresh i Ultë, Malishevë, Përlepnica, Livoç i Ultë, Dunavë, Gumnishtë, Velekincë, Sllakovc i Ultë, Sllakovc i Epërm, Livoç i Epërm, Vërbica e Zhegovci, Çelik, Llovce, Lipovicë, Kurexh, Kishnapolë, Shurdhan, Uglar, Ponesh, Pogragjë, Sllubice, Demiraj, Burincë, Zhegoc, Muhaxherë of Pasjanit, Haxhaj, Kmetoc, Pidiq, Myqybabë, Capar, Pasjak, Cërnica, Stanishor, Nasalë and in the city, as well as in the neighborhoods of “Dermëhalla”, “Lagje e Muhaxherëve” and other villages and neighborhoods.
The villages of Tërstenik, Vërban, Lubishtë and Gjylekar were the scenes of bloodbaths, where 283 men and women were mercilessly tortured. The tragedy of the Lubisht residents amounts to 95 killed, shot and missing. The graves of most of them are still unknown today, and among the dead were also guests from other villages.
Serbian war criminal Gjorgje Jovanovic
Regarding the barbaric behavior of 100 Serbian soldiers, led by their sergeant, Commander Gjorge Jovanovic informed the commander of the Kosovo division that upon arriving in the village of Lubishte (a village inhabited entirely by Albanians), these soldiers immediately surrounded the village and expelled all the adult villagers, conducted a complete search of the village, then questioned all the Albanians, demanding to know who had fired at the soldiers, and since no one had said who had fired, they were asked if they had been in the place from which the shooting had taken place.
Atrocities in Vërbovc
Outraged that the Albanians had not said who had fired, they burned the village housses and all the adult Albanians were tied up and taken to a forest, where later the villagers of Vërbovc (inhabited by Serbs) dug holes in which Albanians were put, who were sentenced with a quick death procedure.
Atrocities in Mogilë and Vërbovc
Local Serbs were also complicit in the crimes committed against Albanians, who in various ways incited the army to commit massacres against Albanians, and evidence of this is the Serbian army superiors themselves who informed the commander of the Kosovo Division. Thus, for the murder of Albanians in Mogilë, Viti, it was reported that when the Serbian army was spending the night in Vërbovc, the local Serbs informed them that in Mogilë (a village inhabited by Albanians and Serbs), there were weapons in an Albanian house and that Albanians were gathering there to negotiate.
The army blocked the village of Mogilë and searched the house, where it found eleven Albanians and found a rifle and 54 cartridges, and all of them were tried in a summary procedure. Violence was also inflicted on the inhabitants of Gjilekar, where the Serbian army, under the pretext of searching for weapons and suspicious persons, vented all its anger on the defenseless Albanians.
Monsignor Lazër Mjeda, Catholic Archbishop of Skopje, in his report, sent to the Vatican on January 24, 1913, regarding the Serbian occupation of Kosovo and Macedonia, gave a full report, while in the part where he spoke about the crimes committed in Morava he wrote that one is horrified when he describes the thefts, robberies and rapes of women in the most barbaric way.
Atrocities in Tërstenik, Smira, Lubishtë, Vërban and Komogllavë
“In Tërstenik 60 people were killed, thirty-two in Smira, 90 in Lubishtë, 20 in Vërban and in Komogllavë, a village with 50 families, all the men were killed without exception… those who had been shot but remained alive were drowned with bayonets”. Mjeda informed Vienna that Gjilan was also massacred, although the city had surrendered peacefully.
Serbs sold Albanian women as slaves
Leo Freundlich in the “Albanische Korrespondenz” on March 20, 1913, published in Vienna, wrote, among other things, that in Lubishtë, Serbian officers sold the village women as slaves, even for 400 piastres.
The diplomatic missions of Austria-Hungary in the occupied territories also speak of Serbian atrocities in Gjilan and the surrounding area. Thus, the Austro-Hungarian consul in Skopje informed Vienna about the acts of rape of Albanian women (of the Catholic religion) in the villages of Letnicë and Shosharë on the Gjilan side.
The London newspaper Daily Telegraph published correspondence from Vienna about the massacres in the villages of Shosharë, Letnicë, Vërban, Sefer, Lubishtë, Gjylekar, Selicë, etc. The Serbian army had taken the village of Shosharë at the end of February. After removing all the men and boys from the village, the soldiers began to rape the women and girls.
Atrocities in Letnicë and Shosharë
Serbian soldiers committed the same atrocities in the village of Letnicë. The war correspondent of the Danish newspaper “Riget” also wrote about the rapes in the villages of Shosharë and Letnicë at the end of February 1913. These unprecedented massacres had also alarmed international circles, and under external pressure the Serbian government was forced to conduct research into the terror caused by its army.
The prefect of Gjilan, Toma Popović, known for his brutality, had also gone to assess the situation, but he had allegedly heard nothing about the rapes in the mentioned villages. General Mišić also sent his officer there for the same purpose. The military officer’s findings contradicted the prefect’s claims.
From these investigations it emerged that in the aforementioned villages all houses were raided (with the exception of the priest’s residence and the church) to collect weapons and calm the population. The committees of the Narodna Odbrana were usually in charge of this mission.
As the Serbian newspaper of the time “Radničke Novine”, which had a somewhat more objective attitude towards the developments of that period, noted, it was the heavily armed Serbian committees who entered the houses after midnight, took the men out and sent them tied up to the police. There they were declared scoundrels and beaten.
Atrocities in Begunca, Smir, Goshica
After a lightning raid undertaken by the Serbian forces, where there was pursuit, killing and burning of houses, all the inhabitants of Begunca abandoned the village and the inhabitants were divided into two columns, one in the direction of Skopje and the other in the direction of Kumanovo.
In Smir, 83 villagers tied hand in hand were shot in a place called Bjashkalle. Of them, two people escaped alive and wounded. In Goshica, 50 men died, in Tërstenik 60 and in Komogllavë 50. Twenty Albanian men were shot in Mogilë and one killed man was brought from the village of Trenaj to the Rashi shooting range, near the village, and local settlers took out the massacred bodies and buried them in the Mogilë meadow in Rastanovicë-Zakuta, north of Mogilë.
To escape the violence of the Serbian forces, Albanians from the Morava, Karadak and Gollak regions tried to defend their villages. The Serbian army from the direction of Ferizaj t was attacking the villages of this municipality, while in the other direction the villages of Gjilan and the surrounding area were being attacked to meet the two wings in Karadak and Gollak.
The Albanians initially held out in Starasella (Old Village), to ambush them in Sojevo. During this resistance there were losses of the Albanian and Serbian volunteer armies and after the withdrawal of the Albanian volunteers, all the anger was vented on the civilian population. The Slavic units in Tërstenik killed 66 Albanians, in Smirë they killed 83 innocent people, in Kabash, they took them and sent them to Zabel of Sahit Aga, in Kllokot and killed 56 people, they also killed the same number in Goshica, while in Lubishte in two sieges 95 Albanians were killed and from there the Serbian forces were released to the villages of Karadak, Gjilan and Presheva.
Serbian war criminal Lazar Zeqević
The Serbs committed massacres and demonstrated violence in the Gollak Mountains as well. Thus, in December 1912, an armed expedition of Bashibozuks from Kolloleq, led by the Serbian teacher Lazar Zeqević, attacked Shipashnica. After severe torture, this expedition separated five people, four of whom were shot in the mountains of their village. Vojvoda Lazar Zeqević had separated the youngest of these, whom they had beaten. In Sfircë, only three houses remained unburned. Hundreds of citizens in Tygjec, Sfircë, Hogosht, Gmicë, Zajçec and other villages of Gallap also suffered from Serbian violence.
Dimitrije Tucoviđ also wrote about the barbaric behavior of the Serbian army, who said that the Albanian villages, from which the men had left for a long time, were reduced to ashes. “These were barbaric crematoriums, where hundreds of women and babies were burned alive. The Albanian insurgents, when they captured Serbian officers and soldiers, only disarmed them and released them without a word, while the Serbian army did not spare children, women or the sick.”
The special correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” reported that the cruel behavior of the troops of the Serbian general Božidar Janković surpassed all the horrors of history. The Serbs, in their march towards Albania, treacherously killed not only armed Albanians, but in their fury even unarmed individuals, the elderly, women, children and babies in their mothers’ breasts.
To justify Serbian crimes, the Serbian Minister of Religion and Education, Ljuba Jovanović, published a statement in a Slavic newspaper, quoted by the “Deutsches Volksblatt”, in which he said, among other things, that “Albanians resisted the Serbian occupation and even opened fire on soldiers after they surrendered.” According to him, such shootings occurred not only from outside, but also from inside the houses in the occupied villages and, according to him, this led to what happens everywhere when people who are not combatants oppose a victorious army” (i.e. the massacre of Albanians).
The Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars, which concerns the fighting that Serbia waged, states that the findings of the international commission have resulted in serious war crimes. According to this report, it has been proven that weapons were not used only against the enemy army, but also for terror against the Albanian population in Kosovo and Macedonia, the elderly, villagers, farmers, women and children.
According to the rapporteurs of this commission, Serbia committed unprecedented crimes, turning entire houses into ashes and massacring the unarmed and defenseless population. “Unprecedented acts of violence, looting and savagery of various kinds – these are the means which have been and are still being used by the Serbian-Montenegrin army, with the aim of ethnically changing the regions that are inhabited only by Albanians”.
In the report of the International Commission, which talks about Gjilan, it is said that massacres have occurred against the population of Gjilan; the city was burned and destroyed even though the Albanians of that city had not resisted.
All this violence was directed by the head of the Serbian army, because this army did not take any step to stop the murders, looting, robberies and rapes of Albanians, but it was the instigator of these crimes and the army demanded and ordered that this violence be applied to the Albanian population.
All this violence exerted against the Albanian population had another purpose, that of its displacement and the colonization of these regions with incoming Serbs, because the displacement could not have come about on its own and even the civilians could not follow the army, which was retreating in complete chaos.
This was generally a farming population, who did not easily abandon their land and livestock. Leaving their land meant losing everything, so the decision to evacuate en masse could not have been spontaneous. The population had to be forced to relocate, and this was done by introducing military garrisons into the villages and burning down villages and houses. The Carnegie Commission found that 80 percent of Muslim villages entered by the army were burned. There are cases where the army entered settlements, separated men from women and killed them one by one.
Often these crimes were committed by soldiers of states that were in the alliance. Of course, these facts prove the Serbian terror over Albanians, they prove that extermination project that Serbia will have as its bible for decades to come.
In the occupied countries, the Serbian army organized Chetnik and gendarme units, made up of criminals, thieves, degenerate people, murderers. They trumpeted that they had come to liberate the territories from five centuries of Ottoman rule, to fraternize the two peoples, to “open” roads and railways, to “civilize” Albania, etc., while on the other hand they continued an unprecedented genocide. Whoever did not comply with the rules set by the Serbian commanders was shot on the spot.
Through these courts, the confiscations and expropriations of Albanians would also begin. They did not even take into account the old family land and house ownership deeds from the Ottoman period, as well as contracts from that time. The anti-Albanian attitude is also seen in the discrimination in the educational plan. The regulation for the occupied territories provided for full state control over state and private schools as well as religious institutions.
Based on this regulation, state primary education was mandatory for all citizens of the “liberated” parts without distinction. However, education was allowed only to those who spoke Serbian, non-Serbian languages were officially prohibited.
Albanians, who in Kosovo and thus also in Gjilan and the surrounding area have always been the dominant population, were never included in the decision-making bodies. They were denied the right to property, national identity, the right to free religion, the right to school, the right to work, language and movement.
Even through its plan to appropriate influential Albanian leaders, Serbia intended that if this plan succeeded, it would use them for its own interests, and if it could not achieve this goal, then Serbia intended that the Albanian leaders would be compromised before their compatriots as sold-out people. By arresting Albanian leaders, or even one or more family members in villages and cities, the Serbian army aimed to force the Albanians of the occupied areas to remain calm and not to oppose the occupying Serbian army.
Another form of violence against Albanians was the behavior of Serbian settlers, the forcible seizure of property, attempts to convert them to religion, and other forms of violence. Serbian settlers were not only more privileged than Albanians in every respect, they were also more privileged than local Serbs.
The settlers also had many rights that neither the Albanians nor the autochthonous Serbs enjoyed, they had the right to cut wood for work in the mountains of the municipality and in the state mountains, for the construction of houses and auxiliary facilities. These rights of the settlers, the autochthonous Albanians did not enjoy in any field, but on the contrary, the Albanians paid taxes on lands, forests, mountains, etc. at triple prices, while the settlers were exempt from taxes on land, on animals for three years and from all municipal and state taxes.
In such conditions of open discrimination, life for the Albanians had become unbearable and unaffordable, therefore all these actions taken by the Serbian state apparatus and the settlers caused the migration of residents from various villages of Gjilan and the surrounding area to Turkey.
The Serbian government, in order to encourage the largest possible migration of Albanians, used various forms of pressure. In addition to physical violence and persecution, it also used political pressure, not excluding economic pressure and especially that of high land taxes. Pressure was exerted especially on Albanians who were richer and had a larger amount of arable land, burdening them with unbearable taxes. Using this method of pressure, the Serbian government sought to migrate the richest and most influential people, so that it would later make it easier for those who were poorer.
There have been cases when citizens who migrated to Turkey were forced to sign documents before leaving that they would give up all their land to the “state”, because their relatives had not even taken over their land, due to the inability to pay the taxes, which were very high. Such a practice was used whenever it was necessary to relocate Albanians. Given the poor yield of the land, the amount of tax that was unbearable and was collected by force, then the population was dissatisfied and their life had become unbearable, so the population sought salvation in moving from their lands.
Another type of pressure on Albanians was that of changing religion – the forced conversion of Albanian Muslims and Catholics to the Orthodox religion. This is It was a special form of state terror and genocide, with the ultimate goal of denationalizing the Albanian population and assimilating this population into the occupied territories, as well as relocating that population that did not accept the change of religion.
Such an attempt was made in the villages of Karadak. The Serbian invaders had also assigned Slavic names to the Albanian inhabitants, bringing certificates from Belgrade and trying to impose the belief that the Albanians had willingly changed their religion. The Serbian army killed Albanians who insisted on preserving their religion, such as Salih Ajvaz from Terzijaj, who before being killed had told the Serbs: “Salih I have left and Salih I want to go”. The local Serbs also expelled the Albanians who were known as the Muhajirs of Pasjan.
The plundering of property and land, the violence inflicted on the population and the inability to work the land, made the winter of 1912/1913 very difficult for Gjilan. Hunger had gripped these areas and the population was living a difficult life. Reports from the police inspectorate and other leaders of the Ministry of the Interior, from January and February 1913, stated that there was a shortage of grain in the Gjilan and Llapi Districts and that corn urgently needed to be sent to alleviate the hunger.
Many people were forced to go as illegal immigrants to the mountains, pursued by the authorities, who often took revenge on the population, while mass burnings were justified by the armed resistance that was offered from their homes during the pursuit of the illegal immigrants.
Thus, the horror of the massacres and deaths was increased by the separation and flight to Turkey, as well as the difficult social situation, namely extreme poverty. Albanians, despite all the pressure that was put on them, resisted even when Serbia forced them to go to war, now against its former ally Bulgaria, but Albanians in large numbers did not respond to the call to this war that was not for the freedom of their people, and many Albanians, to avoid this war and the terror of the Serbian invaders, went into hiding in the mountains, never surrendering and waiting for more favorable days for a new uprising.
Reference
Balkan Academia 