Petrit Latifi

Adem Hasan Selimi (Gllavica) (Gllavica 14 September 1916 – Perth 4 February 2001) was born in the village of Gllavica in the municipality of Lipjan on 14 September 1916. He was a patriot and and agronomist known for his contributions in various areas. Gllavica is considered an Albanian hero and a famous quot is embedded at the end of the article.

Background

He was the only child of Hasan and Fatima. His father was killed during the First World War, somewhere in Macedonia, when Adem was 9 months old, while Fatima was forced, after a few years, to return to her family, leaving her son in the family of his uncle, Hysen (Selim), who had sons Selim and Beqir.

He completed his primary school in the village of Llugaxhi and his secondary school in Skopje, at the “Great Madrasa of King Alexander”. He continued his higher studies in Zagreb, at the Faculty of Agronomy, where he graduated in 1943.

During the period 1941 – 1944 he served for several months as a sub-prefect in Ferizaj, then as a teacher at the “Normale” in Prishtina, as director of the “Agricultural Farm” in Fushë – Kosovo, as an Inspector for Agriculture in the Municipality of Prishtina. After the creation of the Second League of Prizren, in the fall of 1943, Ademi pledged himself to the Movement for the Protection of the Ethnic Borders of Kosovo, as chairman of the “Nationalist Youth Committee” and then, in the fall of 1944, as commander of the “Supreme Headquarters for the Protection of Kosovo”.

In the summer of 1944, Ademi married the teacher Vezire Gjeraku, from Slatina, Pristina.

After the entry of communist forces into Pristina, Ademi continued the resistance war in the mountains, together with thousands of other comrades, until the fall of 1945. In August 1945, after ten months of the Slavic-communist re-occupation of Kosovo had passed, Ademi wrote a Proclamation, which was printed in Skopje and distributed in Kosovo.

This Call analyzes the political situation, the great betrayal committed in Prizren by Albanian collaborators of the Slavic-communist government in July 1945 when it was decided that Kosovo would be annexed to Serbia, other deceptions of the Slavic and communist rulers, massacres against Albanians, including that of Tivar, and provides thoughts on the future.

It also reveals the position of the Albanian nationalists who fought for freedom: “We are not against any ideology, but neither do we support any ideology. Our ideology is the fight for the existence of the Albanian people. Our life and our existence can only be secure in an Albanian state, which will include the borders of the Albanian lands.”

At this time, the decision was made to leave Kosovo and go, by war, to Greece, where he and other intellectuals such as Ibrahim Kelmendi, Luan Gashi, etc., were held in political camps until June 1951. Then Ademi went to West Germany for two years. Unable to reunite with his wife, he took the path of exile to Australia, where he created a new family.

After two years in an emigrant camp in Bonegilla, Ademi managed to get a job as a specialist in the flax fields of Ballarat and later in a scientific institute for fruit growing in Tatura, Victoria. Until he retired in 1982, Ademi carried out a rich research and experimental activity in pomology in the fields of the Melbourne Valley, where many Albanians from the town of Shepperton also worked.

The results of this work were reflected in many prestigious magazines in Australia and other countries. Most of his papers have been compiled in the bilingual book (Albanian and English) “Punime Shkencore” (Eksperimente në frutikulturë), prepared by his son, Bardhyli, in 2005. Ademi has represented the Australian Union in many international scientific congresses.

The last participation was in Hamburg (Germany) on 30 August 1982 with the lecture “Response of golden queen peach”. Here are some papers that have had requests for reprint in journals outside Australia:

No. Serial Article Published in No. of requests

1 Effect of rootstock of oriental origin on pears under irrigation in the 1970 “Australian Journal od Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, vol 10 6

2 “Effects of Pollen Exclusion by Bagging limbs or Caging trees on Packham’s Triumph pears. “Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, Vol.11 September 1971 7

3 “Effect of distance from William’s pollinator on production of Packham’s Triumph pears in the ” “Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, Vol.9 8

4 “Effect of blossom thinning on fruit density, fruit size and seed count of William’s Bon Chretien and Packham’s Triumph pears” “Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, Vol.13 6

5 “Effect of 2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyproprionic and on setting and cropping of under conditions” “Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, Vol.10 8

6 “Better fruit set for pears” “Victorian Horticultural Digest” 1

7 “A long term rootstock for trial for pears under irrigation in the ” “Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, Vol.7 1
8 “Effects of liming on soil pH and manganese toxicity in pear orchard” “Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, Vol.12 January 1972 11
9 “Effects of soil management pollination and nitrogen fertilizers on ‘s pear trees” “Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, Vol.9 6
10 “Rootstocks for pears in the ” “Victorian Horticultural Digest”, vol.10 2
11 “Thinning golden queen peaches with chemicals” “Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry”, Vol.38 no. 3 February 1972 3
12 “Response of golden queen peach..” Speech at the 21st International Horticultural Congress on 30 August 1982 1

Albanian freedom fighter

Although he was not a member of any political party in the emigration, Ademi maintained correspondence and met with his comrades in the war during visits to Europe and elsewhere and exchanged views with them on the future of Kosovo. He was particularly active during the 1990s, when he followed the developments in Kosovo with great enthusiasm and predicted the destruction of the Yugoslav federation.

He instructed the young people he met in Tirana that “guerrilla warfare is the most possible form in the conditions of Kosovo”. In 1999, he often met with refugees from Kosovo in Perth, Australia, as well as with journalists, with whom he discussed current events.

He was never able to return to Kosovo. While he came to Albania twice, in September 1991 and August 1994. During this period, he wrote his war memoirs in the newspaper “Rilindja” published in Tirana and Switzerland, which were published in more detail in a monograph written by Mr. Gani Ratkoceri in 2002 and by his son, Bardhyli in 2016. On this occasion, in 1994, Accompanied by his son and his wife, Ademi also went to Skopje to visit relatives and cousins ​​who had come especially for him from Kosovo.

In 1994, Ademi was decorated by the President of Albania, Mr. Sali Berisha, for his contribution to Kosovo during World War II, while in 2012, the President of Kosovo, Mrs. Atifete Jahjaga, decorated him with the “Order of Freedom”.

Since 1998, Ademi had serious health problems. He passed away on February 4, 2001, unable to return to Albania and Kosovo. The ashes of his cremated body are today kept in a cemetery in Munich.

Full text of the Proclamation of Adem Gllavica

“Brothers of Kosovars, we address you today, your brothers from the free mountains of Kosovo. Ten months passed in armed waiting, we waited patiently and when the need was felt, we fought. During this time, we have investigated the actions and measures of the two arshins of the liberators.

We, these two arshins, have known about them from the beginning and for this reason we have expressed our opinion about their empty promises, expecting that others will also be convinced. Now even the most naive and sympathizers of the “liberators” have a clear understanding of how things stand.

Now they have understood the bitter reality and the great betrayal that has been prepared for the people since during the Second World War by the Yugoslav internationalists.

We are not surprised by the attitudes of the Serbs and Montenegrins. They are the same ones who betrayed in 1878, in 1912, in 1918 and the latter are their sons, who are more moderate in preparing games and are the ones who prepare “the devil’s plans”.

We are not saying this without facts but we are surprised by the attitude of some Albanians. They have turned into blind weapons for foreign interests and have occupied and impoverished their own very humble people to the skin. They have taken everything from the people and given nothing, a great fact of equality and freedom of the people for which phrases have been trumpeted for so many years.

After the war, they systematically recruited young people for ten months and sent them out of Kosovo more than 70 thousand Albanians, the most vital part of the nation. In the 7th brigade Kosovars were deceived and about 20,000 Albanians were recruited. All of them joined the brigade for the liberation of Kosovo because they were told that they would stay in Kosovo and fight for its liberation. After a few days, they were sent unarmed to Banat. Today they are organized in many brigades throughout Yugoslavia, killed and massacred, whose graves are not even known.

Later, another deception was made by trying to voluntarily gather soldiers. . But no one volunteered. Then they thought of another form of deception, they told them that these soldiers would go to serve in Albania, that Enver Hoxha was looking for them. It touched the Albanian’s nerve. The unfortunate Kosovars, ready to sacrifice themselves for Albania, were put in the artisan brigade.

But the Yugoslav betrayal did not delay. They disarmed them and put them in the barracks of Prizeren, which, filled with Albanians, turned into concentration camps worse than those of fascism. After a few days, the young Albanians were organized into various groups of “reactionaries” and “fascist elements”. Most of them, naked and barefoot, contracted tuberculosis while staying in the cold barracks. The rest were disarmed without clothes, naked and barefoot under the escort of armed Montenegrins and set off for Shkodra.

You are seized with horror when you see these young Albanians, who were set off for Shkodra under the barrel of the rifles of armed Montenegrins. The strongest resisted and tried to escape, but fell down without a soul, shot by armed Montenegrins. The Prizeren-Shkodra road in those days resembled a slaughterhouse.

Some of the strongest managed to disarm the guards and head for the mountains. Those who managed to escape informed us about the slaughter and today are members of our battalions. From them we learned about the tragedy of young, unarmed Albanians by the partisans’ skills. This happened on the day when Haki Taha in Pristina killed the greatest traitor of the Albanian people, the Montenegrin Miladin Popovic.

This did not stop there. The extremely brutalized Montenegrin forces killed 3,000 Albanians with bare hands. This massacre would have lasted if it had not been for the families from Tivar, who prevented it from becoming even bigger until the last Albanian had been killed.

The Albanian people in Kosovo constitute 85% of the population and in some places 100%. The official language in Kosovo is Serbian, the language of 15 percent of the population. Can this be called equality?!

We have our own very beautiful alphabet and we do not need the Slavic Cyrillic script at all. This is not happening in Slovenia, Croatia or Macedonia. We think that the introduction of Cyrillic in Kosovo is intentional.

During 10 months of “freedom” promised by the Yugoslav communists, 35,000 Albanians were killed and shot, whose names and the place of the murders are now known to everyone. These are the methods of the People’s Power for “freedom of the people”.

There are other terrible cases that our people have not known about. They call on the Roma to beat drums in front of Serbian prisons, while inside the cells innocent Albanians were mistreated in the most inhumane way, tortures that would drive you crazy such as inserting bayonets into the body, tearing off body parts with axes, breaking bones and many other tortures. All this is done so that the Albanians’ screams from the pain caused are not heard.

The looting that the partisans did to the Albanian people to impoverish them to the extreme, so that they risk even death due to hunger, is not rare, Albanians’ houses were even burned, justifying their actions by describing them as “fascist reactionaries”.

What an irony!.. The same partisans who looted and burned everything, now come from house to house and record the damage done by themselves and try to convince our women that this damage was done by the Germans, since the Albanian men are in the mountains.

The Albanian people, who had suffered greatly from the previous Serbian regimes, joyfully welcomed “freedom”, that freedom and equality promised during the war. But they experienced oppression, looting and murder, which the whole world knows about today.

The entire Albanian people have been informed about the “freedom” granted by the People’s Power. Of the many promises made during the war, nothing has been fulfilled regarding self-determination. They deceived us, because this people, tired and exhausted by many occupying regimes, believed in communist promises. When the betrayal was investigated, we were already armed and our best sons were interned and scattered throughout the edges of Yugoslavia.

We still have fresh communist slogans proclaimed during the war: “The Albanian people will decide for themselves who they will remain with, with Albania, with Yugoslavia or a separate republic.”

In the first days of this power, the political commissars of the regime spoke everywhere with fiery oratory about rights and freedoms, propagandizing the surrender of weapons. The poor people, hoping for complete freedom, began to surrender their weapons, thinking that they would no longer need them, because freedom had come.

Kosovo has experienced injustices in these past ten months at the hands of terrorists with the red star on their foreheads

This manhunt, which is being carried out against the Albanians of Kosovo for 10 months of “liberation”, is not implemented anywhere in the world, but in Kosovo it is not at all new, but a repetition of the history of 1978, when newcomers from Belgrade (the Carpathians), killed and massacred 100,000 Albanians from the vilayet of Nish. Those who managed to escape here today are called “muhajirs”, who are scattered in all parts of Kosovo.

In 1912, again by order of Belgrade, no fewer Albanians than the above-mentioned figure were shot.

In 1912, during the formation of the mosaic Yugoslavia, again by order of Belgrade, thousands of Albanians were killed and shot. At that time, At the Peace Conference, the list of 8,000 victims was published, which was followed by an energetic protest. But this is, as always, “vox clamantis in deserto”.

In 1945, history repeated itself. Again, on the instructions of Belgrade, massive massacres were carried out against the Albanian people. Before 10 months had passed, the register recorded 35,000 killed and massacred and over 50,000 deported, whose fate is unknown. These are bitter facts. Four tragic dates in history, four different regimes, but with a common and identical and very simple policy, the annihilation and destruction of the Albanian being in Kosovo.

Fascist Italy, which was a sworn enemy of the Albanians, was forced to accept the Albanian character of the Albanian lands.

Meanwhile, today’s popular power, the “people’s liberators” are trying to sever all ties with Albania, surpassing the fascist occupier. This has been shown by the OZNA with terrorist actions that surpass those of the Gestapo. The ten-month dictatorship with its terrorist actions leaves the fascist dictatorship behind. We, the free, in our free mountains, are authorized and obliged to express the will of the people of Kosovo.

For this reason, in the name of the Albanian people of Kosovo, we raise our voices and address international opinion and solemnly declare that unification with Serbia has been imposed on us against our will.

Our desire and will is unification with Albania, with our brothers, regardless of which regime is in power, because we have the same customs and the same moral and material conditions.

We wish to reach out to each other as soon as possible and shake off the darkness and slavery, the fear of terror, that we suffered from various occupiers, including the current one, Belgrade and the quislings of Prizren.

We are not against any ideology, but neither do we support any ideology. Our ideology is the struggle for the existence of the Albanian people. Our life and our existence can be secure only in an Albanian state, which will include the borders of the Albanian lands.

As for the Serbian minority, born in Kosovo, who lives together with the Albanian people, we declare that it will have equal rights with the Albanian majority and will in no way be distinguished from the Albanians.

Those Montenegrins who came to Kosovo after 1912 and in 1918, as colonists, we advise them to return to their countries of origin, since the lands they have usurped belong to the autochthonous Albanians. We also declare that there are no autochthonous Montenegrins in Kosovo and all Montenegrins are colonizers. This is documented by the facts, not by us. The Montenegrins in Montenegro have their own power and government, while the Albanian people, although they are four times larger in number than the Montenegrins, do not enjoy this right.

Our organization has no connection with any party, foreign organization or with the government of the country that disputes Kosovo’s opportunity to live and unite with Albania

Regarding the lies and tendentious rumors of Serbian and Montenegrin terrorists, we declare that there are no foreigners in our battalions. In all the wars we have waged in the last 10 months in Kosovo, no foreigner has participated.

In particular, we categorically deny that our organization may have any connection with the dragoons that the terrorists accuse us of. Albanian brothers of Kosovo, the terrorist regime is deceiving you with lies, it is not allowing us to freely vote and decide our fate as they loudly promised us at the beginning, because they knew that we would vote for Albania and not for Belgrade. The quislings of Prizren were aware of the wishes and intentions of Tito, who before the Albanian delegation (April 1945) had presented his request that the Albanians of Kosovo would be better off remaining with Belgrade?! (with Serbia). These quislings who would become Tito’s flatterers rushed to fulfill his wish as soon as possible..

Kosovo brothers. We are your brothers who are in the free mountains of Kosovo, fighting with weapons in hand day and night for the freedom of Kosovo. The blow that the enemy is taking from us is known to the whole world. The heroes who are being sacrificed by the treacherous hand of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the mountains and plains of Kosovo are the steel foundations of Albania in 1912 and for the definitive union of Kosovo with Albania in 1913, which will be once and for all inseparable.

We are determined to unite with mother Albania, which is ours by language and blood, and to expel the colonists who came to Kosovo after 1913 and 1918, to go back to where they came from. This is also the goal of your sons scattered throughout the mountains of Kosovo, who shed their blood to deal the final blow to the filthy scum that do not allow us to unite with mother Albania within the borders of 1912, as this right has been guaranteed to us according to Atlantic Charter in San Francisco and at the Peace Conference in Crete.

Albanian brothers, we have seen enough betrayal and deceit by traitors and the same ones with your spilled blood are trying to leave you under the heel of the Communist Party, filling their pockets with the dinars of the FRGD. These bloodsuckers of the Albanian people, like Mehmet Hoxha, Fadil Hoxha, Rifat Berisha and others, we cannot tolerate, nor their betrayals. Enough! These people think only of armchairs and to maintain friendship with Tito, every day they lie to the Albanian people, who today are largely in prisons, demanding their rights.

Kosovar brothers, the entire Balkans is preparing for a tomorrow that is being watched by the Anglo-American forces, by whose orders the Russian forces have returned from Iraq and other parts. Organize, unite, turn away from the path of betrayal and espionage, it is to your detriment. Turn away from those who want to sell us, as they sold us in 1878 and until today, those who want to leave us under the boot of Yugoslavia. Extend your hand to your army in the free mountains of Kosovo, which every day is breaking the chains of terrorists with a red star on their foreheads.

“Long live the Anglo-American army”

“Long live the unification of Kosovo with Albania”

“Long live freedom and democracy”.

End of quote.

References

Bardhyl Selimi: Adem Gllavica (Selimi) tells, Tirana 2016

Gani Ratkoceri: Adem Selimi, monograph, Tirana 2002

Eng. Adem Selimi (Gllavica: Scientific Works, Tirana 2005

Sulltane Ukaj- Kojçini: Proclamation of Adem Gllavica, “Bota Sot”, fejton

Academician Idriz Ajeti: Speech delivered on the occasion of the raising of the bust of Adem Selim at the Lipjan Technical School, 2004