This article is a collection of various publications documenting Serbian atrocities against Albanians i n 1912 and 1913. Crimes documented are theft, plunder, rape, massacres and torture.

Atrocities reported to Peshterloyd newspaper in London:

“The Massacres and Atrocities of the Serbs

Today, in northern Albania, everyone from 20 to 40 people have been killed, including Macedonian Muslims, and the number of victims has been found. (obscured) 1,000 of them are aggressors.

It is reported to the Peshterloyid newspaper from London on the date of 12 October:

According to information obtained by the Daily Fronikol newspaper, Serbs committed massacres in Albania and murdered thousands of unjust Albanians. Two thousand Albanians were massacred near Skopje and five thousand near Pirizren. Many Albanian villages were plundered by Serbs, and their inhabitants were massacred.”

Esliha Tahrisi – “The Liberation of Albnaians”

“Under the pretext of “Esliha Tahrisi” (the liberation of Albanians), the Serbs entered Albanian homes and massacred the Albanians inside, whether they had weapons or not. To gain control of Albania, the Serbs committed the massacre of the Muslim Albanians. They declare that they have no choice but to destroy it.

After citing many more documents, Dr. Jak says;

“Is there no lover of humanity in Europe who will raise his voice in the name of civilization against these savages?

Documents and photographs depicting these atrocities are available for viewing!”

Atrocities in Monastir and Bitola

“Looting and Massacre

When I spoke with the Monastir Medical Committee that came from Monastir to Thessaloniki (p. 35), they said that they had not seen a village on the railway route and that many of the inhabitants had been massacred by the Serbian army that invaded the Perlepe district, which was adjacent to Monastir.

Only three people were killed by the Serbs in Bitola and 10 people by the Greeks in Filorina. In short, Macedonia was subjected to such an army disaster that it was forced to live in poverty and nothingness for fifty years.”

Serbian theft under lieutenant Aleksander Gorkevic

“The people, who were deprived of the protection of their soldiers, preferred to stay in their towns instead of emigrating, in agreement with the Greek Metropolitan Deputy, and surrendered to the 28-man Serbian detachment under the command of the Serbian cavalry lieutenant Aleksandır Görkevich on Wednesday, October 24, 1912.

However, the committees immediately entered the town and formed a thief company with the participation of İçko Tödorof, Açkof, Arkir, members of the Kökili committee, and a doctor named Kusta, who still claimed to be Serbian and had a previous case of being a messenger, and by including the lieutenant among them, they committed theft and theft of the belongings of twenty houses.

It was also reported that the lieutenant from the village of Buğdanca, which is a part of this district, took thirty-eight liras from the people and killed 65 Islam people, and beat the notables of the town, Ali and Sezai Bey, to make them pay one thousand liras each, and that he beat and imprisoned the district governor of Tikoş, who had stayed in Kökili due to Kökili’s previous silence, by asking from Tikoş to Kökili.

The Serbs are convinced that the more cruel they are, the more rewards they will receive.

The atrocities committed by Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgarians against Muslim populations in the Balkans are described. One of the most important sources cited in the work is a work on the subject by German Dr. Ernest Jaeckh.”¹

Serbian soldiers stole 700,000 sheep in Albania leading to starvation

“For example, Lamb, the British Consul in Thessaloniki, reported that in Albania alone, Serbs confiscated 700,000 sheep belonging to Muslims, condemning the population to starvation.

For example, the Serbian governor of Strumica, Macedonia, personally sent 80 truckloads of looted Muslim property to Belgrade.

Montenegrin soldiers burned and destroyed Catholic villages as well as Muslim villages in Albania, which they invaded (McCarthy, 1995, 163).”²

Serbs killed over 100,000 Albanians by Januar 2, 1913

“The number of people massacred in Albania was calculated as over 100 thousand as of January 2, 1913, and the number of Muslims, mostly Turks, who were exterminated by the Bulgarian and Greek occupied parts of Macedonia was also calculated as of the same date.”³

“Human hunting” by Serbs in Albania

“The human hunting carried out by the Serbs in Albania, which had been forgotten in the last few weeks under the influence and pressure of the possibility and likelihood of a Great War in Europe, has now resurfaced. All the information about the atrocities and injustices committed by the Serbian soldiers has been collected by Austro-Hungarian officials.”⁴

References

1. Rumeli mezalimi ve Bulgar vahşetleri by Doç. Dr. Oktay BOZAN, 2020 ↩︎
2. Sosyal ve Beşerî Bilimlerde Araştırma, Yöntem ve Analiz-2024 ↩︎
3. Bursaʹnın zenginliği göçmenler by Zeynep Dörtok Abacı, Özer Ergenç, Tayyar Arı, Yusuf Oğuzoğlu. 2009 ↩︎
4. Yeni asır’ın Selânik yılları evlâd-ı fatihan diyarları, “1895-1924” by Türkmen Parlak. 1986 ↩︎