Summary
This text presents an account of events in Kumanovo during the early 1920s, describing Serbian military and paramilitary violence by Tanko Trifunovic, Boro Millovanovic, Kosta Peçanac and Milic Krstic against Albanians. It highlights abuses such as killings, forced labor, confiscation of property, and suppression of Albanian language and identity under the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Specific incidents and individuals are cited to illustrate repression and fear. The article portrays these actions as part of a broader Slavic policy of colonization and denationalization.
From Eugen SHEHU, Memorie.al.
The Albanians of Kumanovo, those worthy sons of the ancient Arbërs, have been and remain to this day warriors of self-existence, defenders of the most precious Albanian traditions, and carriers of the message for natural union with the mother state. The philosophy of their self-existence is, in essence, the philosophy of endless struggles and sublime sacrifices, in order not to submit to any occupier and not to be assimilated by the demographic, political, and criminal fury of the Serbs-Bulgarians and Slav-Macedonians. When we speak of the endless wars of the inhabitants of these regions of Albanian Macedonia, we have in mind an entire movement for freedom and justice in the past century, which took on epic proportions in the fights against the Young Turks, Serbo-Slavs, and Bulgarians, led by Bajram Vaksinci.
Even in the winter of 1922, Serbian violence in Kumanovo found no rest. Units of the Third Army from Skopje, commanded by the criminals Millan Stefanoviq and Vojvoda Angjellkon, under the pretext of an arms collection operation, swept through all the Albanian villages in Kumanovo, robbing whatever little had survived the winter.
No ethnic Albanian from Kumanovo could any longer demand even the smallest right. The truth is that with the approval of the Vidovdan Constitution on June 28, 1921, by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the most elementary Albanian rights were trampled in the most brutal way. Thus, in the village of Likovë, in May 1922, the Serbo-Slav-Macedonian unit of Millan Stefanoviq forcibly took the livestock from two villagers under the pretext that the army needed it. When one of these poor villagers told the soldiers that he used them to feed his children, he was immediately shot on the spot—thus foreshadowing the tragic fate awaiting them under brutal Slav-Shovinist slavery.
In the village of Hotël, the 70-year-old patriot Beqë Syla was tied with wire and taken away. His crime was that he had spoken to his own children in the Albanian language.
A Macedonian villager had passed by and told him to speak Serbian or Macedonian, because this was no longer his own land. The brave Beqë Sula replied firmly that this land had been Albania since ancient times and would remain so for eternity. That was enough: the Slav-Macedonian ran to the command post, and after Beqë Sula was dragged through the streets, he was barbarically executed in the center of the village of Hotël.
Then, in 1923–1924, in the name of supposed construction projects to be carried out by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the infamous law on forced labor was issued—especially for the railways. To tell the truth, the first lists and summons that arrived in Kumanovo were for Albanian families. If for any reason they did not send someone from the household, they had to pay large sums of money.
In this way, the Albanian peasants of Kumanovo were forced to send even the elderly and children to the railway, where they worked without pay for entire months. And no one could demand rights. The Albanian press of that time wrote about this: “Here state laws do not apply, but the law of the club, because when the names of the vojvodes and Chetniks such as Tanko Trifunoviq, Boro Millovanoviq, Kosta Peçan, Miliq Kërstiq are mentioned, the mere names evoke real terror.” (Newspaper “Hak”, September 24, 1924).
The truth is that the Serbian spirit was dominant in the political and military formations within the Yugoslav Kingdom in the 1920s. Particularly in the years 1925–1930, certain Serbian circles gained great political power, once again raising the demand for the expropriation of Albanians and the colonization of ethnically pure areas with Serbian settlers. What Belgrade loudly proclaimed as a profound agrarian reform was in fact a cunning and brutal political reform, which later degenerated into open warfare to expel Albanians from their ancestral lands.
In Albanian Kumanovo, this reform did not spread as widely as in other parts of Albanian Macedonia. Nevertheless, the blow was felt there too against Albanian landowners who possessed considerable land. A series of laws burdened these owners with high taxes, and in many cases the lands were seized by force—supposedly for state needs—without paying a single square meter.
But in general, in Albanian Kumanovo, Albanian landowners of all classes were targeted, as the goal was the fastest and deepest de-nationalization of these areas.
What must not be forgotten is the fact that the political parties of the Slav-Macedonians in Albanian Macedonia, as well as military groups and others, were in constant conflict among themselves. However, even though they were divided in their daily party interests, they were always united by a single action regarding.
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