Historically, Serbian intersectional discrimination against Albanians in territories invaded by Serbia manifested through religious, ethnic, and cultural means. For over 80 years, the Serbian judicial faculties failed to prosecute Serbian perpetrators who killed Albanian civilians. The perpetrators were often protected by the Yugoslav state apparatus.
This kind of intersectional oppression and violation of human rights included Serbian armed thugs confiscating Albanian land, Albanian imams (hoxhas) being imprisoned, Albanian intellectuals being tortured to death, Albanian children forced to learn Serbian, Albanians forced to use Serbian names, Serbs kidnapping Albanian young brides, and Serbian Slavic colonists confiscating Albanian sheep, cows and goats.
- Serbian racist discrimination
When adapting this methodology to the Balkans and Serbia in specific, we can see the following: The Serbian Yugoslav oppression and discrimination had multiple dimensions. First, Albanians were discriminated on a Serbian racist ground. The fact that Albanians were simply not Slavs or Serbs was a direct threat to the Yugoslav Serb hegemony and imperial ambitions. Albanians were described by racist Serbian authors in the 20th century as “having tails” and being “savage”.
The Serbian propaganda machine had for a long time encouraged a united front against the Ottoman Turk. When the Ottomans were driven away, the new enemy was the Albanian, who was considered to be a “descendant of the Turk”. Albanians refused to identify either as Serbs or as Turks. This intensified the ethnic cleansing of the Serbian military and paramilitary forces in the 1920s. Albanians, simply through their very presence as something other than a Slavic Orthodox people, was a threat to Serbian imperialism.
2. Serbian religious discrimination
The second aspect is religious discrimination; Albanians were mostly Muslim and Catholic, and this threatened the interests of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Despite upholding and living after Christian values, the Serbian priests would see fit to violently and forcibly convert Albanian Muslims and Catholics to the Serbian Orthodox faith. Serbian Orthodox priests also participated in armed conflicts both during the Balkan War and World War 2 where they killed Albanian civilians. The priests offered between conversion or death.
3. Serbian cultural discrimination
The third aspect is Serbian cultural discrimination. According to Serbian propaganda authors in early 1913, Albanians were denoted as just “Muslim Serbs” who had become Islamised during the 500 years of Ottoman rule. The Albanian nation was considered by Serbian demagogues to be an Austrian invention. The Albanian language was called “dirty” by Serbian officers. Albanian coastal cities and villages were given a Serbian name. The racist stereotypes circulating in Serbia about Albanians being heathen shepherds unable to govern themselves was a rationale for a continued Serbian occupation of Albanian territories.
Historical colonial patterns in Serbia frequently involved:
Suppression of Albanian language, changing the name of regions and villages, forbidding schools in Albanian, and forced assimilation via mandatory visits to the local Serbian church, and by forcing villages to use made up Serbian names.
Serbian Judicial Failures in Yugoslavia
In 1912, Serbia, despite having signed the Haague Convention of 1907, captured thousands of Albanian civilians and sent them to Belgrad where they were all massacred. Not one Serbian captain or trooper who participated in these atrocities was ever prosecuted, despite severe violations of human rights. Other Albanians were sent to the prison of Nish, forced to walk around in chains, similar to the oppressive traditions of Tsarist Russia.
Between 1912 to 1920s, the Serbian state continued to violate the human rights of the Albanian peoples. The Serbian state continued sending out Serbian Chetnik paramilitaries who massacred, raped, expelled, tortured, imprisoned and killed thousands of Albanians, allegedly for “giving support to local Albanian freedom fighters”. Entire villages were burned. Serbian vojvodas (lords) were given Albanian lands, and Albanian servants, who would often burn houses and shoot civilians, like in the case of Serbian vojvoda Milic Krstic.
Serbian Machiavelianism: Allowing Albanians attending “Muslim schools”
Serbia only allowed the opening of Muslim schools in Albanian regions still under occupation in the early 1920s-1930s. The goal was the full islamization (turkification) of Albanians, so that they would forget their origin and culture, and thus be rendered pacified. As “Muslims” and a religious minority of Serbia, they would be more easily ruled over, compared to if they identified as Albanians, an ethnicity with its own rights.
Methods and techniques used by Serbia to establish, maintain, and legitimize control over Albanians (1912-1999)
- Political and Administrative Methods
Direct Rule: Serbian power governed in Kosovo through its own Slavic colonists and bureaucrats, often replacing local Albanian customs. Common in French colonies with the goal of cultural assimilation (“civilizing mission”).
Divide and Rule (Divide et Impera): Deliberately exacerbating ethnic, religious, tribal, to prevent unified opposition. Classic examples in British India, Nigeria, and Rwanda. In Kosovo, the Serbian authorities would secretly distribute arms to Albanian families caught in blood feuds in order for them to kill each other.
Settler Colonialism: Large-scale Slavic settlement by immigrating Slav colonizers from Montenegro, Slovenia and Bosnia with the aim of replacing or eliminating the Albanian populations. Seen in Australia, North America, New Zealand, and parts of Southern Africa.
2. Economic Methods
Resource Extraction and Exploitation: Forced labor, plantations, and raw material export (rubber, sugar, cotton, minerals, ivory). In Kosovo, the Serbian authorities collected taxes from Albanian villages, and confiscated cow and sheep. Albanian prisoners were used as forced labor in mines digging for riches to be sent to Belgrad.
Land Confiscation and Alienation: The Serbian state seizure of fertile Albanian land for Slavic settlers or companies, often through legal tricks or violence. Water wells were poisoned and armed thugs attacked villages at night, burning down the houses.
3. Military and Security Techniques
Violent Pacification: Military campaigns, massacres, and scorched-earth policies to crush resistance. In Kosovo, these kind of atrocities were carried out both by Serbian police, military, paramilitary and armed Serbs who ethnically cleansed Albanian civilians and burned villages.
Collective Punishment: Punishing entire villages or communities for actions of individuals.
Paramilitary and Proxy Forces: Arming local collaborators or using indigenous troops under colonial command.
Surveillance and Intelligence Networks: Informant systems and monitoring of potential rebels.
4. Cultural, Educational, and Religious Methods
Cultural Assimilation: Forcing the Albanian colonized people to adopt the Serbian colonizer’s language, names, clothing, and customs. When King Nikola Petrovic invaded Albanian villages of Rugova, the Montenegrins immediately demanded that the Albanians wear the Montenegrin black cap.
Language Suppression: Banning or discouraging native languages in schools and administration. In Kosovo, this manifested through the Serbian banning of the Albanian language alltogether.
Religious Conversion and Suppression: Destruction of temples/shrines, forced conversion, or privileging one religion over others. When the Serbian army entered the Vilayet of Kosovo in 1912, mosques were burned and destroyed, and other mosques were used as barracks for ammunition. In the 1920s, Serbian paramilitaries massacred an Albanian imam and his family in Keqekollë and Prapashtica.
Naming and Classification: Imposing colonial names on places and people; racial and ethnic categorization in censuses. In our case, the Serbian propaganda machine had begun using made-up Serbian names for Albanian (Illyrian and Dardanian regions) in order to push the narrative that Kosovo (Dardania) was always Slavic land.
5. Legal and Judicial Methods
Racialized Legal Systems: Different laws for Serbs and Albanians (e.g., Code de l’Indigénat in French colonies). Albanians were not once protected by any laws in Serbia between 1912 to 1999. When a Serb murdered an Albanian, he was usually let go or given a very mild punishment. When an Albanian murdered a Serb for having violated the wife, or something considered dishonourable, the Albanian received the capital punishment or life in prison.
Impunity for Settlers: Weak or non-existent prosecution of colonial Slav settlers who committed crimes against Albanians. For a long time, it was not illegal for Serbs to murder or hunt down Albanians, as it was considered sports.
6. Psychological and Ideological Techniques
Racial Hierarchies and Scientific Racism: Theories claiming biological or cultural superiority of Europeans (e.g., Social Darwinism). It was considered in Serbia that Albanians were a weaker race of uncivilised shepherds. This racist stereotyping was necessary to uphold the illusion of Serbian superiority and demagogy.
Orientalism and Othering: Constructing colonized Albanians as backward, savage, or exotic to justify Serbian Yugoslav rule.
Propaganda and Civilizing Mission Ideology: Framing the Serbian colonialism on Albanian lands as a humanitarian or religious duty.
Internalized Inferiority: Creating a colonial elite educated to internalize Serbian values and customs among Albanians (Fanon’s “colonized mind”).
References
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978). The seminal work on how Western representations of the “Orient” constructed cultural and religious inferiority to justify colonial domination. Extended in Culture and Imperialism (1993).
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Analyzes the psychological, cultural, and violent impacts of colonial racism, including ethnic and cultural alienation.
Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957/1965). Explores the relational dynamics of colonial oppression, cultural domination, and the internalized effects on both colonizer and colonized.
Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities (2020). Examines how colonial rule politicized ethnic and religious identities, creating permanent majorities/minorities and ongoing oppression.
Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (2001). Shows how British colonialism hardened caste, ethnic, and religious categories as tools of governance and racialized control.
Ali Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction (2020 or earlier editions). Covers the evolution of racism, including cultural racism and its colonial roots.
Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (3rd ed., 2015). A comprehensive introduction that addresses race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and cultural oppression.
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (1993). Focuses on how colonialism shaped ethnic and national identities in postcolonial states.
Eileen Ryan, Religion as Resistance: Negotiating Authority in Italian Libya (2018) — on religious dimensions of colonial control.
David Theo Goldberg, works on racial states and cultural racism (e.g., The Racial State, 2002).
Critical Race and Religion scholarship, e.g., articles by Malory Nye on race, religion, and postcolonial formations of whiteness and power.
The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (1989).
