Serbia slaughtered 70,000 Albanians and burned 600 Albanian villages
Published on 17.01.2013 | 11:53
“I am honored, on behalf of the Presidency of the Kosovo Muhaxhir Association, to greet you and thank you for organizing this roundtable dedicated to the mass expulsion of Albanians from the Sandzak of Niš and the Toplica region. We, therefore, have gathered today to commemorate this painful event, the 130th anniversary of the mass expulsion of Albanians from the Sandzak of Niš and the Toplica region, in which Serbia, through violence and organized state terror, committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of over 700 settlements and over 300,000 Albanians, who at that time lived in their ethnic lands, or in an area the size of the current territory of Kosovo.
The violent cleansing of the Albanian ethnic space on a massive scale occurred after the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, and continued until the declaration of independence of Albania in 1912, when most of the Albanian population of the Sandzak of Niš and the Toplica region were expelled from their ancestral lands. Serbs and Montenegrins loyal to the Serbian regime were settled in the legal properties of the expelled Albanians, while the expelled Albanian population was settled mainly in the territory of present-day Kosovo and partly in the territory of Macedonia.
Many of the expelled ended up across the Bosphorus, in the deserts of Anatolia and further in Turkey. In an article posted on the Internet entitled “Serbian ethnic cleansing of the Albanians of the Sandzak of Niš” by a collaborator of the Diplomatic Academy of London, it is stated that in the Niš Valley alone during this period 35,000 Albanians were killed and massacred. In a neighborhood of Niš inhabited by Albanians (Ottoman documents confirm the presence of Albanian residents in the city of Niš) 300 houses were looted and burned.
In connection with this tragic event of the Albanians Even Serbian sources and authors themselves speak of this: “Some Albanian families fled and retreated to the South Morava valley through the great cold, through the Gërdelica gorge, to Vranje and Kumanovo”, states Stefan L. Popović, in his book “Putovanje po novoj Srbiji”, published in Belgrade in 1950.
Meanwhile, the Serbian writer Jovan Hadživasilev, while elaborating on the Serbian extermination policy towards the Albanian ethnicity, writes (we quote) “The expulsion of the Albanians was done with the aim of making Serbia a pure national state and creating the possibility for further action to be directed towards Kosovo”.
In some articles published in the Western press of the time, it is also emphasized that the Serbian invaders in the Sandzak of Niš and the Toplica region implemented the scorched earth strategy with the moral, political, diplomatic and military support of Tsarist Russia and Europe. Even the prince of Serbia, Milan Obrenović, had ordered the Serbian military, telling them that the greatest merit to the Serbian state and nation will be the one who manages to exterminate and displace the most Albanians”.
Sources of the time speak of about 70,000 Albanians slaughtered, killed and roasted in the fire of houses in about 600 Albanian villages razed to the ground in 1877/1878 alone. These sources also say that, at that time, the will of the great powers to prevent this Serbian genocide against the Albanians and Albanianness of the Sandžak of Niš was not observed. We have emphasized the above statements intentionally, because, according to the speculations of the Serbian Albanophobes Jovan Cvijić, Dušan Popović, Luba Stojanović, Vladimir Stojanović, Anastasije Urošević and many others, Albanian families as colonizers have penetrated as far as Toplica, Leskoč, Vranje and elsewhere after the “Great Serbian Invasion” of 1690.
According to archival sources, but also according to a Serbian source, until the middle of the 19th century, only in the vicinity of Leskoç and Prokuplje there were more than 300 Albanian villages, while until 1877 only in the vicinity of Pustareka and Jablanica there were 1539 Albanian houses. With the penetration of the Serbian army, there was almost no Albanian family left in the village of Bucë. Thus, from Pustareka and Jablanica almost all Albanian families set off on foot towards Gollak.
The terror that was inflicted on the Albanians is proven by the data that, after the expulsion of the Albanians, Serbia, led by Mita Rakičin, had sent teams to populate that area with colonies before the Berlin Congress was held. The teams for the formation of municipalities and the registrars, among other things, wrote: “Here all the villages were Albanian, now they are deserted, burned and ruined, therefore communes cannot be formed”. Burnt, deserted and ruined, the enumerators had marked 53 villages.
What, in fact, the Albanians experienced during the expulsion, is also spoken of in a fragment of the Serbian travelogue, Sreten Popovic, where, among other things, he wrote: “Those nights, many Albanian families, fleeing with their children, suffered great losses in people from the severe frost. Many children in carts or on their mothers’ backs froze and died. There were numerous cases when even the elderly died from the cold.”
The Bulgarian capital of Constantinople in January 1878 was full of Albanians, just like Bllaca in April 1999, where Serbia had once again attempted to create the Sandzak of Niš and the second Toplica from Kosovo, implementing its plan for ethnic cleansing of the present-day territory of Kosovo.
But, fortunately for our people, unlike in 1877-1878, this time, this misery that the Albanian people of Kosovo were experiencing was being followed by the civilized world, while the most powerful and democratic countries, led by the USA and Great Britain, as well as other countries of the European Union, sided with justice and helped this people return to their ethnic lands. The famous Serbian writer, Jovan Haxhi
Vasiljevic, in the book “Albanian League” (Belgrade, 1909) emphasizes: “The Albanians remained in Serbia (read in the Sandzak of Niš) until August 1878, while the Serbian government, after the decisions of the Berlin Congress, moved them across the border of Serbia to Kosovo”. To make the irony even greater, after 1912 Serbian historiography falsified this data, propagandizing throughout Europe that supposedly the Albanians who lived in their ethnic lands in the Sandzak of Niš had moved from Albania, which does not correspond to the truth at all.
In reality, nowhere, in any archive or library in the world, is there any document or data on any migration from Albania to Kosovo or to the ethnic lands in the Sandzak of Niš and the Toplica region. Why not emphasize that this painful event was also contributed to by the decisions of the Berlin Congress, in which the requests of the delegates of the Albanian League of Prizren were not taken into account, that the Albanians expelled from the Sandzak of Niš be returned to their ethnic lands as soon as possible.
Although the Berlin Congress, within the framework of its decisions, had created the International Commission to return the Albanians expelled to the Sandzak of Niš, unfortunately this never happened. We support this assessment in the decisions of the Berlin Congress, namely in paragraph 39 which states (we quote): “Those who have property in the territories annexed by Serbia and who wish to live outside the Principality may do so and at the same time keep their properties, or close them if they are shops, or give them to a third party for administration” (end quote).
Based on this fact, we have established the Kosovo Muhaxhir Association, which is working to raise awareness among local and international opinion, so that the Albanian Muhaxhirs expelled from their ethnic lands from the Sandzak of Niš and the Toplica region are recognized for their property rights, which according to international conventions is something sacred.
With this aim in mind, some time ago, the Kosovo Muhaxhir Association published the book entitled: “The right to real and indigenous homes and properties does not age” by the distinguished scholar and historian, prof. dr. Sabit Uka, honorary president of this association, who, while he was in this life, devotedly dealt with shedding light on the fate of the Kosovo Muhaxhirs, whom fate has placed in different parts of the world.
These days we are working intensively to have this work published in English and, together with the program of the Kosovo Muhaxhir Association, for the purpose of internationalization, we will send it to diplomatic missions in Kosovo and international settlement centers. All this is done with the aim of recognizing the property rights of the Albanian muhaxhirs expelled from the Sandzak of Niš and, at the same time, to acquaint them, through scientific and historical facts, not only with the ethnic cleansing that Serbia has carried out on over 700 Albanian settlements from the Sandzak of Niš and the Toplica region, but also with its ongoing destructive and genocidal policy against the Albanians.
In the meantime, let me inform you that the Kosovo Muhaxhir Association is working on preparing documents for the implementation of the obligations from the protocol of the decisions of the Berlin Congress, paragraph 39, for the activation of this paragraph on the recognition of the right to property for all Albanian muhaxhirs forcibly expelled from the Sandzak of Niš.
This initiative of the Kosovo Muhaxhir Association should, in fact, be followed by several other initiatives, such as: the establishment of a Memorial dedicated to the Albanians expelled from their ancestral lands in the Sandzak of Niš and the Toplica region and, at the same time, the perpetuation of this tragic chapter in the books and textbooks of our students.
Honorable ladies and gentlemen. At the end of this speech, allow me to thank you once again for organizing this roundtable, through which we together recall with pain, respect and piety one of the most touching and tragic events of our national history, writes the news agency “Presheva Jonë”.
Speech by the author, president of the Association of Kosovo Muhaxhers held at the Tribune, “The Expulsion of Albanians from the Sandzak of Niš 1877-78”
/Shekulli Online/Prepared by: E.Sh/
