Authored by Dr. Jusuf Osmani in 2010. Translated and edited by Petrit Latifi in 2026

Abstract

Dr. Jusuf Osmani examines the long-term Serbian colonization and political domination of Kosovo, with particular emphasis on the displacement, repression, and assimilation of the Albanian population. He argues that Kosovo had an enduring Albanian demographic and cultural presence and portrays successive Serbian political and military authorities as pursuing policies aimed at altering the region’s ethnic composition through settlement, administrative control, religious influence, economic pressure, violence, and, ultimately, the displacement of Albanians. The work traces these developments from the medieval period through Ottoman rule and into the modern era, emphasizing the continuity of Serbian territorial ambitions toward Kosovo.

Serbian expansion into Kosovo began during the medieval period and was accompanied by political subordination, religious pressure, changes in place names, settlement policies, and attempts at cultural assimilation. The Albanian population survived these pressures and remained a substantial, and eventually predominant, population in Kosovo. The Ottoman period is a significant political transformation that did not eliminate Albanian demographic continuity.

Osmani places particular emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, showing the  Serbian state policy as increasingly systematic in its efforts to establish demographic and political control over Albanian-inhabited territories. He describes the use of military and police measures, economic pressure, forced displacement, and colonization, and argues that these policies culminated in attempts to “Serbianize” Kosovo through the settlement of Serbian populations and the removal of Albanians.

A central theme is therefore the relationship between colonization, demographic engineering, political repression, and national assimilation. Osmani argues that Serbian historical writing has frequently presented Kosovo’s past through a competing national narrative and calls for these interpretations to be challenged through archival documentation and historical research. It consequently presents the history of Kosovo primarily through the experience of its Albanian population and interprets Serbian expansion as a prolonged process of territorial domination and demographic transformation. 

THE SERBIAN COLONIZATION OF KOSOVO

In the history of the peoples of Europe, it is difficult to find any people that has been the object of national oppression as the Albanian people, who live in their native lands in Kosovo and elsewhere. The most drastic means, in addition to oppression, terror, violence, physical liquidation, etc., was the ethnic cleansing of Albanian lands and colonization with the Serbian element. Thus, Kosovo, although an ethnic land of Albanians, was constantly faced with the claims of the Serbian government for colonization and thus forcibly changing the structure of the population, which would then lead to the gradual Slavization and fusion of the native Albanian people. Serbia throughout history used all models of colonization of Albanian lands, and in particular Kosovo, which is also the subject of this paper.

The colonization of the lands in Kosovo is a process, the main goal of which was the Slavization of Kosovo, the entire Serbian and then Yugoslav political and military machinery, in all time periods. Meanwhile, throughout history, oscillations have also been observed, sometimes slowing down and sometimes accelerating sharply in the colonization process, which depended on the political, economic and social circumstances that were present. However, as a process, it has never stopped.

In order to achieve the Slavization of the Albanian territories, various political, military-police, and economic and social measures were used against our people. The measures were as inhuman as they were fascist and savage. They ranged from harassment and constant police control to beatings, murders, and mass disappearances of the locals.

To achieve the goals of colonizing Kosovo with the Slavic element and expelling Albanians from their homeland, Serbian academics, politicians, writers, Nobel laureates, historians, major military officers, teachers, pedagogues, and career diplomats were engaged in their anti-Albanian policy, who, based on the instructions of the dome of the Serbian state pyramid, drafted projects, platforms, memorandums, programs, held secret and open tribunes, gathered at “scientific” conferences and symposiums, organized round tables in the name of “Old Serbia”, led masses to heaven, sanctified or cursed Serbian and Albanian warriors, wrote books and monographs full of anger, distributed leaflets with fictional subjects and fabricated events, with non-existent heroes, with demagogic theses that profane the Albanian people and their culture, morality, and centuries-old traditions.

Regarding the writings and other anti-scientific statements of Serbian historiography, it is not enough to simply state that they are non-scientific publications. It is not enough to say that it is not worth dealing with. This assumption is harmful, pacifist and unacceptable for true science. However, all those writings and blanket assessments must be argued with the language of facts and the truth about the historical past of Albanians must be illuminated. For this, there are many facts and evidence of archival documents that completely deny the assessments and publications of many Serbian “scholars” but also some others who were under the influence of Serbian writings.

In some writings and studies, but not enough, our Albanian scholars, historians, analysts, and scientists have opposed both Serbian propaganda and the deformations and distortions that Serbian academics, scientists, writers, etc. have made of historical facts. However, Serbian publications with anti-Albanian fabrications, slander, and distortions of historical facts are so numerous and in such large circulations that this evil can only be atoned for by a voluminous and long scientific work with patriotic dedication, by historians, scholars, and impartial analysts based on historical truths, respectively by our academies and scientific institutions.

THE TERRITORIES OF KOSOVO IN ANCIENT TIMES

The territory of Kosovo has been inhabited since ancient times. Albanians are descendants of the Illyrian tribe, the Dardanians. The Dardanians were one of the great Illyrian tribes that lived in the central part of the Balkans. The heart of the Dardanian lands was present-day Kosovo.

Archaeological, historical, linguistic, folkloric data, etc., clearly testify to Albanian autochthonism, to the Illyrian-Albanian continuity. The presence of Albanians in these regions is later proven and confirmed in the chrysobulls and diplomas of medieval Serbian rulers, while during the period of Ottoman rule there are detailed and abundant documents on the population and settlements of Kosovo.

The Albanian people are among the oldest peoples of Europe, upon whom numerous storms have been stormed, and there can rarely be any people in the world that has had such savage invasions and conquerors as these lands inhabited by Illyrian-Albanians have known. A multitude of conquerors invaded the Illyrian lands, and later the lands of the Albanian ancestors, with the aim of devouring as many parts of the Illyrian trunk as possible. Those conquerors will exercise their arsenal with massacres, murders, burnings, theft of spiritual and material culture. The first in these campaigns were the Greeks and Romans, who will not only enslave the local inhabitants, Hellenizing and Romanizing them, but will also plunder everything from them, eradicating the Illyrian being. Later, all this would enable the Slavic tribes that had just descended from the Carpathians to more easily subjugate and assimilate them.

From this we can conclude that the conquest of Albanian lands and their colonization began since the time of Illyria. Other conquerors left, while the Serbs and Montenegrins who settled in the ethnic Albanian lands live here even today. The object of permanent interest of the conquerors in Kosovo was the very important geographical position, natural wealth, fertile lands and favorable climatic conditions of the Albanian lands, etc.

THE DEPORTATION OF THE SLAVS IN THE BALKANS AND THEIR SETTLEMENT IN THE ILLYRO-ARBORIAN TERRITORIES

The Illyrian-Arbanian territories of Kosovo, after Roman, respectively Byzantine, and then for a time Bulgarian rule, passed under the rule of the state of Raša led by Stefan Nemanja (1165-1195), who also partially conquered Kosovo. The complete conquest of Kosovo took place in 1216. The annexation of the Kosovo Plain and the Dukagjin Plain to the state administration of Raša marks the beginning of the existence of the Serbian ethnicity in these areas.

It should be noted that in the 6th-7th century, when the Slavs invaded the Balkans, many Slavs flocked to Illyricum and caused indescribable disasters. After spending a long time with plunder, they filled the roads with bodies, captured many people, and plundered everything. In the Illyrian lands, they kidnapped and killed thousands of people, penetrating even the most hidden places of those parts, so the inhabitants of these places were forced to take to the mountains and hide in the forests. Thus, leaving them free to inherit all the cultural and spiritual achievements that they had achieved on their own over the centuries. Wherever the Slavs passed, they plundered, massacred, hanged, burned settlements, etc. Thus, with fire and iron, they managed to significantly shrink the area inhabited by the indigenous inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula.

The Serbian population came to Albanian lands, namely Kosovo, as invaders. Here they found the indigenous Illyrian-Albanian population, which had lived uninterruptedly in these lands for many centuries.

From Raška, the Serbs began to penetrate in the 11th-12th centuries, first into the fertile Kosovo Plain, and even into the upper reaches of the South Morava and Vardar. The Serbian hordes destroyed everything. The great župani, Vukan, burned Lypian and devastated other areas (1091). Other rulers did the same. Stevan Nemanja’s son, Stevan Pervovenčani, wrote in 1190: “Nemanja occupied, in addition to the cities of the Struma Valley …. also Prizren, Skopje and the city of Leshtak in Lower Polog … These cities he destroyed and uprooted to the ground, because not a single stone was left unturned ….; he added their lands and wealth to the wealth and fame of his rulers ….”. 

Then, it is said: “since the hated and accursed heresy has appeared in Serbia, Nemanja has introduced the representatives of the church and the rulers into the state assembly and has decided that the “heresy” should be eradicated by force. Nemanja has sent the army and burned some, sentenced others to various punishments, expelled the third from his state, and took their houses and all their property and gave them to the denouncers and collaborators; their teachers and leaders have their tongues torn out in pieces…, while their dishonest books he burned and persecuted, threatening that they confess and mention that accursed name everywhere, and he eradicated that accursed faith everywhere so that it would never be mentioned in his state”. [ 1 ] 

With the invasion of the Slavs in the Albanian lands, their permanent goal was the ethnic cleansing of those lands. To achieve these goals, they used different methods and forms of action, which, of course, depended on internal and external circumstances, political and social developments, as well as other opportunities that could influence the achievement of this goal.

The establishment of the Russian rule in Kosovo marked the beginning of one of the most difficult periods for the Albanian population of this region. The latter was not only deprived of any political rights, but was also subjected to economic exploitation by the Russian-Serbian state hierarchy and assimilation. The assimilation pressure reached its peak during the reign of Emperor Stefan Dushan. A special role was played by the Serbian church headquartered in the city of Peja (Patriarchate of Peja), which, having the unsparing support of the state, worked systematically to remove the Albanian population from the Catholic rite, widely spread among this population more than a thousand years earlier, and to orient it towards Slavic Orthodoxy. In these circumstances, a good part of the Albanian population of Kosovo was forced to embrace the Slavic Orthodox rite. [ 2 ]

During the time of the Empire of Dushan, who had proclaimed himself “king of the Serbs, Greeks and Albanians”, the Serbian government, and previously the Bulgarian government, made toponomastic changes, built their own buildings (churches and monasteries), and in general, tried to distinguish the conquered territories with Slavic features. They accompanied all this activity with the spread of their propaganda, supposedly for their historical and natural right, especially in Christian states. By doing so, over time and continuously, they strengthened the goals of ethnic cleansing and paved other ways to deepen this goal.

The medieval Serbian government, in the conquered territories, began to organize religious life, taking the Orthodox religion as its basis. The Slavic Orthodox Church, having aspirations of domination, began to assimilate other non-Slavic peoples, and first of all the Arbërs. The Russian rulers took drastic measures of persecution and punishment of those who were not of the Orthodox religion. The Albanian churches began to be appropriated and usurped as their own, or they demolished them and on their foundations they erected Serbian churches, such as those of Banjska, Deçan, Graçanica [ 3 ] etc. Therefore, today’s Serbian policy cannot be based on the data that those churches and monasteries are theirs, but rather assimilated. This is also supported by the fact that throughout time until today the Albanian population itself had preserved them, as they had been theirs.

With the arrival of the Slavs in the Balkans, its toponymic map changed radically. Many old Illyrian-Albanian names were replaced by new Slavic names. Foreign invasions and dominations, together with their consequences, have caused the geographical space occupied by the Albanians in the Middle Ages to be the result of a territorial narrowing. The long and strong pressure of the Slavic states and churches, which was also accompanied by the colonization of Albanian lands by the Slavs, especially Kosovo, has caused the Albanian linguistic space to be constantly narrowing.

However, the attempts of the medieval Rasian (Serbian) kingdom to change the ethnic physiognomy of the Kosovo region did not yield the desired results. The Albanian population successfully resisted the Serb pressure, remaining the overwhelming majority in the ethnic structure of these regions. The documents of the Serbian chancellery of the 14th-15th centuries as well as those of Ragusan confirm the uninterrupted continuity of the Albanian ethnicity of Kosovo during the medieval Rasian-Serbian rule.

KOSOVO DURING OTTOMAN RULE AND SERBIAN PLANS FOR SERBIZATION OF ALBANIAN TERRITORIES

The Ottoman conquest of Albanian territories after 1389, although it brought with it important changes in the political, economic, social and ideological plan, did not fundamentally change the physiognomy of the ethno-cultural structure of the Albanian nationality in Kosovo and the Dukagjin Plain. The establishment of Ottoman rule in Kosovo marked a radical change in the political, economic and social developments of this region. The structures of the Russian-Serbian power were destroyed and with them the economic power of the Serbian feudal lords and the church. 

With the establishment of Ottoman rule in Kosovo, fundamental changes were also noted in social life. Thus, gradually a part of the Albanian population abandoned the Christian religion and embraced the Islamic religion. One of the factors that facilitated the penetration of Islam into the mass of the Kosovar population was its tendency to move away from the religious authority of the Serbian church. Like the entire Islamized Albanian population, that of Kosovo changed only its religion, without affecting its ethnic Albanian identity. [ 4 ]

In the second half of the 16th century, a considerable part of the Arbëro-Albanian population was Islamized and, as a result, its anthroponymy was transformed into the anthroponymy of the Islamic religious sphere. The presence of the Albanian population at this time constitutes in itself irrefutable evidence, proving that it existed there even during the period of medieval Russian-Serbian rule, that it was autochthonous and a continuation of the former Illyrian population, that it had successfully resisted the process of Slavization during the 12th-14th centuries. In addition, other economic and socio-political factors also acted for the Islamization of the Albanian population.

The documentation of the period after the Ottoman occupation of Kosovo sheds even more light and provides more data, proving that they were inhabited by the Albanian population, while the Serbs who came as colonists and as the ruling class during the time of the Russian-Serbian occupation of these lands, constituted a significant, but politically dominant, minority.

During the rule of the Ottoman Empire, despite the displacement of some Serbian families from Kosovo, on the other hand, in a way, the settlement of some Serbian inhabitants from Serbia itself, or the mountainous regions of Montenegro, had continued, mainly as serfs in Albanian territories. Thus, the Ottoman government, namely the serfs, brought and settled them by giving land to the Slavic population in the most fertile parts of Kosovo, such as around the Sitnica River, where even today they are settled in some Serbian settlements. They did this because that population was very obedient and suited the serfs in every aspect. While, the Albanian population could not achieve this. In various forms and ways, they assimilated the Ottoman rulers and became indirect or direct owners of various places and areas with an absolute Albanian majority, but also of territories that until then were not inhabited.

Based on historical and other archival sources, which are unfortunately few, they nevertheless prove that in the territories of the Sandzak of Niš and beyond, from antiquity until the 19th century, there was a continuity of the Albanian population. [ 5 ] This is also proven by the fact that in an archival document dated November 30, 1584, it is stated, among other things: “Kryshec with five villages and 1500 Albanians…” [ 6 ] However, as in other territories, there were also large population movements here, especially of the Albanian population. This movement was a consequence of immigration and emigration of the population, which has always been a historical phenomenon conditioned by various causes, but which has been dominated by economic-social and social causes, but often also by political ones. [ 7 ]

As is known, in 1689, at the instigation of the Austrian Empire, a powerful anti-Ottoman uprising broke out in Ballan. One of its leaders was Archbishop Pjetër Bogdani, who had direct ties to General Piccolomini, the conduit of Austrian influence for the uprising in the Balkans. After a short resistance of several months, Austria withdrew and the uprising failed. As a punishment, the Sublime Porte declared a large part of Kosovo a “ferman zone”. For this very reason, the population declared fermanlie, or rather the rebellious part of it, which largely consisted of Albanians, was forced to leave their land to avoid discrimination. Historical sources show that during this population withdrawal, which caught the eye of history, Serbs did not constitute a majority. The Serbs also joined the Austro-Hungarians to fight against the Ottoman Empire, but after the uprising was crushed, there was no mass migration of them. The part of the Serbian insurgents who were forced to leave followed the north and settled in Vojvodina. Migration due to participation in the uprising was mainly from Albanian fighters.

It is precisely this moment of the fictitious “gap”, when the Albanian presence in the demo-ethnic structure of Kosovo had a relative decline, that Serbian scholarship refers to most often to prove that Albanians “flooded” northward to occupy lands belonging to others, at the beginning of the 18th century. While the truth is simple: When, in 1710, the Sublime Porte abolished the regime “under the firman”, the rebellious Albanians returned to their former lands. Serbian scholarship begins its history precisely at this moment: Albanians repopulated Kosovo in the 17th and 18th centuries, because the Ottoman Empire favored their influx as a reward for changing religion and as a punishment for fanatical Serbs. It is not interested in absolute chronology, a relative chronology is enough to find Albanians absent. [ 8 ]

A part of the Albanian population that had temporarily settled in the mountainous regions of Central Albania, after the end of the Austro-Ottoman war that lasted almost 20 years, gradually began to return to their previous settlements in the present-day territories of Kosovo and beyond, which at that time administratively mainly lived in the Sandzak of Vushtrri, Prizren, etc. But a part of the Albanian population of the Orthodox faith as well as the Catholic faith that had been included in the ranks of the Austrian army, out of fear of the Ottoman army, were forced to flock to Vojvodina and other places in that area, and not the Serbian population that was counted in Gishtrinje and a fact that it was of Vlach origin and Serbified in the Middle Ages, as was also a part of the Albanian population of the Christian faith. [ 9 ]

Albanian efforts for national liberation never ceased, but on the contrary they continued to find new forms of resistance, in order to free themselves from the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

The liberation of the territories of the Pashalik of Belgrade [ 10 ] and the 6 nahijas [ 11 ] during the years 1800 to 1875 was a legitimate Serbian right. However, on the other hand, it removed the non-Serb population from those territories. Thus, according to a historiographical note from the period 1800 to 1875, it states that the Serbian military and government circles removed from the aforementioned territories and from the Morava Valley, as it is said there, about 150,000 Albanian inhabitants. [ 12 ] The regimes of the Obrenović dynasty (1817-1903) continued the state terrorist policy against Albanians and Bosniaks during the 1930s, with the aim of ethnic cleansing. In the spirit of this policy, the government of the Principality of Serbia ordered in 1832 that every Albanian and Bosniak caught in Serbian territory be given 25 lashes, while in 1834 it ordered that the army be used to burn their villages. [ 13 ]

The policy of the Serbian Kingdom always had as its permanent goal and objective the plunder of Albanian lands and their expansion. Serbia hoped to take advantage of the created circumstances, to completely swallow not only Kosovo, but also all of coastal Albania, to reach the open sea. Since 1844 it had compiled many programs, with the sole purpose of exterminating the Albanians as a people – for a moment or in stages. Meanwhile, those areas were decided to be colonized with the Slavic element. In order to detach parts of the Albanian lands, they intensified their diplomatic activity. For this purpose, the Serbian monarchy also intensified the press, publications and scientific activity, where it aimed to provide an allegedly historical and scientific support to the predatory and conquering policy of the Serbian bourgeoisie towards the Albanian lands in Kosovo and elsewhere. Serbian science was and is also engaged in this policy, especially in terms of dealing with the historical past and autochthonousness of the Albanian people in the Balkans, where they live today, primarily in Kosovo and Macedonia. This “science” was not based on scientific norms and morality, scientific truth, but only on the interests of the politics of the day, anti-Albanian politics. Such scientists try to deny the Illyrian origin of the Albanians at all costs. They had only one specific goal – the denial of the historical ethnic past of the Albanians, the falsification of their history and autochthonousness. [ 14 ] To achieve this, they used all diplomatic and “scientific” forms and methods, later not sparing the method of violence and terror for the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, its denationalization and colonization with the Slavic element.

Four decades ago, the Vilayet of Kosovo also included the Sandzak of Niš with its kazats of Vranje, Pirot, and Leskoc, where the presence of Albanians was considerable. But the Congress of Berlin gave the Sandzak of Niš to Serbia, to satisfy Russia, which had won the war against the Ottoman Empire. Along with the Sandzak of Niš, the Vilayet of Kosovo included ethnic Albanian lands within its borders. This is confirmed, among others, by three objective foreign observers who visited these lands several decades before the Congress of Berlin. All three of these observers, well-versed in the Balkan Peninsula, the French historian Ami Boue in 1810, the astute British analyst E. Spencer in 1847, and the renowned Austrian scientist J. Hahn in 1853, had also given an approximate outline of the lands where Albanians were present in their time. According to them, Albanians were present in the North as far as Niš, Leskofc and Vranje, in the East as far as Kumanovo, Perlep and Manastir, in the South as far as Konica, Ioannina and Preveza, without the need to repeat that on the outskirts of this region there was a mixture of ethnicities, where Albanians formed a minority somewhere compared to other ethnicities. [ 15 ]

As for real estate, they were mainly owned by Albanian begler and agallar and some Turks, rarely of any other nationality. Most of the inhabitants worked for them as çipçinje. The Ottoman Empire issued the owners with evidence of the properties in the form of tapi registered in the cadastre which was kept with the measuring unit dulum etc. There was no cadastral measurement by the Ottoman government at that time. According to an archival document from 1874 (1290 AH) of the Ottoman province, which is preserved in its original form in the Kosovo Archives, it is proven that the governor of Thessaloniki, Ymer Fejziu, writes in it: “The Austro-Hungarian military rulers have appointed Kembrug Hambukovic and Baron Magdeburg to photograph some terrains of Rumelia. These two should start topographical photography, therefore they deserve to be respected for carrying out the entrusted tasks and they should be helped with housing, provided with horses for travel and for carrying vehicles”. [ 16 ]

The 19th century marks a new era for Albanians of all regions, that of the National Renaissance, of the movement for their comprehensive economic, political and cultural emancipation, for liberation from Ottoman rule and for unification into a single national state. During this period, many powerful uprisings broke out in all Albanian regions. While, on the other hand, the hegemonic and national-chauvinistic policy of the Serbian government, among its main goals has been the denationalization and Slavization of Albanian lands since they have flocked to the Balkan Peninsula until today. 

It has always followed an unchanging line, that of ethnic cleansing of Albanian lands from its ancient Illyrian-Albanian inhabitants, using all cruel means such as murder, terror, the displacement of as many Albanians as possible from their homeland and the denationalization of those who remained until complete assimilation, as well as on the other hand the colonization of those lands with the Serbian element. Throughout history, the Serbian government did its best to Serbify ethnic Albanian areas.

Serbia’s foreign policy program for the conquest and colonization of Albanian territories was elaborated in “Načertania” (1844) by Ilia Garašanin – politician and later Prime Minister of the Government of the Kingdom of Serbia. The content of “Načertania” is based on the creation of the so-called Southern Serbia, which meant Kosovo and Macedonia with its Albanian lands, but also Northern Albania, to thus create the so-called “Empire of Tsar Dušan”. “Načertania” radiated in the Serbian state, in its bodies and institutions, as well as in the activities of its rulers from the year of its compilation to the present day. The objectives of “Načertania” have found support in particular for the policy of genocide of the Serbian government towards the Albanians. The main forms of the genocidal policy of the Serbian government were and remain the expulsion and deportation of Albanians from their lands and the colonization of these lands with Slavic populations.

The Serbian government in 1856, with the Paris Peace Agreement, had gained a certain right to remove all Albanians from the cities of Sumadija, as well as from Herzegovina. It should be noted that Albanians until the end of the 19th century were settled in most of the cities and towns, villages of the Sandzak of Niš and beyond. The vast majority of Albanian families were concentrated in the Toplica region (the regions of Prokuplje, Dobrić, Kosanić and parts of Jabllanica and Pustareka with Kuršumli), the Vranje region (parts of the Pustareka and Jabllanica regions, the Leskoc region, Polanica, Gërdelica, Masurica, Pqinja, Inogoshtë, etc.), as well as in the Niš region, and perhaps some in the Pirot region. There were also Albanian residents in other places, especially in cities, such as in Qupri, Paraqin, Uzice, Krushec, Aleksinc, Karanovc (Kraljevo) and up to Belgrade. [ 17 ]

Some settlements consisted only of the Albanian population, while in others, it was mixed with the Serbian population (somewhat with the Circassian population, etc.).

The course of the history of Albanian Kosovo changed dramatically after the Congress of Berlin in 1878 with the separation of the Sandzak of Niš from the territory of the Vilayet of Kosovo. From that Vilayet during the winter of 1877/78, the ethnic cleansing of Albanians took place with the most radical measures during the march of the Serbian armies in this Sandzak. More than 700 Albanian settlements were cleared and mixed with other Serbian, Circassian, etc. populations, with more than 200,000 deported and their settlement mainly in the present-day territories of Kosovo but also their large-scale displacement to the present-day territories of Turkey. [ 18 ] Also during the years 1877/78 the Serbian army had expelled from their ancestral homes 350,000 Albanians from Saxhak, Niš, Pirot, Jeni Pazar, Plav, Guci, Hoti and Gruda, as well as from a part of Northern Kosovo to the outskirts of Pristina.

The Serbian soldiers, in order to achieve the goal of expulsion and colonization, had used the most brutal means of physical liquidation of the Albanians, not sparing even children, women and the elderly. Over 35,000 Albanians of various ages died from gunfire, bayonets, from burning alive, from freezing in the snow and ice. There were also many mothers frozen with babies in their arms. Then they looted, burned and destroyed many Albanian villages. The burning and destruction of Albanian houses was incalculable, almost all Albanian villages were reduced to ashes in the height of the harsh winter. In one of the neighborhoods of the city of Niš alone, 300 Albanian houses were reduced to ashes. The looting of property was massive, starting from jewelry and ending with furniture, bedding, clothing, money, cereals, dairy products, livestock, etc. [ 19 ]

The forced expulsion of Albanians from the Sandzak of Niš took place during the winter of 1878/78, under very difficult conditions. The expelled population had suffered a lot along the way. Many children, the elderly and others had died in the heavy snow, while the livestock had died. This is evidenced by many documents of the time. The extermination of Albanians was carried out in the most cruel and barbaric ways and methods, as the Serbs themselves testify. 

“Some Albanian families fled and retreated to the South Morava River valley, through the great cold, near the road, through the Gërdelica gorge to Vranje and Kumanovo, abandoned and dead children and frozen old people could be seen. The retreat was tragic, horses and oxen slowly pulled carts through the snow, because there were few carts. Some abandoned children, lost or half-dead from fatigue and hunger, were swollen and swollen like drums, some gave up their souls when our people fed them, or after eating.” [ 20 ] Serbian King Milan Obrenović, to achieve this goal, had distributed a proclamation to his Serbian soldiers, which stated: “… the fewer Albanians who remain in the territories liberated from Turkey, the more you will contribute to the state. 

The more Albanians who are displaced, the greater the merits for the homeland.” [ 21 ] Serbian writer Jovan Hadživasilević explains the Serbian government’s intentions for the occupation of the territories in the south. He writes that the expulsion of Albanians was done with the aim of “making Serbia a purely national state” and to create the possibility “for Serbian action in the future to be directed towards parts of Kosovo”… “With the pursuit of the Albanians, some villages in those areas were left completely deserted. 

The names of some villages were unknown, because there was no one to tell them, so those deserted villages of the Sandžak of Niš – Prokuplje, Leskofc, Vranje had to be populated”. [ 22 ] The Albanian population expelled from the Sandžak of Niš, mainly settled in the territory of present-day Kosovo, some settled in the territory of Macedonia, and many of them ended up miserable outside Kosovo, across the Bosphorus, in the deserts of Anatolia and beyond.

According to Turkish statistics, the Serbian occupier in the sandjaks of Niš and Pirot will appropriate for the Slavic colonies 48,000 Albanian houses, 42,000 cattle sheds, 18,000 grain barns, 48,000 bread bins. From each house, the Serbs had seized from Niš to Pristina from 20 to 4,000 sheep, 3 to 50 cows, 40,000 horses, 50,000 carts and other household equipment belonging to the Albanians.

Based on the Law on the Colonization of Foreigners, from March 2, 1865, the Serbian government will colonize all Albanian properties with Serbian and Montenegrin residents, mainly from the regions of Montenegro and the unoccupied part of Kosovo. On January 3, 1880, the Serbian government issued the Law on Newly Colonized Territories. With this law, the Serbian regime justified the plunder that was carried out on the Albanian population of the Sandzak of Niš. 

Albanian properties were taken by the Serbian government without any compensation. Many families from different regions of Serbia and a small number from the present-day territory of Kosovo were settled in them. In 1879, the colonization commission was established. Every Slav had the right to write a petition to receive abandoned land in the so-called “Arnautlëk”. Regarding this, Franc Kanic emphasizes that 7500 people in the first wave were registered for colonization in Toplica to Molla e Kuqe near Niš. [ 23 ] 

The colonization of these Albanian territories was mainly done by Montenegrins from Montenegro and by some Serbian residents who fled from Kosovo at that time. According to the order of the Serbian government, about 5600 Serbs were settled from Kosovo in the Sandžak of Niš during 1979. [ 24 ] The colonization continued in the following years. In the Serbian campaign for the colonization of Toplica 1880-1899, the properties of the Albanians will benefit 5600 Serbs from Kosovo and 9200 Montenegrins from Montenegro. [ 25 ]

In the wake of the general Albanian uprisings (1908-1912), the Serbian government announced the new Greater Serbian Program entitled: “Directive for Work with Albanians” (Directive for Work with Albanians), wishing to destroy an entire people. In that program, among other things, dedicated to the European public the title “Arnauts of Great Power”, by the author Vladan Đorđević. 

That 188-page pamphlet, the Serbian government to obtain permission for the liquidation of Albanians, published in several languages, to “prove” that “Albanians do not have their own language, do not have their own books (literature), do not have their own history, and therefore according to Greater Serbian orientations (programs) they have no right to life, they have no right to exist, they have no right to form any state”. Not only that, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Serbia will explicitly demand in Vienna that the Albanians “be liquidated as the peoples of North Africa have been liquidated.” [ 26 ]

The great successes that emerged from the Albanian uprisings at the beginning of the 20th century greatly worried the Balkan states of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria. Therefore, in March-May 1912, they formed the Balkan Alliance with the aim of occupying Albanian lands and other goals. Nikolla Pashiqi had drafted the project in 1912 – What does Serbia want?.. “Serbia wants those orders from the Berlin Congress to be implemented, which have been waiting to be realized for 34 years. Serbia wants to work in the spirit of Europe. It wants the desire and goal of the European Powers to be realized. It wants to shed blood just so that the dream of its brothers can be realized. It wants the decisions of the European Powers to be realized at its own risk and expense..” [ 27 ] Serbian troops took advantage of the weakening of the Ottoman forces by the numerous Albanian uprisings, and by forming an alliance with the Balkan states, they entered Kosovo.

Later, in this regard, the Serbian government was constantly preparing for the invasion of Kosovo and other Albanian territories. In 1911, it ordered its consulate in Pristina and the customs offices in Raska and Javor to conduct a census of the Serbian population, here and there of any Albanian settlements. Teachers and priests were engaged in the census on the ground. The census was carried out in 230 villages. In addition, these records of the number of Serbian and other inhabitants served to be used in the future war. [ 28 ]

COLONIZATION OF KOSOVO 1912-1914

The Serbian and Montenegrin Kingdoms continued the policy of ethnic cleansing and colonization of Albanian territories even after the occupation of the Vilayet of Kosovo and other Albanian territories. It is known that with the decisions of the London Conference of Ambassadors of 1912/13, these territories were unjustly left outside the borders of the Albanian state. They were subjected to ethnic cleansing and colonization. For these purposes, the Serbian-Montenegrin political circles used previous experience, exercised unprecedented terror and violence. 

Units of the army, police and “Narodna Odbrana” competed to see who would liquidate the most Albanians, who would demolish their homes, rob them or forcibly convert them to the Slavic Orthodox religion. Violence and terror became the preferred methods to intimidate and force Albanians to emigrate or relocate to other countries. This campaign was accompanied by mass displacement, the looting of property, and the burning of entire Albanian villages, as well as the colonization of Serbo-Montenegrin newcomers.

The Serbo-Montenegrin chauvinist political-military circles (1912-1914) were not satisfied with the fact that they imposed and took away most of their lands from the Albanian state of 1912-1913. Thus, from the cadastral records of the Ottoman administration, it is seen that the Albanian territories from the early Middle Ages until 1912 had an area of ​​115,000 square kilometers. From this territory, the Albanian state was created in an area of ​​only 28,748 square kilometers.

Those circles even attempted to turn the occupied areas of Kosovo, Northwestern Macedonia and other parts annexed by Montenegro, but together with the Greek chauvinists they attempted to turn Kosovo and other areas into Toplica and empty them of the autochthonous Albanian population, a population that was older than these Slavs by at least two millennia, and in their place to place the Slavic element, mainly Serbian and Montenegrin, as was done.

These conquests were justified at the conference of ambassadors held in London in 1913, where outside the Albanian state proclaimed on November 28, 1912, the vast majority of Albanian lands remained, such as Kosovo, Eastern Kosovo, Western Macedonia, parts of Montenegro, Chameria, etc. The Albanian state was truncated. Of the 90,270 km² (Vilayet of Kosovo with 32,900 km², Vilayet of Shkodra with 10,270 km², Vilayet of Monastir with 28,500 km² and Vilayet of Ioannina with 17,900 km²), only 28,500 km² or 32.24% of the ethnic entirety of Albanian lands were included, clearly indicating the injustice that was being done to the Albanian nation since then. 

At the same time, thanks to the occupation of Albanian lands, neighboring states increased their territories to the following extents: Serbia expanded its territory by 82% and its population by 55%, Montenegro its territory by 62% and its population by 100%, Bulgaria its territory by 29% and its population by 3%, while Greece its territory by 68% and its population by 67%. Therefore, with the occupation of 67.79% of Albanian territory, the territories of the Orthodox states of the Balkans expanded and the territory of the Albanian state was catastrophically reduced. [ 29 ]

In order to achieve the colonization of Kosovo and the expulsion of Albanians from their homeland, immediately after the occupation of Albanian lands, the invading Serbian, Montenegrin and Greek armies, gendarmerie units, as well as Chetnik formations, created and armed by the Serbian state, undertook an unprecedented campaign of terror and extermination genocide, which was accompanied by massive displacement, the plunder of property and the burning of entire Albanian villages, as well as colonization with Serbo-Montenegrin immigrants. 

The policy of violence, which was imposed on Albanians in the so-called “new territories”, as the Serbian regions called Kosovo and other annexed Albanian territories at that time, aimed at ethnic cleansing and their denationalization. The anti-Albanian terror was accompanied by a series of economic-administrative measures, with changes in the tax system, which brought Kosovo and the Albanian people to the brink of ruin. [ 30 ] The anti-Albanian policy was also accompanied by attempts to change the religious affiliation of the population. Not only on Albanians of the Muslim faith, but also on those of the Catholic faith, trying to forcefully impose the Orthodox religion on them. [ 31 ]

In addition to the killings, expulsions and violence from Kosovo, they took the bloody action of converting the Albanians, crucifying and serbizing them, both Muslim and Catholic Albanians. This conversion measure was undertaken by the Montenegrin government in the Dukagjini Plateau, in the part that it had annexed. Through the military and police dictatorship, they “gathered the Albanians by force, lined them up with flags in front and took them to the church.” Thousands were killed and shot. 

This crusade, fueled by the poison of religious and national hatred, for centuries by the church and their governments, claimed many innocent victims. Albanian villages were besieged, looted and set on fire. Countless villages were razed to the ground, turned into piles of rubble. Serbian officers declared that “effective peace in Albania can only be achieved by completely exterminating the Albanians.” The supreme order from Belgrade was clear: “That savage people must be taught to live in a modern state.” Then, in the Serbian newspapers it was written: 

“Several generations of Albanians must die so that they forget what the Serbs did to them.” [ 32 ] They broke down the doors of houses and massacred anyone they found inside, without asking if they were young or old, man or woman. Another piece of evidence that proves this. That in the Pristina market, on October 18, 1912, one Turkish gold lira could buy 82 Turkish fez. On November 10, 1912, in the same market, one fez could be bought for 82 gold lira. The price increase was so high because the Serbian army was liquidating all people with white pliss, while sparing those who wore the Turkish religion.

According to the Kosovo Committee, in the prisons of Serbia, Montenegro and Greece, during this period, about 23 thousand Albanians were killed or suffered. The Association of Muslim Imams claims that in the ethnic Albanian territories, during this period, there were 21 thousand graves and corpses massacred by the gendarmerie. (These records do not include the dead during the October-November 1912 war). Five mass graves have been recorded in Kosovo. In Gazimestan alone, over 5,000 ethnic Albanians were liquidated in the period January-May 1913. [ 33 ]

After the occupation of Kosovo by Serbia and Montenegro, after the establishment of Serbian and Montenegrin military rule, from November 1912 to June 1914, Kosovo was destroyed more than during the entire five-century Ottoman occupation. Serbia and Montenegro during 1913-1914 burned and razed 235 Albanian villages, 133 Serbs and 102 Montenegrins”. [ 34 ] Leo Freundlich writes: “Thousands and thousands of men, women, old men and children killed and strangled, villages burned and houses looted, women and girls dehumanized, a land devastated, plundered, blood-soaked and disgraced, proves that the Serbs entered Albania not as liberators, but as murderers of Albanians.

Countless villages were razed to the ground, countless people were massacred in the most bestial way. The place, where generations of hardworking poor Albanians created their homeland, was transformed into piles of rubble. A whole people was crucified with blood and Europe is silent….” [ 35 ] M. Edit Durham, writing in 1913: “In Shala, Muslims either had to be baptized or drowned. A man from Peja recounted: “Every day the bell rings in the streets: – The government will shoot ten people today! No one knows who these people are or why they are being killed. They are led to a pit that will be their grave. Then 12 soldiers shoot at them until they fall to the ground. Dirt is thrown over them, regardless of whether they are alive or dead. People are thrown into the icy water of the river, and then they are forced to stand near the embers of fire until they ask for mercy. And the price for all this was to convert to Christianity. Many of these who had been baptized in terror came to me.” [ 36 ]

In addition to the methods of genocide, murders, burnings, demolitions of Albanian settlements, etc., the process of Serbization of the occupied and enslaved Albanian territories also began, namely the colonization of Albanian territories with Serbian and Montenegrin elements. The uprooting of the Albanian autochthons and the rooting of Serbian newcomers constituted an intertwined process, organized and directed by Belgrade. A process of depopulation of Albanians and population with Serbian and Montenegrin settlers and a process of expropriation of Albanians and ownership of settlers.

In order for colonization to reach high and rapid rates, as in Jablanica, Leskoc, Pusta Reka, etc., in the years 1877-78, the Serbian Kingdom opened the way for Serbian emigration abroad, even beyond the continent. In this regard, the Belgrade newspaper “Balkan”, No. 6, of February 1914, announced the order for the colonization of “new territories”, according to which “Serbs living in America, originating from Montenegro, Bosnia, Serbia and Southern Hungary will also be taken into account. In fact, Serbs living in the monarchy can also benefit” (Austro-Hungary, JO). [ 37 ]

This genocidal process against the Albanian population was accompanied by their expulsion to Turkey and Albania. According to some estimates, in the period between 1912-1914, about 500,000 people were displaced to Turkey. Meanwhile, from Kosovo alone from 1913-1915, more than 120,000 Albanians were forced to evacuate in order to save their lives from the Serbian-Montenegrin state genocide. [ 38 ] On the other hand, a number of thousands of settlers were settled in the territories of Kosovo, especially in the lands of Albanians who had fled their homeland due to violence and terror. 

According to some records, the Serbian authorities brought about 20,000 Serbs to Kosovo, most of them criminals. They were put to work in inter-ethnic quarrels and conflicts, being recruited into the gendarmerie and as provocateurs against Albanians. Meanwhile, in that part of Kosovo, where Montenegro was the occupier, through the “Special Law on Colonization”, around 6,000 Montenegrin settlers were settled on Albanian properties in Peja and Gjakova. [ 39 ] The government immediately or during the time of the Yugoslav Kingdom transferred these lands to the hands of newcomers, thus greatly changing the cadastral status of the actual owners of the lands.

The colonization of the occupied Albanian territories with the Slavic element, as was said to have begun immediately after the occupation in 1912, was sanctioned by special decree-laws, which were issued in both kingdoms at the beginning of 1914. These justified all the injustices that had been done to the Albanians up to that point. These laws were drafted in such a way as to achieve the greatest possible efficiency in the expropriation of Albanian villages and to favor and stimulate Slavic settlers to live in Albanian lands.

The Serbian Kingdom, on February 17, 1914, prohibited the courts from registering land until the issue of real estate was examined and until the issue of land titles was studied. With this, the government wanted to ignore the former Ottoman reality regarding the ownership of property in the new social and political circumstances. Property in Kosovo before the occupation of 1912 was more than 90% in the hands of the local Albanian population, mainly in the hands of Belgians and Agallars. 

Immediately, Serbia, on February 20, 1914, issued the “Decree-Law on the Colonization of Specially Liberated and United Territories in the Kingdom of Serbia”, which was later supplemented. Montenegro also acted in the same way, which had issued the “Law on the Colonization of Specially Liberated Territories” of February 27, 1914. These legal provisions, and many others, that were adopted later, served as support for the issuance of subsequent laws in the Kingdom of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, namely Yugoslavia, such as the Decree-Law on the Colonization of New Southern Territories of 1920, which in 1922 was approved as the Law on the Colonization of New Territories, the Law on Colonization of 1931 and many others. 

With those laws, all land was declared state property, especially for those who did not have written documents, even though they had been working it for years because they had been destroyed during the wars or taken in other forms by the government. Thus, these legal acts legalize violence against Albanians, who, by playing on the few land titles they had, are denied their centuries-old right to ownership of the land. [ 40 ]

Despite the expropriation of the Albanian agrarian population and the arrival of hundreds of settler families, the Serbian-Montenegrin political circles did not achieve the set objectives: a significant change in the ethnic composition of the population to the detriment of the overwhelming Albanian majority. This goal was not achieved due to the armed resistance of the Albanian people, as well as due to the short period of rule of these regimes, and especially the outbreak of World War I, when a number of settlers returned to their homes.

COLONIZATION OF KOSOVO WITH THE SLAV ELEMENT 1918-1941

With the reconquest of Kosovo in the autumn of 1918 and the establishment of the Serbo-Montenegrin government and the putting into operation of a special administrative-political apparatus, the state and military administration, in addition to organizing punitive operations, violence, terror, murders, heavy punishments, etc., at the same time began a political pressure for the denationalization of the Albanian population by various methods. The ruling circles of Belgrade resumed the old chauvinist policy. [ 41 ]

The government immediately began administrative organization in Kosovo and other areas for the implementation of colonization and agrarian reform. The regime of King Alexander in 1920 compiled a special program for the cleansing of ethnic Albanian territories. Based on that program, the Serbian army and gendarmerie committed unprecedented crimes, burning 182 Albanian villages. [ 42 ]

Bodies for the implementation of colonization and agrarian reform

In order to implement the agrarian colonization policy in Kosovo and other regions, the government bodies of the Kingdom of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, respectively Yugoslavia, were directly or in some other form engaged in the implementation of the agrarian reform. The formation of such bodies took place at the beginning of 1919. Initially, the decree of the Provisions for the preparation of the agrarian reform in the new Kingdom of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of 25.II 1919 (Sl. List Kraljevine SHS no. 11/27.1919) was issued and the Ordinance of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, dated 10.IX 1919, for the partial application of the Provisions for the preparation of the agrarian reform, made it necessary to establish state bodies that would implement the agrarian reform and colonization. These powers and duties were assigned to the Minister for Social Policy. This was an attempt to emphasize that the agrarian reform had a social character.

The first body for the implementation of agrarian reform and colonization was the State Office for Agrarian Reform, which was placed under the supervision of the Minister of Social Policy. It was to deal with agrarian reform, internal colonization, and the repatriation of immigrants from America and other countries. The Agrarian Reform Sector immediately began distributing the land of large Albanian and other landowners through its trustees.

Later, it was concluded that this task should be entrusted to a separate ministry. On April 2, 1919, the Minister of Agrarian Reform was appointed to implement the Preliminary Provisions. In some regions, Agrarian Councils began to be formed to implement agrarian reform and colonization. In Kosovo and in some regions, no councils were formed, but all these tasks were carried out by the administrative (police) power. 

With Decree-Law No. 2119, dated February 12, 1920, the Ministry of Agrarian Reform of the Kingdom of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established, the main task of which was the liquidation of feudal relations and colonization. During 1920, agrarian directorates and provincial agrarian offices were formed. Within this Ministry was the colonization sector and the agrarian reform sector. The Supreme Directorate of Agrarian Reform was established for the territory of Kosovo, with headquarters in Skopje, while within it were regional agrarian directorates with headquarters in Peja, Prishtina, Mitrovica, Vushtrri, Gjakova and Prizren, and later in Ferizaj, which included certain districts.

The tasks of these directorates were multiple. They were mainly in implementing the colonization of these territories with the Slavic element, taking over state, municipal and private properties and distributing them to the new settlers and other institutions, especially state ones, gendarmerie stations, churches, monasteries, schools, etc. One of their main tasks, which they managed meticulously, was the management of expropriated properties and their cadastral registration of the new owners of the colony or here and there the local Serbian owners. 

In addition, they compiled the colonization program and organized financial assistance and other assistance for the Serbian and Montenegrin settlers and others brought to Kosovo. Their proposals were approved by the Ministry of Agrarian Reform, later of Agriculture and for this purpose it also approved the budget plan. Numerous embezzlements were committed in the work of these bodies. Within these ministries, numerous commissions and councils were formed to define numerous agrarian complexes without any criteria, the most fertile properties of Albanian owners, and to confiscate the properties of owners who had fled to the mountains due to violence and terror.

In addition to the Ministry of Agrarian Reform, then of Agriculture, the following ministries were also involved:

– The Ministry of Internal Affairs, through the police that used force and violence, helped implement colonization, parceling out and dividing properties, assisting settlers in their arrival and settlement, and protecting them, while on the other hand, putting pressure on the Albanian population to leave the country, move outside the homeland, and bring in Serbian settlers in their place.

– The Ministry of the Army and Navy helped and escorted the settlers from their homeland to Kosovo, propagated colonization, while among the Albanians it propagated migration to Turkey and Albania. It released the soldiers of those families who migrated. This ministry engaged the Ministry of Internal Affairs to create as many disorders as possible, so that its organs would intervene.

– The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had the duty to counter the propaganda of various Albanian societies and individuals who fought against the displacement and complained to the League of Nations in Geneva about violence, land grabbing and other forms of pressure on Albanians. Meanwhile, in world opinion, it justified the agrarian reform and colonization as a necessary economic measure and the “desire” of the non-Slavic people for displacement.

– The Ministry of Forestry and Mining provided the settlers with construction materials, other materials for building houses, fuel, and owned entire forest complexes.

– The Ministry of Communications gave settlers free tickets to transport their families and property to the place of colonization, while providing transportation for displaced Albanians.

– The Ministry of Education was committed to using teachers to propagate the colonization of the Slavic element on one side and the displacement of the Albanian population on the other. It opened schools in the colonial settlements.

– The Ministry of Construction was engaged in the construction of houses, roads, wells, and waterworks for the Slavic colonies.

– The Ministry of Social Policy and Public Health took care of the opening of ambulances and the health and treatment of settlers free of charge, etc.

The Royal Court was also engaged in these works around the implementation of colonization in various forms. As was the case with any complaint that was resolved in favor of the colonist, the king’s visit to Albanian territories to motivate settlers to settle in greater numbers, while pressuring Albanians to move.

Courts of all levels were involved in the ownership of land properties of the settlers. The regular courts and later the agrarian courts established in the centers of Kosovo were engaged in resolving various property disputes so that they would resolve them in favor of the settlers. So that they could take ownership of the lands and issue the land titles to the new owners as soon as possible. In this dispute, they also committed numerous embezzlements and misuses with the land titles of the previous Albanian and Turkish owners. They immediately intabulated the lands of the new “owners” without any procedure.

One of the ministries that played a key role in the implementation of colonization in Kosovo, the consequences of which are still evident today, was the Ministry of Finance. The Cadastral Directorate functioned within this ministry. In this sector were found these materials for measuring and parceling land, materials for the work of surveyors, notes on land affected by the agrarian reform, cadastral records of property-possessory relations and books on land properties, culture, class, land measurement, land taxes, land affected by agrarianism, exemption from tax for settlers, etc. Thus, this Ministry immediately transferred entire complexes of properties such as fertile ones, vineyards, forests, meadows and others to the settlers. 

Thus, the land of Albanian owners for which they had paid taxes, but were still paying without any legal basis, passed into the ownership of the newcomers. The state of property changed catastrophically. Now, new owners of the vast majority of lands are settlers. Unfortunately, this situation also continued under future governments, although the Albanian population largely bought that property later, the communist government did not beneficially register it as de facto owners. So even today, some government officials, based on this situation from the time of the Yugoslav Kingdom, manipulate statistical figures, saying that large areas of land are owned by Serbs and Montenegrins. But they do not take into account the real factual situation, before 1912, when more than 90% of the lands were owned by Albanians and here and there by some Turkish agha or bey, some of whom were forced to move from their homeland by violence, or the situation of whose land it was and whose it is today that has been worked for years. Meanwhile, there were cases of some Serbian and Montenegrin owners who had never come to Kosovo, but had been allocated land, had it owned in the cadastre and court, but had given it to the de facto Albanian owners to work with a smile.

Purpose and measures for the implementation of colonization and agrarian reform

The government of the Kingdom of the Serbs, although it had promised to respect the rights of ethnic Albanians living in Yugoslavia, and had even signed the international acts of the time, which defined the rights of national minorities (the Treaty of Saint Germain, also unified by the League of Nations), these regions, immediately after establishing their own military-police and civil administration, resumed the terror practiced in the years 1912-1915. 

Thus, according to a statistic that was published later, Serbian troops had killed 6,040 people during January and February 1919 alone, and had demolished 3,873 houses. [ 43 ] The Albanian government informed the League of Nations in April 1921 that 2,000 Albanians had been killed in Kosovo since the beginning of that same year; and four months later, the head of the Islamic Community in Bosnia, Reis ul-ulema Čašević, told a diplomat that since November 1918, 5,000 people had been killed in the Priština area. As for the overall figures, a document drawn up by the Kosovo Committee in 1921 estimated that by then 12,371 people had been killed, 22,110 had been imprisoned, and approximately 6,000 houses had been burned. [ 44 ]

One of the methods of ethnic cleansing, denationalization and Slavization of Kosovo was the colonization of Kosovo with the Slavic element and the displacement of Albanians from their homeland. Colonization as a profitable method began to be mystified and camouflaged with the implementation of one of the bourgeois methods with agrarian reform, which was propagated as a progressive measure that actually concealed the goal of the Serbian big bourgeoisie – the colonization of Kosovo and the denationalization of the Albanian population, which was in the absolute majority. So, the bourgeoisie made efforts to reduce the Albanian population as much as possible, especially in those areas where Albanians lived in large numbers and Kosovo was the most densely populated region in all of Yugoslavia. There was a broad program of colonization, of settling Slavic speakers in areas inhabited by Albanians.

In Kosovo, due to the unsuitable configuration of the terrain and the low level of productive forces in agriculture, there was relatively little arable land. In those areas there was a high population density, which was constantly increasing due to the high natural increase, especially of the Albanian population. According to statistical data, the growth of the population engaged in agriculture was very high. In agricultural areas, the number of people who lived from agriculture was constantly increasing from year to year. Thus, the density in Kosovo in places was 200-300 inhabitants per square kilometer, while in Vojvodina there were 80 inhabitants in the same amount of agricultural area. 

The worst situation was if the amount of arable land was taken into account, because in Serbia there were 71.1 inhabitants per 100 hectares of arable land, in Vojvodina 175 inhabitants, while in Kosovo 228 inhabitants.

The goal of the Serbian bourgeoisie was actually to implement the colonization of Kosovo under the slogan of agrarian reform with the Slavic element coming from various parts of the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom, respectively Yugoslav and from some foreign countries. So, the so-called agrarian reform was also put in function of such colonization. Colonization and agrarian reform in Kosovo had a mainly national-political purpose and exploitative character. 

The main goal of colonization was to break the national compactness of the Albanian population and change the national structure to the detriment of Albanians. In particular, the goal was to colonize and strengthen the colonist element in the parts around the border with Albania, because they thought that with that border the continuity of the autochthonous Albanian population from the territory of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia would be interrupted, as stated in the documents for the purpose of security and in accordance with their strategic plan. 

Regarding this, Dr. Hinko Krizman, deputy and minister, in his speech at the Congress of the Independent Democratic Party in Belgrade, on 6.12.1925, among other things, emphasizes that colonization is a requirement of national defense, strengthening the national population on the borders, in the north and in the south. [ 45 ] In addition, that policy made efforts to thin out the Albanian population as much as possible and to establish colonies in those homogeneous territories and settlements inhabited entirely by Albanian population, that is, in those regions where Albanians lived in large numbers, and it was intended to colonize those ethnically pure Albanian territories such as: 

Drenica, Llapi, Llapuša, parts of the Dukagjini Plain, Kosovo, etc., and to break the national homogeneity of those settlements and territories in question. Because as is known, in the Llapi region before the Serbian invasion in 1912 there were no Serb inhabitants, in the present-day municipality of Deçan there were Serbs only in the Deçan monastery and some in the village of Lloqan whose origins need to be studied, in the city of Gjakova there were a few Serbian families, in the present-day municipality of Malisheva there were Serbs only in the villages of Kijevë and Mleqan, the Drenica region, especially the southern one, had no Serbs at all, and so on.

The colonization program was a complex phenomenon, with different goals: its general and long-term goal was, as stated, to change the national structure of the population in Kosovo (as well as in Macedonia, which was also being colonized), but in the meantime, other factors were also mixed in. One such factor was the desire to stop the wave of population from Serbia and Montenegro, which was emigrating to America, by offering them free land near their homes. 

Another factor was the policy of punishing the Kachaks by confiscating their property: the most efficient way of implementing this punishment was to give their lands to the colonists. There was even another plan (seriously considered in Belgrade, in 1921, but not implemented at all) for the colonization of Kosovo by 7,000 Russian soldiers of General Wrangel – a kind of Serbian equivalent to the Ottoman policy of placing warlike Circassians in regions of strategic importance. [ 46 ]

With the implementation of agrarian colonization in Kosovo, new settler settlements were successively created. The government aimed to establish settlements in those territories and settlements inhabited entirely by Albanian population in order to disintegrate, destroy the Albanian national homogeneity of those settlements and to implement the national goal of colonization. In particular, it was intended to carry out ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population, especially around the border with Albania and in these parts to settle settlers and establish settler settlements. 

This was intended to form a buffer zone, to interrupt the existing organic territorial, national, cultural, family and spiritual connection of the Albanian population. In implementing the policy of colonization of Kosovo, namely the establishment of new settler settlements, the agrarian bodies took into account exclusively national-political and state interests, leaving aside the fact that the creation and development of new settlements should have the purpose of developing an economic and social nature.

The state bodies wanted, under the guise of agrarian reform and colonization, to implement the policy of brutal oppression of the Albanian population, confiscation of the land of Albanian peasants, to encourage the tendency of its migration to Turkey and Albania and to realize the idea of ​​nationalization and Serbization of Kosovo. With this, the Yugoslav hegemonic policy, considering that the homogeneous autochthonous Albanian population, which lives in large numbers and can hardly be assimilated due to its culture and language different from the Slavic one, found the method of terror, violence, land seizure and forced displacement of the Albanian population outside their homeland, and with this to acquire large areas of arable land, to settle a large number of settlers on it. In order to seize the lands, the army and the gendarmerie often together with the settler element, which they supplied with weapons and ammunition, launched a terrorist action against the Albanians.

The so-called volunteers, Chetniks, optants, etc., had come from almost all parts of bourgeois Yugoslavia, such as Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, Banja, Southern Serbia, Vojvodina, etc. However, there were also settlers from several foreign countries such as Russia, Italy, Hungary, Albania, America, etc. The government gave them large land holdings, the largest area taken from Albanian owners, forcing them to move or become servants of the new “agallars”, working the land for them and paying taxes for that land. 

The government also placed the settlers in the homes of local Albanian villagers and those who had been displaced. In addition to the land given free of charge, the government built houses for some of the settlers, as well as provided them with assistance in construction materials, tools, and loans, exempting them from state taxes for 10 years and municipal taxes for 5 years, while they would receive full rights as owners – with the right to sell it – after ten years, free transportation of their land, construction materials, tools, livestock, etc. to the place of settlement, etc. Agricultural cooperatives were formed from which the settlers received interest-free loans, construction materials, and other assistance.

Among the arriving settlers, to whom the state had given land, in addition to peasant farmers, there were also merchants, pensioners, officers, gendarmes, clerks, etc. To encourage and attract the settlers to come and settle in Kosovo, the Serbian propaganda machine used propaganda in various forms that there was more land in Kosovo, cheaper houses, etc.

The Slavic settlers, in addition to the “utrina” land, pastures and others, were specially allocated fertile arable land taken from Albanian owners, who were forced to move abroad or take from the settlers and work their own land half or with a share and for it to pay taxes. The government also took the land from Albanian owners with the motivation that it was included in the agrarian complex and for that it often did not give any compensation, or if it gave that land, it gave it of poor quality.

As previously noted, all government bodies were engaged in the implementation of colonization, starting from the lowest local ones to the highest state ones. In other words, the entire state machinery was engaged. They had never taken into account the position of the Albanian peasant. On the contrary, in the actions of taking land, various methods were used, so there were cases when the land was taken up to the doorstep of the house, and in order to enter the house, the Albanian would now be forced to pass through the “property” of the colonizer.

With the seizure of the properties of Albanian residents in various forms, especially those of the Kaçaks, who were considered enemies of the state, allegedly surplus land, unincorporated land, property of the entire village, numerous forest complexes, etc.

In the organized activity for the continuous promotion of Albanian migration and colonization with Slavic settlers, in their place, the state administration had left a special place to propaganda, especially the press, which was supposed to contribute to the psychological preparation of the opinion within the country to support the migration and to justify this before the foreign opinion. Meanwhile, from the settlers, from the whole country and abroad to encourage and attract them to settle in Kosovo, promising them more land, houses, agricultural tools, tax relief, loans, etc. With this, the bourgeois press aimed to create a state of constant tension among the Albanian population, which was supposed to influence the further increase of migration. 

Most newspapers, especially those in Belgrade, published slanderous, tendentious articles, presenting the displacement as a “desire” of the “Muslim” population, while colonization was justified by the free land and the interests the state had in colonizing these territories with the Christian element from the point of view of defense.

The mass expropriation of the Albanian peasantry resulted in its impoverishment. As a result of ethnic cleansing and the colonization of Albanian lands, a significant change occurred in the ethnic structure of the population. Faced with their difficult position, caused by the various pressures exerted by the military police power of bourgeois Yugoslavia, and not finding elementary legal protection for their property and lives, and also not being helped with great ease in preparing travel documentation, which was offered by that same power, part of the Albanian people emigrated to Turkey, and part to Albania. 

The displacement of Albanians from their homeland was motivated by anti-Albanian and discriminatory policies. This process, driven by the negative attitudes and prejudices of the ruling circles towards Albanians and their countries, had begun even during the earliest historical periods. To encourage migration, the bourgeois government also harassed the Albanians in their national and religious feelings, such as by destroying mosques, cemeteries, etc.

With the settlement of settlers, many new settlements were created which were baptized with Slavic names, such as Tankosić, Nova Šumadia, Lazarevo, Devet Jugović, Hercegova, Dušanova, Serbobran, Petrovec, Petrović, Kralica, and many others. However, some remaining Albanian toponyms which had been changed since the Middle Ages, are now being changed arbitrarily in this period, such as Ferizaj to Uroševac, Hani i Elezit to Gjeneral Janović, Globoderi to Obiliq, Ujmiri to Dobravodë, Azizia to Miloševë, and many others. This was also discussed at an inter-ministerial conference in 1937 on the change of geographical names.

Serbian ultranationalists, starting with Garašanin, the Serbian Cultural Club, the infamous 1938 Convention on Relocation, continued their efforts to implement their plans after the end of World War II, such as Vasa Čubrilović’s new Elaborate entitled “The Problem of Minorities in Yugoslavia”. He “taught” the new government that in addition to military purges during operations, other methods should be used to force national minorities to relocate, to establish concentration camps for them, and to confiscate their property.

Based on statistical data, the government managed to appropriate about 129,212.94 ha of land in Kosovo between the two wars, supposedly for the needs of agrarian reform. [ 47 ] During this period, 13,482 families with about 67,410 members were settled in 594 settlements. [ 48 ] According to another source, 21,876 families were given 81,134.49 ha in 14 districts of Kosovo. [ 49 ] According to a report by the Supreme Directorate of Agrarian Reform in Skopje, by the end of October 1940, 381,245 ha of land had been allocated to the agrarian directorates in Peja, Ferizaj, Skopje and Prizren. [ 50 ] Considerable land was given to Orthodox churches and monasteries, gendarmerie stations, etc. 

According to a report of the Supreme Directorate of Agrarian Reform in Skopje, sec. no. 344, dated 12.XI 1940, in the territory of this Directorate, 569 ha of land were allocated to churches and monasteries, 1,342 ha to the army, 250 ha to the gendarmerie and others. [ 51 ] Meanwhile, on the other hand, the property of endowments, mosques, tekkes, etc. was also taken without any compensation and in various forms of benefits. No proper evidence was kept for the taking of these properties, considering them as free properties or included in the agrarian complex. It should be mentioned that in 1927, the agrarian authorities gave the Deçan Monastery the properties of 50 Albanian families of the village of Isniq, while the Deviç Monastery was given the properties of 20 Albanian families of the village of Llaushë, municipality of Skënderaj.

It should be noted that the number of settlers settled in Kosovo is greater than the official Serbian statistics give, because this number only refers to families that have officially been allocated land. Families that have seized land in various ways have been left out, those who came to the city – as clerks, gendarmes, merchants and other professions. Each family received an average of 8.45 ha of land, but there were many cases when a family received up to 45 ha of land. Meanwhile, there were cases when Albanian families had their land taken away completely up to the doorstep of their house, so that the infamous decree-law, which stipulated that Albanian families should be left with 0.40 ha of land per family member, was not implemented.

In the territory of Kosovo, Slavic settlers settled in the following settlements: [ 52 ]

Municipality of Pristina : Badofci (13 families), Ballabani (9), Barileva (13), Besia (2), Çagllavica (3), Dabisheci (17), Gllogovica (6), Hajkobilla (5), Hajvalia (48), Keçëkolla (5), Koliçi (4), Lebana (8), Makoci (3), Mareci (4), Nëntë Jugoviçët (66), Nisheci (9), Orlloviqi (34), Prapashtica (26), Pristina (70), Slivova (2), Teneshdolli (3), Truda (2) and Vranidolli (3).

Municipality of Fushë-Kosovo : Batusa (1), Bardhi i Madh (23), Fushë Kosova (142), Graboci i Poshtëm (20), Harilaqi (18), Henci (2), Krivova (25), Miradia e Epërme (80), Nakarada (3), Pomozotini (40), Slatina e Madhe (33) and Vrogolia (11).

Municipality of Obiliq : Babimoc (1), Bakshia-Nëntë Jugoviët Locality (48); Breznica (58), Caravadica (3), Dobrosella (34), Hadja (4), Dardhishta (15), Lajthishta (4), Lazareva (17), Mazgiti (11), Milosheva (68), Miniera e Kosova (9), Obiliq (122), Plemetini (6), Raskova (6) and Siboci (7).

Municipality of Podujevo : Bajçina (12), Balloci (71), Batllava (28), Bellopoja (39), Brvenik (7), Braina (6), Bradashi (24), Burica (4), Dobrdol (28), Dobratini (11), Dumnica e Epërme (1), Dumnica e Poshtme (137), Dumoshi (12), Dyzi (4), Gërdoci (9), Gllamniku (43), Halabak (5), Herrtica (36), Kaçibegu (7), Katunishta (23), Kërpimehu (21), Konusheci (24), Kushevica (13), Letanci (5), Livadica (33), Lupçi i Poshtëm (14), Llapashtica e Epërme (63), Llapashtica e Poshtëm (21), Llausha (30), Lluga (3), Luzhani (9), Majaci (8), Merdari (33), Metërgoci (39), Metohija (7), Miroc (14), Murgulla (4), Obranca (42), Orllani (56), Pakashtica (28), Penuha (11), Perani (21), Përpolci (5), Podjevo (157), Pollata (1), Potoku (3), Radujeci (31), Repa (54), Revuçi (33), Sallabaja (5), Sfeçla (48), Siboci i Epërm (38), Siboci i Poshtëm (9), Slatina (1), Surkiš (17), Shajkoci (17), Šakovica (8), Shtedim (15), Terrnava (22), Turuçica (37) and Zakuti (15).

Municipality of Lipjan : Akllapi (3), Babushi i Muhaxhirëve (17), Baica (4), Banulla (9), Bregu i Zi (9), Bujani (8), Dobraja e Madhe (6), Dobraja e Vogël (10), Gadime e Epërme (5), Gadime e Poshtme (9), Gllogoci (3), Gracka (82), Hallaçi i Vogël (6), Lepia (4), Lipjani (10), Llugaxhia (3), Lluga (34), Magurja (11), Mareci (8), Medveci (13), Poturoci (17), Qyqylaga (12), Radeva (6), Ribari i Madh (1), Rubofci (4), Rufci i Ri (40), Shala (Sedllari) (1), Suhadolli (125), Topliçani (5), Vërsheci (13), Vrella e Goleshit (111).

Municipality of Ferizaj : Babushi i Serbëve (6), Bibaj (13), Cërnilla (12), Doganaj (4), Ferizaj (36), Gaçka (around 20 families), Gërlica (7), Gremja (23), Komogllava (5), Kosharja (13), Lloshkobarja (26), Mirashi (22), Mirosala (16), Muhoci (19), Nekudini (5), Nerodimja (8), Nerodimja e Poshtme (1), Papazi (23), Pleshina (25),* Pojatishta (22), Prelezi i Jerlive (37), Prelezi i Muhaxhirëve (7), Rahovica (15), Raka (33), Sazlia (10), Slivova (15), Softoviqi (20), Sojeva (14), Katuni i Vjetër (39), Surqina (10), Talinoc i Jerlive (5), Talinoc i Muhaxhirëve (25), Tankosiqi (119), Terni (2), Varoshi (13) and Zaskok (20).

Municipality of Shtime : Glavica (6), Godanci i Poshtem (14), Gjurkoci (9), Petroviqi (Pajtimit Neighborhood) (22), Muzeqina (3), Raçak (1), Rashinca (15), Shtime (3) and Vojnofci (8).

Municipality of Kaçanik : Elezaj (9), Gabrica (1), Old Kaçanik (29), Reka (10) and Stagova (3).

Municipality of Gllogoc : Abria e Epërme (1), Arllati (8), Baica (11), Dobrasheci (12), Domaneku (10), Fushtica e Poshtme (12), Gllanasella (27), Gllobari (15), Komarani (91), while in the locality of Ostrok (8), Karratica e Epërme (5), Karratica e Poshmë (18), Crikova (21), Likoshani (4), Llapushnik (31), Negroci (9), the locality of Negroci – Llapushnik (29), Pokleku (10), Polluzha (11), Çikatova e Re (163), Çikatova e Vjetër (2), Sankoci (5), Shtrubullova (2), Tërsteniku (22), Zabeli i Poshmëm (16) and the locality of Zabeli – Krivova (26).

Municipality of Skënderaj : Buroja (39), the locality of Çubrel-Llaushë-Vitakë (8), Izbica (8), Klina e Epërme (41), Klina e Mesme (7), the locality of Kodra e Tomës in the triangle of Tërnafc-Prekaz-Klinë (51), Klladërnica (1), Kosieri i Ri (20), Kallica (48), Kuçica (2), Likoci (1), Lubovec (9), the locality of Kolena-Lubovec (2), Makërmali (11), Mikushnica (26), Fshati i Ri (Novosella) (13), Padalishta (1), Polaci i Ri (55), Polluzha (13), Prekazi i Epërm (22), Prekazi i Poshtëm (9), Radisheva (2), Skënderaj (Serbica) (55), Tërnafci (8), Turiçeci (25), Vitaku (12) and Vojniku (32).

Municipality of Vushtrri : Akrashtica (3), Beçiqi (10), Bivolaku (8), Brusniku (8), Bukoshi (58), Cecelia (5), Dalaku (14), Druari (26), Druari-Resniku locality (35), Dobërlluka (6), Dubofci (8), Dumnica e Epërme (9), Dumnica e Llugave (15), Dumnica e Poshtme (19), Galica (6), Graca (6), Graca-Stanofci i Epërm locality (28), Hercegova (46), Jezera (Lake) (41), Kollo (15), Mavriqi (5), Nedakoci (12), Novolani (32), Maxhunaj (8), Pantina (16), Pestova (15), Resniku (6), Ropica (5), Samadrexha (29), Sllakofci (1), Slatina (7), Smrokonica (1), Stanofci i Epërm (5), Stanofci i Poshtme (9), Studimja e Poshtme (8), Sverçak i Epërm (19), Sverçak i Poshtme (52), Shalci (16), Shtitarica (1), Taraxha (15), Tëllobuçi (1), Lumi i Madh (28), Vërnica (17), Vilanci (17), Vushtrri (many families), Zagora (21) and in the locality Zhilivoda-Siboci (6).

Municipality of Mitrovica : Brabaniqi (3), Gushafci (7), Kciqi i Madh (2), Kopriva (2), Lisica (2), Lushta (13), Mitrovica (30), Pirqa (12), Shipoli (45), Shupkoci (1), Suhadolli i Epërm (10), Frashëri (Svinjari) (14), Vaganica (12), Vërnica (10), Vinarci i Poshtëm (6) and Zhabari i Poshtëm (3).

Municipality of Zvecan : Korila (1).

Municipality of Leposavic : Kijavčiqi (1) and Koparići (1).

Municipality of Kamenica : Berivojca (30), Bozhevci (1), Bratilloci (1), Busovata (2), Dajkoci (6), Drenoci (14), Firiqeja (2), Gllogoci (1), Hajnoci (2), Hodonoci (10), Hogoshti (7), Kamenica (6), Karaçeva e Eperme (11), Kollolleçi (29), Kopernica (5), Koretina (68), Miganofci (1), Moçari (1), Muçivërci (13), Çarakofci (8), Rubofci (6), Rogana (21), Shipashnica e Poshtme (12), Strelica (2), Cfirca (3), Tërstena (2) and Topanica (27).

Municipality of Viti : Ballanca (11), Begunca (3), Binça (2), Buzoviku (37), Budrika e Epërme (2), Devaja (3), Devaja-Vrapçiqi locality (17), Drobeshi (39), Gërmova (50), Gërçari (3), Gjylekari (16), Goshica (40), Kabashi (34), Mogilla (21), Podgorci (3), Pozherani (54), Radivojci (1), Ramjani i Epërm (18), Ramnishta (9), Remniku (19), Sadovina e Çerkezëve (62), Sadovina e Jerlive (11), Shasharja (12), Slatina e Epërme (17), Smira (13), Tërpeza (13), Tërsteniku (1), Vërboci (3), Vitia (25) and Zhitia (9).

Municipality of Istog : Banica (27), Banja (42), Bellopoja (14), Caralluka (5), Dobruša (234), Dragalefci (7), Dreja (4), Dubova e Vogël (7), Dubrava (103), Gurrakoc (33), Istog (15), Kaliçan (28), Kashica (3), Kërrnina (37), Kovrraga (31), Lluga (1), Llukac i Begut (8), Llukac i Thatë (2), Lubova (84), Lubozhda (11), Muzhevina (6), Orobërda (97), Prekalla (1), Prigoda (11), Rakoshi (32), Sërbobrani (30), Shalinovica (20), Staradran (9), Studenica (4), Suhogërla (Syrigana) (2), Shushica (70), Tomoci (5), Tuçepi (39), Uça (1), Veriqi (62), Vrella (16), Zallçi (25) and Zhakova (7).

Municipality of Klina : Biça (17), Bokshiqi (14), Budisallci (12), Caraviku (8), Çabiqi (4), Deiqi (14), Dollci (2), Dollova (13), Dranoshiqi (29), Drërsnik (3), Gjyrgjevik i Madh (7), Gjyrgjevik i Vogël (28), Gllareva (13), Grabanica (5), in the locality Arat e Gjata (24), Gremnik (4), Jagoda (43), Jashanica (73), Kërnica (24), Klinafci (18), Klina (14), Këpuzi (44), Krysheva (23), Pjetërqi i Epërm (15), Pjetërqi i Poshtëm (13), Pogragja (7), Qeskova (6), Qypeva (5), Radulloc, Renoci (10), Jashanica-Resniku (52), Shtupeli (41), Stupa (25), Ujmiri (6), Videja (19), Zajm-Deiqi-Videja-Drenoc Locality (51), Volljaka (6), Zabërgja (1), Zajmi (12), Zllakuçani (23) and in the Klina-Zallkuçani locality (41).

Municipality of Malisheva : Banja (18), Bellanica (14), Bubaveci (14), Bubli (11), in the locality Mirusha-Carravrana (25), Carralluka (22), Damaneku (10), Jançishta (1), Lashkadrenoci (24), Kjeva (9), Lladroviqi (20), Llazica (42), Lubizhda (23), Malisheva 20, Milanoviqi (Shkoza) (4), Mirusha (12), Mleçani (26), Pagarusha 3, Locality Mleçan-Plloçicë (20), Plloçica (9), Panorci (25), locality Panorci-Bubli (31), Seniku (8), Shkarashniku ​​(9), Tërpeza (23), Locality Tërpeza-Arllati (19), Turjaka (8) and in the locality Vërmica-Bellanica (9).

Municipality of Rahovec : Bellacërka (19), Bellacërka-Xërxa-Gexha-Radosta locality (119), Brënjaca (11), Brestofci (2), Celina (1), Çifllaku (20), Deja (12), Gexha (8), Kramoviku (7), Kramovik-Çifllak locality (23), Krusha e Madhe (41), Mrasori (3), Nushpala (13), Radosta (20), Rahovec (9), Ratkoci (21), in the locality Ratkoci-Vranjaku-Nushpala (24), Saroshi (11), Sopaniçi (31), Vranjaka (7) and Xërxa (46).

Municipality of Gjakova : Babaj Bokës (3), Bardhaniqi (11), in the Bardhaniqi-Llugaxhia locality (26), Batusha (27), Beci (82), Berjahu (5), Bardosana (24), Bishtazhini (5), in the Bishtazhin-Lipovec-Smaç locality (33), Biteshi i Poshtëm (41), Biteshi i Epërm (36), Brekoci (36), Brovina (3), Brovinë-Morinë locality (37), Cërmjani (37), in the Varret e Cermjanit locality (6), in the Drini-Cërmjani locality (13), Dallashaj (25), Damjani (20), Deva (16), Doblibare (28), Dobrixha (30), Dobroshi (9), in the Kallavaj field between Dobroshi and Junik (92), Doli (17), in the Doli-Zhubi locality (111), Dujaka (11), Firaja (4), Firza (33), Gërçina (12), Gërgoci (16), Gradisha (44), Gjakova (26), Fusha e Gjakova (42), Nakarada locality near Gjakova (59), Goden-Zulfaj locality (7), Guska (7), Hereçi (66), in the Malet e Hereçit locality (58), Jabllanica (15), in the Jabllanicë-Luti-Nevxhe-Vardishtë locality (27), Jahoci (21), Janoshi (22), Kodralia (14), in the Kodralia – Neci locality (39), Korenica (55), Kralani (37), Kusari (6), Kushaveci (6), Lipoveci (18), Llugaxhia (11), in the Bardhoq-Llugaxhia locality (26), Lugbunari (122), Marmulli (79), Milena-Rezina locality (19), Meja-Orizë (31), Meça (37), in the Meça-Cërmjani locality (43), Moglica (9), in the Moglica-Raça-Doli locality (39), Mulliqi (13), Morina (5), Neci (77), Nivokazi (19), Novosella e Epërme (2), Novosella e Poshtme (8), Osek Hyla (21), Osek Pasha (2), Pacaj (7), Palabardhi (4), Plançori (26), Ponosheci (51), Popoci (5), Qerimi (3), Raça (35), Radoniqi (128), Rakoci (37), Rogova (47), Rracaj (22), Rrypaj (7), Sheremeti (34), Shishmani (34), Shishmani i Bokës (11), Skivjani (27), Smaqi (17), Smolica (19), Stublla (21), Trakaniqi (8), Ujzi (14), Vogova (20), Vraniqi (32), Sadik Aga’s Zidi (5), Zhabeli (8), Zhdrella (7) and Zhubi (7).

Municipality of Prizren : Dushanova (100), Grazhdaniku (4), Hatmaxha (5), Hoça e Qytetit (16), Kabashi (14), Kabashi i Hasit (9), Korisha-Kabashi locality (11), Kushnini (8), Landovica (2), Lugishta (14), in the Lugishte-Kabash locality (10), Lutogllava (37), Shumadia e Re (55), Petrovasella (14), Prizreni (many families), Romaja (6), Trepetnica, Tupec (18), Vërmica (3), Vllashnja (20) and Zhuri (4).

Municipality of Suhareka : Dubrava (3), Duhla (30), Goranca-Novaci locality (4), Grejkoci (11), Gjinoc (15), Javori (3), Leshani (7), Nëpërbishti (2), Reshtani (7), Savrova (4), Semetishti (7), Studençan (17), Suhareka (5), Shiroka (13), Terni (17) and Topliçan (26).

Some archival documents that prove the colonization of Kosovo

Regarding the colonization of Kosovo with the Slavic element and the displacement of Albanians outside their homeland, there are numerous archival documents that prove this. These documents are today preserved in various archives in Belgrade, Tirana, London, Pristina, Istanbul, Skopje, Vienna, Rome, etc.

The most important documents are undoubtedly kept in the Archives of Yugoslavia, in the relevant Ministries in Belgrade, especially in that of agrarian reform and Finance. Even in the Archives of Kosovo in the funds of the District and District Courts there are documents that shed light on this. While the agrarian reform fund, the card file of about 14,500 families with more than 70,000 inhabitants, the fund of the Revision of the agrarian reform 1945-1945 that functioned in Kosovo within the framework of the Provincial People’s Council and some parts of the funds, the Serbian government during the time of violent measures in the Archives of Kosovo 1990-1999, a part of it was taken and sent to Belgrade. The purpose is known, the loss of traces of factual property-legal evidence and for the purposes of manipulations and subsequent benefits.

However, during my scientific research for this purpose, I have registered a considerable number of these documents, some of which we are presenting in this case only a few that shed light on this genocidal form from the property-legal aspect, which is the most sensitive and key issue that will be discussed during the talks of the various commissions on the status of Kosovo, reparations, compensation, etc. These documents reflect the methods, forms, manner, purpose, propaganda, etc. used by the government to carry out colonization and displacement, resistance against colonization and displacement, and their consequences.

Archival documents prove that immediately after 1912, and during a break due to World War I at the end of 1918 due to violence, the great Albanian migration and the arrival and settlement of the Slavic population in Albanian territories began. Thus, on 12.01.1919, in letter no. 13, Company I of the III Battalion of the Yugoslav regiment informed the Commander of the III Battalion from Plava about the arrival of 30 Albanians from Dukagjini, whose houses had been burned there. [ 53 ] Lazër Mjeda,

Archbishop of Skopje, from Prizren on August 29, 1919, wrote to His Eminence His Excellency, His Holiness Cardinal Von Rossum, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation, De Propoganda Fide, Rome, among other things, this: “….. And while the Serbs (the government) give weapons and ammunition, the Muslims and the Albanian Catholics torture them to extract those weapons that they do not have…” [ 54 ]

The Ministry of the Army and Navy on 12.IX.1919 in Belgrade informs the Ministry of Agrarian Reform about permission that the commands of the regimental districts can provide weapons, according to the need, to the settlers in Dukagjin, Drenica, Kosovo, the Dojran and Maleshk districts. They can also provide firearms and ammunition to the commands of the regimental districts within the limits of real needs, to the police and municipal authorities for maintaining order and performing guard service in the villages. [ 55 ] The Main Directorate in Montenegro of the Ministry of Agrarian Reform in Cetinje, with letter no. 2547, dated 20.VII.1921 – reports regarding the commitment of the military authorities for the colonization of Peja. The Ministry of the Army and Navy orders the Territory Commander of the 2nd Army to escort the settlers from Berani to Peja, while the Commander of the 3rd Army from Peja to Drenica and requests that the settlers be given weapons and ammunition. [ 56]

In addition to violence and terror, there was also a massacre of the Albanian population, with the aim of achieving colonization. The head of the Albanian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, Mithat Frashëri, on April 29, 1921, addressed the Secretary-General of the League of Nations, informing him of the Serbian excesses against the Albanians, who had been subject to Serbian rule since 1912, and that they were continuing and becoming more frequent, so that the Albanian element was in danger of total destruction. 

The Albanians, who inhabited their own territories, were being robbed of their property, were being forcibly expelled from their villages, and in their place were being settled by Russian settlers. In the last three months alone, more than 2,000 Albanians were murdered for no reason, not to mention their homes were destroyed, their property was looted, so they were forced to flee and settle in Albania. However, Serbia has proclaimed that the families of those refugees will be deported and all their property will be confiscated. [ 57 ]

On 10.V.1921. Mr. Aubrey Herbert, asked questions in the British Parliament about the Serbian massacres against Albanians: “Are you aware that on January 28 two Serbian battalions commanded by a major went to the villages of Llap, near Pristina Keçekollë, Prapashticë and Sharban, where they sent the male inhabitants aged 12 years near a mountain and massacred them with machine guns, then went into the villages and set fire to their houses and massacred all the women and children, leaving only 14 survivors from the population of 1,680 people in 320 houses and has any information been requested from the Yugoslav government regarding this?” [ 58 ] 

Some residents of the village of Prapashticë, in their complaint in 1922, write about the murder of their villagers, the officials of the Ministry of Agrarian Reform are measuring their lands and taking them away. [ 59 ] Then, in an article in the newspaper “Pravda”, no. 196, dated 11.XII 1923, Sarajevo, it is written about the murder of three Montenegrins in the village of Vërnica, municipality of Qyqavica by a Kaçak, the next day the Montenegrin settlers with weapons in hand attacked the Albanians, beat whoever they found, then killed 15 and injured 3 Albanians. The government remained passive.

Regarding the murders and massacres, the Belgrade newspaper “Rad”, dated August 5, 1925, writes: “For several days now, Albanian houses have been burning. It is difficult to hear the screams of children and the elderly who are being mistreated and trampled on with the intention of looting them”.., “In Arnautlluk, the rifles echo. Entire areas inhabited by Albanians are boiling with riots similar to those in Ireland… Serbia has formed… a province with second-class citizens. Entire villages are being burned there, many people are being killed, the atrocities are limitless. 

No one in this country has any shame anymore. Like the last cannibal, the government preaches the extermination of a population because of religious and national hatred. No one asks who pushed those people to flee. No one will see that our policemen and civil servants, who are guilty of the blood that has been shed there since the “liberation”, should be stopped. But they are being preached new slaughter and bloodshed. 

Albanian villages resemble real massacres”… “The work was more efficient until now, he slaughtered Albanian women and children successfully. He knew how to kill them with one bullet out of six. Until he got tired, he stabbed people in Kosovo”.

The report of the magazine “Vullneti” entitled “The Peace of Kosovo” from 1930, in which, among other things, it is emphasized that systematic colonization is taking place in these regions with the aim of increasing the percentage of Serbs to 80% in all areas, especially in the border areas. The Serbian element is being colonized exclusively in such a way as to create a barrier between the Albanians and the state. [ 60 ] 

Meanwhile, from the file “Albanian Minority” and “Colonization” of the Territorial Headquarters of the Third Army, sec.gj.ob.r.1859/1938, among other things, he writes to the Prefect of the Main General Staff, proposing measures, according to them, efficient, for the implementation of the colonization and displacement of Albanians, such as: that at least 50% of Serbian settlers be settled in the compact Albanian areas in Kosovo in order to break up the compact Albanian mass, that new military garrisons be formed, especially from the border area, while the Turkish element be moved only to the extent that the displacement of Albanians can be implemented, that colonization be implemented, especially in the border area; the expulsion of all political emigrants; in the pure Albanian areas, that children not be required to go to school, i.e. that they not be educated, that physical education courses for young people not be held and that young people not be prepared prematurely as fighters. In addition, the peasant element in particular must be displaced in order to obtain free land for colonization. [ 61 ]

The aim of the ruling circles, especially the police ones, was to first force the people of the village with authority, the rich, the village nobility, especially the landowners, to move, because the others would follow them. Meanwhile, in another letter rez.gj.o.nr.3550/1938 written to the Minister of the Army and Navy, he emphasizes: The need to create new garrisons in Rahovec, Suhareka, Podjevo, Vushtrri, Gjilan as support for the destruction of compact Albanian masses and ensuring colonization in these areas. 

It is known that there is a Convention according to which a large number of families, which do not belong to the Serbian population, will be moved first of all from the border area at a distance of 50 km. Then, among other things, he presents this: “For the definitive occupation of these areas in the national aspect, it is necessary, as stated in the previous presentation, the closest possible colonization of our healthy element near the gradual displacement of the Albanian population. If this colonization is not implemented in the shortest possible time and in the most rational manner, there is a risk that it will become impossible in the future due to the large annual increase of the Albanian element. Efficient colonization in pure Albanian settlements can only rely on the proposed garrisons formed in the Territory of the Kosovo Division”. [ 62 ]

At this time, the seizure of various lands and properties began immediately, especially from the displaced. The Serbian governors themselves were also involved in this direction, such as Nikolla Pashiqi with several other bourgeois such as priest Miniqi, Jakov Çobriqi, etc. They had seized more than 300 ha of land around the Mausoleum of Sultan Murat, the properties of the villages of Mazgit and Azizi (the inhabitants of the latter with more than 100 houses had been forced to move to Turkey in the years 1912-1914). [ 63 ] 

Punisha Raçiqi had taken 3500 ha of forest land in the mountains of Deçan and 50 ha of fertile land in the Skopje plain. In addition to the peasant settlers, land in Kosovo was also taken by various categories of the population, people who did not have a profession in agriculture, such as clerks, gendarmes, merchants, officers, pensioners, etc. As the newspaper “Socijalistička Zora”, Skopje, no. 31, dated 16.V.1920 writes – the granting of already insufficient communal lands for pastures as well as the taking of land from poor peasants proven by land titles, and its giving to the unemployed, officers, engineers, merchants, etc. 

While, the magazine “Policija” no. 3-4 of 1922, publishes a speech by V. Bojlozevic, prefect of the Gračanica District, where he presents that a large number of the so-called settlers live in towns and live comfortably, have other professions, not agriculture, that among them there are clerks, servants, craftsmen and merchants, and in that way they become owners and new “agas”, they give their land away for others to work. So, instead of the agrarian reform eliminating feudal relations, it is creating them again, but only with the difference that Serbian agallars are replacing the “Turkish” ones. 

Even Nedelko Simonović, a former deputy, in his report dated 13.VII 1927, reported on the negative results due to the implementation of the national policy by looters and vagabonds. He says, the foreign land was taken by rich newcomers or retired officials, in an abnormal and completely illegal manner, that land which was not involved in the agrarian strike. They sold the taken land, and then again they took other land, or they gave it to someone else to work, while they are criticizing the current state regulation in cafes. [ 64 ] Often as a reward instead of a fee, state officials were given the land of the kaçaks. 

A settler in his complaint addressed to King Alexander on 6.IX.1932, because they had taken his land, because he had not settled on it, emphasizes that there are pensioners and civil servants, who have received land from the state, who are not only not working it, but are also selling it. They have also sold their previous property in the territories of their homeland. Thus, for example, a settler from Peja on 10 January 1927, in her complaint, among other things, emphasizes that she sold all her parents’ property, which she had in the district of Kollashin, for 60,000 dinars.[ 65 ] 

The gendarmerie station in Landovica, Prizren, with letter no. 680, dated 7.VI.1936, informs the Prefect of the Sharr District regarding this: “….The settlers, who have taken the land in the “Tupec” complex, have been protected by this station as much as possible. However, most of these settlers have given the land to Albanians to continue to work it for them on a half-share basis under various agreements, while some of them are found in Serbia and Montenegro, in their homes, instead of working the land they have taken themselves. Then, there are cases where some were not personally present when the land was given, so they do not even know the real rents of their plots…”. [ 66 ]

Regarding the implementation of the so-called agrarian reform as a mask for the implementation of colonization, several newspapers of the time and documents testify to the intentions and misuses. Thus, the newspaper “Pravda” no. 70, Sarajevo on 10.VII 1920, among other things he writes: “…That our entire Kingdom is full of large feudal and capitalist properties, especially of the large state domain, but still the entire main agrarian issue has been transferred to Bosnia and Old Serbia (Kosovo NO). 

Why? Croatia is full of latifundia, Slavonia too, Banat, Baçka and Baranja too, but still other provisions and decree-laws are issued for these regions, while Šumadija, which also has quite a lot of capitalist and feudal latifundia, which are worked with the help of workers and peasants, has been separated from the agrarian reform. The slogan, that the land will belong to those who work it, is relevant only in Bosnia and Old Serbia (Kosovo NO), Why?…”. The newspaper “Vreme”, dated 2.01.1923, regarding the disorders of the “Muslims” in the so-called “Southern Serbia” (Kosovo and Macedonia NOT) emphasizes that they are not caused, supposedly by irredentists, but by the weak administration, which has included all categories of employees. Meanwhile, the magazine “Agrarni Pregled” no. 1/1924, emphasizes that colonization began before the agrarian reform, and then went parallel to it, instead of coming after it. 

It is implemented without a plan, without any meaning, without organized institutions and without means. The agrarian administration is incompetent, without knowledge, lacking intelligence. Land is being speculated on, 40% of the land has not been taken by farmers, but by various speculators, the unemployed, parasites. The newspaper “Pravda” no. 27 dated 29.01.1925, Belgrade, publishes a dispatch from N. Petrovic, which states that on all sides there is severe lawlessness and violence against good and wise citizens. The police bodies, starting from the zhupani to the gendarmes, have trampled the constitution and the law and are using impermissible means against all citizens, who have not given visible signs that they are with the current government.

The dictatorship of January 6, 1929 made the repression even more brutal. On the occasion of the visit that the king paid to Gjilan, to the Albanian villagers of Pozheran regarding the injustice of the agrarian districts, he replied angrily: “Go to Turkey, if you are not satisfied”! 

The Naçellnik of the Zveçan district – Kujunxiq, in 1930, is praised for having moved to Asia, from where they will never return, more than 32,000 Albanians dangerous to the state, while they have sold their land at very low prices to Montenegrin settlers and locals, while 6,000 others have gone to Albania. [ 67 ] The Minister of Communications Dr. Spaho had received many complaints from the Albanians of Kosovo and Macedonia. He informed the Prime Minister M. Stojadinović about this, and in his letter dated 29.VII 1938 he wrote: 

“The current work of the agrarian government in Southern Serbia is contrary to the existing legal provisions and the entire legal order. This violence that is being done against Muslims in Southern Serbia has very unpleasant echoes even here in Bosnia. The world is asking why this is being done only against Albanians, and why it is not being done, for example, against Hungarians, who are in the same position as Albanians. There is no example in the world of land being taken away from farmers through agrarian reform”. [ 68 ]

There are numerous documents on the complaints of Albanian villagers regarding the seizure of land, then summer crops by the government and settlers. They complained, but to whom, there were cases when they were punished. For example, on 19.IX.1934, a settler from Kushnini i Hasi sued Rexhë Sylë that he had planted and worked the land and was not allowing him to work it. Sylë declared to the police that his property was large, they had taken 2/3 of the land and given it to the settlers. 

They had left him only a little land. He complained to the higher authorities, but he had not received a response, and that he had 14 family members and would be left without food. The Prizren District Court found R. Sylë guilty, sentenced him to 300 dinars. and forced him to return the disputed property, the area of ​​6.92 ha and the house. [ 69 ] Then many documents prove that Albanians, having no other choice, are forced to take their land that was taken from them and work it with a bag or half, such as Shaqir Xhemaili from Pirana, [ 70 ] Nik Prenku from Dedaj [ 71 ] and many others. 

There have been cases during the restriction, where even the fruits from the restricted land were taken, so that the poor population was left without even the most basic means of subsistence. The land was supposed to be taken at the end of the economic year, after the fruits were harvested. In this regard, many people did not file complaints because they did not know and because they were poor [ 72 ] and did not have money to pay for the writing of complaints by lawyers who benefited greatly and there were cases where they even allegedly mediated in the sale and purchase, as was the case in the village of Bujan in the municipality of Lypljan.

In a complaint dated 27.VII 1938, it is said that the government bodies in various forms took Albanian properties without any compensation. But, if they gave it, they did so in insufficient quantities and in infertile places and where the land had to be cleared. 

The agrarian government made it impossible for the employees, on the one hand, to find documents with which they would prove the basis of its ownership, while on the other hand, that same government demanded that they present those documents, the issuance of which they made impossible. [ 73 ]

Newspapers of the time, official documents, etc., speak of the fact that, in addition to the colonization of Kosovo with the Slavic national element, the relocation of the Albanian population from these territories is also being implemented. They present their own views, proposing at the same time appropriate measures. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kingdom of the Slovak Republic, with letter no. 11079 dated 26.IV 1923, informs the Minister of Justice of the observation of the movement of Albanians and Turks in the southern part of the country, to go to Turkey, mainly to Thrace, to permanently settle there and become Turkish citizens. 

It requests that the local government be ordered to enable the relocation, informs him of other issues and requests that measures be taken and the relocation of those who “desire” it be enabled. [ 74 ] The newspaper “Politika” dated 6.VIII.1923 regarding the displacement writes, among other things, “… that our national interest, in general, is the Serbization of Kosovo and the Vardar valley and that the issue of displacement is more current and important than many other issues.”

The newspaper “Pravda” no. 81 of 1923, published in Sarajevo, also emphasizes this in this regard: “… colonization has been successful in the Llap valley …. today the Turks are moving out of Llap, which means that colonization has been successful in that region”. Meanwhile, the newspaper with the same name no. 27 of 1925 presents data that colonization is largely affecting the issuance of passports, that the Sandzak and Kosovo are being moved, that land is being bought quite cheaply by those who are leaving, and that there are cases when land is donated or completely left by the displaced, and also emphasizes this: “… that this is a great historical act of this displacement” and proposes: “It is better to have the economic crisis than the three-hundred-year political one”. Documents from the time emphasize that migration to Turkey is taking on large proportions and that villages and towns are losing their old characteristics, especially trade and crafts.

The Albanian Cultural Association in Sofia “Dëshira”, in its numerous protests, especially in 1923 and 1924, among other things, regarding the plunder of lands and colonization, writes: “The real estate of the families who were forced to abandon their country was plundered by the Serbian and Montenegrin families settled by the Serbian authorities, before the expulsion of the legitimate Albanian owners. They were not given any right to dispose of their property, either directly or from government funds. Moreover, the Serbian government confiscated all the property of the Albanians, which is temporarily located, for one reason or another, outside the limits of its territory.” [ 75 ]

Numerous archival documents prove that the government, in order to achieve the goal of displacement and creation of free land for the settlement of settlers, also used various methods of violence. This is best evidenced by the article published in the newspaper “Proleter” No. 10, dated January 20, 1930, entitled “Smrt albancima – Zemlja belorukcima” (“Death to the Albanians – Land of the White Hands”). 

At the beginning of the article written by the Peja villager, it is stated: “In this region, the majority of the villagers are Albanians. This has been our land since ancient times. Up until now, we have been ruled by various rulers, beglars and pashalars. We villagers have fought against them, which is why we have been kept under their rule. At one time, in the Middle Ages, we were also ruled by Serbian feudal lords. In 1912, the Serbs again occupied these lands and since then they have been persecuting the Albanians, taking their land, imposing fines on them, burning their houses, torturing their women and children, and killing the adults…”. 

It also testifies, among other things, to the way in which arable land was taken from the agrarian commissions with the help of gendarmes, for the settlement of settlers in the houses of Albanian villagers, who were obliged to feed them, work the land for them, build their houses, etc., as stated in the document: “We Albanians, among other things, must also build houses for the settlers with our own money, we must buy the rope with which they must hang us. While we were building houses, the settlers settled with us, because they had to immediately stay in the village and immediately begin the Serbization of this region. 

They live in our houses until we build their houses for them or until they expel our Albanian families, and for this they did not pay anything. Every Albanian, to whom that “guest” who had taken their land came, had to feed him and his family until the new harvest and had to to help them in cultivating the land, that same land that was stolen from the Albanian. With that method of the gendarmes and the Belarusian agrarian commission, the settlers are actually becoming bashibuzuks, while the Albanian is a simple slave, who only has to work, keeping quiet, where in addition to the tax that should have been paid to the state and the commune, he must give half of the bounty to the settler, if he does not take it in full. The land in the tax books is registered as the property of the Albanian and they must pay the tax even for that land that was taken from them…” 

Here then facts are given about the imprisonments, the murders of the breadwinners of the families, the staging of various processes, fines, mistreatment, murders, etc. all of this has forced those families, who were declared as Kazakhs, hungry and barefoot, to take the path of exile, leaving the land to the new settlers. According to this, the ground for the displacement of Albanians was prepared by the terrorist organizations “Bella Ruka” and “Narodna Odbrana”. Also, this newspaper, previously in issue 6 dated 1.XII.1929,also emphasizes that in Kosovo the most brutal colonization is being implemented. Entire properties of villagers are being seized through treasonous processes, Albanians are being expelled and Albanian lands are being colonized with Serbs obedient to the regime. 

The best land is being given to the Bellogardist and Wrangelist gangs. The division of Kosovo into three banovinas was done with the aim of the fastest Serbization of these areas.

In a document in the form of a brochure entitled: “The Whole of Albania of All Albanians”, published in Rome in 1931, announced by the General Staff of the Army in Belgrade, it is emphasized that mass land expropriation is taking place, especially around the border, where Albanians live, in order to free up land for Serbian peasants and settlers.

The implementation of this expropriation is being carried out in a barbaric and violent manner. Serbian peasants are simply and unjustly taking the land, which has been seized by Albanians. Albanians have fallen into poverty, are moving to America or to the Kingdom of Albania. For this, as stated in the document, Hasan Prishtina addresses the president of the League of Nations, where he accuses the regime of terror, because Albanians are being forcibly expelled from their homes, while their properties are being given to Serbs, Montenegrins and Russians, who are settling in these areas as colonists. [ 76 ]

A poster of the Progressive Youth of Kosovo and Yugoslavia, from March 1937, states, among other things: “Since 1918, Albanians in Yugoslavia have been exposed to murders, the burning of entire villages, expulsion from the country; their homes, property, pastures and forests, both village and tribal, have been robbed. Albanians are forbidden to use their native language, folk customs and traditions have disappeared. After all this comes the robberies of bank usurers, as well as robbery in the form of taxes and bribes.

The Serbian gentlemen, with the reactionary government of Stojadinović – Koroshec – Spaho, are working with all their might to destroy the Albanian population, as the anti-popular governments did before, therefore, instead of the promised freedoms, the JRZ cabinet continues the terror and mass murders of popular fighters. In all the robberies and violent attacks, the Albanians put up heroic resistance. Even why are they always humiliated, pursued with rifle butts and bayonets, persecuted by their respective enemies, by the government, they stubbornly continue to resist…..” [ 77 ] 

While, in the poster of the students of Kosovo, of June 1938, among other things it is stated: “Albanians – The police, gendarmes and spies have become unstoppable in your property and life, they take your taxes three times, they rob you, beat you and kill you. For all these crimes, not a single hair has fallen from the head of any of those tyrants, but, in fact, for this they receive rewards and decorations…”. [ 78 ] Another poster of the Albanian Youth, from June 1939, among other things, reads: “….. They have taken away the land that you have worked for centuries and with which you have fed your children.

 Politically sidelined, economically exhausted, in the cultural-educational field left in the dark and in ignorance, you were exposed to unprecedented terror. The Albanians experienced the culmination of persecution during the three-year period of the anti-popular JRZ government of Milan Stojadinović. Land grabbing has increased. The land on which the Albanian peasant lives has been put under the attack of a certain “agrarian”. 

A Convention has been drafted with the Republic of Turkey for the forcible displacement of Albanians. You experienced unprecedented terror last year when a certain “uprising” of Albanians was trumpeted everywhere….” [ 79 ]

Numerous evidences illuminate that the land was taken away from Albanian agricultural families in its entirety, and given to those who were not engaged in agriculture. For example, in a report of the Consul General of the Albanian Kingdom in Skopje, no. 320.C.III, dated 8.VIII.1930 it is stated: the land of Sokol Hajdar was taken from Janoshi of Gjakova, who was left on the road with 30 family members, and was given to the secretary of the Gjakova Community, the Montenegrin Jovo Joksić. 

The land was taken from some villagers of the village of Nec of Gjakova and was given to the member of the community Boko Tomović and the director of the primary school in Gjakova, Vojić Tomović. These people use the land in question as a fief and the owners of the land – Albanians – use it as farmers. The taking of land also from other families such as in Cërmjan, Bec, etc. [ 80 ] In an analysis by K. Kërstiç, head of the King’s Office, addressed to the Supreme Directorate of Agrarian Reform in Skopje on 23 January 1932, among other things, regarding the taking of land he says: It was done in such a way that the autochthonous Albanians, due to not being informed that the land had been taken from them, planted it and experienced the colonists telling them: 

Stop, this is mine”. Or the agrarian authorities called them and said: “Listen, you planted such and such a field this year, you have to pay rent for it”. There is fertile land, where the colonists have not come; that land the agrarian authorities have leased and they have taken it; there is also land that has not been planted by either the Albanians or the colonists, who have not come, so it has remained barren, uncultivated. Cases in the municipalities of Vogovë and Ponoshec, where the inhabitants of entire villages have been left without any hectare of land. The case of Abdyl Tahiri from Vogovo, who has 79 family members and has been left without any property for living. 

There are cases, which the settlers themselves have shown, that all the families around the house had their land taken away, so now to enter the house one had to pass through the settler’s property. [ 81 ] In a report no. 57, dated 25.VII 1940, among other things it is said that – the Albanians would not complain if they were given 40 ari per family member, but that the land be arable, and not a forest. [ 82 ]

Serbian settlers who received land were exempt from taxes. Meanwhile, Albanians were forced to pay taxes for 5 years for Albanian lands taken 3-4 years ago. Not having money to meet the payments, Yugoslav authorities arbitrarily and strangely put their clothes up for auction, selling them at cheap prices, as well as brides’ dresses. [ 83 ] In a report by a deputy T. Dinić, from March 1938 – among other things, he writes: Unfair taxation. Payment of taxes even for land that the state has taken. Giving away land for which they pay taxes. Systematic destruction of farmers, homeless people and proletarians are created from householders. Destruction of households. 

The consequence of such work is that the farmer is fleeing the land, the housekeeper is turning into a proletarian, and the rough laborers are unemployed. [ 84 ]

In order to encourage emigration and further intensify colonization in 1934, the Ministry of Agriculture of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, through the mortgage bank, had concluded a contract in the amount of 15,000,000 dinars for the purchase of private lands in Kosovo. This ministry requested that a service be organized in the Banovina directorates for issuing passports free of charge to those who sell their land and emigrate abroad, while the Ministry of the Army and Navy requested that all soldiers and their families be released ahead of time. [ 85 ]

Seeing that colonization with the Slavic element and the displacement of Albanians is not yielding the desired results, according to the wishes and opinions of the ruling bourgeois circles, all state ministries and other bodies became even more involved in this direction. The Serbian Cultural Club was also involved in this direction, which made plans and drafted elaborates on how to successfully implement the colonization and Serbization of Kosovo and the displacement of Albanians to Turkey and Albania. We present some of them:

In Vasa Čubrillović’s voluminous essay, entitled “The Displacement of the Albanians” of March 7, 1937, we highlight: “It is not possible to break the Albanians only with gradual colonization; this is the only people who managed in the last thousand years… to survive towards the core of our state… why we did not succeed since 1912, this is our fault since we did not use our power properly. 

The only way and the only means is the brutal violence of an organized state, in which direction we were ahead of them”. “In addition to reliable people, this conflict must be well prepared; the conflict must be massive, so that it is easier to explain that the Albanians have rebelled, while the whole situation must be presented as a conflict of brothers or tribes and, if necessary, given an economic dimension. In the last resort, local uprisings can also be caused, which would be extinguished with blood and with efficient means, but not so much with the army, as with colonists, Montenegrin tribes and Chetniks. 

There remains one more tool, which Serbia had used in a very practical way after 1878: the secret burning of Albanian villages and city neighborhoods…”. “To the end, the laws must be used to make the Albanians’ lives as bitter as possible: fines, arrests, the unlimited application of all police pursuits, the punishment of smuggling, cutting down forests, pursuit for letting dogs loose, forced labor and all other means that a police officer may have at his disposal…”. “When creating a psychosis for migration, everything possible must be done to remove entire villages, or at least entire families. All means must be used to prevent part of the family from remaining here…” 

“When creating new colonies, whenever the need arises, military force must be used…” “…. knowing what is desired and sparing neither money nor blood, our state will be able to transform Kosovo and the Dukagjin Plain into a new Toplica.” [ 86 ]

Another leader, Gjoka Perina, in his lecture on 16.VI.1937 – Proposes that since the colonization of the Serbian element cannot reach the majority in Vojvodina and Southern Serbia, an exchange of population should be carried out in the respective provinces, because “the foreign element will decrease, while ours will increase”. [ 87 ] 

In the report of the Supreme Directorate of the League of Agrarian Communities in Skopje entitled “On the need for intensive implementation of free colonization in Southern Serbia”, he writes that: The advantages of free colonization over state and official colonization are: continued continuity in the implementation of colonization; enabling colonization in places where there is no free state land, especially on the Albanian border; not creating discontent among the locals, Christians and Muslims; purchase and offer almost exclusively by Muslims; colonization on cultivated lands, which can be immediately cultivated and used; settlement immediately after the purchase, since the buildings exist, providing stability, desire and security for the settlers; easy settlement of educated people in several colonies; selection of the place for colonization, etc. Provision of the necessary means for the implementation of this colonization. 

This colonization would cause the displacement of the Muslim population without consequences and without repercussions, since this is considered a private initiative. He proposes that a lot of work should be done in terms of colonization in Southern Serbia. This is imperatively required by economic and national interests and that the means should not be complained about for this action, because it returns them three times to the people and the state. [ 88 ] 

Orestije Krstić in his lecture on April 4, 1938, among other things, writes: “The war for land in Southern Serbia – is a national – economic war, and not simply an exchange of goods. The conflict of the two national elements “us and the Albanians”. The occupation of the mountains by the Albanians as tribes of the old Illyrians”. He proposes the continuation of colonization and assistance to the settlers, the settlement of families of Serbian nationality in pure Albanian villages. [ 89 ] 

In another report of the Serbian Cultural Club dated May 16, 1938, it is stated: Taking measures so that the Albanian element becomes harmless, moves to Albania or Turkey, or buys their properties and gives them to “our national element” and thus forces them to move. Then it is said: “if the Albanian issue in our country is not resolved diplomatically, i.e. by displacement, it will be resolved by further colonization, then it should be known that for that a large number of our population must be colonized, in order to achieve great superiority over the Albanians”. [ 90 ]

At the inter-ministerial conference regarding the resettlement of the population of non-Slavic origin from the so-called Southern Serbia, held on October 1, 1935, in Belgrade at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there was also a discussion about the commitment regarding the resettlement of Albanians, the conclusion of an agreement with Turkey, etc. At this conference, the following conclusions were drawn: [ 91 ]

1. The resettlement should be regulated as soon as possible by a special convention with Turkey and Albania;

2. If an agreement cannot be reached with Albania and our citizens do not wish to resettle in Turkey, this should be done:

a. the gradual migration of the population of Albanian and Turkish origin from the border area to the interior and the colonization of that area with a population of Yugoslav nationality;

b. population exchange with Albania.

3. To provide facilities to the population that is being displaced, such as transportation, free passports, exemption from taxes, recruitment;

4. To prevent and prevent propaganda against displacement;

5. Strict implementation of all provisions on the colonization of southern regions, and

6. Nationalization of geographical names.

In addition to these and many other forms, regarding the resettlement of Albanians, the notorious convention was concluded between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Turkey in 1938. The Resettlement Committee was formed as a body, within the framework of which the Supreme Resettlement Inspectorate with headquarters in Skopje functioned, as well as the mobile inspectorates. The latter had the task of determining the terrain for colonization with the Slavic element, namely to give them orders for the resettlement of Albanians. 

The Yugoslav government did not want Albanians to resettle in Albania, due to the increase in the number of inhabitants in Albania and the entry into it of an element that was hostile to the Serbs. It wanted the Albanians to settle as far away from their homeland as possible, in the deserts of Anatolia, thus having no contact with their homeland and never being able to return to their homeland. The Turkish government also found it convenient to settle Albanians on the border with the Kurds around the borders with Iraq and Iran. This meant that visas for passports to Turkey were issued in two days, while those for Albania took two months or less. [ 92 ] This is evidenced by numerous documents preserved in various archives.

In another document of the General Staff in Belgrade, from 1938, it is written, among other things: “There is a great discouragement of the Albanians due to the seizure of land and they are afraid that other land will also be taken from them and they will be moved to Turkey. The version of the relocation has hit them hard. They are not going to Turkey because they believe that the country that has been given to them for settlement is sick and that due to the unsuitable climate everyone is dying”. [ 93 ] 

The organs of power, in addition to the methods of violence and terror, of taking land from the Albanian population through agrarian reform and colonization with Slavic elements, as a form of encouraging migration, also used propaganda and engaged national-chauvinist organizations, societies, agencies and various agents as well as many local and settler persons, but there were also some fanatics bought with the money of bourgeois governments. All of them operated throughout Kosovo and beyond. 

The Yugoslav intelligence service was also involved in all of this. The displaced people were previously well-robbed by the bureaucratic apparatus, various lawyers, as well as by the agencies and agents themselves. The river of displaced people in this period mainly went in two directions: from Skopje to Thessaloniki and further to Turkey, while the other direction was towards Sofia.

Regarding the migration of Albanians, the British Legation in Durrës on 27.VI 1938 announced: “that there has been much talk since 1936-37 about an agreement between Turkey and Yugoslavia for the large migration of Muslim Albanians from Kosovo to Turkey. Failure of the 1936 agreement for the transfer of 50,000 Kosovo Albanians to Albania. The agreement between Turkey and Yugoslavia will hardly be realized. Declaration of a Turkish diplomat that the Albanian Ministry allows only Turks to go to Turkey. The possibility of a small number of Kosovars going to Albania. 

The finding that the real number of Turks here is very small. The Turkish-Yugoslav agreement for the migration of 250,000 – 300,000 people, even according to one article, 480,000 people. The finding that this number is so large for The migration of Kosovars cannot belong to the Turkish nationality, but they must belong to the Albanian one. Ekrem Libohova’s declaration that the Turkish language, as well as the Albanian language, is spoken by a number of city residents, that the population has no desire to migrate to Turkey, because, if they go, they will lead a cruel life there. [ 94 ]

Against the displacement of the Albanian population, in Kosovo and elsewhere, several nationalist associations, Albanian patriots, etc., acted, who propagandized among the people not to move, resisted, criticized the government and protested because of terror, genocide, oppression, violence, colonization, the unjust implementation of agrarian reform, etc. In this regard, the Albanian patriots who were most engaged and contributed were Hasan Prishtina, who several times until his death addressed letters, complaints, memorandums, etc. to the League of Nations in Geneva, etc. regarding the colonization and seizure of Albanian lands by Serbs, Montenegrins and Russian immigrants, expelling Albanians from their lands. 

In a letter from Vienna dated 10.II.1924 he writes: that they are terrorized with the most bloody methods and endangered in every respect by the government in order to force them to leave their homeland, even though they are the oldest inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula. [ 95 ] 

He also raises his voice against high taxes, numerous penalties, the ban on education in the mother tongue, oppression, terror, etc., emphasizing that oppression is being carried out on 1 million Albanians living in the Kingdom of the Slovak Republic to move to Turkey, Albania and other countries, where they live in misery. In a protest document from Vienna on 15.III.1927 addressed to the Secretary General of the League of Nations, Sir Eric Drummond, writes: 

“Nearly a million Albanians, who live in Kosovo and Macedonia, have no school in their native language. Likewise, they are forbidden to open schools with their own private means; The Government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia uses all possible means to exterminate the Albanians of Kosovo and Macedonia. It is a fact, it is known and clear that the massacres and disappearance of entire villages, the murders of Albanians and the looting of their homes, have been and are being carried out according to the orders of agents and higher authorities; 

As a result of the confiscation without compensation of the property of Albanian farmers, which has been given to Serbs and Montenegrins, Albanians have been forced to abandon their country, the land of their ancestors, en masse. Muslim and Catholic Albanians must pay 60% higher taxes, a This was done to economically ruin them, and in this way, to force them to emigrate. [ 96 ] As a result of this, the Serbian population of the Gjakova region, which 10 years ago did not reach 1% of the population, today reaches 20% of the population, while 20% of the autochthonous population left its land. [ 97 ]

The Yugoslav government has always followed Hasan Prishtina’s complaints and memoranda, tried to deny the true data, and therefore used counter-propaganda.

Bajram Curri and Hasan Prishtina, as representatives of the unliberated Albanian United Committees, on 26.IV.1924, addressed the Presidency of the Council of the League of Nations and informed it of the protests against the regime of the SKS State, for the disrespect of minority rights and the denial of the right of Albanians to live. Regarding colonization, it is said: “Every blow to destroy Albania is followed by an operation to settle Russian, Montenegrin and Serbian settlers. 

For their part, these settlers systematically terrorize neighboring villages, forcing the inhabitants to abandon their homes and lands, which are immediately confiscated and colonized. They are precisely some of the victims of this tragic maneuver, who wander around their homes and are called vagrants…. Kosovo, a completely agricultural country… now suffers from terrible misery, the peasants and agricultural citizens in general have had their lands taken away under the pretext of implementing the agrarian law… This iron, fiery and plundering regime constitutes the main factor in the mass emigration of the Albanian population to Turkey, which is being carried out in terrible conditions, costing the lives of hundreds of families and condemning the rest to unspeakable misery….”. [ 98 ]

Other patriots also sent petitions to the Secretary General of the League of Nations in Geneva, but the most well-known of them is undoubtedly the one dated 5.V.1930, sent by three Albanian priests: Dom Gjon Bisaku, Dom Shtjefën Kurti from Prizren and Dom Luigj Gashi from Skopje. Their petition, among other things, states that the government’s goal is to change the ethnic character of the areas where Albanians live at all costs, by not choosing any means to achieve the goal of their displacement to Turkey, Albania and other countries, such as the use of violence, the burning of houses and villages, murders, looting, mistreatment, punishments, etc. 

Mass murders caused for minor reasons on innocent people, whose only fault was that they were Albanians. The massacre in Dumnica (Vučitrn district) on February 10, 1924 – the massacre of over 25 Albanians (including 10 women, 8 children under 8 years old, 7 men over 50 years old). So, no one has been convicted for this crime. The burning of Rugova. In the document regarding the expulsion of Albanians, the colonization of Kosovo with the Slavic element, it was stated: “Relocation to Albania is not viewed favorably. The Yugoslav government has a vested interest in seeing all those who have been persecuted and plundered settled as far as possible from its borders. For this reason, a thousand misfortunes are caused to those people who wish to go to their relatives in Albania.”… 

“In the villages from which the Albanians were displaced and in their confiscated and expropriated properties, Montenegrins and Slavs from Bosnia, Srem and Banat are being brought. They are settling with the aim of changing the ethnographic appearance of the Province. Similar grafting is being done more or less everywhere and this process is continuing with increased force. It has happened that residents of Albanian origin, who have temporarily left their homes, have found Slavs in them when they returned.”… “Victims of the so-called reform agrarian are numerous. 

The Albanian population is being caused great difficulties. For citizens who have completed military service, the reform foresees that they will keep 5 hectares of cultivated land per head. Albanian families, which have preserved the patriarchal form, consisting of 6-10 members, would have the right to 30-50 hectares. However, today there is no Albanian family in the territory of Yugoslavia that has such property. Albanians have even expropriated properties of one hectare. [ 99 ] 

They emphasize in the petition that by this time more than 10,000 unfortunate immigrants have migrated to Albania and 130,000 to Turkey, while the Government of Belgrade and Angora are making agreements for the expulsion of 300,000 – 400,000 Albanians from Kosovo, to whose lands the Montenegrins and Bosniaks will be brought. The most efficient means to force the Albanians to move was the expropriation of their properties without any compensation. The Serbian government has tried to deny the undeniable testimonies of these three priests and others with various machinations and lies.

Various Albanian delegations from Kosovo have gone to Belgrade several times – people with authority, patriots, etc., where they have requested government intervention so that the land is not taken from the Albanians and that the Albanians are not displaced. But who could they complain to, when the government itself was the organizer and was behind it all. Even some deputies in the royal parliament had requested government intervention several times, but in vain. 

Thus, for example, Mustafa Dauti, a people’s deputy from the Anadri district, in his submission dated 19.IX.1936, complains about the taking of fertile land from Albanian villagers and its distribution to settlers. He emphasizes that they are left with less than 0.40 ha per family member, and that poor, forested, uncultivated and infertile land. [ 100 ] Sherif Voca, discussing in parliament, among other things, had said: “Albanians are not looking for paved roads, railways, air links, they are not looking for work – service, they do not go begging, they do not expect a pension from anyone and neither for anyone to give them foreign lands, or half-shares, but they want to work their own lands. For Albanians, any other sky is foreign. They want and will live on their own land. They want to live in freedom, with dignity and contentment”. [ 101 ]

A delegation of about 50 Albanians from the municipalities of Shtime and Kosina before the Headquarters of the 3rd Army in Skopje, had complained and declared: That they complain to the agrarian authorities, due to the illegal seizure of land, which is not beglar, but arable land of the poor, property inherited from their predecessors, that they pay taxes and have Turkish land titles. The land is not the property of the village, nor of the village, but of individuals. That the forcible restriction was made during the day of Saint Mitre in 1939 by the gendarmes, without the presence of the owners. [ 102 ]

The special role of Albanian women was very sensitive in the context of the fight against Serbian colonization, a special merit, which one of the “scientific” leaders, the originator Vaso Çubrillović, was forced to recognize, when in 1938 he wrote that “our policy of colonization was defeated by the fertility of Albanian women”. [ 103 ] Albanian women have also resisted the seizure of land and houses from the Albanian population by the so-called agrarian commissions and by the gendarmerie. 

Thus, for example, on November 29, 1936, in the village of Budrika e Poshtme, the Serbian gendarmerie comes to the village to take the house of the Musliu family and hand it over to the colonist Jovan Dishlaković. All the family members oppose this, but the gendarmerie ties them up, while their daughter Havushja manages to hit the police officer of the Gjilan district, Petar Kavadarić, with a stick. [ 104 ]

There are many other sources that testify to the seizure of land, colonization, and the forcing of the population by pressure and violence to migrate from their homeland, such as Ivo Andriqi’s Elaborate, dated January 1, 1939. This academic sees the definitive solution to the Kosovo issue as dividing Albania into two parts: one part should be occupied by Italy, while the other part, according to Andriqi, should be occupied by Yugoslavia.

SERBIAN PLANS FOR ETHNIC CLEANSING AND COLONIZATION OF KOSOVO DURING WORLD WAR II

The beginning of World War II interrupted the process of colonization of Kosovo with the Slavic element. After the entry of the German and Italian armies, for fear of retaliation, in the second half of April 1941, the flight of Serbian, Montenegrin and other settlers from Kosovo followed. A number of them settled in compact Serbian and Montenegrin settlements, and there were also those who had remained in their settlements, despite all the evils committed, they were protected by the local Albanian population.

Serbia did not give up on the goal of changing the national structure and colonizing Kosovo even in the most difficult circumstances, such as those during the Second World War. At this time, Serbia, in addition to the war, insisted on the demarcation lines between the Italian and German occupiers, paid special attention to its settlers in Kosovo. The Nedić government always tried to evacuate as few Serbs and Montenegrins as possible from the part of Kosovo that, by agreement and according to historical and natural law, belonged to Albania occupied by fascist Italy. 

When it could not achieve its goal, this government settled the displaced settlers around the Kosovo border and constantly prepared them for their return by indoctrinating them in the necessity of returning, as well as by preparing them in the military field, by forming Chetnik armed units from chetas to military corps. The issue of the displacement of Serbo-Montenegrin settlers from Kosovo during World War II was exploited by the Nedić government both in the fight against the liberation aims of various Albanian forces, especially the Kosovo Committee and the Albanian Government, but also in the diplomatic field. By politicizing the issue of the displaced settlers, the Nedić government tried to convince Nazi Germany to support the previous re-establishment of Greater Serbia in these areas. [ 105 ]

In order to achieve the goals set, the Nedić Government was organized from the very beginning on a state level. At first, this task was assigned to the State Security, and later, when the issue became even more massive, the implementation of these goals was taken over by the prefects of the regions and districts. The state prepared questionnaires, which each displaced head of household had to fill out, and which required, among other things, to declare on whose orders they were displaced, what attitude the government bodies, organizations and individuals had towards the Serbs and Montenegrins, and whether they were displaced because of torture or because they did not want to remain outside Serbia. Of course, according to the scenario of the Nedić Government, the declarants were to speak as badly as possible about the Albanian Government, especially about its attitude towards the Serbs and Montenegrin settlers, so that they could then use this in the international diplomatic arena. 

For this reason, statements are not uncommon in which not only the Albanian Government, but also the Albanian people as a whole are unsparingly attacked. The reports of the hieromonk of the church of Deçan are particularly of this spirit. In addition, many manipulated declarants could not hide the fact that they had good neighborly relations with the Albanians until the time of the “uprising”, as many of them called the beginning of the Second World War. Some of them were even forced to assert several times that even during the Second World War the majority of the Albanian population did not change its previous position. [ 106 ]

In addition, Serbian chauvinist circles made plans for the conquest of Albanian lands, colonization with the Slavic element, namely the change of the ethnic structure of the population of Kosovo, based on the project of Ilija Garašanin. We are highlighting some of them: According to the project drafted by the lawyer from Sarajevo Stevan Molevic, entitled “Homogeneous Serbia” of June 30, 1941, it was envisaged that Serbia would include in the east and southeast Kosovo and Macedonia, Vidin and Kyustendil in today’s Bulgaria; in the west – the Vrbas banovina, Northern Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, Banina and part of Slovenia; in the south – Montenegro and Herzegovina, including Dubrovnik, which would be given a special status, and the northern part of Albania. According to Molevic, the bosom of Greater Serbia should include all the territories where there are Serbs, or where Stevan Molevic assumed there were Serbs. For the Serbs, there were also Macedonians and Montenegrins. Meanwhile, he demanded the mass displacement of Croats, Muslims, and Albanians from the regions where they constituted the vast majority of the population. [ 107 ]

The Chetnik programs of 1941 planned: “To create a Greater Yugoslavia within Greater Serbia, ethnically pure on the borders of Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srem and Banat. To cleanse all territories of non-Serb elements”. To create direct borders, common borders between Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Serbia and Slovenia, through the cleansing of Sandzak and some parts of Bosnia from Muslims and Croats. In accordance with the above-mentioned plans, the Chetnik Movement aimed to cultivate and keep alive in Kosovo the spirit of revenge, the extermination of Albanians and the devouring of their ethnic lands. 

Thus, in one of the elaborates prepared at that time, entitled: “The Province of Kosovo and the Dukagjin Plain”, it was stated, among other things, that “Kosovo has been Serbian and it will definitely remain Serbian, not only in terms of its legal state position, but also in terms of the structure of its population, which must be majority Serbian”. “After the end of the war, the revenge of the Serbs against the Albanians will break out. This will not be prevented, especially the action of the Vasojevićs, who must expand into the Dukagjin Plain. [ 108 ]

Meanwhile, the law on internal colonization should foresee that Albanians, for strategic reasons, be transferred to Srem, Sumadija and other regions, where they will be safe and will be assimilated in time. [ 109 ]

On September 12, 1941, General Lubo Novakovic, in a letter he sent to Kosta Pecanci, already known for his unprecedented crimes against Albanians, reminded him: “When I set off on the fateful road, I know what plans you have for our south. I believe that in Sandzak, Dukagjin and the Kosovo Plain, there will be no seed left. The Sitnica and Llapi rivers will carry two months of Albanian heads”. [ 110 ] Draža Mihailović’s program for ethnic cleansing and the creation of Greater Serbia in Greater Yugoslavia on December 20, 1941, among other things, foresees: “

….. The state territories should be cleansed of all minorities and non-national elements…. The cleansed parts should be colonized with Montenegrins, while the Muslim issue should be settled with Turkey through London”. [ 111 ] D. Mihailović’s agents warned that “the Chetniks would liberate Kosovo from the Albanians and would exterminate them all, leaving no one alive”. In March 1942 in the village of Suhadoll, Voja Dragović, a Chetnik leader, declared that “after the victory of the war by the Allies, all Albanians must be exterminated, not excluding even children in the cradle”. [ 112 ]

In addition to the Chetnik Movement, the Serbian Orthodox Church also played a very aggressive role in inciting hatred against the Albanian people. For the Serbian clergy, “the Albanians were poisonous snakes that had to be exterminated, drowned or their heads crushed”. [ 113 ] The newspaper “Borba”, in November 1944, wrote that “in Kosovo, after April 6, 1941, the Serbs and Montenegrins had suffered under the oppression of Albanian chauvinists, who transformed these territories into a terrible arena of murders and burnings”. According to it, “terrible crimes were committed against the exhausted and helpless colonists, who were fighting at the front against the Italian and German evildoers. [ 114 ]

SLAV COLONIZATION DURING SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA

Plans for implementing colonization

Serbia’s attitude towards the colonization of Kosovo and the change in its ethnic structure did not change even after the expulsion of the German invaders. To implement the well-known anti-Albanian projects, the Yugoslav leadership used the same means and methods that had been used even before the war. Only the pretexts changed. Before 1941, Albanians were treated as foreigners and dangerous for the existence of the Yugoslav state. After the war, this policy and these measures were justified and presented as actions directed against “reactionary Albanians”, counter-revolutionaries”, “collaborators of the occupiers” and “bandits”, etc.

Attempts to ethnically cleanse Kosovo and other ethnic Albanian territories occupied by Yugoslavia first began in the peripheral areas, but soon spread throughout the Albanian territories. Several divisions with a total strength of 40,000 participated in such organized operations. [ 115 ] The issue of the return of the settlers was immediately raised. 

These military actions, among other forms, were associated with the new anti-Albanian project of Vasa Čubrilović “The Problem of Minorities in the New Yugoslavia”, dated November 3, 1944. Čubrilović, in his project, initially accepts the fact that the Serbs, after the First World War, namely after the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) in 1918, acquired a part of the territories with foreign populations, which became a danger to Yugoslavia, not because of their counterbalance to the Slavic peoples, but because of the territories where they live and the geographical continuity that these territories have with their homelands. [ 116 ] 

He emphasizes, among other things: “The Albanians should be accused of being collaborators of the occupier and his satellites. Based on that accusation, some of the Albanians should simply be deported (expelled), some should be transferred to the interior of the country where they will forever be lost, because there through “integration” they will become what they are not, where through religion they will gradually be Serbified”. On the other hand, Qubrillovic further emphasizes, “the Albanian properties should be taken by the settlers”. [ 117 ]

V. Čubrilović, before the highest leadership of the LNÇJ and the UNÇJ, proposed the mass displacement of millions of people, because, according to him, “the only and right solution to this issue is the displacement of these minorities”. He took the actions of the Third Reich and the expulsions and colonizations of many peoples in the Soviet Union and other European countries as support and example for such an action. The author of the project also provided details for the implementation of this project. For the implementation of the project, V. Čubrilović also provided the time, means and methods of action. 

According to him, the most suitable time for efficient displacement was war, so the most successful displacement was the physical and complete extermination of people. According to Čubrilović, the army had a decisive role, therefore he proposed that a special section be formed in the UNÇJ Headquarters for this issue. If complete physical extermination was not achieved, he also envisaged other measures, such as the denial of all rights, the creation of concentration camps, the plunder of property, the extermination of the intelligentsia and the wealthy social classes, and then the immediate colonization of areas with a Slavic element. [ 118 ] To this end, he proposed the formation of a special ministry, or at least a commissariat within the Ministry of Agriculture. 

Then, the main bearers of the mission would be the national liberation councils, from the lowest to the highest instances, while the settlers would be selected from among the most proven fighters and, if possible, Serbs and Montenegrins who had not previously been colonized. The bearers of this mission, according to him, should be provided with high salaries, positions, and a more privileged status in society.

Among other things, he proposes: “The army, during combat operations, must systematically and ruthlessly clear… those areas that we wish to colonize with our national element….” “We must expel all minorities from our lands. We must work for this. All that I say about Vojvodina, Slavonia, Old Serbia (Kosovo) and Macedonia, this is the minimum that must be achieved if we want to secure for ourselves the ownership of those lands for the future”… “For now, I am only emphasizing that the Germans must definitely be cleared from Vojvodina, and the Albanians from the Dukagjini Plain, Kosovo and Polog….”; “What can I say first: wars provide the greatest opportunities for solving these problems. Like a storm, they sweep through countries, uprooting peoples. What should be done over decades and centuries, during war is done in a month or a year”. “Detailed plans should be made as to which villages and districts in Old Serbia and Macedonia should be cleansed, and based on that plan, action should be taken….” 

“In addition to cleansing by the army during operations, other means should be used to force the national minorities to relocate. First of all, because of their stance in this war, the minorities should be deprived of all their rights. All those members of the national minorities who have in any way served the occupiers should be mercilessly brought before a war tribunal. For this, concentration camps should be established, their property should be confiscated, their families should be sent to camps and, at the first opportunity, deported.” [ 119 ]

Čubrillović’s terrorist plan envisaged a general amnesty for the Chetniks, which was made by the AVNOJ Presidency on 21.XI.1944. After the amnesty, entire Chetnik formations were transferred to Kosovo to carry out Čubrillović’s plan. In order to have a free hand in implementing terror and genocide against the Albanian people, the Yugoslav leadership forcibly mobilized the most vital force of the Albanians. Adult Albanians were forcibly mobilized into military formations and sent to Srem in Vojvodina, Bosnia and Croatia. Young Albanians went to the front without weapons. 

On the way to Tivar, dozens of Albanians mobilized in the Yugoslav Army were killed, while in Tivar, Montenegro, in just one night, about 1,500 mobilized Albanians were killed and massacred by Serbian escort troops. [ 120 ] As rarely in history, the commanders themselves, without any reason, had ordered to open fire on their soldiers – just because they were Albanians. The killing of the mobilized Albanian youth continued even further on their “journey” to the “front”, so that even today the exact number of those who were executed by the Yugoslav army or who were really killed as “cannon fodder” on any front is not known. Because, this was also the motive for instilling fear and insecurity in the entire Albanian population that had remained in Yugoslavia.

The Supreme Headquarters of the National Liberation War and the Yugoslav Army, which in August 1944 had addressed the Albanian people in Kosovo and beyond with this threatening message: “You Albanians, together with the fascist invaders, raised your hand against the neighboring peoples and were shamed badly… By such behavior until now you have not invoked the right to live fraternally and equally with the other peoples of Yugoslavia”. With the departure of Albanian fighters and recruits from Kosovo and the arrival of Serbian, Montenegrin and Macedonian military units, the composition of the military forces in Kosovo changed in favor of the Serbian element. From then on, the actions of these military units began to cleanse Kosovo of “Albanian gangs”. In fact, this was about revenge against the Albanian people, because during the war they had not allowed the Chetnik forces to penetrate Kosovo. [ 121 ]

Although Yugoslavia had publicly declared itself after 1944 for “general equality and freedom of all citizens”, Serbian politics had gone a few steps further in terms of programming the extermination of the Albanian people. A new such program against the Albanians, entitled “Tajni cirkular za istrebljavanje svih albanaca Kosova 5.II.1945” (Circular circular for the extermination of all Albanians in Kosovo on 5.II.1945), was written by a teacher from Vushtrri. This program, like the others, was no different in terms of methods and means of exterminating Albanians from other programs. [ 122 ]

Before the arrival of military units from neighboring territories, the revenge had begun the OZN, as well as some Kosovar units under the command of Serbian and Montenegrin communists. The OZN began by liquidating people who enjoyed authority who were not under arms, but were mainly honorable people. This was done with the aim of leaving the Albanian people without people who could wait for them. People were taken from their homes, mainly at night, and sent to prisons and there, after “interrogation”, they were killed most of the time with cold weapons. 

The families of the killed were never informed of their fate and their graves are not even known to this day. With the amnesty law of October 20, 1944, the members of Drazha Mihajlovic’s Chetnik units, criminals of all stripes, were not only amnestied, but they were also given the opportunity to join the partisan ranks, and just as before with the Chetnik cockade, now with the five-pointed star to kill “Albanian counter-revolutionaries”. [ 123 ]

In such exterminating circumstances, the Albanians organized armed resistance to protect themselves from terror and to oppose the reoccupation of their territories by the Serbian communists. In order to break the strong democratic and freedom-loving resistance, as well as to justify the further implementation of the genocide, on February 8, 1945, military administration was established in Kosovo, with the justification of normalizing the situation. Now, the continuation of terror and crime against the Albanian population was officially legitimized. The military power that was imposed on the Albanian people of Kosovo was not an unknown form of repression, genocide and terror against Albanians, because the Yugoslav invaders had implemented it before. 

This had happened every time Serbian, Montenegrin or Yugoslav troops had occupied and reoccupied Albanian territories. In 1913, in the Albanian territories that were annexed to Serbia, the organization of power was entrusted to the army and military administration. [ 124 ] This was done on the basis of the proposal of the Command of the III Army Zone, dated 12.XII.1912. 

In these territories, the Supreme Command of the Serbian Army ruled the country through the organs of the military and police system. [ 125 ] In the autumn of 1918, in addition to the reconquest of Kosovo and other ethnic Albanian territories, a military-police dictatorship was established, intertwined with the Serbian civil power, which carried out the extermination genocide on the Albanian people. In the Albanian territories, no legislation was valid, the “order” and “calm” were ensured by the Serbian-Yugoslav army with the help of the police apparatus. [ 126 ] The Military Administration, which was established in Kosovo in 1945, was entrusted with the military leadership of the civil and judicial power “until the regulation of the circumstances”, namely until its annexation by Serbia.

In July 1945, at an assembly organized in Prizren, Kosovo, instead of independence, or rather unification with Albania, was recognized only limited autonomy within Serbia and Yugoslavia and today’s borders were set. Albanian territories were divided by Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. It should be added that during the fighting against German and Italian military forces in Kosovo, about 6,100 people were killed, of whom almost all were Albanians.

In order to deceive some progressive and internationalist internal circles and the entire international opinion, the Serb bigots, with a visible influence throughout Yugoslavia, added the syntagmatic attribute of agrarian reform to the name Ministry of Colonization, so that this ministry would later be called the Ministry of Agrarian Reform and Colonization. 

That this ministry had no agrarian character and did not work for any agrarian reform at all is also seen from the fact that this “reform” and this colonization were implemented only in Vojvodina, Kosovo and Macedonia, that is, in the territories where Albanian, Hungarian, German, Macedonian, etc. nationalities lived mainly. This finding is also confirmed by the fact that the revision of the agrarian reform was based on the Yugoslav Decree and the “Law on the Revision of the Distribution of Lands to Colonists and Other Agrarian Interested Parties in Macedonia and Kosovo and Metohija” on November 5, 1945. [ 127 ]

Recolonization – the return of settlers to Kosovo

Serbia did not raise the issue of recolonization and the alleged agrarian reform in Kosovo in the first months of 1945; on the contrary, the Directorate of Internal Affairs of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, by its decision of 5 March 1945, temporarily prohibited the return of settlers to the places settled during the period between the two world wars. [ 128 ] 

It did this not because it had given up on this goal, but because at that time severe fighting was taking place in Kosovo, because the Albanians did not agree with the reoccupation and because the position of Kosovo was still unclear. However, despite this, the Politburo Directive of the CPY Central Committee dated 1 April 1945 was issued for the return of all settlers to Kosovo (despite the position of 5 March 1945). 

After the Albanian opposition was extinguished with blood and the position of Kosovo was somewhat clarified, the issue of the colonization of Kosovo was put into expedited procedure at the meeting of the Agrarian Council from 6-8 September 1945, clarifying that Kosovo was included in Serbia’s quota and that 28,750 hectares or 50,000 jutes would be included in this province through colonization and agrarian reform. [ 129 ] The Law on the Revision of the Agrarian Reform for Macedonia and Kosovo and Metohija was also adopted at this meeting. [ 130 ]

At a time when the issue of agrarian reform and colonization was being kept quiet in the Yugoslav regions, in Kosovo and Serbia, great activity was being carried out in preparations for the re-colonization of Kosovo. This finding is confirmed by the numerous dispatches of the settlers and Serbian authorities, who sent to the Agrarian Council with requests that colonization and agrarian reform be initiated in this province as well, which were considered at the meeting of October 5, 1945. The decisions of the Agrarian Council at its meeting on October 16, 1945 were also in this spirit. 

At this meeting, among other things, it was decided that the Serbo-Montenegrin settlers settled in Vojvodina should return to Kosovo, while the “settlers” from Albania should be moved out of Kosovo as soon as possible. The well-organized activity in Kosovo for its colonization was also investigated by the Agrarian Council of the Ministry of Colonization. At the meeting of this council on December 7, 1945, among other things, the issue of implementing the Law on the Revision and Distribution of Lands in Kosovo was addressed, and one of the ministers of this ministry was authorized to refer it as soon as possible. In addition, to achieve this goal, this council, at the same meeting, allocated 5,000,000 dinars to the settlers of Kosovo, which at that time represented a large sum of money. [ 131 ]

The actions organized at all levels for the colonization of Kosovo during 1946, especially after the great commitment of Serbia, did not remain fruitless. As early as the beginning of 1946, data were prepared for the interested settlers of the various districts of Kosovo, who had sent their requests to the “Agrarian Commission of Kosmet”, the Agrarian Revision Commission and the Ministry for Colonization. Their requests were reviewed and for almost all of them the relevant decisions were approved by the competent bodies. 

Meanwhile, the agrarian colonization commissions were operating in the field, in whose work there were many remarks and complaints in the bodies of various levels. The bodies that had to decide on real estate, land and houses for residence had a particularly difficult job. 

Such work “became more difficult”, especially when the disputes were Serbo-Montenegrin – Albanian. In fact, during the colonization period after World War I, so many concessions were made to Albanians that no commission, no matter how composed it was, could overcome these injustices under the new circumstances. However, at that time there were great objections to the correction of these injustices. 

In addition, neither the then provincial and republican bodies nor the federal bodies showed any interest in such an action. For this reason, the absolute majority of real estate during the work of the commissions was not affected at all (of 1,515 families), or was only partially affected (1,253), while only a few settlers were deprived of their entire land (445), which could not have belonged to them even under these discriminatory laws. 

The bodies engaged in the return of settlers and the settlement of new settlers had it much easier. For the return of settlers, all that was needed was a special commitment in the organizational-administrative aspect to collect data and popularize the creation of the new situation in Kosovo. These bodies were even quite involved in persuading the colonists to return to Kosovo, who had settled in the wealthy Vojvodina and were confident of their future. However, the colonization of Kosovo with interested young people was much easier. They were mainly settled in socially owned properties, and those interested in colonization were almost all civil servants and workers. [ 132 ]

Based on statistical data, during the Second World War, 3,150 families remained in Kosovo who had been colonized in the period between the two world wars. The phenomenon of the return of settlers before the end of this war (5,545 families) was also noticeable, in addition to the large number of settlers who moved from Kosovo during the Second World War (7,397 families). Many settlers, even though they received recolonization decisions from the Review Commission, did not return to Kosovo until July 11, 1947 (2,471 colonized families). 

Such settlers had decided to live in Vojvodina or elsewhere, where their life prospects were more visible. It should be added that in the four districts of Kosovo (Peja, Vushtrri, Llap and Gjilan) by the mentioned time, more settlers returned than had been displaced during the Second World War. Overall, of all the settlers displaced during World War II, no more than 1,500 families or nearly 7,500 people returned to Kosovo, assuming that each family at this time had five members. [ 133 ]

The Kosovo Archives contained the Agrarian Reform Revision Fund, but during the period of violent measures in the Kosovo Archives, the Serbian authorities took this fund and many documents regarding confiscation, expropriation, etc. of property and sent them to Serbia with the aim of losing traces of ownership, making forgeries, and preventing the real owners from exercising their property and legal rights.

As can be seen, the new government continued the agrarian reform during this period. In addition to the legal provisions on agrarian reform and colonization, it issued numerous legal and sub-legal provisions, based on which private property was transferred to the so-called all-people’s – state property, which was later transformed into social property, such as through sequestration, confiscation, nationalization, expropriation, arondization, taking over properties supposedly as surplus, and many other forms.

In this dispute regarding agrarian reform and colonization, mention should be made of the Law on the Revision of the Distribution of Land to Colonists and Agrarian Interested Parties in Macedonia and the Province of Kosovo and Metohija, [ 134 ] the Law on Agrarian Reform and Colonization, [ 135 ] the Law on the Distribution of Abandoned Lands of Colonists in the KAM, [ 136 ] the Law on Agrarian Reform and Internal Colonization, [ 137 ] etc.

At this time, the confiscation of the properties of the so-called enemies of the people, especially the Albanians, also began. In this regard, it should be mentioned – the AVNOJ Decision on the transfer of enemy property to state ownership, on the state administration of the property of missing persons, and the seizure of property that the occupying power has forcibly alienated, [ 138 ] the Law on the Seizure of the War Profile Achieved during the Time of the Enemy’s Occupation, [ 139 ] the Law on the Transfer of Enemy Property to State Ownership and the Seizure of Property of Fugitives. [ 140 ] the Law on the Confiscation of Property and the Execution of Confiscation; [ 141 ] the Law on the Confirmation and Amendments to the Law on the Confiscation and Execution of Confiscation, [ 142 ] the Basic Law on Actions with Expropriated and Confiscated Forest Possessions, [ 143 ] the Law on Criminal Offenses against the People and the State. [ 144 ] 

So, Confiscation was a legal instrument by which private property was taken in favor of the state, without any compensation. Usually, confiscation comes as an accessory punishment to persons who have been convicted of certain criminal offenses, and that punishment was imposed by the court. In Kosovo after World War II, many people were declared enemies of the people and the courts formed for this purpose confiscated all their property. Peasants had their property confiscated even in cases when they were unable to fulfill their obligations, the delivery of “surplus agricultural products”. 

Until 1965, the property of all citizens of “Turkish” or Jewish nationality, who had emigrated from Yugoslavia and had obtained another citizenship, was confiscated. Many Albanian families from Kosovo and other regions fall into this category, but also Bosniaks, who had obtained Turkish citizenship, with the intention of emigrating to Turkey or other countries. [ 145 ]

It is important to mention that at this time many Albanian villagers also had their properties confiscated on the grounds that they did not pay for the so-called “surplus” of agricultural products that they were unable to provide, such as agricultural products, livestock, etc.

At this time, the nationalization of property also began. It is worth mentioning the Law on the Nationalization of Economic and Private Enterprises. [ 146 ] Nationalization (or statehood) in the legal sense was a unilateral act of state power, according to which the property of a certain branch of the economy is forcibly taken from the private owner and transferred to the state, with or without payment. In 1958, the Law on the Nationalization of Leased Buildings and Construction Land was also passed. [ 147 ] For various needs, private properties were also expropriated based on the Basic Law on Expropriation. [ 148 ]

Regarding the ardonation of properties, a Decree-Law on the arondation of agricultural economic land was passed. [ 149 ] This exchange of properties was done in an unrealistic manner. Often, high-quality property was taken and much lower-quality property was given.

It should be noted that the inhabitants of rural settlements in this period were also greatly affected by the so-called cooperativism. The Law on Cooperatives, [ 150 ] provided for three models of cooperativism and three types of cooperatives: general agricultural cooperatives; specialized cooperatives and worker-peasant cooperatives. The latter were the ones that affected a part of the Albanian inhabitants. 

Worker-peasant cooperatives were typical socialist cooperatives, according to the model of Soviet state farms and collective farms. Among other things, those cooperatives aimed to break the patriarchal mentality of families, and to unify individual interests with collective ones. By uniting land, animals, labor and tools in cooperatives, attempts were made to form large agricultural economies and to alienate private property. 

Political propaganda was developed for this purpose, as if cooperatives were paradises. It was propagated that there everyone works as much as they can, while everyone takes as much as they need. Not only these tempting words, but the propaganda also contained threats that if they did not accept entry into the cooperative – collectivization, they would be imprisoned and their property would be confiscated. 

Of course, such a threat was in contradiction with the legal proclamation that collectivization is based on free will. Even despite the propaganda that was being developed for collectivization, Albanian families did not want to join such cooperatives. Although the Albanian population of Kosovo was more than three times larger than the rest of the population, only 29% of the members of the cooperatives were of Albanian nationality. They did not trust the government and were afraid that they would lose their lands held for generations. Meanwhile, the Serbo-Montenegrins who had received their lands for free from the agrarian reform, and felt safe from their state, did not hesitate to enter such collectivization. [ 151 ]

While regarding the acquisition of properties and the division of those agricultural organizations, numerous provisions were made. It is worth mentioning the Law on the Agricultural Land Fund of the General National Property and the Division of Land to Agricultural Organizations. [ 152 ] These organizations were also given property that was allegedly confiscated as surplus land over 10 ha, mainly from Albanian residents, who had a large number of members. 

They lived in patriarchal families, while Serbs and Montenegrins were separated and had a small number of members in order to benefit from the properties. The Serbian government had largely appropriated these properties to Serbian and Montenegrin owners from 1990 to 1999. The latter, after 1999, began to sell the properties of the former cooperatives to Albanian residents at high prices, as is the case with the villages of Çagllavića, Llapllasellë and many others in Kosovo.

Pressures for Albanians to relocate

Unable to fully realize Čubrilović’s project and other projects, after World War II, the Serbian government continued to implement further phases of violence and terror against Albanians, their displacement from their homeland, and colonization with the Serbian element in Kosovo. Although Yugoslavia publicly declared after 1944 for “general equality and freedom of all citizens”, Serb policy went several steps further in terms of programming the extermination of the Albanian people.

After the end of the war and the formation of new organs of power, as it was popularly called, in the name of brotherhood-union, the reconstruction of the country, “equal” rights, numerous actions began in voluntary work, in the reconstruction of the country. Even in Kosovo, compared to the period between the two world wars, slow economic development began, then cultural, educational, health, etc. 

Schools began to open in the Albanian language with a certain communist ideology, courses against illiteracy, health courses, home economics, agriculture and other courses were organized. A slow development and reconstruction began, with the motto to destroy the old and build the new. The period of persecutions, imprisonments, murders, deportations continued. etc. 

Then began the economic pressure for the alleged collection of “surpluses”, propaganda for violent declaration of Turkish nationality, with the aim of moving to Turkey, the action of collecting weapons that Albanians did not have, in the winter of 1955/56, with the justification that Albanians were preparing for an armed uprising and unification with Albania. 

All this was accompanied by massive trials and drastic punishments of Albanians again for alleged “collaboration with the occupier” to continue later, after the Resolution of the Information Bureau (1948), but allegedly the creation of Greater Albania and cooperation with the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. Albanians were arrested, killed, massacred and interned in various prisons and camps in Yugoslavia (Goli-Otok, Bileca, Nis, Gradishke, etc.).

As more direct pressures for the persecution and displacement of Albanians, in addition to the mistreatment of innocent people and especially the lower intelligentsia and education workers, who were declared enemies of the socialist order and were imprisoned, interned and, some were even shot without trial – were the violent declaration of Turkish nationality, grain collection actions, the weapons collection action with the excuse that Albanians were allegedly preparing for an armed uprising and unification with Albania, the staging of secret “irredentist” political organizations, the reduction of rights regarding the use of the Albanian language and national symbols, the closure of several Albanian-language schools, the raising of the Albanian flag on the day of the national holiday by the security organs as a provocation to imprison innocent people, etc. 

All this cruel strategy was devised to find a reason for the massive displacement of Albanians outside Yugoslavia. During this period, all those “irredentist and diversionist” “Albanian-Romanian” organizations were supposedly “discovered”, which, in fact, did not exist.

As can be seen, the pressures to emigrate against Albanians were so numerous and diverse that their life in Kosovo and other parts of Yugoslavia became unbearable. Therefore, a significant number were forced to register as Turks in order to go to Turkey to escape as soon as possible from the hell of Serbian rule. The exodus of Albanians from Kosovo took on large proportions with high intensity, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. 

During these years, 283,000 Albanians emigrated to Turkey, meaning nearly a third of the population at that time. [ 153 ] Macedonia was the final stage of the irreversible exodus of Albanians to Turkey. All the rivers of populations that had flowed from Yugoslavia flowed into Macedonia and then headed for Turkey. The process was carried out “secretly”, while the motives for the migration were the same as before the war, mainly political in nature, only they were modified and adapted to the new conditions of the socialist system. [ 154 ]

On the other hand, a large number of Serbs and Montenegrins came to Kosovo from both nearby and distant territories of Serbia and Montenegro, as cadres and with their families. They are mainly employed in state, social, cultural organizations and institutions, etc. It is estimated that 12,300 Slavic families, or about 64,000 people of Slavic origin, settled in Kosovo from 1945 to 1965. [ 155 ]

This process was interrupted in 1966 (after the 4th Brioni Plenum), when the Yugoslav State Security Service of that time was severely criticized, which had severely affected everyone else, namely the Albanians of Kosovo, but also of other regions of the former Yugoslavia.

Temporary cessation of colonization and return of some settlers to their homeland

After 1966, and especially after the adoption of the 1974 Constitution, Serbs and Montenegrins, losing their privileges and not tolerating the equality of Albanians with them, a number of them, especially those of colonial origin, returned to their original homes and to the most developed areas of the former Yugoslavia. They sold their property, land, and other housing they had received for free in Kosovo at high prices and with those funds bought land, houses, economic facilities, and other things in the areas of Serbia, at much lower prices than in Kosovo, so that they had ample funds left for savings. 

The political circles of Serbia and some of Yugoslavia used this economic displacement of Serbs and Montenegrins as further pressure on Albanians. The “pressure” on Serbs and Montenegrins was a political platitude and a slander. The factual situation does not match the qualifications that Serbs and Montenegrins were moving out of Kosovo due to “pressure”, “discrimination”, “terror”, “genocide”, etc. by Albanians. The “pressure” of Albanians on Serbs and Montenegrins was a serious slander and on this construction an anti-Kosovar and anti-Albanian climate and strategy was created almost throughout Yugoslavia. According to Serbian sources, from 1967-1980, 57,118 Serbs and Montenegrins were moved out of Kosovo. [ 156 ]

It should be noted that the Albanian population of Kosovo from 1968 to 1981 experienced a transformation in terms of education, culture, science, economy, etc. It was a kind of pause in the wave of migrations and was done to avoid any explosive situation in Yugoslavia and to establish some political-ethnic balance in the federation, with the hope that it would not disintegrate in the future.

New plans and actions for the recolonization of Kosovo with Serbo-Montenegrin population

In the created conditions, very difficult and with great consequences of that time, the Albanian people of this region always stood up for themselves, never agreed with this situation created under Serbian-Yugoslav rule. Throughout the period of the so-called “socialist” Yugoslavia, the forms of action for an independent and democratic Kosovo were conspiratorial and led by the brain of the nation. The people always continued their efforts for liberation and national unification. In 1968, the student youth of Kosovo organized mass demonstrations with the main demand for the Republic of Kosovo.

After the constitutional changes in 1969, in 1974 Kosovo gained its own Constitution, as one of the eight Yugoslav federal units with representation in all bodies and with the right of veto, as well as the other six republics and the Province of Vojvodina, but without the right to declare a Republic. After this, a new phase of development and construction of Kosovo began. 

The establishment of the autonomy of Kosovo, as an equal unit of the Yugoslav federation, gave the Albanians in Kosovo the opportunity to develop economically, politically, health, socially and culturally. The development of education, science and technology also took a big step forward.

The years 1974-1981, in the history of Kosovo, are known as among the most successful years in both the political and economic spheres. During this seven-year period, Albanians were involved in all social areas, such as: municipal leadership, police, education, health, employment, etc. Of course, in most cases, they had to adapt to the circumstances of the time, otherwise they would not have been able to use even the limited assistance that was dedicated to Kosovo. 

However, despite the advances that the Albanians had during this time, we can say that the Serbian and Montenegrin minority was more privileged, although in magazines, newspapers, symposiums, etc., Serbian propaganda for political purposes emphasized that “Serbia had lost in peace what it had gained in war” which means that according to them the rights of Serbs and Montenegrins were “reversed”. 

Therefore, in 1977, some Serbian “intellectuals” had drafted the “Blue Book”, which emphasized that the rights and powers of the autonomous provinces (Kosovo) should be limited. Influenced by the “Blue Book”, many Serbian politicians began to demand a revision of the status of the autonomous provinces. If we compare the development parameters of the cities of Kosovo with the cities of other parts of the former SFRY, the level of economic development of the cities of Kosovo was far behind those of other Yugoslav cities. [ 157 ]

The militarization of Kosovo dates back to the early eighties of the last century, especially after the demonstrations of youth, students, workers and others in Kosovo. According to some witnesses, the list of prisoners of Internal Security, as organizers and participants of the demonstrations of 1981, included about 600 people. 

The Serbian government began to activate its previously known hegemonic plans. With various perfidious methods, it also tried to hinder the economic development of Kosovo and other achievements. Thus, during the nineties, in addition to increasing repressive measures against the Albanian population, the Serbian government constantly increased the number of police and military forces in Kosovo. Serbian police checkpoints were set up at most crossroads, where the Albanian population was mistreated and terrorized.

The Serbian hegemonic forces in 1981 acted openly and covertly, with propaganda and concrete actions, to change as much as possible the ethnic structure of Kosovo and its colonization. To achieve this goal, the forces in question did not hesitate to, on the one hand, mount various political processes and other oppressions against Albanians, while, on the other hand, they justified all these actions with the injustices done to Serbs and Albanian nationalist and separatist goals.

After the demonstrations of Albanian youth and students in 1981, the anti-Albanian activity and attitudes of the Belgrade government intensified. In this year, the Belgrade government set to work to approve measures against Albanians and to prepare the political ground for the Slavization of Kosovo. 

Taking as its cause the just demands of the demonstrators and in the name of the fight against Albanian nationalism, irredentism and separatism, through the meetings of the former LKJ, then of the political and executive bodies, from the former federation, the republics to the provinces, a frontal war was opened against the Albanian youth, against those who had demanded the status of a Republic for Kosovo within the framework of the former Federation. The most fascist vocabulary was used against the demonstrators and thousands of chauvinist and national-fascist decisions were issued, and violence was sanctioned.

After this time, the Yugoslav government, namely the Serbian government, entered into a new plan with the aim of recolonizing Kosovo with a Slavic population, namely organizing an action supposedly for the return of Serbs and Montenegrins displaced from Kosovo. The Serbian government, supported by the Yugoslav government and sometimes by the Kosovar government, taking advantage of this climate began to approve assessments, platforms, resolutions and programs supposedly for the return of Serbs and Montenegrins to Kosovo, in reality preparing another wave of colonization of Kosovo with the Slavic element.

The Serbian government began movements to suppress the autonomy of Kosovo. The Serbian secret services encouraged the Serbs and Montenegrins of Kosovo to rise up in demonstrations – protests against the “inferior” position they had in front of the Albanians. The nursery of the organizers of the demonstrations was in Fushë-Kosovo. They also used as a motto the return of Serbs and Montenegrins who were allegedly forcibly displaced from Kosovo in previous periods. This anti-Albanian campaign was accelerated and motivated with the coming to power of Slobodan Milošević, while it was inspired by the ASHS Memorandum, where many rallies with an anti-Albanian character were organized and for the suspension of the autonomy of Kosovo.

Encouraged and inspired by the memorandum of the Serbian ASHA (1986), various individuals and parties even raised the issue of recolonization of Kosovo in the Serbian Parliament, arguing that during World War II, Kosovo was colonized by Albanians from Albania. As is known, at first there was talk of hundreds of thousands of Albanian settlers, later about tens of thousands, and finally it was established by the Federal Secretariat of Internal Affairs that in Yugoslavia from 1949-1956, of the people who arrived, only 754 Albanian immigrants remained, and of that number only 243 lived in Kosovo. However, this fact does not prevent these circles and the Serbian government from openly advocating and acting for the change of the national structure in Kosovo and for its colonization with the Slavic element. Serbia even legislated such an activity.

In addition, the Belgrade government managed to mobilize the entire population under the slogan “A united Serbia”. For several years in a row, hundreds of anti-Albanian rallies and demonstrations were organized. In order to make nationalist turns, the Serbian government organized marches and chauvinistic demonstrations in Kosovo, Serbia and in front of the Serbian-Yugoslav bodies in Belgrade. Their slogans were: “Kosovo is Serbia”, “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia”, “Kosovo is the holy Serbian land”, “We will fight for this part of the old Serbian land”, “Serbia, do not let go of Kosovo”, etc. This Serbian government used the displacement of Serbs and Montenegrins from Kosovo as a cover before the state bodies. This was just a baseless and unrealistic pretext.

Regarding employment policy, the Serbian authorities themselves were promoting and encouraging Serbs and Montenegrins to supposedly move, but with the aim of employing them without any criteria. Thus, in 1987, 18,500 people were waiting for work in the municipality of Pristina, of whom only 2,600 were Serbs and Montenegrins. However, in Pristina for nine months of 1987, 442 Serbs and 42 Montenegrins were employed, out of 2,263 unemployed at that time. 

Special importance was given by the then bodies to the employment of people who came to work and live in Kosovo for the first time. Thus, in the municipality of Pristina alone in 1987, 110 people were employed who worked and lived in the municipality of Pristina for the first time. Most of these were employed in the Kosovo Electricity Company, in administrative bodies, etc. This was one of the forms of colonization of Kosovo with the Slavic element. [ 158 ]

Albanians, in a much milder form, seeing the purpose of the demands for changing the 1974 constitution, organized several protests, protest marches of the miners of “Trepça” of Stantërg, trapped in a cage on November 17, 1988 in Pristina, and many others, among which the most well-known was the strike of the miners of “Trepça” on February 20-28, 1989. The entire Albanian people showed solidarity with the strikes and demands of the Albanian population.

At this time, a state of emergency and a curfew were imposed in Kosovo under the pressure of 30,000 police officers brought from Serbia. Thus, on March 23, 1989, under the state of emergency and under the threat of weapons, as well as through extra-parliamentary votes, the Kosovo Assembly approved amendments to the 1974 constitution, which also de jure abolished Kosovo’s autonomy. On March 28, 1989, in Belgrade, the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia ratified the decision of the Kosovo Assembly. Meanwhile, in July 1990, the Serbian government occupied Kosovo.

Regarding the genocidal policy and the overt intentions of the Serbian government, a letter from Academician Mark Krasniqi sent to the Chairman of the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Pristina on February 1, 1990, among other things, he writes: “….. The acquisition of Kosovo’s autonomy in the spring of 1989 was the first success of that policy, and partly even more extensive. 

As is known, Kosovo’s autonomy was destroyed with tanks, special police and numerous victims of Albanian nationality, who with massive demonstrations throughout Kosovo in a plebiscite expressed against the abolition of the 1974 Constitution, and against the amendments of the RS of Serbia, has caused numerous problems that it intends to solve through drastic repressive measures against Albanians, who in Kosovo constitute 80% of the total population, by removing them from work on a massive scale, by imprisonment and by new murders of innocent people, which may have unforeseen tragic consequences of vast proportions. This dangerous policy of Serbia is being condemned by the entire democratic, freedom-loving world, with a few exceptions, but all of them are viewed with crossed arms.

Albanians are accused, first of all, of three main deadly sins: of counter-revolution, of pressure on Serbs and Montenegrins, namely, of alleged inequality and of an ethnically pure Kosovo. However, all of these are fabrications. The counter-revolution in Kosovo did not happen at all in 1981 and the following years, when Albanians demonstrated en masse, demanding only their national, economic and political equality within the Yugoslav federation. 

There is no small number of Yugoslav scientists who, with undeniable arguments, have proven that this accusation is without any basis, but with a clear anti-Albanian tendency. Albanians participated en masse in the People’s Revolution during the LNC, with which they gained the right to be equal to other nations and nationalities of socialist Yugoslavia, which to a considerable extent was achieved with the 1974 Constitution, therefore any counter-revolution would be against them. Albanians then and now with their demands do not want to achieve anything other than full equality within the SFRY, and this equality in deed but not only on paper. However, Serbia’s unitary policy is still based on its dominance, and not on the equality of nations and nationalities.

As for the second accusation, the inequality of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo, this is truly unscrupulous. Let me just point out a few facts that convincingly show that Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo are not only not in an unequal position, but they are largely privileged, while Albanians are discriminated against. Kosovo, as is known, is the most underdeveloped region of Yugoslavia, which contributes 2.1% to the country’s social production, while its population is 8%. 

The new contingent reaches 18 to 20 thousand people every year, so the army of the unemployed is rapidly growing. In 1000 inhabitants in Yugoslavia there are on average 281 employed, while in Kosovo there are only 120. Thus, the average number of unemployed is 3.3 times higher in Kosovo. Over 41% of the unemployed are youth with secondary education, while the unemployed with higher qualifications are over 3,000. Ten municipalities in Kosovo have even 6.5 to 8 times lower incomes per capita than the average of Serbia and Yugoslavia. 

In this dramatic situation in Kosovo, the right to work is the greatest social privilege, because it ensures the basic condition of existence. On that basis, the greatest social and national conflicts and injustices are created. … In this economic sphere, Albanians are discriminated against to such an extent that many families have been brought to the brink of poverty and to the brink of famine, while this, according to international norms, is the greatest crime against humanity. 

This is actually a deliberate policy towards Albanians, so that this people is deprived of the opportunity to educate the new generations and with other repressive measures, Albanians, due to poverty, leave their homeland for Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. This is today’s anti-Albanian policy and the practice of the informal Serbian-Montenegrin-Macedonian coalition, which has its roots in the last century. But the facts themselves illustrate the factual truth.

The national structure of the population in 1981 was: Albanians 77.4%, Serbs 13.2%, Montenegrins 1.7% and Turks 0.8%. On 30.IX 1988, there were employed: 162,499 Albanians, 51,092 Serbs, 6,957 Montenegrins and 3,014 Turks. From this it can be seen that in the year in question every third Montenegrin, every fifth Serb, but every thirteenth Albanian was employed. On 30.VI 1989, 113,000 (82.1%) Albanians, 14,156 (10.5%) Serbs, 1,2225 (0.9%) Montenegrins and 1,095 (0.8%) Turks were registered with employment agencies in Kosovo. 

It should be noted here that every adult Serb and Montenegrin seeks employment, while a large number of Albanians generally do not apply for work in the aforementioned entities, because they know that this is futile, based on the fact that Serbs and Montenegrins are employed even against the constitution and without any competition, without appropriate qualifications, while intellectuals can be seen throughout Yugoslavia as in the markets waiting every day to engage in any physical work for miserable wages. Some attribute this situation to the high birth rate of Albanian women, which is a problem of its own kind, but it is no argument for justifying the discriminatory policy in employment. 

This discrimination is clearly proven by the fact that over 60,000 Albanian families do not have any employed member, while on the other hand there is no Serbian and Montenegrin family without an employee or without any pension or other assistance. In view of this factual situation, how can it be said that Serbs and Montenegrins are being expelled or are unequal in Kosovo? They are in fact the most privileged category not only in Kosovo, but also in the whole of Yugoslavia, because neither in Montenegro nor in Serbia are Montenegrins and Serbs employed to that extent. To this should be added the fact that Serbs and Montenegrins are employed mainly in administrative activities and services, while Albanians in mining, construction and other heavy work.

Another convincing fact that speaks of the privileged position of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo. This is shown by the degree of their urbanization, which is incomparably greater for them than for Albanians, because according to the 1981 census, over 38% of Serbs and 70% of Montenegrins live in cities, while a total of 28.9% of Albanians. In addition, in Pristina alone, 84.7% of Montenegrins and 70.3% of Serbs live in social housing, but only 26.9% of Albanians. 

After the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989, Serbia has taken several measures that have made the entire economy of this province dependent on it, justifying this with some kind of integration and community within the Republic. This is the case of the Kosovo Electric Power Company, the “Ramiz Sadiku” Construction Combine from Pristina, with Trepca, etc. …… Instead of taking measures to improve this drastic policy of the endangered party, Albanian families, the opposite is done: almost all industrial facilities are built in Serbian environments and settlements, in which exclusively Serbs and Montenegrins work. 

They are pure ethnic enterprises. , as well as in some settlements in which the authorities bulldoze the houses of the few Albanians in the villages (such as the case in Bresje near Pristina), while from some mixed schools students of Albanian nationality are expelled (Priluzhja near Vushrri) so that the schools remain completely Serbian. However, Serbian politics and propaganda accuse Albanians of wanting settlements and a pure Kosovo, which is essentially the opposite. 

In the newly established municipality of Zubin Potok, which has 6,000 inhabitants, mainly of Serbian nationality, several industrial facilities have been built, as well as in the Serbian municipality of Leposavić, as well as in Sirinić, etc., while in the municipality of Malisheva, with 43,000 inhabitants, mainly of Albanian nationality, there is no industrial facility, where a total of 1,000 people are employed. A modern police station building has even been built here. 

In order to implement this economic policy and national inequality, the funds of the Federal Fund for Underdeveloped Regions are also used, from which the federal government has allowed the construction of 2,000 apartments and the purchase of 700 plots for Serbs and Montenegrins who will come to live and work in Kosovo. On the one hand, the arrival and employment of those who have never lived in Kosovo is encouraged, while on the other hand, local Albanians are put out of work, who are recommended to look for work throughout the country and abroad…..”

Even the representatives of the Section of Fighters of the Seventh Assault Brigade in Kosovo had reacted, in the open letter from Pristina, on March 19, 1990, sent to the Presidency of the SFRY and the Federal Council of the League of Fighters of the Yugoslav People’s Army, which among other things states: “… the destruction of autonomy, the colonization of Kosovo again, the registration of volunteers to come to Kosovo, the relocation of over 300,000 alleged Albanian immigrants from Kosovo, the closure of the University in Pristina, the removal of the Albanian language as an official language, etc. 

We are also irritated by the punishment measures that are being taken based on national criteria, and not according to the degree of the offense. Thus, let’s say, an Albanian parent is punished only because his two-year-old child, certainly under the influence of photos on TV or elsewhere, raises two fingers in the sign of the letter “V” when he sees A policeman, or an Albanian in a drunken state, in a cafe demands that the photo of the current Serbian leader be removed, is sentenced to 60 days in prison, while no measures are taken against a V. Seselj, V. Drašković, who in front of TV cameras remove the photo of Tito, calling him a criminal…. 

We are unfortunately witnesses of the very time when the goal of these forces, receptive V. Qubrillović, I. Andrić and the directions of the “non-existent” ASSHKA memorandum are gradually being realized, almost completely matching and identifying with the program and measures of official Serbian policy. This fact is also confirmed to us by V. Drašković at the round table of Serbian political parties and for Kosovo (March 9, 1990)…”

This was emphasized on March 23, 1989, when Kosovo was deprived of its subjectivity in the former SFRY and its 1974 Constitution was repealed, especially after July 5, 1990, when Serbia classically occupied Kosovo, a highly national-chauvinistic and expansionist policy of Serbia towards the Albanian people in Kosovo reigns. On the other hand, on July 2, 1990, the Assembly of Kosovo declared the independence of Kosovo and approved the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. 

On September 7, 1991, the citizens of Kosovo declared in a referendum for the independence of the Republic of Kosovo. The Government of Kosovo requested the Badinter Commission within the framework of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia to recognize the independent state of Kosovo in the process of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. In 1992, presidential and parliamentary elections were held in Kosovo. However, the Serbian government has responded to the democratic demands of the people of Kosovo with violence and organized state terror aimed at ethnic cleansing of Kosovo and its Serbization.

In addition to the political determination for the Serbization of Kosovo, Serbia has continuously issued laws and normative acts with discriminatory content specific to Kosovo. The Serbian government had approved about 1360 political, legal, general and special acts in function of the recolonization of Kosovo with Serbs and Montenegrins. They were purely colonial laws. With them, the legal support for the colonization of Kosovo with the Slavic element was created. With such laws, Kosovo was transformed into a monarchical colony of Serbia.

The former Yugoslav Federation and its republics allocated large funds to stimulate the mass arrival of Serbs in Kosovo. The privileges of the Serbs were very large: the provision of employment, housing, free land, long-term loans without interest, much higher incomes for the same job, and other benefits. During this period, the establishment of industrial units in Serbian enclaves and the construction of segregated housing and other facilities began.

The new wave of colonization began with the arrival of police officers, senior military instructors, judges and administrators to pursue and torture as many Albanians as possible. In 1988, the two Presidencies of Socialist Yugoslavia (the Presidency of the LKJ and the Presidency of Yugoslavia) and the government sought the colonization of Kosovo through an action to supposedly provide Kosovo with personnel assistance: in education, culture, jurisprudence, police, etc. The former Yugoslav Federation and its units thus stimulated repression and segregation in Kosovo and helped realize the long-standing goals of Serbia’s hegemonic policy.

On March 8, 1990, Serbia repealed the “Law on the Revision of the Distribution of Land to Colonists in Kosovo and Macedonia”, which, according to calculations, should have returned land to about 14 thousand Serbian families who had come as settlers in Kosovo between the two World Wars, which resulted in many former Serbian and Montenegrin settler families receiving new land properties from agricultural cooperatives, or large sums of money as “compensation”. Meanwhile, the “Law on the Establishment of the Fund for the Return of Serbs and Montenegrins to Kosovo” envisaged the provision of funds for colonization from income taxes, legacies and gifts, from interest and other sources.

The consequences of this discrimination in the legislative aspect mercilessly hit all spheres of social life in Kosovo. Through the conduct of discriminatory laws and normative acts, Albanians were excluded from economic, political and social life. Thus, the entire economic and social life in Kosovo and beyond was paralyzed, further deepening the economic crisis with catastrophic consequences, especially for about 130,000 Albanian workers, who were left without work and without means for their existence and that of their families, most of whom were forced to take the path of exile in different countries of the world, just to ensure an existence. The policy of inequality and discrimination was manifested in a special form in the sphere of education.

For this purpose, the “Political Platform for Kosovo” of the LKJ was also drafted, which envisaged the colonization of Kosovo through the alleged return of Serbs and Montenegrins. Then, the Project for the return of about 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins to live in Kosovo was drafted. This project was a document, which colonized Kosovo with Serbs and Montenegrins, despite the fact that Kosovo had the highest population density, 200 inhabitants/1 km2 (two and a half times more than the average in the former Yugoslavia).

For colonization of the classical type, Kosovo did not have any conditions, because it is the most densely populated territory in this part of Europe, especially in terms of agricultural density, with large potential for unemployed labor, with insufficient development of processing capacities and with a very low degree of finalization of the raw materials it has. On the other hand, the destruction of the economic base of Kosovo, the plundering of funds and technology by the Serbian rulers does not go in favor of additional population. 

But the main goal of the occupying power was the tendency to change the national composition of Kosovo. On the other hand, many settlements, even entire rural agrarian provinces in Serbia had remained empty, without population. But the government did not settle Serbian refugees there, where there was sufficient land and basic conditions, because it did not have this goal, but the goal of colonizing Kosovo with the Slavic element and changing the national structure.

The government of that time also drafted the so-called Yugoslav Program for Kosovo, dated February 9, 1990. Through this program, the government tried to change the ethnic structure and establish an ethnic balance in Kosovo in a refined and perfidious manner, unlike the previous Serbian regimes, by putting unprecedented pressure on Albanians to leave their homes, while bringing Serbs and Montenegrins in their place with the aim of Slavizing and colonizing Kosovo. 

That program aimed to take concrete measures in all areas: political, economic, cultural, educational, health, judicial, informational, employment, urbanism, demographic development, etc. Such a program, which bore a rather cynical title “Program for the realization of peace, freedom, equality and prosperity of Kosovo”, known as the “Program for Kosovo”, was simply a discriminatory and racist program. It envisaged the opening of new jobs, employment priorities, special incentives for investments in employment programs, all for the return, namely the arrival of a larger number of Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo to live and work here and to prevent their emigration from Kosovo; it envisaged the reduction of all Albanian cadres in social institutions and economic organizations, it envisaged the issuance of a special law by which the Fund for ensuring material conditions for the development of Kosovo would be established, in order to prevent the emigration of Serbs and Montenegrins, the return and arrival of young people. 

It also envisaged examining the possibility of employment of Albanians in other countries of Yugoslavia in accordance with the “Program for Kosovo”; It envisaged the construction of 30 branches of Serbian enterprises in places where Serbs, Montenegrins, Muslims, Goranis lived, respectively in places where Serbs and Montenegrins wanted to return to work and live in Kosovo – in Leposavić, Mitrovica, Fushë Kosovë/Kosovo Polje, Zubin Potok, Novo Brdo, Shtërpc, Lipjan, Gjilan, Obiliq, Ferizaj, Kamenica and in local communities in Gračanica and Pristina, where Serbs and Montenegrins live. [ 159 ]

In addition to the plans of Socialist Yugoslavia, initiated by Serbia, it had also drawn up plans and projects for the recolonization of Kosovo. An operational plan envisaged the construction of 30 neighborhoods, the construction of housing in Gjakova, Pristina, Fushë-Kosovo, Obiliq, Novobërdë, Shterpce, Lypjan, Zubin-Potok and Kamenicë. On December 12, 1991, with the aim of recolonizing Kosovo, 100 families of Serbian and Montenegrin origin who had fled Albania were settled in the premises of the children’s and youth center in Deçan. [ 160 ] Later, many other families were settled there and elsewhere.

As part of the action to colonize Kosovo, Socialist Yugoslavia on 16 February 1990 approved the Law on the Provision of Housing for the Needs of Personnel and the Return of Persons Displaced from Kosovo in the Period from 1989 to 1993, as well as the Law on the Implementation of that Program. [ 161 ] According to that program, or rather the law, it was envisaged to build 2,000 apartments on an area of ​​115,273 square meters and to allocate 711 plots of land and loans for individual construction, with the value of the funds for the implementation of that program in the amount of 20,075,712 dinars. 

After the destruction of the former Yugoslavia, the appetites for the colonization of Kosovo had increased even more. To this end, the Assembly of the former FRY, on 17 March 1994, adopted the Law on the Provision of Housing for the Needs of Personnel and the Return of Displaced Persons to Kosovo. [ 162 ] According to that law, it was envisaged that in the period from 1994 to 1998, 1,564 apartments would be built or purchased for these needs. In 1994, it was envisaged that the construction of 1,024 apartments that had been started earlier would be completed. [ 163 ]

Legal provisions defined the conditions and criteria for granting loans and allocating housing to certain categories of “cadres” and persons returning to Kosovo. Then, the allocation of plots for the construction of houses for the colonists, etc. was determined.

On August 6, 1992, Serbia approved a “Program for the Formation of the Fund for the Development of Serbia,” which provided funds for the continuation of the colonization campaign.

One of the most extreme systemic legal acts is the “Law on Territorial Organization of Serbia”. [ 164 ] According to Article 7 of this law, “The Government of Serbia may change the names (toponyms) of existing settlements according to the definitions in that law, after the preliminary opinion received from the municipal assembly”. With the provisions of Article 72, paragraph 1, of the aforementioned Law, “The bodies of the Municipality of Malisheva shall cease to operate on the day of entry into force of this Law”. 

On the other hand, new municipalities such as Zubin Potok, Zvecan, Shterpca and Gora are formed. With the provisions of Article 73 of the said Law, the municipal assemblies are obliged to “review the existing names of settlements and assign new names within a period of one year from the day of its entry into force”. This means that first, through legal acts, the Slavicization of the autochthonous Albanian toponymy begins.

The Serbian law on the transformation of social property into private property stipulated that 60% of the proceeds from the sale of social property would be allocated to the Serbian Development Fund, which, as we have seen, financed the colonization of Kosovo. [ 165 ]

In addition to the government bodies, various organizations, individuals, and other associations made various proposals for the colonization of Kosovo. A proposal was made to bring 400,000 Serbs from Romania [ 166 ] , the Israeli version of the colonization of Kosovo was even considered, then the proposal that the colonization of Kosovo be carried out immediately, making Pristina the capital of Serbia and Yugoslavia, where all state institutions, military and police schools, many officers, civil servants, police officers, etc. with their families would be transferred. This wave of colonization would capture a number of 100,000 Serbs, and even the request of some Kosovo Serb officials that at least 300,000 Serbs and Montenegrins should immediately come to Kosovo. [ 167 ]

In economic terms, the installed Serbian government wanted, in addition to the political side, the expulsion of Albanians, their exploitation, the colonization of Kosovo with the Serbian element, etc., to also begin the destruction of the little economy that had been built in Kosovo compared to other regions of the former Yugoslavia. As a measure of advantage, it used the integration of the same social enterprises in Serbia and Vojvodina. The goal was to profit and take capital from Kosovo. With this, the removal of Albanian workers and the introduction of Serbian cadres to leadership positions without any relevant educational qualifications.

The Association of Serbs and Montenegrins “Bozhuri” of Fushë-Kosovo defined a program for the colonization of Kosovo. This operational program does not differ much from other previous programs, because in essence it is a conglomerate of demands presented for many years, both in Serbo-Montenegrin gatherings, as well as in occupied Kosovo forums. As its first demand, the obligation to build neighborhoods and pre-laws with at least one hundred households throughout Kosovo is singled out, an obligation that Serbia, namely the directorate for the development of “Kosmet”, must implement. 

Then other demands are listed, such as the one for the immediate start of preparing locations for the construction of new and existing settlements, the return of mountains usurped by Albanians (!) to state ownership, on the condition that they are then divided between Serbs and Montenegrins; the settlement of Serbian families on lands that were sold in violation (!) of the law, as well as on expropriated lands, such as those in Brezovica, Gazivoda, Radonić and elsewhere; the request for the issuance of a law prohibiting the allocation of socially arable lands to Albanians; the request for the annulment of the Law prohibiting the return of Serbs to Kosovo; the request for the issuance of a decision to expel Albanian emigrants who do not have Yugoslav citizenship; the prohibition of the work of parties, associations and other associations that are being exposed “hostilely”, etc. Of course, “Bozhuri” did not forget to also demand the issuance of the discriminatory law, the one on family planning. [ 168 ]

The so-called Yugoslav government on January 12, 1995 approved a decree, according to which 4.1 million dinars should be allocated from the federal budget for this year for the construction of colonies in Kosovo. 

This completely anti-Albanian decree supported the colonization of Kosovo with Serbian and Montenegrin populations; “All citizens displaced from Kosovo and Metohija, who are interested in returning, and cadres who want to come to this province, for the construction of houses or the purchase of apartments will receive loans with a repayment period of 40 years, while the place – free of charge”. 

According to this decree, priority was given to: a) cadres necessary for administrative bodies, judiciary, economic and social services and returnees who were displaced before 31.12.1991; b) cadres and other persons working in the administration of socio-economic services of the KAMK (cadres brought after the re-occupation); c) persons who have a large number of family members. With the approval of this decree, Belgrade officials envisaged the possibility of implementing a program for the settlement of 100,000 Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo. [ 169 ]

Even in the area of ​​property, in the colonization dispute, the transfer of powers from Kosovo to Serbia was made. A law was issued, which defined the sale and purchase of real estate. [ 170 ] According to it, the Republican Secretariat of Serbia for Finance could allow the sale and purchase of real estate only if it assessed that it would not affect the change in the ethnic structure of the population, or the displacement of certain people. This law applied only to Kosovo, while the “certain people” were Serbs and Montenegrins. According to this law and others, hundreds of purchase and purchase contracts were annulled. Many hectares of land and hundreds of houses and apartments were taken from Albanians.

Serbia also took a concrete action to colonize Kosovo by changing the urban plans of Kosovo and its municipalities. Those changes were made in violation of the Law on Spatial Planning, based solely on the (discriminatory) provisions of the Law on the Work of Republican Bodies in Special Circumstances. In this regard, the Serbian Parliament also approved the decision to amend and supplement the Decision on the Detailed Urban Plan of the “Ulpiana” neighborhood in Pristina, which provided that instead of the primary school sports facilities, 110 residential buildings would be built for Serbs and Montenegrins from other parts of Yugoslavia who wish to return or settle in Kosovo to live and work there. For this purpose, the Serbian Parliament has taken the decision to amend and supplement the urban plan of the “Dardania” neighborhood in Pristina, which envisaged that instead of the green space, 98 residential buildings for Serbs and Montenegrins would be built. [ 171 ]

The current Serbian government has also implemented the Serbization of Kosovo by building churches in urban centers, changing the names of schools, streets, squares, various organizations, and naming them with Serbian mythological names. The Cyrillic script dominated everywhere.

As can be seen, Albanians in Kosovo were discriminated against in education, culture, employment, health protection and social security, in the legal protection of physical and moral integrity, in information, in the economy, politics and in all spheres of their life and work.

The FRY, for the colonization of 100,000 Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo, with the Decree on the manner and conditions of the colonization of Kosovo of 12 January 1995, stipulates that the Serbian settlers will be given free land, land, apartments, houses and very large financial resources. According to the Serbian newspaper “Jedinstvo”, the Serbian government bodies of Obiliq have planned to build a settlement between Miloševo and Obiliq, with 247 houses (families) for Serbian settlers from Croatia. It is also planned that the Serbian settlers, who want to engage in agriculture, will also be given three hectares of agricultural land. [ 172 ]

After the fall of the so-called Serbian Krajina in Croatia (August 1995), the colonization of Kosovo with Serbs who had fled Croatia intensified. Within a short time, 13,895 Serbian settlers settled in Kosovo. In addition to Croatia, many Serbs from Bosnia and Serbia themselves settled in Kosovo. 

According to earlier Serbian plans, initiated by Serbian President Milošević, it was planned to settle in Kosovo several tens of thousands of Serbian refugees, rebels (insurgents) and criminals who would flee Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Serbian refugees were settled in 23 school buildings, 8 student dormitories, 7 kindergartens, 21 hotels and resorts, 2 health centers, 9 cultural and sports facilities and 35 other facilities in Kosovo. [ 173 ] In the meantime, or later, they were also settled in many other buildings of working organizations, entities, institutions, factories, etc., by one or two families, where they were employed and settled there. 

Even, which is against all international legal norms, they were also settled in archive buildings, where archival material is preserved as a cultural monument, as is the case with the Kosovo Archives, the Pristina City Archives, etc. In addition to their high salaries, they were exempt from all payments, such as electricity, telephone, municipal taxes and levies, even travel, etc. The number of settlers settled in those buildings increased day by day.

The settlers who settled in Kosovo and those who would settle were given and promised 30 thousand hectares of agricultural land, the property of the people of Kosovo, mainly Albanians. In particular, the land of agricultural cooperatives, previously taken from the Albanian population, was allocated to them, based on the “Law on the conditions, manner and procedure for the allocation of agricultural land to citizens who wish to live and work in the territory of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija”. [ 174 ] 

Meanwhile, for many Serbian and Montenegrin families, the government, through the pretext of returning previously confiscated, nationalized or expropriated lands, even though payments had been made for them, “returned” those properties to them, or gave them in exchange or paid large sums of money again, where there were cases where even though they had received the money, it was still paid. Such cases were numerous. The most characteristic case is the properties of the cooperatives in the villages of Qagllavića and Llapllaselle in Prishtina, but also elsewhere. 

Those properties now after 1999 Serbs are largely selling to Albanians who, without any plan, are building numerous facilities, mainly service facilities. In addition to the material side that is benefiting the Serbian residents of those areas, on the other hand, in Kosovo, fertile land is now being taken away to a worrying extent and is being transformed into various facilities, not only residential but also other. These types of actions are not done anywhere in the world. Constructions are being made on infertile lands, mainly of class IV and V, while the fertile land is being preserved. 

This will later come back to haunt us and our future generations will judge us. The Albanian residents see this only as personal interest. They are not interested in the future of the state, their families. They build without any plan, without permission, even on socially owned properties, usurping them. The government in many cases, in the absence of legal provisions, but also due to negligence, is tolerating all of this. 

However, later history will condemn us for all this. In modern countries of the world, the first priority for the individual is the strengthening of the state and with it his own. In Kosovo, the opposite exists. We still consider state property, of course, a mentality inherited from the past, state property, as foreign. Without the creation and strengthening of the state, there is no security, prosperity and democracy. In fact, we are not paying state obligations, such as property taxes, utility payments, etc.

During a visit by an official Dutch delegation in June 1995 to the Council for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms of Kosovo, the chairman of this Council, Mr. Adem Demaçi, among other things, informed that delegation about the Serbian colonization of Kosovo, saying: That almost a quarter of the Albanian population, even the most vital one, has emigrated abroad. Serbia is taking all measures to create conditions for the settlement of 100,000 Serbian and Montenegrin settlers in the territory of Kosovo and it is acting intensively and since last year the Serbian government has begun building residential centers for Serbian and Montenegrin settlers in the territory of Kosovo. [ 175 ]

On the other hand, seeing that the rapid change in the national structure of the population of Kosovo, the colonization through the aforementioned program of the former Yugoslavia, the program of Serbia in 1990 and the behavior of Serbian refugees, did not yield encouraging results, the Serbian government continued, but now with increased intensity, a systematic terror against Albanians, especially against the youth, with the aim of abandoning and emptying Kosovo. 

Meanwhile, the collection of weapons, which Albanians do not have, according to the scenarios of the weapons collection action in the 50s, was used as a pretext, as well as the pursuit of Albanian recruits, whose number each year is from 18,000 to 20,000, as well as numerous provocations made to Albanian youth by the police, government, administration and the Serbian and Montenegrin population themselves, who lived in Kosovo. 130,000 Kosovo Albanian employees were dismissed, out of a total of 150,000. 

State, legal, police and all leadership positions were completely taken over by Serbs. According to some accounts, more than 1,600 Serbs and Montenegrins were appointed directors and other leading cadres in economic organizations, institutions and other organizations in the social sector (this is what the Serbs and Montenegrins themselves said in public appearances). [ 176 ] Hundreds of thousands of Albanians were mistreated by the police. Dozens of people were killed and massacred every year. Murders and massacres, supposedly “suicides”, were committed especially against Albanian soldiers in Yugoslav Serb barracks.

The Serbian government considered the colonization of Kosovo with Serbs and the expulsion of Albanians as a sacred national action. For Albanians, however, these actions constitute acts of genocide with a background of de-Albanianization. Despite the pompous Serbian propaganda that the action was of a humanitarian nature, it is clear that the main goal was to change the ethnic structure of the population and colonize Kosovo. [ 177 ]

For the Serbian and Montenegrin settlers, the current government built houses, but also settlement colonies. Thus, it built about 119 houses near Junik, over 180 houses (1996) near the village of Baballoq and began construction of a new settlement on the other side of the road, the construction of 76 houses in Lum i Madh in Vushtrri, 160 houses in Kodra e Diellit in Prishtina, residential complexes in the neighborhoods of “Ulpianë”, “Dardani” etc., in Shiroka in Suhareka, in Miradi i Epërme 80 apartments for settlers etc. 

It had changed the urban plan of many cities and villages as well as industrial areas for the construction of settlement colonies, such as in Gjilan, Prishtina, Prizren, Klina, Suhareka, Vushtrri, Istog, Deçan, Zveçan etc. [ 178 ] However, there were cases when Serbian plans for the colonization of Kosovo had failed. This is evidenced by the case in the municipality of Istog, when three blocks of flats, which were built for settlers, namely for Montenegrins from Vrraka in Albania, were divided between the Serbs and Montenegrins living in this municipality.

Regarding the number of settlers settled in Kosovo during this period, we do not have accurate records, because the government itself did not want to present them, precisely because of its policy and specific purpose. However, according to some records that we possess, we can emphasize the following: After the fall of the so-called Serbian Krajina in Croatia (August 1995), the colonization of Kosovo with Serbs who had fled Croatia intensified. Within a short time, 13,895 Serbian settlers settled in Kosovo. [ 179 ] 

In addition to Croatia, settlers from Bosnia and Serbia themselves settled in Kosovo; According to another record, by 1997, about 20,000 Serbian, Montenegrin and other settlers had settled in Kosovo. [ 180 ] According to some records given by Dr. Hakif Bajrami, [ 181 ] Serbia from 1981 to 1995 allocated at least 5,519 apartments and houses for Serbian settlers. If an average family has 5 members, then it turns out that through various plans of the former Yugoslavia and Serbia, 27,595 settlers were brought to Kosovo. 

This number increased even more by 1998. However, the settlers, or rather the refugees, moved from one settlement to another, moving to where there were better living conditions.

Although the war for national liberation had begun in Kosovo by the Albanian population led by the KLA, the Serbian army, police and paramilitaries were committing genocide against the Albanian population, the ruling Serbian political party “SPS” (Socijalisticka Partija Srbije), namely the “Provincial Council of “SPS” for Kosovo and Metohija” was making plans and drafting projects for this purpose. It had drafted a document entitled “Predlog mera za resavavanje aktualnih problema na Kosovu i Metohija” [ 182 ] (“Proposal of measures for solving current problems in Kosovo and Metohija”), Pristina, 15 December 1998.

The introduction to that project, among other things, emphasized: “For the remaining of Kosmet in Serbia, the most important thing is that the Serbs and Montenegrins remain in these territories. In order to preserve Kosovo and Metohija, the state must undertake urgent measures to destroy terrorism and the Albanian para-state, to raise the economic and social position of the Serbs and Montenegrins and to create conditions for the colonization of these territories.” [ 183 ]

The introduction to the project proposes appropriate measures that the state should take in this regard. I will highlight some of the most important ones:

– Only strong and well-organized Serbs and Montenegrins could successfully defend this part of Serbia. For this reason, the state must urgently approve a plan for the economic development of the Serb-Montenegrin population in these areas;

– The construction of housing that has begun in Kosovo must be urgently completed in all aspects. Currently, around 1,300 homes are being built and they must be completed as soon as possible;

– Funds must be provided for the construction of new apartments and houses. It has been evidenced that in the territory of the Province there are 4286 socially endangered Serb-Montenegrin families, mainly in rural areas, who live in unsuitable housing and in poverty and misery;

– There are 7300 people interested in building houses in Kosovo. We believe that land should be provided with very favorable conditions;

– This is the case for refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, who are currently in collective settlements, to be provided with permanent residence and to be connected to these regions;

– The construction of apartments and houses in Kosovo will also bring a large number of Serbs and Montenegrins, who are not found in other parts of Serbia;

– There is a real possibility that these categories of population will be allocated arable land. It has been established that there are 44,529 ha in the Province, which are mainly owned by agricultural cooperatives or combines. It is important that state bodies simplify the procedure for allocating land, determine the criteria for this process;

– The majority of Serbs and Montenegrins work in socially and state-owned enterprises. Few are engaged in private business. There are environments where employees have not received income for several years, which has contributed to their impoverishment. For this reason, means must be found to move production in those enterprises where Serbs and Montenegrins are employed;

– Ways must be found to stimulate Serbs and Montenegrins to engage in private business. This can only be achieved through incentives and benefits;

– Institutional support for all forms of integration of Kosovo with Serbia. This should be particularly insisted on, because experience shows that the largest number of collectives and enterprises from other regions of Serbia during integration with Kosovo enterprises have entered partially motivated, unclear, sometimes even with personal interests, not taking into account that the integration process is of strategic importance for the existence of the state of Serbia in these regions. Now is the chance to economically strengthen Serbo-Montenegrin families through the transformation of enterprises in Kosovo, so that under appropriate conditions their shares can be divided. In this way, the transformation will also be in function of the existence of Kosovo in Serbia;

– In order to change the ethnic picture in Kosovo, the economic growth of the Serbo-Montenegrin population must necessarily be assigned a “Kosmet allowance” in state services and state-owned enterprises. This would be an effective stimulating measure not only for the existence, but also for the colonization of these areas. In the past, this has had great effects;

– As a measure of state importance and a political issue, land measurement and cadastral registration in Kosovo is important.

– Other issues are also proposed, such as creating better conditions for the education of Serbian and Montenegrin children, the urgent connection of all Serbian settlements with municipal centers by road, normal supply, installation of telephones, improvement of the information system, etc.

Regarding the colonization of Kosovo, in points 3 and 6 of that Project, the locations of the places where settlements can be built, who can live in them and the resources for existence are foreseen:

– Municipality of Gjakova : The settlement can be built near the Gjakova-Prizren highway on both sides of the road, where 21 acres have been parceled out. The second location is near the Gjakova-Prishtina regional road on both sides, where more than a hundred buildings can be built. It is proposed that in addition to the house and yard, the residents be allocated 2-3 ha of agricultural land, 2-3 ha of forest and 0.5 to 1 ha of vineyards. They will also be given a tractor and a cow that they would pay in kind. All these families will be mainly engaged in agriculture. The municipality has 29,436 ha of land in the social sector.

– Municipality of Gora : The Assembly of the Municipality of Gora has approved the Program for the Return of Serbs and Montenegrins and the Cessation of the Migration of Gorani and has provided 9 plots of land for the construction of family houses in the settlement of Dragash. Three plots have been allocated to Serb and Montenegrin families, but construction has not started. For this purpose, this municipality possesses 174 ha of land in the social sector.

– Municipality of Suhareka . The settlement could be built in the location in Shiroka, near Suhareka, near the Suhareka – Prizren highway. Complete infrastructure has been provided. In Shiroka, the municipality has drafted and approved the urban plan for this settlement and has parceled out 50 plots for individual housing construction, as well as 50 plots for the construction of a settlement for refugees. There is a location in the village of Mushtishte for the construction of 50 family houses. Infrastructure has been provided, as well as employment in the economy and in the municipality and in social bodies. There are interested parties for these settlements. The sources of existence of these families would be provided by employment in the economy, state bodies, local administrations and other institutions in the municipality. There is a possibility of allocating arable land of the social sector for use in an area of ​​120 ha.

– Municipality of Rahovec : In the territory of this municipality, settlements could be built in Xërxë, Brënjacë and Hoçë e Madhe. Families who fled from other villages would be settled here. These should be employed and working land should be allocated to those who want to work it. It already has over 920 ha of working surface for those families who want to live in this environment.

– Municipality of Prizren : Localities where settlements can be built: Dushanovë – 150 lands x 5 ares = 75 ha; Lubizhda (at the Perllonka facility) 60 lands x 5 ares total 3 ha; Novak 10 lands; Jagllanica in Prizren 30 to 35 lands. Sources of existence from agriculture, except the latter from work in economic entities. For this purpose, it possesses 160 ha of arable agricultural land.

– Municipality of Novo Brdo : According to the urban plan, the construction of two residential complexes for individual and collective housing in the village of Prekoc, 60 apartments and Bostan, 76 apartments is foreseen. They will be employed in the local administration and state bodies, in the mine, etc. Out of the 205 ha of land they own, 35-40 ha can be allocated to them.

– Municipality of Kamenica : The settlement can be built on the plot of the village of Kololeç, in the place “Part Two”, where there are approximately 25 hectares of arable land. This will serve both for refugees and for all those who want to live and work in this municipality. Employment would be done in the city. It has 260 hectares of land, property of the Agricultural Cooperative.

– Municipality of Viti : Due to the migration of Croats from BL to Letnica, conditions have been created for the colonization of 3000 Serbs and Montenegrins. In the plot of the village of Sadovinë, on the properties used by “Agromorava” for strategic reasons, it is proposed to build a settlement with subsistence from agriculture and partial employment in the economy. 250 ha of arable land have been allocated for Serbs and Montenegrins who wish to live in Kosovo.

– Municipality of Gjilan : In this municipality there are many suitable sites for the construction of a settlement. In the “Park” neighborhood in the city, 100 plots have been allocated and 120 others should be allocated to Serbian families. Funds are needed for infrastructure, because the urban plan foresees the construction of the Serbian Neighborhood. In the village of Livoçi i Poshtëm, there is a social site of several hectares, quite suitable for a settlement with 100 houses. There are many interested people and their existence is ensured by work in the economy, agriculture and other institutions.

– Municipality of Leposaviq : Settlements will be built in Soçanica (two settlements) and in Leshak, which will house refugee families who wish to live and work in Kosovo. The sources of livelihood would be agriculture and work in an agricultural enterprise.

– Zubin Potok Municipality : There are two plots of land of 2 ha each, 50 acres, which could be used for the construction of a settlement for refugees and returnees.

– Municipality of Mitrovica : Locations for the construction of settlements are located in the BL of Suhadoll and BL of Frashëri, respectively 15 ha in BL of Shipol and 11 ha BL of Frashëri.

– Municipality of Zveçan : With the urban plan of 1996, as possible locations for the construction of new residential neighborhoods in seven residential blocks and the possibility of building a number of residential buildings in all local communities. With this, the number of displaced people would be reduced. There are about 100 land areas available.

– Municipality of Shterpce : Three locations have been designated for the construction of settlements in this municipality, which would house the necessary municipal staff, refugees and social workers.

– Municipality of Skenderaj : An urban project has been drafted for the construction of a settlement of 74 houses intended for refugees, near the center of Skenderaj. For this purpose, there are 3,200 ha in this municipality.

– Municipality of Kaçanik : The construction of a settlement is planned on the plot of the Prishtina-Skopje highway, at the location of Partizani Street, on an area of ​​42 ha. According to the project, 230 housing units will be built. The settlement is dedicated to people who fled and were expelled from the former republics of Yugoslavia and some poor citizens, in order to prevent the displacement and return of displaced persons. They would be employed in the “Sharri” Factory, in customs, in the army, in the police, in administrative bodies and in the cultivation of agricultural land, which has 42 ha of land and 250 ha of disputed area that would then be divided.

– Ferizaj Municipality : The establishment of these settlements was foreseen: Babushi serb (employment in the bicycle parts factory that was built near this village); Nerodime i Poshtme (division of agricultural lands and the existence of infrastructure); Talinofc (division of agricultural land and the village level). For this purpose, the municipality possesses 1000 ha of land owned by agricultural cooperatives.

– Municipality of Gllogovc : Construction of a settlement in Komaran, on the right side of the Prishtina-Peja road (agricultural existence), Karrotica e Epërme, on the right side of the Prishtina-Peja highway. Source of existence: employment in the nearby municipalities of Fushë-Kosovo, Gllogovc or Prishtina. In the territory of this municipality, 5000 ha of arable agricultural land can be offered for the colonization of Serbs and Montenegrins.

– Municipality of Shtime : Settlements can be built in several places such as in Shtime in the place “Koshtanë” and outside Shtime in the places “Fidanishtë” and “Gllavica”. Employment: in the Pipe Factory in Ferizaj and the activation of agriculture, where the social sector possesses 12,827,ooo ha of working surface.

– Municipality of Obiliq : There are two locations for the construction of the settlement: in Miloševë/Milosevo, a parceling plan has been drafted for the construction of 250 individual buildings, on land that is state-owned in the direction of the Prishtina-Mitrovicë road, and in Obiliq/Obiliq in the center of the settlement on an area of ​​100 ares on which the construction of individual buildings can begin immediately. There are 1333 ha of working area, which can be divided.

– Municipality of Peja : The following locations have been determined: 1. Settlement near the regional road Peja-Deçan, about 4 km from the city, on the left side of the road on the social surface, where a settlement with 40 housing units with a surface area of ​​10-15 ares per unit can be built. Infrastructure exists. 2. Settlement near the main road Peja-Prishtina, on the left side of the road about 8 km from the center of Peja, where there is social property that allows the construction of a settlement of 100 or more housing units. Each unit would receive 20 ares. 3. Settlement on the plot Peja-Gorazhdevc, in the Orashje neighborhood, where there is a social complex next to the road on which 30 housing units with a surface area of ​​10-15 ares could be built. Infrastructure exists for this location. For this, about 1,200 ha can be allocated to agricultural producers with a share.

– Municipality of Klina : Places where settlements could be built: The complex with an area of ​​6 ha, located next to the Nora motel, near the Prishtina-Klina road; The area, property of the Sugar Factory in Zajm, near the Prishtina-Peja road; The areas of the Sugar Factory in Budisalc, where there is a local asphalt road; The village of Biçë, the area property of the Agricultural Combine “Malishgan”; The village of Jashanica, the areas of the Agricultural Combine “Malishgan”, 3 km away from the asphalt road Klina-Ujëmir. The working area in the state and social sector, which could be allocated to families who wish to come and live in this municipality, is 3,422.86 ha.

– Municipality of Deçan : Construction of a settlement in which Serbs and Montenegrins displaced from the villages of this municipality would live, in the locality on the plot “Rrafshi i Koshtanit” (3 km) and in the village of Rastavicë (8 km). Serbs and Montenegrins who fled from Albania and settled in Baballoq and Junik have been allocated 600 ha of arable land. This municipality currently possesses another 40 ha of arable land, which could eventually be allocated for cultivation.

– Municipality of Istog : The Municipality of Istog, in its extraordinary meeting on 14.09.1998, decided to allocate 97.66 ha of land in the Bellopojë-Dubravë complex. 147 decisions were issued with 20 ares of land each for the construction of family houses. However, the refugees who were settled in this municipality have left and gone to America. There is a total of 3,793 ha of land in state and industrial ownership.

– Municipality of Fushë-Kosovo : Location Complex 300, the construction of multi-storey residential buildings, namely 327 apartments under the JU program, for the colonization of returnees, is foreseen. So far, in this location, 42 apartments under the JU program have been built, which have been in use since 1992, and 49 apartments for the market, which were purchased by the Yugoslav Army and are also in operation. During 1997, the construction of 36 apartments under the JU program and 24 apartments through the Solidarity Fund began in this location. The construction of 168 apartments can also begin in this location. The population of these settlements would be employed in the Kosovo Electroeconomy, the Railway Enterprise, the SOE “Thertorja”, the Textile Plant “Jumko” and in other organizations that gravitate to the municipality of Fushë-Kosovo. It owns 75 ha of arable land (Uglar, Miradi and Epërme) for this purpose.

– Municipality of Lypian : Possibility of building settlements in the villages of Magure and Suhadoll. In Magure, since 1995, an initiative has been launched to build a refugee neighborhood. For this purpose, 10.54.96 ha of land were allocated, whose employment would be done in the “Golesh” magnesite mine. At this time, an initiative was also taken to build houses in the Suhadoll settlement. This municipality possesses for the allocation of land areas to families, the poor and those who wish to live and work in Kosovo: fields – 131.65.13 ha, pastures – 904.56.46 ha, meadows – 23.00.35 ha, meadows – 23.00.37 ha, mountains 296.50.94 ha and barren land 14.74.42 ha.

– Municipality of Podujevo : At a distance of 2 km from the city center, a settlement of 100 family houses could be built in the place called “Fusha e Livadhisë”, 20 parceled lands above the railway, at the Orthodox church and 106 plots for family houses of the SOE “Fagar”. These settlements are planned for those who live and work in the territory of this municipality and do not have a resolved housing issue, those who want to come and live in this municipality and refugees from Croatia who want to stay here. Their employment in the enterprises of this municipality. For this purpose, agricultural cooperatives own 139 ha of surface area (Ballofc 15 ha, Shajkoc 20 ha, Merdar 14 ha, Obranxhë 20 ha, Shammalluk 30 ha, Dyz 25 ha and Zakut 15 ha).

– Municipality of Vushtrri : In this municipality, the construction of settlements was planned in the following locations: Maxhunaj village, City location “Kooperativa”, City location “A reparti”, City location “Polet”, Location “Prilluzha 1-2-3”, Stanofci i Poshtëm, Stanofci i Epërm, Novolani, Samadrexha, Pantina, Vërmica, Bukoshi, Nadakoci, Druari and Begaj. Refugees, families in difficult financial circumstances, those families that do not have construction land would live in these. Their employment would be in the city’s enterprises and factories and others. For this purpose, 170 ha of land area were planned (Gracë 100 ha of arable land, “Bregu” site 7 ha, “Korrizi” site 3 ha, near Llapi, Maxhunaj village – 60 ha).

– Municipality of Prishtina : The Prishtina City Assembly has also provided, from an urban planning perspective, for the construction of houses: in Hajvali 141 plots of land with 10 ares each, with employment opportunities in the Hajvali Mine; in Leban 175 plots of land with 7.5 ares each, with employment opportunities in the Kosovo Electricity Company; in the village of Nëntë Jugoviçët 59 plots of land with 5 ares each, with employment opportunities in the Kosovo Electricity Company and in the collectives of Prishtina. In the meantime, preparations are being made to allocate 150 plots of land with 7 ares each in the village of Badovc for the “Serbian Solidarity Settlement”. The agricultural area that can be allocated to poor families and families who wish to come and live in this area is 72.36.80 ha.

On the other hand, as a result of violence and terror, a wave of Albanian migration had already begun in the form of refugees, political asylum seekers, seasonal workers, etc. According to various data, it turns out that by 1996, there were around 350,000 Albanian asylum seekers from Kosovo in various European countries. By 1999, their number had reached 500,000.

Murders, massacres, mass expulsion of Albanians and their return

The anti-Albanian platform of the Serbian rulers for the annihilation of Albanians has found its application in a continuous temporal sequence in all areas of social life. It has had its peaks sometimes in the economic field, sometimes in the political, sometimes in the religious or military, but constantly intertwined.

Against the Albanian population and settlements, the Serbian police, army and paramilitaries, starting in March 1998 and until the spring of 1999, launched a large-scale offensive to kill the Albanian population and destroy their settlements. This oppression reached its peak in March – June 1999. At the end of this century, when the world is preparing to enter the third millennium with human and civic achievements, the Albanians of Kosovo suffered a real tragedy: they were faced with macabre atrocities and reprisals, as well as a savage ethnic cleansing carried out by the police and military forces like never before. 

Milosevic and his associates, in implementing plans prepared in secret, launched against the Albanians of Kosovo the 45-thousand-strong army of Serbian police, soldiers and paramilitaries. Its units, both uniformed and ununiform, forcibly evicted Albanians from their apartments and houses within minutes, some of which they set on fire, while the people headed towards the Albanian and Macedonian borders. Milosevic had decided to settle accounts with the Albanians of Kosovo forever, to ethnically cleanse the land of these indigenous inhabitants as soon as possible. Thus, he planned to “celebrate” the 610th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in Gazimestan without Albanians in Kosovo.

Despite the killings, massacres and expulsions of Albanians, the Serbian government, with the aim of colonizing Kosovo, carried out propaganda and continued to build housing for the Serbian population. Thus, as reported by the Pristina newspaper “Jedinstvo” on March 11, 1999, in the “Bazhdarhane” neighborhood in Prizren, on March 10, 1999, the construction of 236 apartments began for the needs of the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the necessary personnel for the economy of Prizren.

The wave of institutionalized Serbian state terror, of murders, massacres, and executions of Albanians swept across Kosovo. The paramilitaries and police, but also the enraged Serbian soldiers could and did kill whoever they wanted and whenever they wanted – without feeling any moral, human, or legal responsibility. They could and did kill young men and women, old men, old women, and men, sparing neither children nor infants. They killed – with or without motive. Just because they were Albanians. Just because they wanted to wipe them off the face of the earth, to wipe them out of Kosovo, so that those who could escape their bullets or knives would flee, would be forced to leave Kosovo, if by chance they could escape their arrest or violent deportation.

The most monstrous barbaric murders and massacres that the government committed against the Albanian people in Kosovo, with the clear intention of completely exterminating the entire Albanian population of Kosovo, completely exposed the policy and genocidal character of the Serbian government and state. The Serbian military, police and paramilitary phalanxes and death cordons did not spare not only unarmed Albanian civilians, but also their women, children, infants and elderly people. Showing openly all their cruelty and trying to erase the traces of macabre violence, the Serbian forces burned the victims of their terror, or even exhumed them and sent their bodies to unknown destinations, which are today being discovered in numerous cemeteries throughout Serbia.

With the beginning of the armed conflict in Kosovo (March 1998), ethnic cleansing and genocide took the form of a barbaric activity, which challenged the entire international community on the eve of the 21st century. The NATO bombings that began on March 24, 1999 aimed to stop and interrupt the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo with murders, massacres and executions, with looting, demolition and burning of entire settlements and with the massive deportation of the Albanian population from their ethnic lands, which was exercised by the Serbian military-police power over the Albanian population.

Serbian plans, proposed by Dobrica Qosiq and other Serbian academics, as well as by circles of official Belgrade politics, have planned to empty Kosovo of Albanians. To achieve this goal, a complete genocide was carried out on an entire population in Kosovo. The entire civilian population was massacred, humiliated to such a barbaric extent, and deported in three directions: Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro. This expulsion was the exodus, or rather the most massive displacement in Europe since World War II.

Deportation – the forcible removal of people from their homes and apartments, where they were ordered to continue towards the train station or motorized vehicles at gunpoint, and even fled on foot towards Albania, the border with Macedonia, but also towards areas with a predominantly Albanian and Bosnian population in Montenegro. From all four corners of Kosovo, columns of people on foot, by tractors, by cars and by train had taken the path of exile, pursued and persecuted by Serbian forces. Among them were the sick, the elderly and the disabled, pregnant women and children and newborn babies. 

These people traveled, pursued or walked for kilometers and kilometers in difficult weather conditions and with shocking experiences and memories of people killed and unburied, corpses thrown on the side of the road, their homes and their homes burned. The statements of the criminal Seselj were put into action, who constantly emphasized that Albanians should be pursued beyond the Bjeshkët e Nemura Mountains, dead or alive… Meanwhile, the Serbian government had made plans that after this all refugees from Croatia and Bosnia would be brought to Kosovo, as well as a number of the Serbian population from the so-called “Srpska Republika”, e.g. part of the population of Banja Luka to Pristina and so on.

For the deportees to Macedonia, Bllaca was a place of hell, where people faced death. The elderly, the sick, the children, tired and exhausted, exhausted and hungry, were lost, but they could not find anyone alive. Bllaca was a human catastrophe of antihuman policy towards a defenseless people. Bllaca, as such, was condemned by the democratic and humanitarian world opinion.

After that chaos of the invasion of the police and paramilitaries, the Albanian homes remained open. The stoves were still lit, the bread was still on the stove, the dishes were still prepared on it, the table was still set.

During the deportation, they were robbed of their money, valuables, and cars. Those who did not have any were mistreated, beaten, or even killed. Their personal documents were taken and immediately torn up, so that they would have no proof of legitimacy. They were convinced that Albanians would never return. Even during the deportation, the Serbian paramilitaries told them: They will never see Kosovo again, and if they do, they will see it on television!; You yourself asked for this, go to Albania, it is yours, this is Serbia!; This is NATO, you yourself asked for it, etc.

Before the withdrawal, Serbian paramilitaries executed Albanians in the country, while during the withdrawal they separated men from women, from family members and executed or disappeared them, while in some cases they raped women and girls.

Regarding the expulsion of the Albanian population from Kosovo, Kadare wrote: “The deportation of the Albanians of Kosovo is the third tragedy, the wildest, the most unprecedented and the most cruel. But it contains within it, along with the mourning, the light of the future. It is the first time that the Albanians will return to where they were uprooted. A change has occurred in our destiny, from what is called divine. 

Albania, after all its anxieties, is finally reaching that part of the world that its brightest people dreamed of, from Gjergj Kastrioti to the Renaissance: in the European area, where it has been and where it had its place. Let the others, its wild neighbors, go wherever they want. That Kosovo, which they left as an evil, the Albanians will fill again with their presence, with beautiful boys and girls, with the wrinkles of the elderly, with an invincible army of babies and children, who everything will be renewed, as life was renewed after the mortar left. 

Life restored after a season is more valued, and so is the land and the house, the lullabies and the books, and everything that constitutes what is called the fatherland, the homeland. Parting from a black night of horror, Albanians must not forget in their lifetime what happened to them. Not to fall into the trap of barren hatred, but to value and better protect their lives…”. [ 184 ]

The government has played a double game, that of organized crime and of creating a belief in the local Serbian and Montenegrin population that with the expulsion of the Albanians this area will always be Serbia. Some naive local Serbs have been encouraged to commit crimes and atrocities against their Albanian neighbors, and even the properties of the Albanians have been divided up among the local Serbs. 

Thus, many local Serbs have been involved in crime, looting and dividing the lands of the Albanians. However, in the end, after being exploited, they were betrayed by the government and a number of them, after the return of the Albanians, after June 1999 to their homeland, after they had bloody hands together with the paramilitaries, police and military, went after them to Serbia and elsewhere, where most of them had their own homes and apartments.

The vandalism of the Serbian government, in addition to inhumane crimes against Albanians, the destruction of Albanian villages with their entire infrastructure, also targeted school buildings, ambulances, houses of culture, valuable objects of historical and cultural heritage, such as many old Albanian towers, on March 27, 1999 the building of the complex of the Albanian League of Prizren, the Gjakova Bazaar, the Peja Bazaar, more than 209 mosques, many tekkes, old houses of great architectural value, etc., as well as many archival documents, books, museum exhibits, etc.

During this period, the Serbian government had looted from municipal assemblies, country offices, etc., all official documentation, such as birth, marriage, and death registers, citizenship books, and then cadastral service documentation, etc. They had distributed them throughout the cities of Serbia. Meanwhile, such personal and property documents that Albanians possessed were burned by Serbian soldiers along with their homes and all their property, or had been torn apart during their expulsion. 

The purpose of all this was that the civil status documents, along with the cadastral service books and other valuable documents that prove the Albanian nature and identity of Kosovo, were looted in order to hide the traces of the ethnic cleansing that was being carried out in Kosovo and to forcibly change the demographic structure of the population in favor of the Serbian and Montenegrin minority and to forcibly prohibit the exiles from returning to Kosovo forever, trying to present the absence of these documents before the eyes of world opinion as an “argument” that they had supposedly never been residents of this region. 

The documentation on the colonization of Kosovo between the two world wars, that of the revision of the agrarian reform and other documentation on property-legal issues and that of political punishments after World War II were taken from the Kosovo Archive. Documents have also been received from other state institutions, such as the one from the Secretariat of Internal Affairs of Kosovo, the Kosovo Cultural Monuments Protection Agency, the Kosovo Museum and many other institutions.

By early May 1999, about 730,000 Albanians had been expelled from Kosovo. Of these, 605,000 took refuge in Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, while another 125,000 in various countries in Europe, America and Australia. If we add to these refugees those who fled until 1996, it turns out that Serbian chauvinism had forcibly displaced by May nearly 1,000,000 Albanians from Kosovo, or more than ½ of the Albanian population of these lands. About 700,000 Albanians were displaced from their homes and apartments and were forced to live in the mountainous regions of Kosovo in a dramatic situation. [ 185 ]

According to UNHCR data at the beginning of June 1999, of the refugees expelled from Kosovo, 443,300 were settled in Albania; 247,800 in Macedonia, 69,300 in Montenegro; 21,700 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a total of 782,100. A total of 76,475 refugees were settled in other countries of the world, including 13,639 in Germany, 7,581 in Turkey, 5,829 in Italy, 5,730 in the USA, then in France, Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Israel, etc. [ 186 ]

It should be emphasized that in the defense of the local Albanian population, of the doorstep, in the return of national pride, in the sensitization of the Albanian issue in the international arena and in the liberation of the country, the Kosovo Liberation Army had undoubtedly given the best sons and daughters of our people. Some of them gave the most precious value for freedom and independence – life.

Serbian anti-civilian military and paramilitary units have committed serious crimes in Kosovo, crimes against humanity in scale. Serbian criminals, despite all the cruelty they have shown by killing, executing, massacring and torturing their victims in the most horrific way, have all along tried to hide the traces of their crimes, by burying and exhuming the bodies of the killed and massacred, by transporting them from one place to another, by throwing them into wells and abysses or even by burning them and disappearing in various ways. 

However, even in Kosovo it is becoming clear that crimes cannot be hidden. This has been proven by the discovery of around 550 mass graves and hundreds of thousands of individual graves with the decomposed bodies and skeletons of victims that are still being found in various parts of Kosovo, caused by Serbian criminals.

The number of those killed, executed, massacred, burned alive or dead, according to current parameters, is estimated to be at least 11,000. Over 2,000 Albanian prisoners are known to be languishing in prisons in Serbia and Vojvodina, while up to 4,000 are estimated to be the number of those who have disappeared and been kidnapped. Serbian soldiers, policemen and paramilitaries have raped Albanian women in various parts of Kosovo. The number of destroyed, burned or damaged objects – houses and apartments, business premises and factories, schools and other educational, cultural and scientific facilities, religious buildings, cultural and historical monuments from ancient times to the present day, business premises, craft workshops, factories, etc. – is extremely large. 

It is estimated that during the war in Kosovo (March 1998 – June 1999), according to incomplete data, 204,285 houses were destroyed and burned, followed by apartments, business premises, craft workshops, factories, in 1,300 settlements in 29 municipalities, 534 schools and 240 health institutions, while in 617 settlements, installations and facilities for electricity supply, drinking water and sewage were destroyed. [ 187 ]

They did this destruction in the name of xenophobic education and, especially, the bigotry of Milosevic and his clique. In the press, in the mass media and in their masses they nicknamed Kosovo “Cradle of the Serbian state”, “Serbian Jerusalem”, “Old Serbia”, etc. And to engrave it in the minds and hearts of their generations, they destroyed, adapted, modified, created or erected busts, monuments, placed plaques and new symbols throughout Kosovo.

The Serbian strategy is a strategy of scorched and dead land. Ethnic cleansing to completely conquer the territory. The Serbian rulers have developed their strategy with a principle of previous wars that is centuries old, which says that “no people can be conquered”. To conquer the territory they have chosen the tactic of ethnic cleansing. They intended to occupy the lands, but they did not want those lands to have non-Serb people, the liberation movement would be continuous and one day that people would definitely enjoy freedom.

However, the Albanian people, their youth had always opposed this terror and violence, and that in various forms. At first by organizing illegal organizations, then by taking action against the authorities, and in recent years also by active resistance – the formation of the Kosovo Liberation Army, in which the best sons and daughters of the Albanian people were involved in the defense and liberation of the homeland. 

Thanks to this army, which began the initiative of liberating the country, then the engagement of the forces of the North Atlantic Alliance – NATO in air attacks against Serbian forces from March 24 to June 12, 1999, when NATO ground forces entered Kosovo triumphantly. The Serbian occupying forces signed the capitulation and were forced to withdraw from Kosovo, while the Albanian people returned to their homes in freedom and marched on the path to independence.

After the withdrawal of Serbian military troops from Kosovo, about 47,000 military troops ahead of the deadline agreed in the Military-Technical Agreement signed by NATO and the military commanders of the former FRY on 9 June 1999, approximately 800 tanks, armored personnel carriers, cannons and artillery guns were withdrawn. Immediately, on that same day and the following days, the Albanian population began to return to their homes. This was done first by refugees from Macedonia, then by those from Albania and so on, despite the appeal of the UNHCR about the risk of mines, not at all waiting for the organized return that international humanitarian and other organizations and institutions were warning about.

The rapid return of refugees from Macedonia, Albania, and distant Western countries, such as the USA, Canada, Australia, etc. is an astonishing fact for the world, which shows how much Albanians are attached to their land, how much love they have for their homeland.

NATO allied forces led by the USA made the most humanitarian act so far towards the humble people, protecting them from total annihilation. They contributed to the fact that Kosovo is now moving towards independence. The constitution of the power bodies under the leadership of UNMIK was made, which are gradually releasing their powers to the locals. Meanwhile, the Serbian and Montenegrin population, but also others, who had no hand in violence and terror, with the creation of conditions began to return to Kosovo, while with the resolution of the status of Kosovo, they must definitely return and live together with the local Albanian population and others in full equality and in a new and promising state – Kosovo.

NOTES TO THE AUTHOR

Jusuf Osmani was born in Albana e Madhe (Sllatinë e Madhe) in Fushë Kosovë in 1948. After completing primary, secondary, university and postgraduate studies in Zagreb (1878), in 1986 he received his doctorate in the field of archival science at the Faculty of Philosophy (Department of Archival Science). He is the first doctor of archival science in Kosovo and the first candidate at the University of Ljubljana to defend his thesis in this field.

He worked as a teacher, professor, and since 1973 at the Kosovo Archives in Pristina, from 1987 – 2001 at the Pristina City Archives, while since March 2001 he has returned to the Kosovo Archives as director, where he still performs this function.

So far, he has published numerous works, papers and articles in the field of archival science and history, from which we are highlighting some of them: Archival material on colonization and agrarian reform in Kosovo 1918-1941, Prishtina, 1996; Lexicon of terms and expressions of archival science, Prishtina, 1996; Murders in Prague: of Cena Bey – 1927 and of Alqiviadh Bebit – 1928 (according to archival sources), Prishtina, 1997; Serbian colonization of Kosovo (reviewed by Prof. Dr. Noel Malcolm from London), Prishtina, 2000; Settlements of Kosovo, no. 1 – 18, for the municipalities: Prishtina, Kastrioti and Fushë-Kosova 1, (2003); Rahoveci 2, (2003); Klina 3, (2003); Theranda 4, (2003); Lypjani 5, (2003); Gjilan 6, (2004); Vitia 7, (2004); Mitrovica, Zvecani and Zubin Potok 8, (2004); Ferizaj, Shtime and Shterrpca 9, (2004); Kaçanik 10, (2004); Peja and Deçan 11, (2004); Burimi (Istog), 12, (2004); Dardana (Kamenica) 13, 2005, Gjakova 14, (2005); Drenica 15, (2005), Vushtrri 16, (2005), Besiana (Podujeva) 17, 2005, Prizren 18, 2005 and Archival Studies – Theory and Practice, Prishtina, 2005.

He also wrote many scientific and professional papers and articles, published in newspapers and magazines, and participated with presentations in many national and international scientific and professional gatherings.

References

1.  Fatmir Fehmiu, The Genocide of Serbian Regimes in Albanian Spaces, Speech at the Scientific Tribune of the Association for Free Thought, Action and Creation “Dardania” in Prishtina, held on 19.06.2000; “Bota Sot”, 22.06.2000.
2.  Kosovo in an encyclopedic perspective, Tirana, 1999, pp. 79-89.
3.  Letopis Gracanicki, Gracanica, 1995.
4.  Kosovo in an encyclopedic perspective, Tirana, 1999, p. 81.
5.  Jovan Trifunovski, Vranjska Kotlina I, Skopje, 1969, p. 34; Dr. Sabit Uka, Expulsion of Albanians from the Sandžak of Niš 1877-1878, book I. Prishtina, 1994, p. 220-21; Dr. M.Gj. Miličević, in the book “Kralevina Srbije”, Belgrade, 1987, p. 334, states that the inhabitants of the village of Ivan Kulla were Albanians and had been there since the Battle of Kosovo in 1389; In the work of Adem Hanžiqi, Oblast Brankovica, Opsirni katastarski popis iz 1455 godine, Sarajevo, 1972, p. 229, among other things, the village of Arbanashka is also mentioned, etc.
6.  Documents of the 16th-17th centuries on the history of Albania, I. Tirana, 1989, p. 373.
7.  Dr. S. Uka, The Expulsion of Albanians ……….., v. e c., p. 23.
8.  Shaban Sinani, The Status of Kosovo: The Source of Crises and the Basis of Compromises, Albanian Archive, 1-2/2000, Tirana, p. 70.
9.  Ibid., pp. 88-89.
10.  R. Djordjevic, Serbia 100 Years Ago, Belgrade, 1946, 1-36; Dr. Sabit Uka, Anti-Albanian Plans of Neighboring States in the 19th Century, Albanians in Balkan Currents, Prishtina, 1996, p. 162.
11.  Dr. Vladimir Stojančević, Iz istorije Leskovackog kraja u drugoj polovine XIX veka, “Leskovacki Zbornik”, IV, 1966, pg. 89-93; Dr. S. Uka, Planet………, p. i c., pg. 162.
12.  Shaban Braha, Idriz Seferi in the Albanian National Movement, Tirana, 1982, p. 23.
13.  Mr. Fatmir Fehmiu, The Genocide of Serbian Regimes in Albanian Spaces. Paper presented at the scientific forum of the Albanian Academy of Sciences “Dardania”, p. i c.; “Bot Sot”, 22.06.2000.
14.  Selami Pulaha, The Albanian Population of Kosovo during the 15th-16th Centuries, Tirana, 1984, p. 4.
15.  Prof. dr. Kristo Frashëri, Historical Kosovo and Today’s Kosovo, Bujan Conference, ASH of the Republic of Albania and IH in Tirana, Scientific Session dedicated to the 55th anniversary of the Bujan Conference, held in Tirana, on January 20, 1999.
16.  Ismail Rexhepi, Ottoman Documents in the Kosovo Archives, Volume I, Prishtina, 2004, p. 11.
17.  Dr. Sabit Uka, Expulsion …………, v. and c., pp. 24-25.
18.  For the expulsion and relocation of Albanians from the Sandzak of Niš in 1877/78, see in more detail: Dr. Sabit Uka, Expulsion of Albanians from the Sandzak of Niš, 1877/78, Preishtë, I, 1994; Dr. Sabit Uka, Settlement and position of Albanian emigrants in Kosovo 1878-1912, Part One II, Prishtina, 1994.
19.  Shaban Braha, Overview of the Serbian Genocide in Kosovo, published by the Scientific Section of the Albanian Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, Tirana, June 29, 1999, p. 38.
20.  Stefan L. Popović, Travels in New Serbia, Belgrade, 1950, p. 345.
21.  Dr. Jovan Hadxhivasiljević, Albanian Congress, Belgrade, 1909, pp. 14-15; Dr. S. Uka, The Settlement and Position of Albanians in Kosovo 1878-1912, vol. II, Prishtina, 1994, pp. 45.
22.  The same.
23.  Prof. dr. Hakif Bajrami, How Serbia occupied Kosovo in 1912, 1, Prishtina, 2003, p. 11.
24.  B. Cani – C. Milivojeci, KOSMET or KOSOVA, Report of dr. H. Bajrami, p. i c., p. 163.
25.  Prof. dr. Hakif Bajrami, Naçertanija, Serbian political program leading to the extermination of Albanians 1844-1999, Prishtina, 2004, p. 306.
26.  AVII, P.2, K.13-1/2, pov 1141/13 – Izoliranje Albaskih prvaka u Kaljemegad 1913. See: Vladan Djordjevic, “Arnauti i Velike sile”, Belgrade, 1913, pp. 1-188. is one of the most shameful programs of Serbian politics for the destruction of Albanians through force.
27.  Archives of Serbia, Fund: Nikolla Pasica Papers; Dr. Hakif Bajrami, How Serbia Occupied Kosovo .., p. 32.
28.  Djordje Mikic, Social and economic conditions of Kosovo Serbs in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Belgrade, 1989; Documents: Serbian Archives, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, PPO, various reports from the Pristina consulate, teachers, priests, etc.
29.  Dr. Nuri Bashota, Albanian lands at the current Balkan crossroads. Albanians in Balkan trends, Prishtina, 1996, p. 275.
30.  Dr. Muhamet Shatri, Kosovo in the Second World War, Prishtina, 1997, p. 7.
31.  Dr. Mark Krasniqi, The Monastery of Deçan in the Tradition of the Albanian Population of the Surrounding Areas, Albanological Research, 18/1988, Prishtina, 1989, p. 97.
32.  Riza Lahu, Albanian Golgotha, Tirana, 1995, pp. 43-44.
33.  Dr. Hakif Bajrami, The Policy of Extermination of Albanians and the Serbian Colonization of Kosovo (1844-1945), Prishtina, 1995, p. 17.
34.  Same, p. 28
35.  Leo Freudlich, Vienna, 1913.
36.  M. Edit Durham, Twenty Years of Balkan Confusion, Rome, 1942, p. 241 (August 1913).
37.  Haus und Stads Archiv, Politichen Archiv, 24-38-3869, from Mitrovica-Vienna, report, no. 6/P, dt. 28.02.1914; Sh. Braha, The Greater Serbian Genocide and the Albanian Resistance (1844-1990), Gjakova-Tirana, 1991, p. 232.
38.  Dr. H. Bajrami, Yugoslav-Turkish Convention on the Migration of Albanians, “Albanological Traces”, XII/1982.
39.  Dr. H. Bajrami, Politics ………, v. and c., pg. 27.
40.  Dr. Jusuf Osmani, The Colonization of Kosovo between the Two World Wars, “Bujku”, 7.XI 1998.
41.  More broadly: Dr. Jusuf Osmani, Archival materials on colonization and agrarian reform in Kosovo 1918-1941, Prishtina, 1996.
42.  AVII B, P.3, Program for the liquidation of the Aranuts, 28.VI 1920; AJ, F. 14, Ministry of Internal Affairs), k. 118; Program for police work in the field; Program for the liquidation of the Kačaka 1924; “Journal de Geneve” 22.IX ​​1921; Report of the International Red Cross, 1921, G. Markyas, presents a figure of 10,000 Albanians killed outside their homes while fleeing (Treva e Lumës).
43.  Dr. Liman Rushiti, The Kachak Movement in Kosovo 1918-1928, Prishtina, 1918, pp. 7-81; Noel Malcolm, Kosovo a Short History, Prishtina, 1998, pp. 285.
44.  Noel Malcolm, Kosovo a Short History, Prishtina, 1998, p. 289.
45.  Arhiv Jugoslavije (AJ), Belgrade, Fund: Hinko Krizman, 84, k.1, nj.1-4.
46.  Noel Malcolm, Kosovo ……….., d. and c., pg. 290.
47.  AJ B, Ministry of Agrarian Reform of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 96-15-51; 96-15-55.
48.  AJ B, MAR, 96-21-69, Colony Register on 8.IV.1940.
49.  AJ B, MAR, 96-15-58.
50.  AJ B, MAR, 96-15-57.
51.  AJ, Ministry of Agriculture, Belgrade, 67, k.28, fas. 263.
52.  AJ B, MAR, 96-21-69; 96-51; Dr. Milovan Obradovic, Agrarian reform and colonization of Kosovo (1918-1941), Prishtina, 1981, pp. 306-339.
53.  Arhiv Vojno Istorijskog Instituta (AVII), Belgrade, R.4/3, K.54, p.41.
54.  Gjergj Gashi, Kosovo, the altar of Arbëria, 1910-1941, I-III, Monsignor Lazër Mjeda, Onufri, Tirana.
55.  AJ B., MAR, 96-1-4
56.  AJ B, MAR, 96-2-6
57.  Public Record Office, London, FO-371-5727.
58.  PRO L, FO-371-5725.
59.  AJ B, Ministry of Justice, Versko odeljenje, 63, k. 135.
60.  AJ B, Central Press Bureau, 38-28.
61.  AVII B, P.17, ch. 26, p.3, d.40.
62.  AVII B, P.17, ch. 26, p.3, d.40.
63.  “Socijalisticka Zora”, Skopje, no. 36-38, June 6-9, 1920.
64.  AJ B, Ministry of Internal Affairs, 14, k.27.
65.  AJ B, “Dvor”, 74, ch. 56, gr. 77.
66.  Kosovo Archives, Pristina, F. Prizren District Court, k.3, KPS-303-1936.
67.  AJ B, “Dvor”, 74, ch. 56, gr. 77.
68.  AJ B, F. Milan Stojadinovic, 37, p. 222.
69.  AK P, F. Prizren District Court, K.4, KPS-303-1936.
70.  AK P, F. Prizren District Court, K.3, KPS-303-1936.
71.  AK P, F. Prizren District Court, K.4, KPS-356-1936.
72.  AJ B, FM Stojadinovic, 37, p. 22. doc. dated 12.09.1938.
73.  AJ B, FM Stojadinovic, 37, p. 22.
74.  AJ B, F. Min. Pravde, 82-147-23.
75.  Dr. Hakif Bajrami, Politics ………….., v. and c., pg. 100-101.
76.  AVII BP17, K. 95.a, p.8, d.1.
77.  AJ B, FM Stojadinovic, 37, k.40; Arhiv Istorijskog Instituta Crne Gore, doc. 8931.
78.  AJ B, FM Stojadinovic, 37, p.29.
79.  AVII B., P.17, K. 26, p. 2, d. 47.
80.  Central Archives of Albania, doc. no. 320 C.III, 8.08.1930, F. “Kosovo Committee”, Microfilm in the Kosovo Archives.
81.  AJ B, “Dvor”, 74, ch. 56, gr. 77.
82.  AJ B, CPB, 38, p. 63.
83.  AQSH T, “Kosovo Committee”, doc. no. 333, EV, Sec. 27.08.1930.
84.  AJ B., FM Stojadinovic, 37, p. 39,
85.  AJ B., Min. Poljoprivrede, 67, k. 28, gr. 256.
86.  AVII B, Arhiv bivse yugoslavsne voske, no. 2, p. 4, k. 69; AK P, XXVII/k. 2-31-1937.
87.  AVII B, Arhiv bivse yugoslavsne voske, no. 4, p. 4, k. 69; AJ B, F. Jovan J. Pizhon, 8, k.55; AKK. XXVII/K.2-29-1937.
88.  AVII B, Arhiv bivse jugosl. army, no. 7, p. 4, ch. 69.
89.  AVII B, Arhiv bivse jugosl. army, no. 3, p. 4, ch. 69.
90.  AVII B, Arhiv bivse jugosl. army, no. 1, p. 4, ch. 69.
91.  AJ B, Min. Poljoprivrede, 67, k.1, p. 17.
92.  AQSH T, “Kosovo Committee”, Mf. AK.
93.  AVII B, P.17, K. 94, p.1, d.5, res. 8261/1938.
94.  PRO L, FO-371-22305.
95.  PRO L, FO-371-9961.
96.  Drzavni Arhiv Saveznog Sekrtarijata Inostranih Poslova, Belgrade, (DA SIIP), F. Drustvo Naroda u Zenevi (DNZ), sec. no. 96, Geneva, 22.05.1927; AQSH, P. 263, D.11, p.1.
97.  “New Albania”, Constanta, 10.01.1931. Letter from Hasan Prishtina to the League of Nations in Geneva.
98.  AQH T, P. 252, D.208, p.04; Hasan Prishtina, Documents, Tirana, 1983, pp. 163-164.
99.  DA SSIP, DNZH, p.13, d.1; AVIII B, k27, p.1, d.20, res. Dj., ob.b. 17.013, Belgrade, 23.VIII 1930.
100.  AJ B, M. Stojadinovic, 37, p.4.
101.  Sluzbene Novine Narodne Skupstine KJ, 14.03.1938.
102.  AVII B, P.17, k.519, p.7, d.46.
103.  V. Çubrilović, report “The Displacement of Albanians”, Belgrade, 1938, p. 49; Sh. Braha, The Greater Serbian Genocide …….., v. e c., p. 320.
104.  Dr. Jusuf Osmani, Archival Materials …………., v. e c., p. 179.
105.  Dr. Izber Hoti, The issue of the colonization of Kosovo during the Second World War, “Fjala”, Prishtina, July 5, 1993.
106.  The same.
107.  Rexhep Qosja, The Albanian Question, History and Politics. Albanological Institute, Prishtina, 1994, p. 171; Dr. Muhamet Shatri, Kosovo in the Second World War, Prishtina, 1997, p. 46.
108.  Gojko Medenica, The Chetnik Movement in Kosovo and Metohija during World War II, “Vjetari” X-XI, Kosovo Archives, Prishtina, 1979, pp. 347-375; Dr. M. Shatri, Kosovo in the Second World War ……., v. e c., pp. 47.
109.  The same.
110.  Military organization of the Chetniks in occupied Serbia 1941-1942, VIG, Belgrade, 1968, pp. 205-214; Dr. Hakif Bajrarmi, Plans for a homogeneous Serbia and the Balkan tragedy, 1941-1945, “Rilindja”, 13.IX 1995; AVII B, K.111, fas. 4, d.14; Dr. M. Shatri, Kosovo in …….., v. e c., pp. 47.
111.  Dr. Hakif Bajrami, Politics ……….., d. and c., pg. 144.
112.  Dr. Sh. Braha, The Great Serbian Genocide ….., v. and c., p. 207; Dr. M. Shatri, Kosovo in ….., v. and c., p. 53.
113.  Archives of the Historical Institute of Kosovo in Pristina, k.14/8, 181; Dr. Muhamet Shatri, LNC in Prizren and the surrounding area (1941-1945), Pristina, 1987, p. 186.
114.  “Borba”, Belgrade, 21.IX 1944, p. 1.
115.  Dr. M. Shatri, Kosovo …………., v. e c., p. 207.
116.  Academy of Sciences of the Albanian Socialist Republic, Institute of History, “The Truth about Kosovo and Albanians in Yugoslavia”, Tirana, 1990, pp. 546-550; Dr. M. Shatri, Kosovo ………, v. e c., p. 207.
117.  V. Čubrilović, “Mišljenje o minjanama”, 1945; Plenum CK KPJ, 1.IV 1945, Conclusion.
118.  The Truth about Kosovo …………, v. e c., p. 546-550; Dr. M. Shatri, Kosovo ……, v. e c., p. 209.
119.  “Bujku”, Our File, November 7, 1998.
120.  Council for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms, BULLETIN, no. 14, January-March 2000, p. 20.
121.  Dr. Lush Culaj, An anniversary of crime and terror, “Koha ditore”, December 4, 2004.
122.  Manuscript material by Prof. Dr. Hakif Bajrami, given to the author on 15.07.2005.
123.  Dr. L. Culaj, An anniversary of crime and terror, “Koha ditore”, December 4, 2004.
124.  Lefter Nasi, The Reconquest of Kosovo (September 1944-July 1945), Tirana, 1994, p. 163.
125.  Zekeria Cana, Serbian Social Democracy and the Albanian Question, Prishtina, 1984, p. 75.
126.  Liman Rushiti, The administrative-territorial arrangement of Kosovo during the years 1919-1929, Kosovo 1, Prishtina, 1972, p. 253.
127.  Dr. Izber Hoti, “Fjala”, July 5, 1993.
128.  “Sl. List DFJ”, no. 56/1945.
129.  Dr. I. Hoti, “The Word”, July 5, 1993.
130.  “Sl. List DFJ”, no. 56/1945.
131.  Dr. I. Hoti, “The Word”, July 5, 1993.
132.  The same.
133.  Milovan Obradovic, Revision of the Agrarian Reform in Kosovo, “Kosova”, no. 3/1974, Prishtina, p. 411; Dr. I. Hoti, “Fjala”, July 5, 1993.
134.  Sl. List DFJ, no. 58/45, no. 89/46 and Sl. List NRFJ, no. 101/47.
135.  Sl. List DFJ, no. 64/45, no. NRFJ br, 24/46; no. 101/47; Sl. Glasnik Srbije, no. 39/45 and no. 4/46.
136.  Sl. List FNRJ, no. 9/47.
137.  Sl. Glasnik NRS, no. 5/48, 1/49 and 34/56.
138.  Sl. List DFJ, no. 26/45.
139.  Sl. List DFJ, no. 36/45.
140.  Sl. List NFRJ, no. 63/46 and 74/46.
141.  Sl. List DFJ, no. 40/45 and 70/45.
142.  Sl. List FNRJ, no. 61/46.
143.  Sl. List FNRJ, no. 61/46.
144.  Sl. DFJ list no. 66/45 and FNRJ no. 86/46.
145.  Adil Fetahu wrote about this in a column in the newspaper “Kosova Sot” in December 2005.
146.  Sl. FNRJ list no. 98/46 and 35/48.
147.  Sl. List FNRJ, no. 52/58.
148.  Sl. List FNRJ, no. 28/47.
149.  Sl. Gazette NRS, no. 99/46.
150.  Sl. FNRJ list no. 59/1946.
151.  Adil Fetahu, Fear of Cooperatives, feature (V), “Kosova Sot”, December 24-25, 2005.
152.  Sl. List FNRJ, no. 22 and 27 of 1953, no. 4/57, 46/62, no. 10/65 (Sl. List SFRJ).
153.  KMDLJN, Prishtina, BULLETIN, no. 14, January-March 2000, p. 21.
154.  Dr. Hivzi Islami, Kosovo and the Albanians. Demographic issues. Prishtina, 1990, p. 164.
155.  KOSMET or KOSOVA, v. e c., Paper by Dr. H. Bajrami, p. 170.
156.  The same.
157.  Vushtrri – Viciana and its surroundings, pp. 204-205.
158.  Prishtina City Archives, Fund: Socialist League of the Working People of the Municipality of Prishtina, report. Unregulated and unrecorded fund.
159.  KOSMET or KOSOVA, v. e c. The work of Dr. Rifat Blaku, Serbia institutionally works on the colonization of Kosovo, p. 204-205.
160.  Cen Mazreku, Attempts for the new colonization of Kosovo, “Fjala”, December 1991; Kosovo in an encyclopedic perspective, v. e c., p. 51.
161.  “Sl. List SFRJ”, no. 9/1990; KOSOMET ili KOSOVA, v. e c. Paper by Dr. Rifat Blaku, p. 206.
162.  “Sl. List SRJ”, NR.24/1994; KOSMET ili KOSOVA, v. e c. Paper by Dr. Rifat Blaku, p. 206.
163.  KOSMET or KOSOVA, v. e c. Paper by Dr. Rifat Blaku, p. 207.
164.  “Sl. Glasnik RS”, no. 47/94.
165.  Dr. Hakif Bajrami, Politics ………, v. and c., pg. 189.
166.  “Jedinstvo”, Prishtina, 7.X 1989; Dr. Hivzi Islami, Kosovo ………, v. e c., p. 173.
167.  “Jedinstvo”, Prishtina, 28-30.XII 1989; Dr. Hivzi Islami, Kosovo ………, v. e c., p. 173.
168.  E. Bajçinovci, New variants for the new colonization of Kosovo, “Bujku”, 14.VI 1991.
169.  “Sl. Novine SRJ”, no.4/1995; KOSMET or KOSOVA, v. e c. Rifat Blaku’s paper, p. 207.
170.  Hysen Ibra, The Destruction of the Space of the Republic of Kosovo by the Serbian Occupier (1989-1997), Prishtina 1998, p. 97.
171.  KOSMET or KOSOVA, v. and c. Rifat Blaku’s work, p. 205.
172.  Hysen Ibra, Destruction …………, v. e c., p. 156.
173.  Ibid., p. 190.
174.  “Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia” no. 43/91, dated 20.VI 1991.
175.  “Bujku”, June 7, 1995.
176.  KOSMET or KOSOVA, v. e c. Paper by Dr. R. Blaku, p. 207.
177.  Dr. Fehmi Rexhepi, The Colonization of Kosovo after the Removal of its Autonomy by Serbia 1990-1995, “Kosova” no.6/1997, p. 20. Prishtina, 1997.
178.  See: “Sl. List RS” no. 68/91; 61/93; 4/92; 47/92; 35/94; 68/94; H. Ibra, Destruction ….., v. e c., p. 156.
179.  Dr. Hakif Bajrami, Politics ……….., d. and c., pg. 189.
180.  Hysen Ibra, Destruction ………., v. e c., p. 156.
181.  Dr. Hakif Bajrami, Politics …….., v. and c., pg. 190.
182.  Kosovo Archives in Pristina, Fund: Kosovo Executive Council. (Part of the unregulated fund and unrecorded document). Provincial Committee of the SPS Kosovo and Metohija, Proposal for measures to resolve current problems in Kosovo and Metohija, Pristina, 15.12.1998, p. 3.
183.  The same.
184.  Ismail Kadare in the preface to the novel “Night of Kosovo”, by Rexhep Hoti, Tirana, 1999.
185.  Kosovo in an encyclopedic perspective, v. e c., p. 52.
186.  US State Department Report, Erasing History, Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo during 1999, May 1999, p. 27.
187.  KMDLNJ – Pristina, Report on the violation of human rights and freedoms in Kosovo during 1999; “Bota Sot”, June 12, 2000. 

Translated and edited by Petrit Latifi