International Committee to Defend Slobodan
Milosevic
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KOSOVO DURING THE '80s YUGOSLAVS SEEK TO QUELL STRIFE IN REGION OF ETHNIC ALBANIANS PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- In Belgrade, three muscular men in black windbreakers boarded a night train to Kosovo, the southern province where nearly all of Yugoslavia's more than 1.5 million ethnic Albanians live. In a conversation with a visitor in the aisle, the three men said in Serbian that they were headed for the provincial capital, Pristina, for a few days of what they called ''service work.'' On arrival near dawn, they were picked up by a van marked ''Militia.'' The three were plainclothesmen of the Yugoslav Federal Security Service, apparently sent here to help prevent acts of violence by Albanian nationalists. An official in Belgrade, 150 miles to the north, said that since the rioting in March 1981 when nine people were killed, the Yugoslav Government had spent more than $30 million to maintain order in the Kosovo Autonomous Province, which abuts Albania. The province, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians, contains only about 180,000 Slavs. Both the Yugoslav Army and the militia maintain a large visible presence here. Yet acts of violence, mostly attacks on Kosovo Serbs or their property, continue to be reported every week in the Belgrade press. Non-Albanians Flee Area A few days ago a newspaper reported that a young Albanian had splashed gasoline in the face of a 12-year-old Serbian boy and ignited it with a match. The boy avoided serious injury by pulling his sweater over his head, extinguishing the flames. Such incidents have prompted many of Kosovo's Slavic inhabitants to flee the province, thereby helping to fulfill a nationalist demand for an ethnically ''pure'' Albanian Kosovo. The latest Belgrade estimate is that 20,000 Serbs and Montenegrins have left Kosovo for good since the 1981 riots. The hatred that has developed between ethnic Albanians and the Slavic inhabitants is reflected in slogans painted overnight on walls here. In an interview, Ismaili Bajra, a husky 53-year-old ethnic Albanian who is a member of the province's Communist Party presidium, spoke with pride of progress in the industrialization of the province, but he spoke scornfully of the Kosovo nationalists as ''traitors.'' Terming the political situation good, he said it was getting ''more stable'' every day. ''Now the school year has begun,'' he said, adding that, with ''500 000 youngsters enrolled,'' there have been ''no hostile actions, though of course you do find slogans painted here and there.'' The ethnic turmoil in Kosovo has origins that go back more than five centuries when the Serbian nation developed in this region and created a brief-lived empire that was ended by the Ottoman Turks in 1389. As the Turkish grip tightened, Serb peasants gradually migrated northward, and Albanians moved in. Tito* Ruled With Strong Hand After Serbia became independent again in the 19th century, Belgrade asserted dominance over the Albanians of Kosovo. After Marshal Tito's Communists took power in the 1940's, Kosovo's Albanians were ruled with an iron hand by the Serbian authorities (sic) of Belgrade for nearly 21 years. A minority in Serbia as a whole, the Albanians were already a majority in Kosovo. Copyright 1982 The New York Times Company *Tito was a Croat, not a Serb. SERBIAN DEMONSTRATIONS ADD TO YUGOSLAVIA'S ECONOMIC WOES BELGRADE - Thousands of Serbs demanding better treatment in Yugoslavia's Kosovo region staged an all-night vigil after the area's worst reported clashes since nationalist riots in 1981. The incidents in the town of Kosovo Polje rekindled ethnic tensions in the region between majority Albanians and other nationalities who say they are being forced to leave. They also dealt a further blow to Yugoslavia's Communist authorities, already facing a major economic crisis and labor unrest. A crowd of about 15,000 Serbs and Montenegrins hurled stones at police after they used truncheons yesterday to push people away from the entrance to the town's cultural center. The disturbance took place as Slobodan Milosevic, Communist Party chief in the republic of Serbia, was meeting a delegation of local Serbs and Montenegrins in the center to discuss their grievances.' The newspaper Vecernje Novosti said many people, including women, were injured when police advanced on the crowd only to be pushed back by demonstrators demanding to see Milosevic. Local reporters earlier told Reuters that police took away at least 20 demonstrators. The official Tanjug news agency today quoted Milosevic as saying that those ordering the use of truncheons against citizens would be disciplined. The violence was the worst reported since the army was dispatched to Kosovo in 1981 to quell Albanian nationalist riots in which at least nine people were killed. Kosovo, which borders Albania, has a population of 1.7 million ethnic Albanians and 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins. Thousands of non-Albanians flee the area every year amid charges of harassment and claims that the Albanians want to create an ethnically pure Kosovo. Hundreds of Serbs came to Belgrade last year to complain to senior state and party officials of alleged brutality, including rape and murder, by the Albanian majority. Some threatened to take up arms unless they were provided with better protection. Television yesterday called Kosovo "Yugoslavia's number one problem" amid the current economic crisis. Tanjug later ran a full report of Milosevic's speech, which included an emotional appeal to the Serb and Montenegrin delegation to end emigration from the area bordering Albania. "The migration of Serbs and Montenegrins under economic, political and physical pressure is probably the last tragic exodus of a European people," he said. "The last such processions of desperate people were in the Middle Ages." He told the Kosovo Serbs: "This is your land. These are your houses, fields, gardens and memories. You can't leave your land because its hard to live here, because you're pressured by injustice and degradation." He added: "Our goal is to overcome hatred, intolerance and distrust. We want all people in Kosovo to live together. The first step towards that is you have to stay here." Yugoslavia, grappling with 100 per cent inflation and falling exports, was hit last month by a wave of strikes by workers denouncing a law rolling back wages to average levels of the last quarter of 1986. New strikes were reported this month at the country's biggest steel complex, Smederevo, and at a rolling stock plant in Kraljevo in Serbia. Coal miners in Istria in northwest Yugoslavia have entered the third week of Yugoslavia's longest-recorded strike, demanding 100 per cent wage increases and better living conditions. Copyright 1987 Reuters ***** Urgent Message from Sloboda (Freedom) Association and the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic! The Freedom Association in Belgrade and the ICDSM, based outside Yugoslavia, are the two organizations formed at the request of Slobodan Milosevic to aid in his defense. Up until now our main work has been threefold. We have publicized the truth about The Hague's phony trial. We have organized research to help President Milosevic expose NATO's lies. And we have initiated legal action in the Dutch and European Courts. Now our job has increased. The defense phase of the "trial" may very well start this year. No longer will Mr. Milosevic be limited to cross-examining Hague witnesses. The prosecution will be forced further onto the defensive as victims of NATO's aggression and experts from Yugoslavia and the NATO countries tell what really happened and expose media lies. Moreover, Mr. Milosevic will call leaders, from East and West, some friendly and some hostile to the truth. The controlled mass media will undoubtedly try to suppress this testimony as they have tried to suppress Mr. Milosevic's cross-examinations. Nevertheless this phase of the "trial" will be the biggest international forum ever to expose NATO's use of racism, violence and lies to attack Yugoslavia. We urgently need the help of all people who care about what is happening in The Hague. Right now, Nico Steijnen , the Dutch lawyer in the ICDSM, is waging legal battles in the Dutch courts and before the European Court, about which more news soon. These efforts urgently require financial support. We now maintain a small staff of Yugoslav lawyers in Holland, assisting and advising Mr. Milosevic full-time. We need to expand our Dutch facilities, perhaps bringing in a non-Yugoslav attorney full-time. Definitely we must guarantee that we have an office and office manager available at all times, to compile and process evidence and for meetings with witnesses and lawyers and as a base for organizing press conferences. All this costs money. And for this, we rely on those who want Mr. Milosevic to have the best possible support for attacking NATO's lies. ************ * You can contribute by credit card. By the end of September we will have an ICDSM secure server so you can contribute directly on the Internet. For now, you can contribute by credit card in two ways: * You can Contribute by Credit Card over the Telephone by calling: ICDSM office, USA: 1 617 916-1705 You can Contribute
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