Kosovo 1987, or US media have acute problems with memory.


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Отправлено Andrey Nikolaev 14:57:41 06/04/1999:

 
FAIR  Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting     130 W. 25th Street   New 
York, NY 10001 
 
Rescued from the Memory Hole: Background of Serb/Albanian Conflict 
 
March 31, 1999 
 
There is always intense pressure in wartime for media outlets to 
serve as propagandists rather than journalists. While the role of 
the journalist is to present the world in all its complexity, so 
that people can make up their own minds, the propagandist simplifies 
the world in order to mobilize the public behind a common goal. 
 
One basic simplification is to interpret a conflict in terms of 
villains and victims, with no qualification allowed for either role. 
Conflicts in the real world rarely fall into such simple categories: 
Particularly in ethnic conflicts, both sides usually have legitimate 
grievances that are often used to justify a new round of abuses 
against the other side. 
 
In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news 
outlets usually begin with Serbia's revocation of the Kosovo 
Albanians' autonomy in 1989. This was a crucial decision, one of the 
major reasons for the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army. It also 
destabilized the Yugoslavian system and contributed to the country'sbreakup. 
 
Yet media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted Kosovo's 
autonomy. The attached article, from the New York Times in 1987, 
gives important background to this decision. Although the article is 
easily found in the Nexis database, little to none of this 
information has found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, 
in the Times or anywhere else. 
 
If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one would 
likely dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was written 12 
years ago, when Kosovo was an obscure corner of the world, and the 
New York Times would not seem to have any particular interest in 
defending Serbs or attacking Albanians. 
 
It should be kept in mind that some of the charges in this article 
may be exaggerated or politically motivated. Of course, the same is 
true of atrocity reports that are being carried in the New York 
Times and other papers today. 
 
 
 
The New York Times November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition 
Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1; 
 
"In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil 
Conflict" 
By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times 
 
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia 
 
Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic 
friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying 
possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its 
population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II. 
 
The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians 
against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at 
all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest 
peasants. 
 
A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his 
barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six 
others. 
 
The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic 
Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided. 
 
Vicious Insults 
 
 
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and 
regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians 
have exchanged vicious insults. 
Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been 
torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys 
have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by 
their elders to rape Serbian girls. 
 
Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in 
Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after 
the Serbs and Croats. 
 
Radicals' Goals 
 
The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an 
interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, 
southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania 
itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up 
the southern half of Yugoslavia. 
 
Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater 
Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than 
Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania. 
 
There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in 
Tirana is giving them material assistance. 
 
The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high 
plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than NewJersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population 
of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins. 
 
Worst Strife in Years 
 
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what 
ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and 
especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in 
Pristina in 1981 — an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a 
''Republic of Kosovo' ' in all but name. 
 
The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the 
worst in the last seven years.'' 
 
Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the 
matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and 
religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, 
politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the 
Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed 
as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic 
Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a 
minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today. 
 
Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems 
 
with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some 
Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread 
far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with apopulation of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 
350,000. 
 
''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a 
member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic 
minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region. 
 
Attacks on Slavs 
 
Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 
ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two 
years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political 
crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe. 
 
In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic 
Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in 
Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy 
potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this 
October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was 
dismissed from the Communist Party. 
 
As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police 
officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years. 
Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as 
imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called 
federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and twoprovinces. 
 
'Lebanonizing' of Yugoslavia 
 
High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their 
country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern 
Ireland. 
 
Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in 
an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one 
south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the 
breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.'' 
 
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko 
Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts 
by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 
1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of 
Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's 
Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had 
been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food 
and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing 
arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist 
incidents in army units.'' 
Concerns Over Military 
 
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi,had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the 
speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to 
start their mandatory year of military service. 
 
Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, 
one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic 
Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human 
timebombs. 
 
He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for 
assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians 
said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to 
intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in 
Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely 
reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a 
political issue. 
 
Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the 
autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, 
civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost 
immediately feel the independence — and suspicion — of the ethnic 
Albanian authorities. 
 
Region's Slavs Lack Strength 
 
 
 
While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, 
they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years,20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind 
farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north. 
 
Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party 
leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo 
party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi. 
 
But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in 
late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, 
deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, 
the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being 
an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had 
courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself 
calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.'' 
 
''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us 
Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav 
politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four 
decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the 
state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. 
Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a 
strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians. 
 
Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt 
 
Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we 
all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party. 
Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview 
in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians 
and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without 
hope.'' 
 
But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity 
for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito 
did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948. 
 
Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through 
amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning 
an extraordinary party congress before March to address the 
country's grave problems. 
 
The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of 
law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's 
mainstream. 
 
Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company 
 
 
pass this post on to others. You might also contact media outlets 
and ask that they present a fuller picture of the background to the 
conflict. The New York Times may be reached at: 
Letters to the editor letters@nytimes.com 
 
Adam Clymer, Washington Correspondent adclym@nytimes.com 
 
Contact information for other media outlets may be found at: 
www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html 
 
[More on the war in Yugoslavia] | ["Death Camps and Desert Storm 
Frame Bosnia Coverage"] (Extra!, 10-11/92) | [FAIR Home] 
 
 
 
 
ACTION ALERT: If you agree that the background in this article is 
important for a complete understanding of the Kosovo crisis, please 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


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