The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation
The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation
The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation
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In 1981, one year after Ti<strong>to</strong>’s death, students in Prishtina demonstrated<br />
for better food at the university canteen. Workers all over Kosovo joined<br />
them, <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong>ed higher wages. <strong>The</strong> police shot in<strong>to</strong> the demon -<br />
stration <strong>and</strong> killed thirteen people. <strong>The</strong> persecution, arrests <strong>and</strong> <strong>to</strong>rture<br />
<strong>of</strong> Albanians became an everyday occurrence, they were dismissed<br />
from all important positions <strong>and</strong> their children expelled from the schools,<br />
since they were no longer allowed <strong>to</strong> speak Albanian. <strong>The</strong> deaths in Kosovo<br />
aroused no indignation in the country. In the national pecking order<br />
in Yugoslavia, Albanians were just one rung above the Roma people.<br />
<strong>The</strong>ir dem<strong>and</strong> for the status <strong>of</strong> a republic was misinterpreted <strong>and</strong> condemned<br />
as separatism; their poverty was unimportant. Instead, <strong>of</strong> a<br />
wave <strong>of</strong> support <strong>and</strong> helpfulness, an avalanche <strong>of</strong> Serbian nationalism<br />
was unleashed which labelled the Albanians in Kosovo as intruders.<br />
Later, Miloševic´ would very rapidly destroy the Yugoslav system, without<br />
anyone trying <strong>to</strong> s<strong>to</strong>p him. <strong>The</strong> others responsible are those who accepted<br />
the shots at the demonstra<strong>to</strong>rs <strong>and</strong> the persecution <strong>of</strong> the Albanians<br />
with no great uproar, in fact without any protest. Special police units<br />
from all parts <strong>of</strong> Yugoslavia participated in the ensuing hunt for the “separatists”.<br />
All those then in leadership must take responsibility for the<br />
fact that all Albanians were treated as terrorists.<br />
Unfortunately, this attitude was also supported by the Serbian Orthodox<br />
Church. In 1945, the communist regime had banished all religious communities,<br />
Christian <strong>and</strong> Muslim, from public life <strong>and</strong> nationalized their<br />
property. Now the Orthodox Church returned with a vengeance – in education,<br />
in culture <strong>and</strong> in the Serbian national consciousness. <strong>The</strong> clergy<br />
celebrated the “Kingdom <strong>of</strong> Heaven”, invoked in memory both <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Serbs killed in Kosovo by the Ot<strong>to</strong>mans 600 years earlier <strong>and</strong> in the Sec -<br />
ond World War by the Croatian Ustaša. <strong>The</strong> remains <strong>of</strong> Prince Lazar, killed<br />
at the Battle <strong>of</strong> Kosovo, were carried from village <strong>to</strong> village, from <strong>to</strong>wn<br />
<strong>to</strong> <strong>to</strong>wn, along the boundaries <strong>of</strong> the future Greater Serbia. <strong>The</strong> church<br />
ideologues fixed three criteria for determining the national boundaries:<br />
recognized ethnically pure Serbian areas, areas with a “Serbian spirit”,<br />
such as Kosovo, where a Serbian kingdom had been founded in the<br />
tenth century <strong>and</strong> where a number <strong>of</strong> orthodox monasteries are located,<br />
<strong>and</strong> areas where there are Serbian graves.<br />
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