yugoslavias implosion

210
ChApter 3
for such shameful behavior. Children, under-age Shiptari, began
raping Serb women and girls in Kosmet.” 342
The theory was marketed that, due to a demographic boom,
Albanians would in the next few decades turn the Serbs into a
minority in their own country. The Serbian media suggested that
increased Albanian birth rate was a mechanism to redraw the borders
of the sfry—”a new, bloodless vehicle for attaining what Albanians
failed to attain through their armed rebellion.” 343 Symposia
were held recommending birth control as a means of controlling
the birth rate. Serbian academics played an influential role in the
anti-Albanian campaign. Miloš Macura, a demographer and a member
of the Serbian Academy of Science, considered that “the high
birth rate must be limited, for such a move would be in the interest
of Kosovar women, local community and our whole community,
in the interest of relations in Serbia and Yugoslavia.” 344 More
than two hundred prominent Serbian intellectuals signed a petition
in 1986 demanding “the end of a lethal genocide on European soil,”
and of the “banishing of the Serb people from Kosovo and Metohija
[which] has been going on for three centuries.” 345
The media whipped up anti-Albanian hysteria by portraying
Albanians as demonic and inhuman in order to justify the wave of
violence and repression that was to ensue. 346 Analyses pointing to
an Albanian terror campaign were regular features in the media.
“In settlements in which they are in the majority, Albanians engage
in institutional terror and sow a feeling of insecurity … They rape
342 Quoted in Ljiljana Bulatović, Ispovesti, 1995 .
343 Politika, Odjeci i reagovanja, December 6, 1988 .
344 Politika, January 27, 1989 .
345 Quotation from the petition sent to the federal bodies, January
21, 1986, Književne novine, January 15–March 15, 2003 .
346 See, for instance, Renaud de la Brosse Expert Report on Political Propaganda and
the Plan to Create ‘A State For All Serbs:’ Consequences of using the media for ultranationalist
ends’ presented at the Milošević trial in the Hague Tribunal, in “Milošević vs
Yugoslavia”, ed . Sonja Biserko, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Belgrade 2004