yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 1
The activities of the Kosovar Serbs were coordinated from Belgrade
by Ćosić. He organized a petition signed by 215 Serbian intellectuals,
including several representatives from the Serbian Orthodox
Church. The petition, published on January 21, 1986, made the first
mention of a genocide against Kosovo Serbs; according to its authors,
200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins had been forced to leave Kosovo
because of decades of harassment at the hands of Albanians, who
sought to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo. The petition,
which triggered demands for amending the Constitution, stated:
The genocide in Kosovo cannot be suppressed without far-reaching
social and political changes throughout the country. But such changes
are inconceivable without changes in the relations between the sap
[Socialist Autonomous Province] and the sr [Socialist Republic] of
Serbia and/or the sfr [Socialist Federal Republic] of Yugoslavia. The
genocide cannot be prevented by the policy which made it possible, the
policy of the gradual surrender of Kosovo and Metohija—to Albania:
an unsigned capitulation which leads to a policy of national treason.” 60
The signatories of the petition were mostly advocates of a unitary
Yugoslavia under Serbian domination: Antonije Isaković, a
writer and academician; Tanasije Mladenović, the editor of the literary
journal Književne Novine; Živorad Stojković, a publicist; Mihajlo
Đurić, the aforementioned professor tried for criticizing the constitutional
amendments; Mića Popović, a painter; Predrag Palavestra;
Vojislav Koštunica; Kosta Čavoški; Nebojša Popov; Zagorka Golubović,
and others. A later analysis by independent intellectuals titled
“Kosovski Čvor” (the “Kosovo Knot”) proved that rape, especially
intercommunal, had not been conducted on a mass scale and that
most Serbs and Montenegrins had emigrated for economic reasons.
But the petition indicated a consensus among Serbian intellectuals on
the issue of Kosovo, a consensus that was manifested later, especially
60 Quoted in Književne novine, 15 January – 15 March, 2003