Domovina Urednistvo
Today marks the 104th anniversary of what is considered as the first modern European genocide, carried out by Serbia as part of its official policy of wiping out all non-Serbs in the Balkans.
While most historians talk about the Armenian genocide, where in 1915 up to 1 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks, there was one mass murder that happened three years earlier and which has consequences to this day.
During the Balkan Wars of 1912, most of Kosovo was taken from the Ottoman Empire by the Kingdom of Serbia while the region of Metohija (known as the Dukagjini Valley to ethnic Albanians) was taken by the Kingdom of Montenegro.
According to a variety of sources, including the New York Times which was one of the first to report this incident, during the First Balkan War of 1912-13, Serbia and Montenegro – after expelling the Ottoman forces in present-day Albania and Kosovo – committed numerous war crimes against the Albanian population, which were reported by the European, American and Serbian opposition press.
In order to investigate the crimes, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace formed a special commission, which was sent to the Balkans in 1913. Summing the situation in Albanian areas, Commission concludes:
Houses and whole villages reduced to ashes, unarmed and innocent populations massacred en masse, incredible acts of violence, pillage and brutality of every kind — such were the means which were employed and are still being employed by the Serbo-Montenegrin soldiery, with a view to the entire transformation of the ethnic character of regions inhabited exclusively by Albanians. — Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars
In fact according to Serb sources, about 120,000 – 270,000 Albanians of both sexes and all ages were killed while 255,878 Albanians expelled.
According to other Serbian documents, 239,807 people were expatriated from October 1912 until March 1914, without accounting the children up to six years old. By august 1914 this number had increased to 281,747, again not counting those less than six years old. The vast majority of these were Albanians. Serbia and Montenegro plundered 381,245 hectares of land in Kosova and Macedonia.
In Kosova 228,000 hectares of land were taken for colonists, and it was settled by 15,943 families. The ‘Serbization’ of Kosova continued until 1941. In this way the territory for the Serbian national element was created.
The goal of the forced expulsions and massacres of ethnic Albanians was a statistic manipulation before the London Ambassadors Conference which was to decide on the new Balkan borders.
Even one Serb Social Democrat who had served in the army previously commented on the disgust he had for the crimes his own people had committed against the Albanians, describing in great detail heaps of dead, headless Albanians in the centers of a string of burnt towns near Kumanovo and Skopje:
…the horrors actually began as soon as we crossed the old frontier. By five p.m. we were approaching Kumanovo. The sun had set, it was starting to get dark. But the darker the sky became, the more brightly the fearful illumination of the fires stood out against it. Burning was going on all around us. Entire Albanian villages had been turned into pillars of fire… In all its fiery monotony this picture was repeated the whole way to Skopje… For two days before my arrival in Skopje the inhabitants had woken up in the morning to the sight, under the principal bridge over the Vardar- that is, in the very centre of the town- of heaps of Albanian corpses with severed heads. Some said that these were local Albanians, killed by the komitadjis [cjetniks], others that the corpses were brought down to the bridge by the waters of the Vardar. What was clear was that these headless men had not been killed in battle.
The Serbs did to the Albanians what the Ottomans would soon do to the Armenians.
But the Serbian thirst for conquest has now found a means of destroying the fair dream of this courageous and freedom-loving people before it can be realized. Serbian troops have invaded Albania with fire and sword. And if Albania cannot be conquered, then at least the Albanian people can be exterminated. This is the solution they propose. – Excerpt from a work by Leo Freundlich: “Albania’s Golgotha: Indictment of the Exterminators of the Albanian People”
Houses and whole villages reduced to ashes, unarmed and innocent populations massacred en masse, incredible acts of violence, pillage and brutality of every kind — such were the means which were employed and are still being employed by the Serbo-Montenegrin soldiery, with a view to the entire transformation of the ethnic character of regions inhabited exclusively by Albanians.– Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars
“In the case in question, it seems to have been regular Serbian troops who committed the massacre. But there is no doubt whatsoever that even the heinous massacres committed by irregulars were carried out with the tacit approval and in full compliance with the will of the Serbian authorities.”
At the beginning of the war Leo Freundlich was told quite openly by a Serbian official: “We are going to wipe out the Albanians.”
He wrote: “Despite European protests, this systematic policy of extermination is continuing unhindered. As a result, we regard it as our duty to expose the intentions of the Serbian rulers. The gentlemen in Belgrade will then indignantly deny everything, knowing full well that journalistic propriety prevents us from mentioning names.”
An officer during the massacres, Serbian soldier Captain Dimitrije Tucović stated: We have carried out the attempted premeditated murder of an entire nation. We were caught in that criminal act and have been obstructed. Now we have to suffer the punishment…. In the Balkan Wars, Serbia not only doubled its territory, but also its external enemies.
This is another example of ‘Serb victims’ and the true face of Belgrade’s expansionist policy- and it must be kept in mind, that these killings occurred in 1912, when there were no such thing as an Ustashi or nazi, putting a lie to the Serbian propaganda lie about their so-called ‘victimhood’.
It was a precursor of what was to come in 1941-47 and 1991-2000.
