Milosevic Ally Defends Belgrade Takeover of Kosovo

Wednesday, 9 November, 2005

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Ana Uzelac

A long-time ally of Slobodan Milosevic testified in The Hague this week that the 1989 abolition of Kosovo’s autonomous state was legal and even approved by many Albanian delegates to the regional assembly.

The testimony of Vukasin Jokanovic, former head of the Kosovo assembly and ex-Yugoslav interior minister, gave the most complete rendition so far of the Serbian policies on Kosovo that prevailed in the years leading to the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

During his testimony, Jokanovic tried to cast doubts about sections of the Kosovo indictment that speak of Milosevic’s political manipulations in the late 1980s that led to the then-Serbian province of Kosovo losing its autonomy. At the time, Jokanovic chaired the regional assembly, which passed the bills curbing this independence.

The prosecution is trying to prove that Milosevic used the grievances of local Serbs in Kosovo in 1989 to whip up nationalist sentiments in Serbia, thus making the first move to bring the maximum possible territory of the former Yugoslavia under his control.

Statements about the role Milosevic played in Kosovo in 1989 are presented as factual background in the indictment against him. Although they do not form part of the charges themselves, he has the right to contest them as part of his defence. Earlier in the trial, the prosecution devoted significant attention to developments in Kosovo in the late Eighties, seeking to show that they represented a first step in what they portray as Milosevic’s plan to create a “Greater Serbia”.

Jokanovic described Serbia as an open country that after the Second World War accepted many political refugees from neighbouring Albania, run at the time by the communist dictator Enver Hoxha.

Some of these refugees, he said, were given houses by the Serbian government free of charge – houses that he insists were first “bought away” from the Serbian and Montenegrin peasants in the region.

He went on to talk about how the Albanians, who were rapidly becoming a three-quarters majority in Kosovo, staged demonstrations in 1968 and again in 1981 demanding that their province become a full republic within the former Yugoslavia. They also asked for “unity”, he said – apparently with Albania itself.

Kosovo Albanians, Jokanovic said, enjoyed privileges including schooling in their own language and significant political autonomy. Kosovo, he said, was able to influence political events in Serbia by imposing a veto on constitutional changes there, while the Serbian government “wasn’t even able to send its police to Kosovo” to calm riots in the province.

When asked why the Albanians who enjoyed such privilege would want to become a fully-fledged republic, he answered: “Because they wanted independence”. A constitutional provision gave the republics of the former Yugoslavia the theoretical right to secede.

Jokanovic insisted the Albanians wanted an “ethnically clean” Kosovo, free of Serbs. He said Albanians would on one hand intimidate the local Serb population, while offering high prices for their land on the other. Some Serbs would then leave, while others would travel to Belgrade to ask for protection and help from the authorities there, but would be faced with the institutional impotence of the Serbian government.

This situation, he said, was the reason why an effort was made at the end of the Eighties to change Serbia’s constitution to assert full control over all its territory including Kosovo – a move described in the indictment as “stripping Kosovo of most of its autonomous powers”.

The witness insisted that the road to these changes led through the Kosovo assembly, which approved a set of amendments via a “democratic” process. These amendments, he said, were not imposed on Kosovo, but in fact came out of two years of consultations between Kosovo assembly delegates and their “constituencies”. Jokanovic suggested that many rank-and-file Kosovo Albanian politicians participated voluntarily in this process of limiting their province’s autonomy.

The bloody riots that accompanied the announcement of the assembly session to vote on the amendments were led by “Albanian separatists”, he said.

Due to these riots, in which a few dozen people were killed, a state of emergency was introduced in Kosovo in early March 1989. Just over two weeks later, on March 23, the assembly over which Jokanovic presided met for the final vote on the amendments

Prosecutors have insisted that the amendments were voted on “with the majority of Kosovo Albanian delegates abstaining”, meaning that the assembly lacked the required two-thirds majority.

Jokanovic vehemently denied these claims, insisting both that there was the necessary quorum and that most of the delegates who passed the amendments were Albanian.

Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice countered by citing a speech an Albanian delegate made to the assembly at the time complaining that the main amendment that actually cut down Kosovo’s autonomous powers was never put up for public debate.

In response, Jokanovic said the fact that this speech was made was proof of the democratic nature of the assembly’s vote.

This prompted a reminder from Nice that at the time Yugoslavia was a one-party state, and all the assembly members were in one way or another connected with the League of Communists.

The witness denied the delegates were pressured by the presence of members of the state security service and armoured vehicles parked around the assembly. He kept on denying this point, even when Nice pointed out that other witnesses, including long-time Kosovo Albanian political leader Ibrahim Rugova, had confirmed it in court.

“I don’t question that Rugova has said something like that, considering his separatist ambitions,” answered a visibly irritated Jokanovic. “But I don’t understand why you would believe him.”

Ana Uzelac is the IWPR’s project manager in The Hague.