Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

90 THE BEGINNING OF THE END
In Kosovo itself, the Serbian apparatus of repression allowed the mask to
fall. 120 Heavily armed police traveled in groups of four or five through Priština,
followed by the stares, full of hate, of young Albanians. The police conducted
themselves with unbelievable brutality, Albanians related. Many more young
Albanians than officially acknowledged were shot or clubbed to death. In some
towns, Albanian police tried to stop the violence against civilians. The ensuing
confrontations between Serbian and Albanian police resulted eventually in the
expulsion of all Albanians from the police force in Kosovo. The prisons were
filled to the brim; some of them could be described as concentration camps.
Police were constantly roaming the university area. Over Serbian Radio in
Priština one heard the frenetic demand, in shrill tones, for further “differentiation”
(purges). On the radio, lists of names of people who needed to “go” were read.
Many police vehicles on the streets were, in fact, army vehicles, on which police
identification numbers had been temporarily marked. In this way, the role of the
army was supposed to be kept “in the background”. In the Secretariat of
Information, there were now only Serbs. “The Albanians of Kosovo believed
that they had found their home in Yugoslavia on the basis of equality. Now this
Yugoslavia has disappeared, and the Albanians see themselves vanquished and
suppressed in a nationalist-ruled Serbia,” as one Albanian put it to me at the time. 121
There were Albanian reactions. More than 200 Albanian intellectuals, among
them many professors at the University of Priština, who had been dismissed from
their posts, protested against the de facto abrogation of the federal constitution of
1974; their appeal was insultingly described as a“pamphlet”. 122 There were even
faint admonitions from the Serbian side not to let matters get out of hand. The
leading political figure in Kosovo after the upheaval, Tomislav Sekulić (a Serb),
the new secretary of the provincial party committee, told Danas that there was no
need for any “drunken Serbism”. 123 Sekulić was a representative of the Serbian old
settlers and, in spite of everything, did not want to close off all communication
lines with the Albanians. About a year later, Sekulić was pushed to the
background as a result of his moderate behavior. However, even he impudently
claimed in an interview that “not a single person” had been beaten in Kosovo. Party
chairman Morina seemed to hope that he could now reap the reward for his
change of orientation and be accepted as a “partner” and not merely as an
instrument. 124 A few months later he died under circumstances which were not
entirely clear.
The worst was yet to come, viz., revelations about the treatment of persons
held in protective custody. This affair acquired political significance not only
because of the brutality which had been meted out to those prisoners but also
because of the questionable legal basis for this measure and, above all, because it
had not been reported to federal organs. It was, none the less, Josip Vrhovec, the
Croatian representative in the state presidency, who, on 11 May 1989, brought this
to the attention of the public. In response, the Interior Secretary of Kosovo, Jusuf
Karakushi, had to concede that 237 persons had been placed in confinement
without proper legal procedures. 125 A short while later, it became known that