Page 3 - illyria

Wednesday, May 27, 1992 I l l y r i a 3
APEACEFULPATHTOTHEPRESIDENCY
PWRISHTINE
rapped in scarves and smoking nervously, Ibrahim Rugova looks more like an artist than what he is — the undisputed leader of Kosova’s Albanians defying Serbia with illegal elections.
The soft-spoken, unassuming Rugova, 48, has made it his task to free the 2.1 million Albanians in Kosova from the direct rule of Belgrade.
Rugova was poised to be the first president of the Kosova Republic after elections on Sunday carried out in defiance of Yugoslav federal authorities.
Kosova, where Albanians out - number other nationalities including Serbs by 10 to one, is widely considered to be one of the worst examples of human rights abuses in Europe.
“These 50 square meters are the only free territory in Kosova,” Rugova said, sitting in the cramped offices of the Democratic League of Kosova, the party he helped form after bloody riots in 1990.
V eton Surroi, leader of the rival Parliamentary Party, is con - sidered by many a more moder- ate politician.
And Adem Demaci, called the “Balkan Mandela” for having spent 28 years as a political pris- oner, is a living legend to
Kosova’s Albanians.
But it is Rugova who has won
their hearts and trust and, through the Democratic League, given them hope despite the Serbian crackdown.
Far from any trappings of power, he lives with his wife, two sons and daughter on the seventh floor of a dilapidated apartment block whose elevator has not worked for years.
“He has learned a lot in the past year,” said a Kosova Albanian intellectual who has frequently criticized Rugova for being an old-fashioned national - ist. “He’s acquired charisma. He has courage and people recog- nize this.” To Serbs, Rugova is Satan personified, a nationalist long intent on grafting Kosova onto neighboring Albania.
But he has become a hero to his own people. When he cast his vote on Sunday, people applauded and many wept. They reached to touch him as he left the polling station.
After scores of people were
killed in demonstrations in 1989
and 1990, Rugova and other
Albanian leaders urged non-vio - Dr Ibrahim Rugova lent civil disobedience in place
selves virtually forgotten in the midst of bloody war between Serbs, Moslems and Croats in Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina.
“Albanians feel a little aban- doned,” Rugova told Reuters in an interview. After all, war is war but if war comes here, it will be a massacre because Albanians have nothing to fight with except their bare hands.”
Rugova first entered the politi- cal fray in the mid-1980s as president of Kosovo’s writers’ union and shocked Serbian col- leagues by his political outspo- kenness.
This led to a rift in the writers union that was soon reflected in political life. But Rugova had made his mark.
Born in 1945 near Prishtina, Rugova went from being the child of a prosperous farmer through an academic career which took him to Paris.
His father, branded an enemy of the Yugoslav state by Communist partisans, was exe- cuted in the chaotic final days of World War II when Rugova was only a few months old.
Rugova studied literature in Prishtina and at the age of 30 won a scholarship to study for a year with French philosopher Roland Barthes in Paris.
“Can you imagine what it was
of demonstrations and created a network of underground schools and hospitals.
Sunday’s election came as Kosova’s Albanians found them -
like for a young man to go from Prishtina to Paris and be exposed to someone like Barthes?” he said.
“What I learned there for the first time was intellectual courage.
Before I had only traditional Albanian bravery but in Paris I learned that a man could be inde- pendent and fight for his ideas.” (Reuters)
BELGRADE
A Serbian policeman and an Albanian were killed in a shootout in the Kosova village of Leshan on Tuesday, two days after Albanians held elections, Serbian police said.
A Serbian statement said that a 25-year-old policeman died and another was wounded when an Albanian opened fire on them near the village. The Albanian, Tahir Lush Berisha, 23, was also killed.
The Democratic League of
TWOKILLED IN KOSOVA
Kosova gave another versio LDK said that several peop were killed in a police attack Leshan and other villages.
It said in a statement th police had armed minority Ser and Montenegrins in the villag and that a large interior minis force had sealed off Leshan.
The violence was the fir since Albanians held an electi for parliament and president the Kosova republic in defian of Serbian authorities.
Kosova’s 2.1 millio
n. le on
at bs es
try
st on of ce
n
Albanians outnumber other nationalities, including Serbs, by 10 to one but were stripped of their autonomy by the authorities in Belgrade who oppose seper- atist moves by ethnic Albanian leaders.
In Tirane, the Albanian Foreign Ministry said it had made a strong protest to Belgrade author- ities over what it called the “vio- lent intervention of armed Serbian military and civil forces against the unarmed Albanian population” in Kosova.
Tirane Radio said that a second ethnic Albanian was tortured and was in danger of dying from his injuries.
The ministry said Albania was “extremely concerned and shocked” by reports from Pristine.
According to the Ministry, clashes in Kosova could lead to a total destabilization of the region.
The protest called on the European Community and the United States “to do their best to prevent bloodshed and to defend the unarmed Albanian people”.
In Vienna, the European Center for the Prevention of Conflict said it was sending a fact-finding mission to Kosovo to examine the security situation.
wing of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), said a Canadian envoy would head the team of 11 military and diplomatic experts on the week-long mis- sion.
The team was due to leave for Pristine on W ednesday, he added.
Albanians have accused Belgrade of stocking the province with federal army troops and equipment recently withdrawn from Bosnia- Hercegovina and Macedonia.
They also claim guns have been distributed to Serbian civilians in Kosova on a mas- sive scale. (Reuters)
A spokesman for the center, a
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Grey area indicates the Albanian population in former Yugoslavia.