Presevo Valley May 11, 2008
Presevo-The silence started at midnight thursday night. By law politcal parties can do no more campaining.
I was at the DS “Youth Brigade” party outside the philosophy faculty in Belgrade. The light set up was taken down and the musicians who’d been playing Serbian pop and rock packed up.
I’d come from the DSS party across town. It was in Club Taz and the live Turbofolk drowned out the newscaster on the TV screens. Both events were well attended.
Along with the turbokfolk band at the DSS party there were two dancers in string bikinis with oiled legs who were bumping their asses around more like they were performing at a strip club then at an end of campain event for the Prime Miinister’s party. Kostunica is that eager or perhaps desperate to please his people, I thought darkly.
Thankful for no more campain events to cover, Friday morning we jumped a bus to the Presevo valley in southern Serbia where a human rights organization was signing people up to vote.
Presevo is a difficult place to get to. The bus from Belgrade didn’t let us out along the highway as it was supposed to. In fact the driver didn’t stop until we reached the border with Macedonia 20 Kilometers away. The taxi ride to the downtown area cost only 5 euros, but the bus driver’s attempt to make it difficult for three foreign journalists to visit Presevo expressed the feelings of many Serbs towards the area.
Presevo is ninety percent Albanian and in 2001 attempted to seperate from Serbia and join with Kosovo.
The result was bloody, but the UN brokered a peace deal before too large a conflict erupted.
In the center of Presevo we immediately became a curiosity and people gathered around to attempt to talk to us and laughed at our minimal knowledge of Albanian.
The Human Rights organization spent the day passing out fliers for a party with an Albanian and a Serb DJ so we walked around speaking with who we could and through a translator interviewed the president of the municipality Ragmi Mustafa of the Democratic Albanian Party.
Mustafa said that there was no connections between his party and any of the larger parties in Serbia. Most of the developtment in Presevo came from the EU and foreign countries with only a small amount from the Serbian government.
The Serbian government had to approve where all the foreign aid went in Presevo however.
He pointed out that the Serbian government still did not allow schools to use Albanian langauge textbooks and that the area was forgotten, with little interest from the rest of Serbia to integrate it.
“People here feel closer ties to Kosvo,” he said. “But the people of the Balkans to not want more violence.”
Mustafa said that his party had told people not to vote in the parliamentary elections as taking part of them would be harmful to the status of the newly independant Kosovo.
Few of the Albanians we spoke to in Presevo said they would vote in the parliamentary elections, though most planned to vote in the local elections.
Later that night the Human Rights organziation set their booths up in front of a club. Attracted by the loud music on a Friday night young people began to stream into the club. Along the way many signed up to vote.
The goal of the Human Rights organization was to get people to take pride in who they are as part of Serbian society. Getting them to vote was step towards integrating them into Serbian society.
It isn’t clear if Serbia wants the Albanians as part of Serbian society.
For now, so soon after war and Kosovo’s independence, it seems the answer is more no then yes. But as the young people came and said yes they would take part, you could not help but feel some hope.
- Posted in : Photos, The Balkans, essays
- Author : justinvela
Comments»
Justin i have no idea who u are but your report is another provocative and one sided stupid propaganda from western alies lovers so please get some more info about serbian colture and people and then you may have some stories to tell about serbians serbia and albanians or you may do something even beter and relocate and live just for a couple of years with inocent Kosovars and you may learn where the kosovo albanians get the welth from !!! for now just cut your unrisonable stories short and let the poor serbians live there lives ,you have kwnolidge about freedom of choice if serbia want to be alone let them be Thanks For remaindingm as Serbians that some countries will not live serbia alone to make a decision about there future SERBIA to SERBIANS( you may keep the rest of the world)
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