For the rise of Milosevic, "all the blame lies with the Albanian pie maker"!

On the occasion of the 12th anniversary of the death of the publicist, poet and playwright Agim Mala, Telegrafi brings to mind an article of his published on March 18, 2006 (in the weekly supplement Lajm-Plus, the daily "Lajm"). Mala, as the director of Radio and Television of Pristina (RTP), had broken the communist censorship, which is why, in March 1990, the then leader of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, had asked him for a meeting in Belgrade. In that forced meeting, Milosevic says that he will kill 320 thousand Albanians and that there will be a war. How the meeting and conversation went, read the article posted below.

1.

This will be the end of March 1990.

Demonstrations in Pristina started in January of the same year; in March they had taken off all over Kosovo. Earlier generations are reminded of these demonstrations by the two fingers raised for democracy. There were no other demands: for democracy and against Milosevic and the Kosovar rulers who identified with him.

The balance of the clashes between students and young people with the police was 32 killed, hundreds injured and thousands of Kosovo Albanians in prisons.

I was the director of Radio and Television in those years. With a lot of effort and sacrifices by journalists and the editorial staff of television and radio, it was possible to break the censorship and inform the public about what is happening. RTP as a media house had taken on a meaning in the lives of Kosovo Albanians, whose autonomy had been forcibly taken away a year earlier. At the doors of the TV every day there were people beaten by the police, who came to testify about the violence and terror that was practiced. The RTP was a place for the political frustration of the masses.

2.

I had been invited to a panel discussion on Novi Sad TV, where the democratic processes that had engulfed Eastern Europe would be discussed. Communist governments in most countries of the socialist bloc had fallen after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the organized conversation - which was broadcast live on the entire RTJ network of the time - there were representatives from all the federal units of the former Yugoslavia. An Albanian functionary who was a participant in that televised discussion, who at that time identified with the politics of Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo, informed me that his boss had asked to meet me. I was surprised, to say the least. The Albanian official tries to convince me that it will not be good for me if I refuse the invitation.

The next day at ten o'clock he was waiting for me in his office in the building of the Serbian Parliament. I felt lonely in the cold north of that country, which had turned to violence against the Albanians. I was used to making important decisions in Pristina, not by myself. The way back to Pristina passed through Belgrade.

3.

It was a cabinet with velvet-colored belt seats. Sitting on one of the sish was a short man, with gray hair, with a rough look, who was directed towards the interlocutor, but did not focus on him at all, lost somewhere beyond. He puffed in vain on a cigarette that had gone out. This was Slobodan Milosevic, who ten years later will be tried in The Hague as the biggest war criminal after Hitler.

"I have information that you and your television have a great influence on the people there. Convince your Albanians not to die in vain, because Serbia does not give Kosovo"!

That's how he starts the conversation. At that time, I had a calmness and patience from God, which helped me in the most difficult situations. I laughed. It was clear to me that there is no politics there and any political argument is useless:

"Who is looking for Kosovo"?! - I ask him. "Does anyone want to carry him across the Bosphorus?! Kosovo is sought by the people who live there, and they seek nothing more than to live equally with others!"

"No"! - he says sharply. "The Albanian irredentists are looking for Kosovo to join Albania".

This was the thesis of Serbian nationalism, since 1981, to have a pretext to punish an entire people. With this thesis, about half a million Albanians were imprisoned or treated by the police during the eighties. It was futile to try to explain that Albanians are not so politically backward as to believe that under these circumstances they can change borders in the Balkans...

There was no dialogue about concrete political postulates with which Serbia was subjugating Kosovo and trampling the Albanians. I try to bring the conversation to another level: "Do you know Albanians"? - I ask him. "Have you ever faced any Albanian, apart from politicians"?

"Yes"! - he says. "In high school in Valevë, there was an Albanian pie-maker, who, when I had no money, gave me pies for free!"

I didn't know if he was being ironic or if he was confused.

"Yes, you cannot know Albanians through a pie maker. You have probably read Mark Milani...".

He was not a man of reading, nor did he want to know Albanians. He returns to the beginning of the conversation, that Albanians should not die in vain, and mentions 28 victims of the demonstrations of that spring.

"Thirty-two have been killed!" - I tell him.

"3.200 had to be killed, 32.000, 320.000, because Serbia does not give Kosovo"!

He added zeros to the number of Albanians he wanted to kill, as if he were talking about chicks in the incubator. The end of this Orwellian conversation comes with his threats, which he almost said more to himself, than for me to hear: "If that's the case, then there will be a war..."! He repeated the slogan "There will be a war..." at the end of that conversation, which had clearly made him nervous, certainly more than ten times.

4.

Until I returned to Pristina in a "Reno 25" car of RTP, with Bahrudini, a dry boy from Bradash of Podujeva, who, seeing me lost, did not even try to speak, the slogan of the Serbian vozhd was running through my head: "There will be a war... There will be a war...". And I don't know why I couldn't get out of my head the image of the Albanian pie-maker in Valevë, who had given free pies to the criminal.

I imagined him dressed in white, painted with flour, with a black mustache... He would be from Dragash, from Gostivari, where five or six children would leave him... He would be named Liman, Destan... And now I think... All the blame lies with the Albanian baker, who had fed the student for free, for whom it never occurred to him that one day he will become the executioner of 20 thousand Albanians and 250 thousand people of other affiliations ? /Telegraph/