Multiculturalism Ethnic and Religious conflicts in Yugoslavia gr

Multiculturalism Ethnic and Religious conflicts in Yugoslavia gr. 02194

Yugoslavia existed on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20 th century. It was known as the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes". It was established on 1 December 1918. It existed in three forms during 1918 -2003. From 1918 until 1928 it was called the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. From 1928 until World War II it was the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. After the WW 2 it was renamed to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with six republics, 2 autonomous provinces: Bosnia. Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia and two autonomous provinces in Serbia: Vojvodina in the north, and Kosovo. YUGOSLAVIA

SIX SOCIALIST REPUBLICS 1. Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the capital in Sarajevo, 2. Socialist Republic of Croatia, with the capital in Zagreb, 3. Socialist Republic of Macedonia, with the capital in Skopje, 4. Socialist Republic of Montenegro, with the capital in Titograd (now Podgorica), 5. Socialist Republic of Serbia, with the capital in Belgrade, which also contained: 5 a. Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, with the capital in Priština 5 b. Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, with the capital in Novi Sad 6. Socialist Republic of Slovenia, with the capital in Ljubljana.

R e l i g i o u s Is s u e s Serbia and Montenegro were under the ecclesiastical authority of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Macedonia had its own Macedonian Orthodox Church after 1967, but that republic also included many Muslim ethnic Albanians. Croatia and Slovenia were predominantly Roman Catholic, but many Orthodox Serbs also lived in Croatia, and the Muslim Slav and ethnic Albanian populations of Slovenia were growing. Bosnia and Hercegovina contained a mixture of Muslim Slavs, Orthodox Serbs, and Catholic Croats. Vojvodina had significant numbers of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant believers; Kosovo was predominantly Muslim, although about 10 percent of the province's ethnic Albanians were Roman Catholic and virtually all its Serbs were Eastern Orthodox

R e lig io n Besides Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Islam, about forty other religious groups were represented in Yugoslavia. They included the Jews, Old Catholic Church, Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, Hare Krishnas, and other eastern religions. The connection between religious belief and nationality posed a special threat to the postwar Communist government's official policies of national unity and a federal state structure. Government attempted to reduce church influence. From 1945 to the early-1950 s, the authorities carried out antichurch campaigns that imprisoned, tortured, and killed many members of the clergy In the censuses of 1921 and 1948, religious believers accounted for over 99 percent of the population.

C o n s e qu e n c e s o f e t h n i c an d r e l i g i o u s issu e s In the midst of economic hardship, Yugoslavia was facing rising nationalism amongst its various ethnic groups. The Croatian War of Independence began when Serbs in Croatia, who were opposed to Croatian independence, announced their secession from Croatia. During the war in 1991 -1995 Serbs conducted ethnic mopping-up killing Bosniaks and Croats.

Kosovo conflict 1912 -1974 Serbia and Montenegro took control of the Kosovo area by force of arms from a crumbling Ottoman Empire in 1912, and gained sovereignty over it in the 1912 -1913 London Ambassadors Conference. Medieval Serbia had lost Kosovo to the Ottomans in 1389; Serbia gradually regained its own independence between 1817 and 1878, the Kosovo myth becoming central to its new national consciousness. By 1912 Albanians comprised at least half Kosovo’s population. Despite the introduction of Serb settlers and other attempts to bolster the Serb population and encourage Albanian emigration during the two Yugoslav periods, the Albanian majority in Kosovo continued to rise through the twentieth century.

1974 -1989 In a liberalising Yugoslavia, the 1974 constitution granted Kosovo autonomy and the status of a federal unit, though still within the Serbian republic. The majority Albanians were emancipated and took over the province’s administration. Yet, pressure upon resources from an economic downturn and fast-growing population formed the background to riots by Albanian students in 1981, with demands that Kosovo’s status be upgraded to a republic. Yugoslav security forces re-established a stronger grip over the province. Through the 1980 s thousands of Albanians were imprisoned for alleged subversion; anti-Albanian sentiment stoked rising Serbian nationalism, which Slobodan Milosevic used to take over Serbia’s leadership, staging a vast rally of Serbs in Kosovo to mark the 600 th anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Field.

1989 -1997 Milosevic clamped down in Kosovo with heavy security forces and revoked the province’s autonomy. Under “emergency measures”, Albanians were expelled en masse from state institutions. They responded by selfdeclaring a Kosovo republic, electing a president (Ibrahim Rugova) and organising a parallel education system. In 1991 -1992 the Badinter Arbitration Committee appointed by the EU to decide its state recognition guidelines in the former Yugoslavia ruled that republics should have the right of self-determination: Kosovo and Vojvodina, the two autonomous federal units suppressed by Milosevic, did not make the grade. Kosovo was also bypassed in the 1995 Dayton talks, which decreed a settlement in Bosnia-Herzegovina; this deprived the Kosovo Albanian peaceful resistance of any realistic hope of outside help. By the late 1990 s, Serbs and Montenegrins had dropped to 15 per cent of Kosovo’s population.

1998 Attacks in rural areas by a small, clandestine Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) formed by Kosovo Albanian radicals brought heavy retaliation by Serbian security forces; fighting mushroomed across the Kosovo countryside through 1998, leaving 300, 000 Albanians homeless by October, when a ceasefire was agreed an international OSCE monitoring mission inserted.

1999 The six-nation Contact Group (U. S. , UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia) summoned both sides to talks in Rambouillet, France, and proposed they sign an Interim Agreement for Peace and Self. Government in Kosovo: autonomy with NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) inserted and Serbian forces (except for some border guards) withdrawn or demilitarised. Tens of thousands of Serbs fled Kosovo in mid-1999, fearing reprisals as Albanians returned. A wave of murders, kidnappings and other crimes were perpetrated against Serbs by Albanians through early 2000 In 2008 Kosovo declared independence

K o so vo c o n f lic t In 1989 the Serbian president, Slobodan Miloevi, abrogated the constitutional autonomy of Kosovo. He and the minority of Serbs in Kosovo had long bristled at the fact that Muslim Albanians were in demographic control of an area considered sacred to Serbs (Kosovo was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox church, the inspiration for Serbian epic poetry, and the site of the Turkish defeat of the Serbs in 1389 and Serbian victory over the Turks in 1912). In response, the Albanian Kosovars began a campaign of nonviolent resistance. Growing tensions led in 1998 to armed clashes between Serbs and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which had begun killing Serbian police and politicians. The Serbs responded with a ruthless counteroffensive, inducing the UN Security Council to condemn the Serbs' excessive use of force, including ethnic cleansing (killing and expulsion) the Serbian nationalist media sought to incite hatred among the two groups by presenting farcical interpretations of past events, to the extent that many Serbs truly believed that they had been systematically discriminated against by non-Serbs, and so were terrified that they could become victims of mass genocide at any moment

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