In an article about developments in Serbia, the well-known German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) emphasizes that a part of the student protest movement is characterized by a nationalist tone. Recently, this became clear through the adoption of a student “memorandum,” which in a confusing ideological language repeats Serbian nationalist narratives about Kosovo and essentially demands that the already independent state be returned as a province under the sovereignty of Belgrade.
A politician who rejects this is Shaip Kamberi, the only Albanian deputy in the Serbian parliament, writes Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Kamberi comes from the Presheva Valley, which borders Kosovo in the southwest of Serbia. The valley has an Albanian majority population. In the very south, around the border town of Presheva, Albanians make up more than 90 percent of the population. Therefore, it is not surprising that Kamberi sees the events from an Albanian perspective.
Although he does not reject the student protest movement in principle, reports Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he certainly rejects “their memorandum on Kosovo” and similar accompanying nationalist phenomena: “The democratization of Serbia cannot be based on reproducing old nationalist models – even when they come packaged in a new political wrapping,” he says. He says that he understands the pragmatic argument that it is necessary to replace “the authoritarian regime of Aleksandar Vučić,” but the experience from recent Serbian history has shown “that compromises with nationalism produce in the long-term new crises, new injustices and new instability.”
With this, he alludes to the nineties and the beginning of the two-thousands. In September 2000, the united Serbian opposition had managed to defeat in elections the violent ruler Slobodan Milošević (whose propaganda minister at that time was the current president Aleksandar Vučić). After Milošević did not want to accept the results, he was overthrown in a popular uprising in October of that same year. But the price for the change of power was high. In the elections, the pro-European opposition had made a pragmatic alliance with Serbian nationalist Vojislav Koštunica, who in the years that followed, as Yugoslav president and later as Serbian prime minister, distanced Serbia from the EU and brought it closer to Russia.
Kamberi does not want such developments to be repeated with the student movement. “A democratic Serbia must be based on civic values, on confronting the past and on the equality of all peoples,” he says. Of course, the student movement is not homogeneous and it would be wrong for all students to be labeled as nationalists. “Although, the problem arises when the dominant symbols, messages or documents leave the impression of a continuity with the old national narratives that led the region into conflicts.” Then it is not surprising that among minorities in Serbia concerns arise “that in essence nothing is really changing.”
Supporters of the students argue that their insistence on the return of Kosovo into the Serbian state only implies respect for the Serbian constitution. This is formally correct, underlines the German newspaper. As prime minister, Vojislav Koštunica initiated in October 2006 a successful referendum, as a result of which Kosovo since then is listed as an inseparable part of Serbia in the preamble of the Serbian constitution.
Referring to the constitution in itself is not problematic, says Kamberi in this analysis published by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. But the problem arises when one refers to the constitution “without confronting the reality on the ground and without understanding the historical context. Kosovo today functions as an independent state, recognized by the majority of the democratic world.” Faced with these facts, he assesses that insistence on juridical-constitutional formulations keeps Serbian society “in a permanent conflict with reality.” The claim that there exists an “open Kosovo issue” regarding status speaks “more about Serbia’s internal political dilemma than about Kosovo.” Because the illusion that historical processes can be reversed serves neither Serbia nor the region.
Another argument brought by supporters or defenders of the protesting students is of a pragmatic nature: Serbia, according to them, is a country where without a strong dose of nationalism elections cannot be won. The student movement is adapting to this reality. Kamberi rejects this argument as well: “The claim that without nationalism elections cannot be won in Serbia speaks about the depth of the problem in Serbian society. If the logic is accepted that nationalism is a necessary political tool, the space for a true democratization closes. Nevertheless, political leadership must change social consciousness – and not adapt to it opportunistically.”
Defeating Aleksandar Vučić alone is not enough, says Kamberi. Serbia needs a break from the politics that brought the country into the current political condition. Therefore, the Serbian protest movement stands before a historic decision: “Does it want only a change of power or a real change of Serbia?” Kamberi sees a necessity for making a “clear break” with ideologies “that have produced wars, ethnic conflicts and systemic discrimination. This foresees confronting the past.” But this he cannot notice sufficiently among the students.
In fact, as emphasized in the article of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, very few of the Serbian students who loudly chant for Kosovo’s belonging to Serbia have ever stepped on the soil of Kosovo. They do not know Kosovo, nor do they know any Kosovo Albanian. Even less is their knowledge about the crimes that were committed against Kosovo Albanians by the generation of the fathers of today’s Serbian students. One example is the massacre of Meja and Korenica in April 1999. In these two villages of Kosovo, Serbian troops, as revenge for four Serbian police officers killed earlier, executed around 350 Albanian men. But whoever asks young Serbs about this will mostly receive only a shrug of the shoulders as a reaction. Meja and Korenica? They have never heard of them. Similar happens with other Serbian war crimes in Kosovo.
Such ignorance or unwillingness to know also contributes to the student protests of the capital being followed with lukewarm interest in the border areas inhabited by Albanians in southwestern Serbia. Albanians in the Presheva Valley have hardly found their political and social concerns in the dominant messages of the protests, Kamberi describes the mood in his region of birth. “The reason for this is the feeling that the issues of minority rights, discrimination and inequality are not sufficiently present in the agenda of the student movement.” Therefore, the Albanians of Serbia did not participate in the protests either.
