The issue of national identity is taken seriously by Balkan people – including the least serious among them.
South Serbia Albanians Invest Hopes in New Council
Preshevo, Bujanovac | 23 November 2009 | By Baki Rexhepi
Political leaders of ethnic Albanians in Southern Serbia hope their local agreement to set up a national council will help the community improve its position in this disadvantaged part of the country, near the Kosovo border.
Serbia’s parliament adopted an Act on National Councils of Ethnic Minorities, adopted in August 2009. The act empowers ethnic minorities to set up councils that can then propose solutions to competent institutions, draft school programmes, launch media and generally steer cultural policy.
Activists of all local Albanian parties in the southern municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja collected the requisite number of signatures from local citizens, on the basis of which Serbia’s Ministry for Human and Minority Rights in November gave the green light for elections to an Albanian national council.
By forming a national council, Albanians will be able to play a more active role in shaping pre-school and school curriculums, found newspapers in their own language, manage cultural matters and regulate the use of language and national symbols in the municipalities in which they live.
Founding the body is a key step in a long-standing process aimed at reintegrating ethnic Albanians into institutions in Serbia’s problematic border region, which was the scene of armed conflict between security forces and militants in the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja in 2000 and 2001.
Under the terms of the Act on National Councils of Ethnic Minorities, voting for the members of the council must be held by March next year at the latest.
Albanian politicians agree that the council should help the community preserve and build up cultural autonomy as well as contributing to a better position overall in Serbia.
Riza Halimi, the only Albanian MP in Serbia’s parliament and leader of the Party for Democratic Activity, said the fact that the Albanian community would have the right to found cultural and schooling institutions would help Albanians meet their goals.
“The competences of the council create a framework for the formation of adjoining institutions, such as higher educational institutions, media, institutes for literature and arts, and son on, which leads towards the creation of the cultural autonomy we are fighting for,” Halimi told Balkan Insight.
Shaip Kamberi, mayor of Bujanovac and president of the local branch of the Party of Democratic Activity, agreed. The council would better the position of the Albanian community in Serbia, strengthening their influence on government policy in the fields of education, culture, and media.
“Such an institution, with precisely established competences and a strong influence in the procedure of decision-making, could improve the position of Albanians in the region,” Kamberi said.
This stance was backed by Rahmi Zulfija, president of the newly formed Democratic Union of Albanians. “Cultural autonomy has a special significance. For us, it is an inevitable and logical development”, Zulfija said.
Like their political leaders, most Albanians in the area believe their new national council will help the community take advantage of the range of minority rights to which they are entitled.
“Albanians will be able to breathe more easily,” predicted Zecirja Rasitim, from the village of Depce, on the border with Kosovo. “The council’s competences in education, organisation of cultural life and promotion of Albanian culture, as well as regulation of the rights to use the Albanian language, are things that mean a freer life for us,” he explained.
Selami Bajrami, of Bujanovac, said Albanians should have formed a national council in Serbia a long time ago and local leaders made a mistake by delaying its foundation with struggles over who would run it.
“The council obviously has serious competences, because up to now the politicians have been arguing over would be in charge,” he said. “It is a good thing that they’ve finally agreed.”
Parliament’s adoption of the new Act was a key precondition for a political agreement on the council emerging among the various Albanian parties.
Until now they could not agree on whether to found a council or not. Some parties disputed the method of electing council members and queried its real powers, which is why Albanians have been the last ethnic community in Serbia not to have their own council.
The Democratic Party of Albanians, led by Ragmi Mustafa, and the Democratic Alliance for Prosperity, led by Jonuz Musliu, both opposed forming the council, saying it would have no real competences and thus would not improve the community’s position.
The two parties feared that their political rivals in the three municipalities of South Serbia, known as the Presevo valley, would have greater influence in the council due to the delegate system of voting for council members.
This would inevitably favour the larger political parties, primarily the Party for Democratic Action of Riza Halimi. Until the Democratic Union of Albanians emerged, Halimi’s party was the only one active in all three municipalities.
Because they had failed to agree to form a council, Albanians have remained virtually devoid of influence over education, media, culture and regulation of the use of language and national symbols in their areas.
Hopefully this will now change. However, some local figures are still not satisfied with the council’s defined competences.
Agim Kamberi, a lawyer and head of the Public Service Department in the municipality of Presevo, agreed that forming the council was a significant step – but said he worried that some key fields remained uncovered by the national council.
“I hope the national council will become a prime mover of proposals regarding issues of protection and improvement of minority rights,” he said.
“But fields such as security, economic progress and welfare issues are of crucial significance to Albanians in the Presevo Valley,” he added.
Baki Rexhepi is a journalist from Preshevo. This article was published with the support of the British embassy in Belgrade as part of BIRN's Training and Reporting Project.
