Montenegro: An Apartheid State in the Heart of Europe

Albanian American Civic League Delegation Conducts a Fact-Finding Mission to Montenegro with Congressman Tom Lantos

by Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi
 

From July 31 to August 4, the Albanian American Civic League, with the support of the Patriotic Association of Kraja and Shoqata Ana e Malit, conducted a fact-finding mission to the Albanian communities in Montenegro with Congressman Tom Lantos and his wife, Annette. The delegation was the realization of a Civic League plan to begin the internationalization of the plight of Albanians in Montenegro that was launched more than a year ago in Washington. It did not come a moment too soon. As we quickly discovered, the state-sponsored effort of the Montenegrin Slav majority to either drive out or assimilate the Albanian population in Montenegro is not the stuff of history, but a contemporary and shocking reality that threatens the very existence of Albanians in Montenegro. Fueled by a virulent anti-Albanian racism, this effort also threatens the political and economic future of Montenegro as part of a united Europe. 

After hearing testimony from Albanian experts and activists in Ulqin, Ana e Malit, Kraja, and Tuzi, Annette Lantos, who works with the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, observed that, in its racist treatment of Albanians, “Montenegro is a hundred years behind the rest of Europe.” Based on what he heard and saw, Congressman Lantos described his feeling as “one of outrage that in the twenty-first century civilized people living in Europe could be discriminated against so profoundly simply because they want to maintain their linguistic, cultural, and ethnic heritage.” He stated that, along with his friends Joe DioGuardi and Shirley Cloyes, he was “both emotionally and intellectually committed” to helping the Albanian people in Montenegro, and he vowed to “deal with their problems at the highest levels in Washington.”

The two main purposes of the trip were to see firsthand the conditions in which Albanians in Montenegro live today and to bring this information back to the U.S. Congress, so that the Civic League, working with Congressman Lantos, can develop a solution that will give Albanians full economic, political, and cultural equality with Montenegrin Slavs. Just as he played a critical role in internationalizing the Albanian issue in Kosova, Tom Lantos is now prepared to do the same for Albanians in Montenegro. 

The members of the delegation included Albanian American Civic League President, former Congressman Joe DioGuardi, Balkan Affairs Adviser Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, and Board members Luan Bukolla, Gjergj Dedvukaj, Adem Dukaj, Sadri Gjonbalaj, and Marash Nuculaj; Xhevat Kraja (vice-president) and Adem Cukaj of the Patriotic Association of Kraja; and Xheladin Zeneli (board member) of the Shoqata Ana e Malit. Faton Bislimi, student coordinator for the Civic League from Kosova, acted as the delegation’s official translator.

While Congressman Lantos flew to Budapest to celebrate his 75th birthday in his country of origin, some of the members of the delegation traveled to Prishtina to hold a press conference on August 5 about our findings in Montenegro. Shortly thereafter, we were fortunate to meet with Azem Hajdini, one of the few living survivors of the 1945 massacre of 4,300 anti-fascist Albanian soldiers in Tivar, Montenegro, by Serbian and Montenegrin military forces. Hajdini, who has published a comprehensive account of the massacre, explained how for years no one was allowed to speak about this tragedy under threat of death. He expressed his concern that Albanians in Montenegro and throughout the Balkans will continue to risk expulsion and extermination unless we demand change.

Forced Immigration, Confiscation of Land, and Forced Assimilation

In addition to a hidden history of genocide against the Albanians of Montenegro, which began with the first annexation of Albanian land to Montenegro in 1878, there has been a continuous pattern of forced immigration, confiscation of land, and forced assimilation. The delegation encountered these realities from Ulqin to Tuzi and also in Plave-Gusija, where part of the group concluded our fact-finding mission.

Historian Riza Rexha explained that ever since the socalled Great Powers at the Conference of Berlin placed Albanians under Montenegrin control, the effort to censor Albanian speech, behavior, and cultural expression and to assimilate Albanians, beginning with appending their last names with the Slavic suffix “-ic” at birth, has proceeded apace. According to Rexha, “Albanians face the same issues that they have faced for the past 123 years.” As a result, today half the population of Albanians from Montenegro lives in the United States and Western Europe. 

He also described a parallel strategy that consists of moving Montenegrins into Albanian communities to change their ethnic composition and political structures. Some of the most egregious examples of confiscating Albanian land and moving Montenegrins into Albanian-populated areas to change the demographics have occurred and are occurring in Tuzi. We learned from Anton Lajcaj, a teacher in Tuzi, that within the next year, 1,200 Slavs will be placed in factories and given apartments on confiscated land between Tuzi and Podgorica. At the same time, the government, which earlier confiscated 60,000 square meters of land owned by Slavs on the outskirts of Podgorica for the purpose of building a prison, has promised to recompense the aggrieved landowners with Albanian land. The government is also in the midst of seizing miles of property along Lake Shkodra, to which Albanians have held title for generations, ostensibly to establish a national park. When Congressman Lantos asked what kind of compensation Albanians receive from the government for their land, Anton Lajcaj responded that they receive none whatsoever and any protest is met with imprisonment and persecution.

Tuzi has also been physically divided by the building of a military base and a garbage dump that is subjecting Albanian children to disease. Lajcaj stated that “Montenegrin policies violate all European human rights conventions and that, if they continue, the entire Albanian population will either flee or be assimilated.”

While Congressman and Mrs. Lantos and the members of our delegation were powerfully impacted by the insight and courage of the Albanians whom we met in Montenegro, we were vividly aware that the state’s policies have already succeeded in assimilating many Albanians, who no longer speak their mother tongue. Some Albanians have gone so far as to join Montenegrin political parties, and others still have actively collaborated with the government’s security forces and special police in monitoring and repressing the Albanian population. 

Education as an Instrument of Assimilation and Forced Immigration

The delegation asked the president (Petrit Gjokaj) and the vice-president (Nick Gjeloshaj) of the national Albanian Student Association, as well as the branch leaders, to meet with us in Ulqin. Because there is no higher education in the Albanian language, all attend university outside Montenegro. The Association, which has 700 members, came into being only recently to oppose assimilation and to help students to cope with an educational system that is designed for them to fail. Petrit and Nick spoke of the intense pressure on Albanian students to forget their identity and history and to shun political activity. In response, the Association is calling for Albanian-language education through high school and a curriculum that teaches Albanian history and culture and working with all student bodies in Montenegro to further the political cause of Albanians. Currently, Albanian language instruction exists through elementary school, but even this is not universal. Increasingly, Serbo-Croatian is the language of instruction at all levels (students are forced to translate Serbo-Croatian textbooks into Albanian), and the curriculum is completely devoted to Serbian and Montenegrin culture and history. There are only three Albanian-language high schools in Montenegro, and those who are admitted to high schools in the Serbo-Croatian language often lack the money to commute to or reside in the Montenegrin neighborhoods where these institutions exist. As a result, many Albanian students never receive more than a grade-school education. 

Because Albanians make up only seven to ten percent of Montenegro’s population, the students pointed out that by European standards, they could not expect to Montenegro to build an Albanian-language university. However, they said that they should be able to enroll in universities in Kosova, Albania, and Macedonia without interference, and they said that an Albanian-language teachers’ college should be established in Montenegro to train future elementary and secondary school teachers. They told the story of how the proposed teachers’ college is being systematically undermined by both Montenegrin and Albanian politicians. The government has offered to build a teachers’ college in Niksic, which is deep inside Slav territory and therefore inaccessible to most Albanians. Albanian political parties, meanwhile, instead of uniting to oppose the location in Niksic, are fighting among themselves over the placement of the college on Albanian land. The result is a deadlock that threatens the future of Albanian education in Montenegro.

Students who have the economic means to attend university abroad often find that they are unable to return to Montenegro, because the state will not recognize their degrees and therefore they cannot get jobs. But some Albanian students never even make it to high school. For example, we learned from historian Ismail Doda, as we stood next to the statue of Skanderbeg funded by the Patriotic Association of Kraja, that students from Kraja are forced to move to Ulqin or to take a long bus ride there to attend high school. Many cannot afford to do either.

Nail Draga, a board member of the Association of Artists and Intellectuals in Ulqin and a school principal who recently has been removed from his job by the Montenegrin government, told the Civic League delegation that, “Although Montenegro is multinational, and therefore multicultural, Montenegrin culture dominates.” He said that, “To this day the Montenegrin government has not financed a single Albanian cultural or scientific project.”

Economic Underdevelopment and Unemployment as an Instrument of Forced Immigration

The delegation learned that sixty percent of Ulqin is made up of the younger generation of Albanians because there are jobs in tourism and in the municipal government. However, in Ana e Malit, Kraja, Tuzi, and Plave-Gusija, the older generation predominates because of the lack of jobs and infrastructure. In Kraja, historian Ali Gjecbritaj informed our group that in 1991, 4,000 people lived there, but that today only 2,000 live in Kraja because there are no jobs, no running water (in spite of the town’s proximity to Lake Shkodra), and no access to the Internet. Muhamet Gjokaj, a lawyer in Tuzi, explained that ever since Tuzi, the Albanian-majority center of the Malesia region, was stripped of its autonomy in 1957 as a municipality and was subsumed under Podgorica, its economy and infrastructure have deteriorated to the point that more than half of the Albanian population has immigrated elsewhere. 

In one of the most poignant moments of our travel through Montenegro, Gjokaj revealed the extent of the poverty, including no running water, minimal electricity, and no phone lines, in Albanian villages in the region. This is the case in Dinosha, the largest Albanian village in the area, which is only three miles from the capital of Podgorica and in which 1,500 people live. When Congressman Lantos asked how many Montenegrin villages were similarly afflicted, the answer was “none.”

Ominously, Gjokaj stated that, “The call for a Tuzi commune, along with any move for improvement by Albanians, is deemed to be the work of a ‘separatist movement,’ and that the Montenegrin government is now passing laws to prevent Albanian municipal control permanently. Our delegation learned that the European Union has done nothing to stop this unfolding tragedy.

Lack of Adequate Healthcare as an Instrument of Assimilation and Forced Immigration

As explained above, Albanian names are changed at birth to appear Slavic. This is accomplished because none of the maternity wards in Montenegro are run or staffed by Albanian doctors and nurses. 

Dr. Sime Dobreci informed our delegation that there has been no financial investment in the healthcare system in any Albanian areas in Montenegro for the past twenty years. The majority of Albanians in Montenegro have no access to healthcare and, where they do, their interaction with the healthcare system is conducted in Serbo-Croatian. The hospital in Ulqin is a bleak, ill-equipped facility, and this is where tourists, not just residents, are treated for disease and injury.

The delegation visited the clinic in Ana e Malit, one of Montenegro’s few Albanian clinics. Only two doctors serve 10,000 inhabitants, and both commute from Ulqin, returning home at 7:00 p.m. each evening. From Dr. Zulfie Duraku, we learned that the government finances the education of Montenegrin Slav medical students but no Albanian students. (She financed her own education at the age of 38.) Dr. Duraku observed that the clinic in Ana e Malit is “exactly the way that it was when she was born,” and that it receives almost no funds from the government. 

The Criminal Justice System and the Military as Instruments of Political Repression

Lawyer Gezim Kalavrezi gave our delegation a detailed account of the criminal justice system in Montenegro, where “the principle of equal rights under the law is not practiced and where what is written in the Constitution is not implemented,” he said. For example, the law that states that minorities have a right to use their language in spoken and written form is never implemented. All court procedures are conducted in Serbo-Croatian and then translated. According to Kalavrezi, the translation is often poor to the point that citizens’ rights are abrogated. None of the judges in the Supreme Court or in the prosecutor’s office are Albanian.

During his presentation to our delegation, Professor Muhamet Gjokaj disclosed that he was one of 300 Albanians, from 18 to 35 years of age (many, like Gjokaj, with a wife and children), who had just received call-up notices to report to a military base deep inside Serbia on September 3. This conscription of Albanians in Montenegro is being advertised as a “multiethnic” endeavor by the state, now that Albanians and Slavs “are no longer in conflict.” And yet, historically, Albanians have been subject to gross racism and brutality in the armies of the former Yugoslavia under Serbian and Montenegrin command.

Conclusion

The situation for Albanians in Montenegro is dire. As Nail Draga stated during our visit, “the Montenegrin government ‘recognizes’ its problems when international delegations visit, but in practice they never do anything.” The prevailing mentality in the government is deeply racist and still in the throes of Communism. Draga believes that the problem of human and civil rights for Albanians in Montenegro can be solved only through diplomatic intervention by the United States and the European Union. The members of the Civic League delegation are dedicated to working with Congressman Lantos to internationalize the plight of Albanians in Montenegro. We will not support the independence of Montenegro unless the Albanian population receives full economic, political, and cultural rights. And we will vigorously oppose the admission of Serbia and Montenegro into the European Union and NATO until both are willing to recognize and protect the ethnic legitimacy of Albanians, to renounce a hundred years of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and to embrace democracy and the rule of law.

Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi is Balkan Affairs Adviser to the Albanian American Civic League.