Speech of Slobodan Milosevic at Urosevac
April 25, 1987
At this instant about 1,500,000 Albanians live in Kosovo, and many fewer Serbs
and Montenegrins. We can't say that they are a minority, but the fact is that
there are a lot less of them. It's also a fact that the majority of them are
exposed to economic, political, nationalist and physical pressure from
separatists, carrying forward a counter-revolution which started in 1981.
Things are happening here these days that haven't happened in civilized
countries in this world for a few centuries. They rape women and children,
humiliate people, physically mistreat them. Serbs and Montenegrins can't conquer
those shameful acts alone. In the ways and amounts of support the republic and
Yugoslav leadership can offer, the position of Serbian and Montenegrin peoples
on Kosovo require a huge change in a positive way in the Albanians on Kosovo.
Progressive, upstanding people, young people, it's understood, above all, that
the Albanian communists must be the first, most dedicated and most successful
fighters against their own nationalists.
That, friends, doesn't go just for the Albanian nation, it goes for Serb,
Montenegrin, and for every nation on the planet.
It's true and moral that every nation's most progressive people alone, before
all others, fight against the nationalists in their own ranks. Against all those
ugly and inhumane acts that wound and humiliate other nations. But, those ugly
and inhumane acts wound and humiliate, at the end of the line, the nation that
those that commit them belong to.
The Albanian nation, out of shame from what their nationalists are committing,
are surely hurting not Serbs and Montenegrins but rather herself alone. With
every rape of a Serbian child infamy falls on all Albanians if they do not put a
stop that shame.
On the safety of Serb and Montenegrin children, here on Kosovo, Albanian mothers
and fathers must worry more, and not the police. There where the police and the
military take matters into their own hands freedom ends for both the guilty and
the innocent, for the rights of all.
Care for your rights, guard your voice, those that can.
TRANSLATED BY: TIM SKORICK
Original Serbian Text (PDF File)