PREFACE
The occupation of Albanian lands and their colonisation began in the time of Illyrians. The other occupiers have gone, and the Serbs and Montenegrins populated the land of the Albanians and they have lived there to the present day. The Albanian people has faced the partition of their ethnic land since the Congress of Berlin. Serbia and Montenegro have expelled the Albanians forcefully from their land and colonised it. Ethnic cleansing has been carried out in the most brutal way in the occupied land. Ethnic cleansing of the Albanians from their own land was carried out after 1912 too, and has continued ever since. During ethnic cleansing campaigns, great massacres were committed by the occupying regimes.
The question of the expulsion of the Albanians has almost always been kept in silence, and instead it was written on and propagated about the alleged emigration of the Serbs and the Montenegrins, that in fact were nothing but small migrations of the population out of their free will.
Mass expatriation of the Albanians from former Yugoslavia, till the fall of communist dictatorship and the proclamation of the independence of Kosova, was not allowed to be mentioned either in Albania or in Kosova, and not alone to conduct any scientific research on this question. Pointing out this problem in the former Yugoslavia of between the two world wars and after the Second World War was incriminated as a penal offence.
The present discussion about the forceful expatriation of the Albanians and colonisation of Kosova is being proceeded in extraordinary circumstances and conditions, and in the time when the expulsion has taken the character of a mass exodus.
Nevertheless, this study is intended to provide proven information, based on authentic documents and relevant sources on the issue.
Apart from scientific importance, the study is also of social importance in the present political relationships. The evidence on this research sometimes does not completely coincide with the present administrative borders of the Republic of Kosova.
Based on this study, but also on former historiography achievements, it can be seen that Serbian circles, supported by Serbian pseudo-science, have exerted ethnic cleansing on the land of the Albanians for one and a half century, in the similar way as in the case of a part of the territory of the Vilayet of Kosova, namely in the Sanjac of Ni. They have continued with such a policy towards Kosova and the Albanians as a whole to the present day.
Ethnic cleansing and genocide committed on the Albanians could not be hidden; it could not but be observed and opposed by many political and publicists of Europe. However, they were powerless to make the public opinion of Europe and the world sensible in favour of the Albanian question in order to influence its right solution. The influence of Serbian political and pseudo-scientific propaganda made use of this spirit of indifference and kept misinforming the opinion continuously and manipulating for its interests. The question of the forceful expulsion of ethnic Albanians from their own land and colonisation of their land are the subject of this study that is titled: EXPULSIONS OF ALBANIANS AND COLONISATION OF KOSOVA (1877-1995). The study includes the time from the Congress of Berlin, when half of the Vilayet of Kosova was handed over to Serbia, to 1995. Both by its time and content, the subject could be elaborated in several books, a work that ought to be done in the future.
In this study we bring only a brief picture of forceful expatriation of the Albanians to Turkey and other countries and colonisation of the territories of the Albanians on purpose of their conversion into a Serbian soil. The study is divided into four chapters, and a conclusion, annex, sources and literature come at the end. To complete this study archival sources have been used, mainly from the archives of Kosova, former Yugoslavia, and also of Albania, Turkey and other countries. Documents have been studied in a critical and scientific way. Some data have been repeated in the function of necessary clarifications.