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Thursday, November 02, 2006

Letter of the Day

Why must Serbia be bullied into giving up Kosovo, when Serbs in the Republik Srpska are denied the right to cede from Bosnia?

Serbs and Kosovo
Thursday November 2, 2006
The Guardian

You suggest (Leaders, October 31) Serbian foolishness in not giving up Kosovo. To Serbs, Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, legitimised by the London agreement of 1916 and by UN security council resolution 1244 of 2001. Kosovo is also the historical, religious and emotional heartland of Serbia. The change from a Serb to an Albanian majority does not change its historical, legal and political status.
Serbia's claim to Kosovo is no different from Russia's claim to Chechnya, China's to Xinjiang, India's to Kashmir, Thailand's to Panni Marathiwad and Philippines to Mindanao - all Muslim majority provinces in non-Muslim majority states where violence for independence has taken place for decades. The Serb majority of the Krajina region in Croatia broke away and declared independence. They were not recognised. The Krajina Serbs have all been driven out of Croatia in the largest ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav wars. Republika Srpska has been denied independence from Bosnia.
As long as the independence of these provinces are denied, Kosovo has no special right to independence either. Serbia must not be treated differently.

Professor George Thomas
Marquette University, Wisconsin, USA

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's all useless. The Western "liberal democracies" are just as bad as other countries, they just have better PR and an infallible sense of their own rightousness. Rational arguments are pointless when force and coercion are the order of the day.

I'd rather live under a genocidal and imperialistic government that was fairly blatant about it; that wouldn't kill ~650,000 Iraqis in the name of liberal democracy and keep a straight face. It's interesting to contrast that with the Serb "genocides": Krajina ethnically cleansed of several hundred thousand Serbs, 100,000 dead in Bosnia and Herzegovina (of whom ~25% were Serbs), and 2,000 dead in Kosovo (about a third of whom were Serbs). The forces of "international justice" march on...