Kosovo’s caretaker Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, took part in the scholarly roundtable titled “The SANU Memorandum: The role of Serbian academic discourse in inciting conflicts and violence in the former Yugoslavia.” The event was organized by the Institute for Crimes Committed During the War in Kosovo and the “Ali Hadri” Institute of History.
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In his opening remarks, Kurti emphasized that even four decades after the emergence of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, analyzing the conditions that produced it, the concepts it expressed and its profound impact on Serbia’s political and social landscape in the years that followed remains essential.
He highlighted the case of Kosovo as a concrete example, recalling that in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, the narrative of the danger facing Serbs in Kosovo became a key tool of political mobilization in Serbia. As a result, Kosovo’s autonomy was abolished, Albanians were massively dismissed from their jobs and removed from institutions, and a regime of deep discrimination and state repression was installed, eventually leading to the outbreak of war. According to him, the history of the former Yugoslavia demonstrates how the spread of certain narratives and their legitimization by authorities can create the conditions for the normalization of violence as a political tool.
The caretaker prime minister underscored the need for democratic societies to have institutions committed to the professional study of the past and intellectuals who preserve their independence, along with open archives and evidence-based debate.
Referring to the recent case involving Ratko Mladić, Kurti spoke about the honors Serbia continues to bestow on war criminals. He pointed out that when a society publicly honors someone convicted of genocide, it becomes impossible to speak of any genuine process of confronting the past or distancing itself from the policies that caused those crimes.
He stressed that the body of Ratko Mladić, who was convicted of genocide and war crimes, is being received with high state honors by Serbia’s current president, Aleksandar Vučić, who was once a minister in Milošević’s government and a well-known figure for his participation in what was called the “Sarajevo Safari.”
Continuing his remarks, Kurti added that an extraordinarily large number of projects for the ethnic cleansing of Albanians had been devised by Serbian state structures throughout history, yet they had survived and managed to build their own independent state, the Republic of Kosovo. He concluded by emphasizing that, four decades on, the responsibility that remains is to document accurately, study seriously, remember with dignity and defend the truth with facts.
