BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND NATASHA TERLEXIS
PRISTINA, Kosovo, Yugoslavia - "We will give up our lives. But we won't give up Kosovo." This chant reverberated across the hilltops of Dragodan, a neighborhood in the capital of Kosovo here, and into the center of the city below on March 13. It captured the determination of the Albanian majority in this region, ruled by force by the regime in Belgrade, to resist brutal repression and fight for self- determination.

Nearly 100,000 people demonstrated that day. The mobilization was called by the Independent Students Union of the University of Pristina and supported by most Albanian political parties and the Independent Trade Union of Kosovo. It had been preceded by three other large street actions since the beginning of March, some of which were attacked by the police with clubs and water cannon. It is being followed by nearly daily protests, including one by more than 1,000 Albanian women who attempted a 30-mile march from Pristina to the Drenica region March 16 but were blocked by the police.

Under the guise of fighting "terrorism," Serbian police and army units assaulted several villages in that region, killing at least 85 people on February 28 and March 5, in an unsuccessful attempt to crush the resistance of Albanian working people and youth in Kosovo. In the aftermath of the Drenica massacres the demand for independence of Kosovo has gained widespread support here.

While attempting to portray themselves as defenders of the national rights of Albanians, Washington, Bonn and other imperialist powers are working overtime to take advantage of the turmoil to deepen the NATO military intervention into the Yugoslav workers state and tighten their encirclement of Russia.

On March 15, German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel called for the reinforcement of the 1,000-strong United Nations "peacekeeping" force in neighboring Macedonia and for the deployment of imperialist troops in Albania to "secure the border with Kosovo." The same day, government officials in Skopje, capital of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, disclosed they are collaborating with the White House to turn an army base in southern Macedonia into a NATO training center for a new "peacekeeping" force that can be deployed in Kosovo.

During a visit to Skopje on March 17, U.S. undersecretary of state Strobe Talbott said that his government is committed to maintaining a military presence in the republic even if the UN force leaves and announced $18 million in military aid to Macedonia and other governments in the region that cooperate with Washington. This is part of an "action plan" the Clinton administration is putting together in the Balkans, the aim of which, according to the press in Skopje, is to create a "security ring" around Yugoslavia. Washington maintains 8,000 troops in Bosnia, dominating the NATO occupation force of 30,000 in that republic.

The designs of the imperialist powers to reestablish the domination of capitalist social relations in Yugoslavia, however, and the attempt by the Belgrade regime to maintain its parasitic existence through repression are both running up against the resistance of the Albanian people.

`Blood that doesn't dry'
"This action organized today by all of us united together is a continuation of the protests that are being held all over Kosovo these days and is dedicated to the courageous people of Drenica and against the crimes and horrible massacre carried out by the Serbian occupiers," said Bujar Dugoli, president of the Independent Students Union (UPS), in addressing the March 13 rally in Dragodan, one of the largest neighborhoods of Pristina. "Using medieval practices, the Serbian occupiers have caused great bloodshed in which so many people lost their lives, among them many young people....

"But there is a saying that blood doesn't dry and doesn't disappear especially when it is shed by the adversary in a most barbarian and inhumane way."

Bugali scolded the "Contact Group" for equating the assaults by Belgrade with self defense by Albanians. The Contact Group is made up of the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia and is charged with monitoring implementation of the Dayton accord. That was the treaty Washington forced the warring regimes in former Yugoslavia to sign in 1995 on the Wright-Patterson Air Force base just outside Dayton, Ohio, paving the way for the partition of Bosnia and its occupation by NATO troops.

"The resolutions of the Contact Group speak about both the state-sponsored murderers as well as the innocent Albanian victims who were left with nothing but their bare hands to defend the thresholds of their homes, their honor, their dignity, and to claim their natural human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," Bugoli said. "The natural right to self- defense for those facing brutal occupation is one of these human rights. Exercising this right has nothing to do with terrorism."

The student leader's points were echoed by many protesters, who were in their majority young. "We don't want mercy, we want justice," was a frequent chant.

Albin Kurti, another leader of the Students Union, said in an interview that the statements by Robert Gelbard, U.S. special envoy to the Balkans, when he visited Belgrade in February "gave the green light to [Yugoslavia's president Slobodan] Milosevic to unleash the assault in Kosovo." At that time, Gelbard praised Milosevic for his cooperation in Bosnia and branded the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) as "without question a terrorist group."

The Kosovo Liberation Army was formed several years ago to wage an armed struggle for the independence of Kosovo. According to a number of people Militant reporters interviewed, it is based in the rural areas and has taken responsibility for attacks on the police since its founding. Serbian authorities claimed to have destroyed much of the UCK during their assault in Drenica. A UCK statement distributed to the press here March 10 said the "Liberation Army is determined to continue its struggle for Kosovo's liberation."

`We are all UCK'
"We are all UCK," was one of the popular slogans at the March 13 protest. "UCK! UCK! UCK!" chanted many people, using the initials of the Kosovo Liberation Army in Albanian. Many referred to those who died in Drenica resisting the assault as heroes, not victims.

"How can they claim that children are terrorists?" said Mohammed Jasheffi, a hotel worker. More than a dozen of those killed were children. Adding insult to injury, Serbian authorities refused autopsies and buried the bodies of the deceased in a mass grave during the March 5 sweep. On March 11 dozens of their relatives dug up the bodies and reburied them individually at the same spot, outside the village of Prekaz, with Muslim ceremonies.

The demands of the March 13 protest included calls for the demilitarization of Kosovo and the removal of Serbian police units that reportedly amount to 45,000 troops, the prosecution of those responsible for the killings, and the immediate lifting of the siege of Drenica.

On the way to the Drenica region March 14, Militant reporters passed through five checkpoints guarded by heavily armed police, with armored personnel carriers in some cases. The sandbag bunkers at these checkpoints are now being replaced with more permanent structures. Reporters are allowed into most villages at the moment, though some are still off limits. The movement of Albanians is greatly restricted, however. Merchants are not allowed to bring food or other goods into the region and even most shipments of medicine have been halted.

The mountainous region is made up of 50 villages with 65,000 inhabitants, 99 percent of whom are Albanian and have a history of militant struggle for their national rights. A decade ago, about 3,000 were employed at an ammunition factory on a hill overlooking Prekaz, as well as at grain elevators, and textile and toy plants. Virtually all of these facilities have been shut down, though, and most residents live off subsistence farming and help from relatives who have emigrated to Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and other countries.

The wave of police raids
"The first killings took place November 25," said Hajnishahe Shala, who works at the Human Rights Center in Srbica (which Albanians call Skenderia), the largest town in the region. That's when police with armored personnel carriers surrounded the village of Laushe and began shooting indiscriminately, she said, killing the 11-year-old son of someone they accused of being a UCK member. Teacher Halit Geci was also shot dead inside his classroom, and others were wounded. "Since then Drenica has been surrounded by heavy police forces who took over the ammunition factory and have turned it into their barracks."

On January 22 Serbian policemen attacked the home of Saban Jashari with grenades and heavy gunfire. He had been convicted in abstentia by a court of membership in the UCK. "Fortunately no one was killed that day," Shala said. "Family members fought back. They would have been killed if they hadn't resisted." Frustrated by being pushed back, the cops began beating villagers indiscriminately and shooting at random from their posts in the ammunition factory, killing 52-year-old Husen Manholi, a factory worker, later that morning. As tensions mounted Serbian authorities imposed economic sanctions, prohibiting the transportation of food and other necessities for grocery stores. Farmers could no longer get supplies. "The economic sanctions have been in place ever since."

Most of the police sweeps were carried out under the pretext of trying to arrest convicted felons. During three trials in 1997, Serbian courts tried and found guilty in absentia 40 people on charges of belonging to the UCK, sentencing them to between 10 and 20 years in prison.

In these clashes, six Serbian policemen were killed in January and February, according to Belgrade. The Milosevic regime used this to justify the February 28 attack on the villages of Qirez and Likoshan, where 24 Albanians were killed and several more wounded. "When the bodies came back from the morgue in Pristina, several were missing limbs, eyes, and teeth," said Shala. Photos provided by the Independent Students Union showed the brutality by the Serbian authorities.

The heaviest assault came five days later at the village of Prekaz, home to nearly 700 families. Eyewitnesses who escaped said more than 1,000 soldiers attacked with tanks and artillery. Lower Prekaz, in the valley below the ammunition factory, is now in ruins. Part of the village was guarded by the police and men in civilian clothes armed with assault rifles, and no photographs were allowed there. In upper Prekaz, on the facing hilltop, a number of farmers had returned to their houses after fleeing the assault in the early morning hours of March 5.

Agim Maliqi, one of these farmers, showed Militant reporters tractors and other machinery destroyed in the raid. All of the houses had been ransacked, furniture broken, and passports and other personal documents torn up. "This is Serbia," was painted on mirrors and some walls along with the nationalist Serb emblem.

"We are farmers. We are poor. We don't have guns. But we won't be intimidated into leaving our land," Maliqi said. About 13,000 people have reportedly fled the region and are being housed by working people in nearby towns that are not under siege. Unlike what imperialist powers have been predicting so far - and have been using to justify "peacekeepers" in Macedonia and to probe their possible deployment in Albania - refugees have not been streaming over the borders as of now.

In Mitrovica, a mining town about 10 miles north of Prekaz, Shashivar Begu, secretary of the miners union, said that unemployed miners and others there have given shelter to refugees from Drenica. "We are taking care of them," he said. "They are determined to go back as soon as conditions permit. We won't allow ethnic cleansing in Kosovo."

Earlier in Prekaz, Latif Maliqi, Agim's brother, said he had been trying to eke a living off the land after being fired from a job with a construction company in Croatia eight years ago. "I've tried to go back three times since and I've been turned back by force," he said. "What the Serbian regime did in Kosovo was the spear point of the breakup of Yugoslavia."

Origins of conflict in Kosovo
Kosovo was an autonomous region of the Republic of Serbia until 1989, when the Milosevic regime revoked its status and imposed a state of emergency that has remained in place since. Ninety percent of its population of 2.1 million are of Albanian origin, 8 percent are Serbs, and the rest are Turks, Gypsies, and other nationalities.

The autonomy status was granted in 1974, following a series of protests demanding a republic. "It was a step toward fulfilling the promises Tito made during the revolution, but was not adequate," said Haidar Hyseni, 75, a retired wood worker at the March 13 protest in Pristina. "Kosovo should have been a republic from the beginning of the revolution by the Partisans."

The Partisans, led by the Communist Party whose central leader was Josip Tito, united toilers from every nationality behind the struggle against Nazi occupation in World War II, including Albanians like Hyseni. Putting into practice a program that called for mutual equality and respect for all nationalities, and that opposed chauvinism and the domination of one nation by another, was a factor in the Partisan victory against the Nazis. Hundreds of thousands of working people who had joined the Partisans turned the victorious antifascist struggle into a social revolution. By the end of 1945, they had put in power a workers and farmers regime that by the late 1940s had nationalized the means of production, distributed land to the poor peasants, and instituted a monopoly of foreign trade and economic planning - in short establishing a workers state, even if deformed at birth by Stalinist domination.

In the years that followed, Albanians were recognized as a distinct national group for the first time, their language became one of Yugoslavia's official languages, and Albanians won the right to education in their own language. The University of Pristina, where all courses were taught in Albanian, was opened in 1970.

While affirmative action measures were taken to develop the more economically backward regions of Yugoslavia in the early years of the revolution, these steps affected Kosovo less. As a privileged bureaucratic caste crystallized its hold on power under the Stalinist misleadership of Tito, the initial gains of the revolution began to be undermined. Kosovo remained far behind in economic development compared to other regions, including neighboring Macedonia. This has continued to fuel the struggle for a republic, including mass protests at the end of the 1960s that led to the granting of autonomy in 1974.

"Autonomy was a compromise that worked for a decade," said Lulezon Jagxhiu, 22, a leader of the Independent Students Union. "Not becoming a republic, however, made the change somewhat cosmetic. It was easier to take away," he stated. Jagxhiu pointed to the 1986 revision of the Yugoslav constitution, half a decade after Tito's death, that abolished the territorial defense units in Kosovo, which were made up overwhelmingly by Albanians. This was a widely held view among a number of students and others interviewed by the Militant.

Tito had opened up the Yugoslav economy to foreign investment and loans from imperialist bank trusts acting through institutions like the IMF long before other regimes in Eastern Europe adopted similar policies. So when the first worldwide recession hit in the mid-1970s, the gyrations of the capitalist market system adversely affected Yugoslav working people too. This fact, combined with the bureaucratic, anti-working-class methods of planning and management by the Stalinist regime, produced an economic crisis that was the worst in the least developed areas like Kosovo. By the mid-1980s, for example, unemployment throughout Yugoslavia averaged 14 percent. It was 27 percent in Macedonia and 50 percent in Kosovo.

Nationalism unleashed
After militant strikes and demonstrations for better economic conditions and recognition of national rights broke out at the end of the 1980s in Kosovo, Belgrade cracked down, revoking autonomy in 1989. Pristina was the city where Milosevic launched his nationalist tirades to justify grabbing territory and resources for the layer of the ruling bureaucracy loyal to him. Prejudices against ethnic Albanians have been widely promulgated by the regime ever since.

The Independent Trade Union of Kosovo (BSPK) was formed in July 1990 by miners, construction workers, and other unionists who were disillusioned by the unions dominated by the former Communist Party, which were not seen as representing the interests of workers of Albanian origin. "Our union has a membership of 254,000," said BSPK president Hajrullah Gorani in an interview in Pristina. "But only 40,000 are employed today."

After an eight-day strike in August 1990, all but 300 of the 7,600 miners in Kosovo were fired from their jobs. Over the next two years most other industrial workers who are Albanian were also dismissed.

Cut off from unemployment or other social programs, Albanians survive often with food sent from the countryside or from assistance by relatives abroad. About 400,000 have emigrated since 1990.

"In 1991 ... some 1,000 professors and 27,000 students were forced out of the University of Pristina alone," said a March 13 statement by the Independent Union of Students. They refused to teach or get lessons in Serbian. "Hundreds of thousands of high school students were banned from entering school buildings. In some of the elementary schools, children were allowed into segregated buildings - with Serb children on one side, Albanians on the other. The university and high schools began to hold classes outside their school buildings, in private houses, in miserable conditions. This has been going on for seven years now. The Serb police raids on these buildings are a common practice. Teachers are beaten in front of the children as a way to promote fear."

In 1992 elections that were not recognized by Belgrade, Ibrahim Rugova of the Democratic League of Kosovo was elected president of the Republic of Kosovo, which had been declared two years earlier by the Albanian members of Kosovo's parliament. Rugova, a literary critic who had been a member of the former governing Communist Party, set up a parallel government to the one loyal to Belgrade but promoted dialogue with the Milosevic regime and opposed street protests.

"There was a lull in struggle between 1992 and last year," Jagxhiu said. Frustration with the lack of any progress led to the formation of the UCK and the student protests that erupted last year. In 1996, Milosevic signed an agreement with Rugova under which schools, including the university, were supposed to reopen with instruction in Albanian. "This agreement was never implemented," Jagxhiu said.

New turning points in struggle
"That's why we launched the protests last year," Jagxhiu continued, talking to Militant reporters at the offices of the Independent Students Union, on the top floor of a three-story apartment building in the Velanija neighborhood of Pristina. It is one of the main organizing centers of the resistance to the Serbian regime. The students organized three large demonstrations in Pristina on October 1, October 29, and December 30. Smaller actions took place in four other cities where the parallel university has branches.

"The October 1 action was a watershed event," Jagxhiu said. "It broke the ice after five years of passive resistance." More than 20,000 students attempted a march from Velanija to the center of the city, while tens of thousands of others lined the sidewalks in support. The police blocked the march and, after the students staged a sit-in, attacked the protesters and arrested a number of the organizers. They were released after being beaten and threatened with prison sentences if they continued the actions.

"We were simply demanding the return of school facilities as Milosevic promised in 1996," Jaghxiu said. The parallel university has 23,000 students. "The `regular' university buildings are only partially filled by Serb students, but the rest of the buildings remain empty. Although the Serb government has offered lucrative loans and housing, it has managed to attract fewer than 4,000 Serb students from Serbia and Montenegro to attend classes in Kosovo. They only occupy 20 percent of the university buildings." Belgrade has also brought thousands of Serbian refugees from Bosnia to resettle in Kosovo, many of them against their will.

The failure to implement the 1996 agreement led many youth who were previously reluctant into the streets. Eleonora Halimi, for example, said she had a chance to go abroad and study but gave it up hoping the university would reopen.

"Our main difference with the Rugova leadership has been his reliance on the `international community' and passive resistance," Jagxhiu stated, referring to statements by Rugova that amount to calls for direct military intervention by Washington and other imperialist powers.

"We are the only ones who can fight for our rights," added Driton Lajci, another student leader. After the assault in Drenica, though, "our demands for opening the schools were bypassed," Lajci said. "We have now joined other forces, including the BSPK and the political parties, in demanding independence."

Serb students join protests
A small layer of Serb students from Belgrade have joined the recent protests in Pristina. Bronislav Cale, president of the student union of the University of Belgrade, took part in the March 13 demonstration along with a handful of other students. Last year he helped lead the three-month-long student demonstrations in Belgrade that, along with other mobilizations, forced the Milosevic regime to reverse cancellation of election results in 15 cities where the opposition coalition Zajedno won municipal elections in November 1996.

"We are here to support the demands of Kosovo students for the return of their university," Cale said. He wasn't sure about the demand for independence.

"The policies of Milosevic led to the bloodshed and the breakup of Yugoslavia," said Sanja Pesek, another student from Serbia. "I consider myself a Yugoslav. We can only regain unity among working people by supporting the struggle for self-determination of the Albanian people in Kosovo."

Tijana Zivanovic, another student at the University of Belgrade who joined the March 13 action, said most of her fellow students oppose the crackdown by the Milosevic regime. This is significant given the propaganda about UCK "terrorism" in Serbia and the fact that virtually all opposition parties, including those that formed the now defunct Zajedno, have sided with the government in Belgrade on Kosovo.

During a visit to Belgrade on March 11 a number of people interviewed by Militant reporters expressed support for the struggle for national rights of Albanians in Kosovo. "Albanians I know are neither terrorists, nor `lazy child breeders' as the media call them," said a Serbian taxi driver who identified himself only as Zashta. "They are hard-working people. Kosovo must get autonomy at least." This appears to be a minority view in Serbia, however. So far, only Women in Black, a group that has opposed the war unleashed by Belgrade and the breakup of Yugoslavia since the early 1990s, has organized street protests of about 100 people in Belgrade in solidarity with the embattled Albanians in Kosovo.

In Kosovo the majority of Serbs who have stayed through the last decade have privileges most of the population is denied. For the most part they live segregated from the Albanian majority and side with the Serbian regime.

The events in Drenica, however, appear to have created some cracks in this wall of chauvinism. On March 15, relatives of those killed in Drenica organized a memorial service at a small Catholic church in Pristina in honor of the victims. At the same time, more than 20,000 students and working people, overwhelmingly Albanian, held a silent candlelight protest in downtown Pristina that marched toward the church. "Most of us are Muslims, but we go to a Catholic church demonstratively to show this is a struggle for all who support justice," said Zoga Idrize. "They try to divide us, accusing Albanians of `Islamic fundamentalism.' " Idrize and a couple of others said a few Serbians had joined the action that day.

Imperialist intervention
Meanwhile, Rugova and other leaders of Albanian political parties have stated that they will no longer settle for autonomy and have turned down an offer for negotiations by the Milosevic regime without "international mediation."

Rugova's calls for "outside help," which include imposition of new sanctions on Yugoslavia and direct military intervention, are playing into the hands of U.S. imperialism.

At a March 9 meeting in London the "Contact Group" agreed to impose a new arms embargo on Belgrade and to deny visas to those deemed responsible for repression in Kosovo. The UN Security Council is planning to vote March 20 on a British-sponsored resolution to impose an immediate arms embargo.

Russian foreign minister Yevgeni Primakov rejected a third proposal to cut financial credits to Belgrade.

During a visit to Belgrade on March 17, Milosevic met with Primakov and said Kosovo "is our internal matter and can only be solved by Serbia through political means." He urged Moscow to "oppose the internationalization of the matter." The Russian government has come into increasing conflict with Washington over expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe; preparations for a military assault on Iraq; and U.S. attempts to not only dominate the oil in the former Soviet republics of the Caspian Sea region, but to establish a stronger regional line of influence and pressure across the southern flank of Russia, from the Caspian all along the Silk Road.

The next day, the foreign ministers of France and Germany visited Belgrade and Zagreb. "Traveling together," said the French Press Agency, "they want to reassert in front of their European allies the value of the French-German axis on the international scene." Within NATO, Paris has diverged with Washington over tactics in the Balkans and Iraq, differences that reflect the continuing U.S. push into Europe and the Middle East. In the simultaneous visit to Macedonia by Strobe Talbott, to be followed by trips to Bulgaria and Romania, Washington is laying the groundwork for deepening its intervention in the Balkans. Government officials in Skopje state that a new NATO rapid- deployment force is in the offing, based in Macedonia, that can be used in Kosovo.

Inside Kosovo, U.S. government officials are working hard toward widening illusions in "democratic capitalism." U.S. embassy officials could be seen mixing it up and talking with protesters at the March 13 mobilization.

CNN and other news programs have been highlighting out of proportion the sign "NATO: Where are you?" at the mobilizations in Pristina. During the March 13 rally and march, and the subsequent TV coverage of the action, Militant reporters saw only one such placard. And most people we asked said this wasn't different in previous actions. Nevertheless, attitudes toward requesting what is in fact imperialist intervention are contradictory. Many working people and youth in Kosovo have come to accept to some degree the Rugova leadership's calls for "help" from the "international community." Independent Students Union president Bujar Dugoli called for tougher sanctions against Belgrade in his March 13 speech. Belgrade is in fact using these attitudes to exploit anti-imperialist sentiment among people in Serbia and the deep opposition there to the UN sanctions to claim that the rebellion in Kosovo is nothing but a NATO plot.

"I think the U.S. should help us get our country, but not by sending an army," said Aryana, a high school student who gave only her first name on her way to the protest.

"I know this power has its own interests," said university student Agron Camolli, referring to Washington. "But we are a few people facing a strong army. The U.S. is the only one that can help."

Faredi Ibrahim disagreed. "We don't need NATO or the European Union," he said. "Where were they when Germany and other countries were expelling Albanians? We rely on our own strength to stop the terror by Milosevic."

Resistance by working people
This fighting spirit permeated most discussions with student organizers and working people interviewed by the Militant. It is among workers that we found those most determined to defend the remaining gains of the 1945 revolution and use them to advance the struggle for self-determination.

During the visit to the mining town Mitrovica March 14, Mon Uka and his wife Shemsie showed Militant reporters into their front yard. Behind a tall wooden fence, they live in one small room with a dirt floor along with their two children. Uka had been saving money to build a house on this plot of land. But he was fired from his job in a nearby mine for going on strike in August 1990, along with 2,750 fellow workers. There has been no work, especially in the winter months. Many miners have been surviving ever since on solidarity organized through the unemployed league of the union. The miners union has been organizing a fund for the fired workers and distributing the money. Contributions come mostly from the 500 miners who have emigrated abroad in the last eight years. Asked if he took part in the student protests in town, he replied: "Is there any reason anyone wouldn't protest? Especially when our brothers and sisters are being killed in Drenica."

Shashivar Begu, secretary of the miners union in the region, who worked in the mines for 18 years before being fired himself, recounted how the workers occupied the mine for eight days, sitting underground during the 1990 strike. "We struck demanding a return to the 1974 constitution [autonomy for Kosovo], an end to firings or early retirements of teachers for political reasons that had already begun, and new elections for new union officers. We only came out of the mine when Serbian authorities gave us what turned out to be false promises they would meet our demands."

The attempts by the Serbian authorities to sell off one of the mines to foreign investors "is the biggest robbery," Begu said. "Since 1945, we the workers are the owners." The mineral wealth of Kosovo includes coal, silver, gold, zinc, lead, and bismuth. "It is for these riches that the Serbian regime is occupying our territory, not for their churches," he said. Begu was referring to a rationalization by Belgrade for the denial of national rights to Albanians - that Kosovo historically belongs to Serbia because it was the site of a battle four centuries ago where the armies of the Ottoman empire defeated Serb armies, an argument pushed by the Serbian Orthodox church.

Begu said Kosovo miners "have received support, including material help, from unions internationally. But more is needed." The recent police clampdown in the area prevented miners union representatives here from participating in a conference against privatization called by the Independent Miners Union in Tuzla, Bosnia, that weekend. According to a Greek trade unionist who took part in the meeting, that conference included representatives of the Independent Trade Union of Serbia and passed a resolution calling for solidarity with the Kosovo miners.

Despite the hardships, "we don't regret for a moment the 1990 strike," Begu said. "We will continue to fight," he added, pointing to how the miners and other workers in the area have joined the student protests. "And there's a good chance we will win."

Natasha Terlexis is a member of the Foreign Airlines Workers Union in Athens, Greece. Anne Howie, a member of the Transport and General Workers Union in Manchester, England, and Jack Willey contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home