Albanians want memorial for fallen policemen removed

Source: B92, Tanjug

BUJANOVAC -- Ethnic Albanian parties from southern Serbia organized a protest in Bujanovac on Friday and demanded that a memorial for fallen policemen be removed.

(Beta)

The memorial is located between the villages of Lučani and Dobrosin, in honor of the Serbian Gendarmes who died during the NATO attacks in 1999, and later in clashes with the so-called Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac (UCPMB) - an ethnic Albanian terrorist group that has since been disbanded.
A memorial placed for the UCPMB members in downtown Preševo without a permit, and later removed, previously generated a great deal of controversy.

On Friday, several thousand ethnic Albanians rallied under the slogan "Together against the monument for the Serbian Gendarmerie in Lučani".

The protest was organized by the local parties, the National Council of Albanians, and the Council for Human Rights.

On Wednesday, President of the Coordinating Body for southern Serbia Zoran Stanković said that the local administrative unit (MZ) in Lučani -a village inhabited solely by ethnic Albanians - had sent a demand for the memorial to be removed.

The initiator of the protest today was the right-wing Movement for Democratic Progress (PDP). Its leader Jonuz Musliu told B92 earlier on Friday that there was "no reason for the Gendarmerie to place the monument exactly there".

"For that reason we will send a demand to the regime in Belgrade to remove the monument," he added.

Musliu also claims that works on this memorial started before that in Preševo and that "written approval of the local self-government in Bujanovac was not obtained".

According to Musliu, "the memorial monument" was placed as "a provocation toward Albanians".

Villagers in Lučani say they are "livid and upset", while local MZ President Ridvan Isufi told reporters that "nobody from the Gendarmerie, or the authorities, spoke a single word with him about this procedure".