Speech of Slobodan Milosevic at Urosevac
April 25, 1987

At this instant about 1,500,000 Albanians live in Kosovo, and many fewer Serbs and Montenegrins. We can't say that they are a minority, but the fact is that there are a lot less of them. It's also a fact that the majority of them are exposed to economic, political, nationalist and physical pressure from separatists, carrying forward a counter-revolution which started in 1981.

Things are happening here these days that haven't happened in civilized countries in this world for a few centuries. They rape women and children, humiliate people, physically mistreat them. Serbs and Montenegrins can't conquer those shameful acts alone. In the ways and amounts of support the republic and Yugoslav leadership can offer, the position of Serbian and Montenegrin peoples on Kosovo require a huge change in a positive way in the Albanians on Kosovo.

Progressive, upstanding people, young people, it's understood, above all, that the Albanian communists must be the first, most dedicated and most successful fighters against their own nationalists.

That, friends, doesn't go just for the Albanian nation, it goes for Serb, Montenegrin, and for every nation on the planet.

It's true and moral that every nation's most progressive people alone, before all others, fight against the nationalists in their own ranks. Against all those ugly and inhumane acts that wound and humiliate other nations. But, those ugly and inhumane acts wound and humiliate, at the end of the line, the nation that those that commit them belong to.

The Albanian nation, out of shame from what their nationalists are committing, are surely hurting not Serbs and Montenegrins but rather herself alone. With every rape of a Serbian child infamy falls on all Albanians if they do not put a stop that shame.

On the safety of Serb and Montenegrin children, here on Kosovo, Albanian mothers and fathers must worry more, and not the police. There where the police and the military take matters into their own hands freedom ends for both the guilty and the innocent, for the rights of all.

Care for your rights, guard your voice, those that can.

TRANSLATED BY: TIM SKORICK
Original Serbian Text (PDF File)