UNMIK ON AIR

6^th November 2003

HISTORY BOOKS IN KOSOVO

By Zoran Culafic

History in the Balkans has always been a thorn in the side, provoking many tensions and even armed conflicts in the past. The declared stance of every Balkans government today is the path towards their European integration; therefore building a real democratic society. But it seems to be a long process in the Balkans bearing in mind the heritage of non-tolerance and negative feelings towards the others throughout the region.

Hello and welcome to this edition of UNMIK on Air.

UNMIK has recently begun a process of reforming school curricula’s in Kosovo, bearing in mind the local community’s myths and emotions could harm the fragile democracy, which is just beginning to be established.

Mechthild Hennecke, UNMIK’s press and information officer, explains the position of the international interim administration regarding history books, particularly in primary and secondary schools,

Mechthild Hennecke: UNMIK has no intention to change the history of Kosovo. We think that the textbooks should be free of provocative and inflammatory speech and this we think is also in the interest of Kosovars themselves.

Fehmi Rexhepi is a historian and political adviser to Kosovo’s minister of education. Rexhepi agrees that UNMIK did not ask to change the history, but only advised to write them in a more professional way, paying attention to the facts and improving some of the terminology.

Fehmi Rexhepi: They (UNMIK) asked from us that history school text should not initiate ethnic hatred. They asked that the History texts should be more light and practical and should not be loaded with many arguments and facts, so it could be more easy for the students to learn it.

According to Rexhepi, Kosovo’s history text books have no conflicting material that could create inter-ethnic or regional hatred, except when the historians write about dictatorships and he adds

Fehmi Rexhepi: All changes that will be done in History books have an aim to improve the quality of the text. In this way that the terminology of the text will be more precise without any material mistakes. So the changes will give the students a better and more professional learning textbook. And also the changes that will be done and that were proposed, were not done because of political issues but only for professional, scientific and material issues.

Sonja Biserko from the Belgrade based Helsinki committee for human right agrees that history is a very sensitive issue in the Balkans indeed, and political elites in the region are not mature enough to deal with such issues.

She also stressed that the existence of the Hague tribunal today could be of great help and of great importance for the future content of history books covering this region.

Sonja Biserko: The lucky point is the existence of the Hague Tribunal which registers very precisely everything what happened, so there is no room to make new myths about alleged victims, as it was the case after WWII. So the Hague tribunal is very useful in this situation in the region because it will document most of the victims and most of the events and that will be the basis for writing the history of this region.

One of UNMIK’s education advisers suggestion was to edit out 8 pages from a high school history textbook talking about the conflict in Kosovo. Fehmi Rexhepi explains one of the examples:

Fehmi Rexhepi: During the period of state repression on the Albanians after 1989, one of the pages reads: Serbian courts convicted hundred of Albanians with thousand years, this text was written in 1996. So the terminology Serbian in this case has been replaced with in Kosovo and in Yugoslavia – the final text reads, the courts in Kosovo and Yugoslavia convicted hundred Albanians with thousand years.

Sonja Biserko adds that political elites in the region, and not only in Kosovo and Serbia, react mainly on pressure from international circles; In Croatia there are already alternative history textbooks, which are compatible with EU standards. In Serbia there are ongoing educational reforms, which gained mainly positive reactions. But, Sonja Biserko adds, such processes would go even faster if there were a more constant pressure from the international community.

Sonja Biserko: That’s the characteristic for the whole region and it seems to me that “our political elites”, I’d rather say equally in the whole region, are not able to correspond with such European civilized values which are now imposed through the European Council and through EU integrations. I think that the problem is essentially in the fact that ethnocentric political parties won the elections here in the region with nationalistic programs, and these are restrictive and not tolerant programs. Ethnocentric parties do not consider minority issues in their own state, not to mention the minorities from surrounding countries, and there are plenty of stereotypes regarding each others.

Kosovo and the whole region are on the way to learn that tolerance is the most essential part of a democratic society in the world, and one important part of that process is to understand that history could be a binding force between the people, and not necessarily the thorn on the side, as its been till now.

And that was all for this edition of UNMIK on Air. Thanks for listening us.