Hello and welcome to the witness history podcast with me, Jack Butcher. Today, I'm taking

you back to 1990's Kosovo, where the majority Albanian population fought to keep education

alive. In the face of ethnic exclusion and repression, thousands of families offered

up their private homes to form a nationwide network of clandestine schools. It's September

1991 and in Kosovo, it's the beginning of a new school year. I started my high school

really with the protest in front of the building. Fourteen-year-old Linda Goosea, another Albanian

students and staff, find themselves shut out of their schools and university faculties,

following the introduction of oppressive new laws. It was a lot of police there not allowing

us to get in and I think it was like four or five days like that. Kosovo is being

run as a province of Serbia within Yugoslavia. This really led to what was often called

an apartheid system in Kosovo really the segregation between Serbs and Albanians.

Divisions had recently escalated with Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power in Serbia on a wave

of Serb nationalism. He quickly set about dismantling the rights of Albanians who made

up the significant majority of Kosovo's population. First, he hit their political rights by revoking

Kosovo's autonomous status within Serbia. Then he introduced so-called temporary measures

in Kosovo, which were ruthlessly enforced by the state security apparatus.

80% of Albanians that worked in many public institutions were massively fired for different reasons.

But Milosevic particularly targeted education, stripping away the hard one right of Albanians

to be educated in their own language.

Educational system for Albanians in Kosovo meant really a significant chance to participate

in political and public and was important in the economic and social life.

When Albanian teachers and university professors objected to a new curriculum prescribed

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