{"id":28198,"date":"2013-04-14T12:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T09:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eliamep.lncdoo.com\/i-diamachi-gia-to-mnimeio-polemou-ucpmb-stin-koilada-tou-presevo\/"},"modified":"2024-08-28T11:04:55","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T08:04:55","slug":"i-diamachi-gia-to-mnimeio-polemou-ucpmb-stin-koilada-tou-presevo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/i-diamachi-gia-to-mnimeio-polemou-ucpmb-stin-koilada-tou-presevo\/","title":{"rendered":"A Balkan hotspot: The controversy over the U\u00c7PMB war memorial in the Pre\u0161evo Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"the-content\"><p>Since November 2012, Pre\u0161evo Valley, an Albanian-majority area in southern Serbia, has been the epicentre of\u00a0growing tension in the Western Balkans. Tensions began with the construction of a monument commemorating 27\u00a0fallen members of the Liberation Army of Pre\u0161evo, Medve\u0111a and Bujanovac (U\u00c7PMB) &#8211; an offshoot of the Liberation\u00a0Army of Kosovo (U\u00c7K) &#8211; and were then intensified by its\u00a0removal by the Serbian authorities on January 20.<br \/>\nIn the region of the Western Balkans, conflicts over\u00a0monuments and memorials are almost commonplace, as the\u00a0former warring parties continue to voice opposing views on\u00a0interpretations of past events and the roles of those involved \u2013\u00a0one side\u2019s hero is the other\u2019s villain. Thus, the\u00a0 U\u00c7PMB\u00a0monument built in front of Pre\u0161evo\u2019s town hall fits within this\u00a0context. Serbia considers the U\u00c7PMB terrorists and\u00a0separatists, responsible for the attacks on Serbian forces in the\u00a0Valley until the NATO-mediated ceasefire in 2001, as well as for\u00a0the deaths of 10 civilians and 24 members of Serbian security\u00a0forces. Albanians though, consider the U\u00c7PMB heroes who\u00a0have fought against Serbian repression of the local Albanian\u00a0population, which greatly intensified in the aftermath of the\u00a0Kosovo conflict in 1999.<br \/>\nThe Pre\u0161evo monument is not the only memorial of its kind\u00a0that has been constructed in this part of Serbia, but it is the\u00a0first one that has received such publicity, revealing perhaps,\u00a0that tensions are running high for both the Serbs and the\u00a0Albanians. This recent incident re-opened old wounds in the\u00a0Albanian-inhabited Pre\u0161evo Valley, a part of the Western\u00a0Balkans on the border with Kosovo, which continues to be a source of instability in the region.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors<\/strong>:\u00a0Dr. Ioannis Armakolas &#8211; \u201cStavros Costopoulos\u201d Research Fellow &amp; Head of South-East Europe Programme, ELIAMEP, Greece and\u00a0Maja Maksimovic &#8211;\u00a0Research Assistant, South-East Europe Programme, ELIAMEP, Greece<\/p>\n<p><strong>ELIAMEP Briefing Notes 10\/ 2013<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/A-Balkan-hotspot.pdf\">A Balkan hotspot: The controversy over the U\u00c7PMB war\u00a0memorial in the Pre\u0161evo Valley<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since November 2012, Pre\u0161evo Valley, an Albanian-majority area in southern Serbia, has been the epicentre of\u00a0growing tension in the Western Balkans. Tensions began with the construction of a monument commemorating 27\u00a0fallen members of the Liberation Army of Pre\u0161evo, Medve\u0111a and Bujanovac (U\u00c7PMB) &#8211; an offshoot of the Liberation\u00a0Army of Kosovo (U\u00c7K) &#8211; and were then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[492,102],"tags":[209],"program":[23],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44665,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28198\/revisions\/44665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28198"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eliamep.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=28198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}