(1 Oct 1997) Natural Sound
About 20-thousand ethnic Albanians confronted heavily armed Serbian riot police trying to block their protest against Serb repression on the streets of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, on Wednesday.
The demonstrators were mostly young students demanding the right to Albanian-language education at Pristina University.
Instruction at the university is now in Serbo-Croatian and the curriculum is set by Serbians.
Wednesday's demonstration was the first large-scale protest in Kosovo since Serbia stripped the province of its autonomy in 1989.
The protesters - mostly young students - were demanding the right to Albanian-language education at Pristina University, where instruction is in Serbo-Croatian and the curriculum is set by Serbians.
Student leaders vowed to press ahead with their peaceful protests despite appeals from their own political leaders and foreign diplomats to refrain from action.
Wednesday's march took them from their own makeshift campus outside Pristina to the centre of Kosovo's capital.
The march exploded into violence when heavily armed Serb police fired tear gas and clubbed protesters to break up their demonstration.
Many of the demonstrators managed to escape into the nearby hills.
For the past six years, the Albanians - who make up 90 per cent of the two (m) million people in Serbia's Kosovo province - have studied underground in private homes, following courses not recognized by Serbian authorities.
Serbia has ruled Kosovo with a heavy police and army presence since 1989.
Many ethnic Albanians say they want complete independence from Serbia.
But Kosovo is the heart of Serbia's medieval empire, and home of many of its most important cultural monuments.
Slobodan Milosevic, now president of the Serbian-Montenegrin federation of Yugoslavia, began his rise to power in the late 1980s by heating up Serb nationalist feelings over Kosovo.
The same kind of nationalism later contributed to the wars that accompanied the breakup of the larger Yugoslavia.
In 1990, most Albanians were either dismissed from or quit their jobs as teachers, policemen and other Kosovo civil servants.
They founded their own network of schools and a university in private homes, and have similar alternative hospitals.
The students say they now want to force the Serbs to let them use the campus of Pristina University, where 18-thousand Serbs now study.
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