User:Antidiskriminator/Drafts of articles/Persecution of Kosovo Albanians loyal to Serbia

The Persecution of Kosovo Albanians loyal to Serbia was organized by KLA in period 1996—1999.

Persecution
The KLA persecuted Kosovo Albanians who refused to support them or their violent means of struggle. The villagers who did not want them in their villages were "arrested" by KLA or forced to leave their village while students who opted for hunger strike instead for armed struggle were threatened. Ibrahim Rugova, the Kosovo Albanian leader who was against violent methods of struggle, was labeled by KLA as being traitor of the Albanian national cause.

Since 1997 the KLA started to send faxes to Albanian language newspaper taking responsibility for systematic attacks which targeted Serbs but also ethnic Albanians who were loyal to Serbia. KLA labeled moderate Albanians who were loyal to Serbia as "collaborators".

Aftermath
when NATO forces followed with KLA captured Kosovo in June 1999, many Kosovo Albanians loyal to Serbia were among around 250,000 people who fled Kosovo. According to some sources, thousands of Kosovo Albanians fled to Belgrade.

Arrests and trials
The president of Serbia proclaimed that "terrorism in Kosovo had been cut in its roots" when the authorities in Serbia arrested sixty Albanians in the end of January 1997 following a long stream of executions of Albanians loyal to Serbia, only to be soon denied by the reality.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office was established in 2017 for the trials of the crimes committed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The crimes includes those against other Kosovo Albanians. In January 2017 several members of KLA were accused by Special Prosecutor for kidnapping and murder of one Kosovo Albanian, Haxhi Petreshi. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/kosovo-podignuta-optu%C5%BEnica-za-ratne-zlo%C4%8Dine-protiv-pripadnika-ovk-01-16-2017