Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo burnt the Greek flag following a match between SC Gjilani and APOEL from Cyprus.
APOEL needed extra time to beat Gjilani 2-0 in the Kosovo capital of Pristina to progress to the second qualifying round of the Europa League.
Congolese striker Dumersi Endogala with a good energy and an accurate cross in 102' gave a ready goal to Georgios Efrem. Dieumerci Ndongala sealed his debut with a goal, after a nice place he made it 0-2. Tomás De Vincenti made the vertical pass in both goals.
However, despite their defeat yesterday by the APOEL Nicosia football club, the fans of Gilani did not thwart their plan to burn the Greek flag after the match in Pristina.
Gilani fans calling themselves "Hawks", chanted after the match that "Kosovo is the heart of Albania", unfurled the Greek flag and burned it while shooting videos that they posted on social media.
Despite the heroics of Albanian national figure and anti-Ottoman guerrilla leader Gjergj Kastrioti, more commonly known as Skënderbej, the Albanians became loyal Ottoman subjects and were used as colonists in more restive and disloyal areas of the empire, especially those inhabited by the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks. They often became a majority over the initial inhabitants, like what happened in Kosovo.
Although the idea of a Greater Albania may seem like an exaggerated conspiracy, to the Serbian people this is anything but. The Serbian mythos finds itself in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, where despite their courage, Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was martyred and his forces routed by the Ottoman invaders. Although the Serbs achieved sovereignty over Kosovo with the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, the region had already become an Albanian majority on Ottoman orders to weaken Serbian identity and dominance in the region.
Kosovo became an autonomous region of Serbia after the establishment of socialist Yugoslavia in the aftermath of World War Two and retained its Albanian-majority. The 1990’s proved this was always a weak point of Serbia. With the U.S. sponsoring the violent destruction of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, the status of Kosovo was left unresolved, culminating in the terrorist-led war against the Yugoslav state (in which Serbia was the successor of) in 1999.
The terrorist ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK), who the "Hawks" had a banner of while burning the Greek flag, with the backing of NATO and the Albanian Republic, defeated Yugoslav forces. The United Nations and NATO assumed control of the territory, which eventually declared independence in 2008. Since then, Kosovo under Albanian rule has become a heroin ‘smugglers paradise,’ and a hub for human trafficking, organ harvesting and arms trafficking.
