- Date of the event
- Place
- Prishtina
- Evidence status
- Evidence status: Documented. Supported by contemporaneous documents, institutional reports or independent studies that corroborate one another.
Students of the parallel University of Prishtina protested peacefully for implementation of the education agreement and a return to university buildings. Serbian police dispersed the protest by force.
According to Human Rights Watch's World Report 1998, police dispersed the crowd and beat many demonstrators; the sources read give no number of participants or injured [1]. The student movements of 1968, 1981 and 1997 are analysed by Atdhe Hetemi [2].
Historical context
1996–1997
After Dayton, disappointment with international inaction turned into a search for new paths: student protests, underground networks and, at the end of 1997, the first public appearance of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Read the chapter “The crisis of peaceful resistance and the KLA's first public appearance”Sources
- [1]Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch World Report 1998: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. https://www.hrw.org/legacy/worldreport/Helsinki-12.htm. Accessed 2026-09-16.
- [2]Atdhe Hetemi. Student Movements for the Republic of Kosovo: 1968, 1981 and 1997. Palgrave Macmillan (Springer Nature), seria Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, 2020-10-06. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54952-7. Accessed 2026-09-16.
- [3]Tribunali Penal Ndërkombëtar për ish-Jugosllavinë (ICTY). Prosecutor v. Milutinović et al., Judgement, Volume 1 of 4. 2009-02-26. IT-05-87-T. https://www.icty.org/x/cases/milutinovic/tjug/en/jud090226-e1of4.pdf. Accessed 2026-09-16.