1989 Kosovo miners' strike

The 1989 Kosovo miners' strike was a hunger strike initiated by the workers of the Trepča Mines on 20 February 1989 against the abolition of the autonomy of the Province of Kosovo by the Socialist Republic of Serbia. The strike quickly gained support in Slovenia and Croatia, while in Belgrade protests were held against the Slovenian, Albanian and Croatian leaderships. It eventually ended after the hospitalization of 180 miners and the resignation of the leaders of the League of Communists of Kosovo Rahman Morina, Ali Shukriu and Husamedin Azemi.

SFR Yugoslavia was a federal republic consisting of republics including SR Serbia, which in turn had two autonomous provinces, SAP Vojvodina and SAP Kosovo. Kosovo was inhabited mostly by Kosovo Albanians and the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution gave Kosovo a then-unprecedented level of autonomy, but after Josip Broz Tito's death in 1980, Kosovo's autonomy began to be questioned by Serbian politicians.

Following the 1981 riots in Kosovo, which the League of Communists of Kosovo declared to be a product of Albanian nationalism, Serbia reacted by a desire to reduce the power of the Albanians in the province, and promoted a campaign claiming that Serbs were being pushed out of the province primarily by the growing Albanian population and not the state of the economy. In November 1988, 2,000 Albanian miners protested for the preservation of autonomy by marching from the southern mines to Kosovo's capital Pristina with support from another 6,000 other citizens along the way.

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