Gazimestan speech
June 1989 Slobodan Milošević speech / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Gazimestan speech?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The Gazimestan speech (Serbo-Croatian: Govor na Gazimestanu / Говор на Газиместану) was given on 28 June 1989 by Slobodan Milošević, then president of Serbia, at the Gazimestan monument on the Kosovo field. It was the centrepiece of a day-long event to mark the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, which was fought at the site in 1389.
Native name | Obraćanje na Gazimestanu (Croatian) Говор на Газиместану (Serbian) |
---|---|
Date | 28 June 1989 (1989-06-28) |
Venue | Gazimestan, Kosovo field |
Location | Pristina, SAP Kosovo, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia |
Coordinates | 42°41′26″N 21°7′25″E |
Theme | 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, possibility of armed conflict |
Participants | Slobodan Milošević |
The speech was delivered to a crowd of an estimated million or more attendees,[lower-alpha 1][1] and came against a backdrop of protracted ethnic tension between ethnic Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo and increasing political tensions between SR Serbia and the other constituent republics of the then SFR Yugoslavia caused by the anti-bureaucratic revolution.
The speech has since become notorious for Milošević's reference to the possibility of "armed battles", in the future of Serbia's national development. Many foreign commentators have described this as presaging the collapse of Yugoslavia and the eventual Yugoslav Wars. Milošević later claimed that he had been misrepresented.