From: "SNN" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: "STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN!" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dear Friends in UNITED NATIONS / UNESCO I like to inform you about the online petition: "PETITION FOR THE SAFEGUARD OF SERBIAN CULTURAL HERITAGE" at: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/SNN/ We personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look. Would you please take appropriate actions in regards to this petition. Best wishes, Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ THE ARTICLE BELOW Negovan Rajic: From Kabul to Kosovo The barbaric destruction of the gigantic Buddhas in Afganistan has provoked a justified hue of worldwide protests. Believers and nonbelievers alike, all civilized people are recoiling in pain at this intolerable assault on culture. It is not only an attack on the artistic heritage of mankind, but also on human history and our collective memory. Sadly, as I write these lines, the Taliban has already reduced to a pile of rubble the sandstone cliffs where pious Buddhist monks infused a soul so long ago. None of the great powers has dared to send troops into the Afghan's hornet's nest to save those priceless treasures. Even if, to some extent, this failure can be justified by the wish to save human lives, one cannot understand how, in Kosovo, in the heart of Europe, in the presence of U.N. troops, the West is unflinchingly witnessing the destruction of the monuments of a civilization which, in the final analysis, is one of its own. Who can believe commanders of the United Nations' Kosovo Protection Force (KFOR) - an army of 40,000 soldiers and 2,000 policemen deployed in an area no larger than a single department of France- who say they do not have sufficient means to protect the Serb communities from Albanian extremists nor to stop the destruction of almost a hundred * churches and monasteries, some of which were adorned with magnificent frescoes dating back to the Middle Ages? How is it that the same western leaders and intellectuals who only yesterday were demonizing the Serbs with allegations of all crimes imaginable, are so cowardly silent today? For how long will the Western leaders be able to close their eyes to a reality that will surely boomerang as did the wartime misdeeds of the Nazis. No, tomorrow, our leaders will not have the right to say, "We did not know". Orthodox churches are being dynamited, Serb houses set aflame , and old cemeteries desecrated, all in the presence of the troops of that same "international community" that is trying to impose itself as the supreme judge of good and evil. Whether it is the peak of cynicism or insensitivity,we are now being told that the commander of the allied troops in Kosovo, an accomplice of the terrorists, is thinking of entrusting the protection of those Orthodox shrines still standing to the former soldiers of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army! Even Hitler himself didn't dare to push perfidy so far as to entrust the protection of synagogues to the units of his SS! If this news is confirmed, we might as well put a cross on the last vestige of the jewels of medieval art which, despite being formally under Unesco's protection, have become, as the giant Buddhas, mute witnesses of a civilization put to death. But let's not fool ourselves, their disappearance will also be our moral defeat and the world's power- brokers will not have an easy conscience when trying to persuade us that this destruction is what the Serbs deserved for their crimes. And who, after the the big petroleum companies have elaborated their plans to run pipelines across the Balkan peninsula, can still believe that the war against Yugoslavia was a "humanitarian" war? Thanks, KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
