-----Original Message-----
From: Seth Sandronsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Regarding "what Milosevic and the Serbs have done in Kosovo" I heard a
>reporter on the McNeil New Hour (4-1) report that the Albanian Kosovars
>say they welcome the US/NATO bombs.
>In my view, they could well be fleeing the US/NATO bombs, a point
>Michael Parenti and a Yugoslavian woman writer made on KPFA Radio in
>Berkeley last week.
This is a report on the UN High Commission on Refugees. For those blaming
NATO for the exodus of refugees, it is notable that of the roughly 650,000
Kosovan refugees, the estimate is almost one-third, 200,000, had been driven
out before NATO acted. That means over 10% of the ethnic Albanian
population had been driven out of the country before a single bomb was
dropped. Again, with documented refugee stories of murder by the Serbian
military, we have apologia trying to shift the blame to NATO bombs. There
are reasonable arguments that the bombing was a strategic mistake because it
gave Milosevic's army cover for accelerating the ethnic clensing, but this
continual shifting of moral blame away from Milosevic is outrageous. --
Nathan Newman
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April 6, 1999
Kosovo Refugees: How Many; Where
By The Associated Press
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that nearly
500,000 people, the vast majority of them ethnic Albanians, have left Kosovo
since NATO began its air assault on Yugoslavia on March 24.
Many others of Kosovo's about 1.8 million ethnic Albanians were already
displaced before the current exodus. Following is a look at the number and
whereabouts of the refugees:
Albania -- 262,000 refugees, plus another 18,500 who fled previously.
Macedonia -- 120,000 plus 16,000 previously.
Montenegro -- 36,700 plus 25,000 previously.
Bosnia Herzegovina -- 7,900 plus 10,000 previously.
Turkey -- 6,000.
Yugoslavia -- 30,000 previously.
There are believed to be about 100,000 refugees from Kosovo in other
countries in Europe who left before the current fighting.
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