-Caveat Lector-
The Committee for National Solidarity
Tolstojeva 34, 11000 Belgrade, YU
A student of mine, Greek-American, bicycle maniac, toured Kosovo in the
1980s.
When he asked the Albanian dudes what they did for fun, their answer was:
"Serb hunting".
pera
..
George Thompson wrote:
Daily abuses dismay NATO troops
The title is misleading. There's no indication that NATO gives a
rat's arse about any of this.
Foreign Affairs News
Source: USA Today
Published: August 3, 1999 Author: Jack Kelley
Posted on 08/03/1999 03:36:51 PDT by Cincinatus
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - Despite the presence of NATO troops and U.S.
appeals for tolerance, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have stepped up what
appears to be an increasingly organized and violent campaign to force out
the 30,000 Serbs still living in the province.
Ethnic Albanian men, armed with guns and carrying expulsion orders
stamped by Kosovo Liberation Army officials - the de facto government
leaders - are going door-to-door, assaulting Serbs and giving them only
hours to leave.
Monday, they began distributing leaflets with the same message. "Serb
dogs: You are in Albanian land and should leave if you want to live," read
the leaflet written in Cyrillic and distributed in Serb areas of Mitrovica,
northwest of Pristina.
Muje Gjonbalaj, installed by the KLA as Kosovo's deputy minister for
reconstruction and development, said, "The Serbs need to understand that
they are in our country now." His office is distributing the expulsion
orders. "They should go back to where they belong," he said.
NATO estimates an average 20 Serb families are fleeing the province, 12
Serb homes are being torched and two Serbs are being killed each day. Also,
dozens of Serb women have reported being raped.
U.N. and NATO officials, both of whom are in charge of maintaining peace
in Kosovo, say there's little they can do to stop the forced expulsions and
atrocities. "We know what they're doing is wrong, but what can we do?"
NATO's Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson said in an interview. Jackson commands the
36,500 NATO peacekeepers here. "We can't be everywhere. It's impossible,"
he said.
U.N. administrator Bernard Kouchner, who called the actions of the ethnic
Albanians "unacceptable," has appealed for more time to set up a civil
government and police force in Kosovo to stop the violence. The KLA, in the
meantime, has established its own, unofficial government.
"We have to stop what is happening here, and I believe we will," Kouchner
said. "The world did not intervene to make Kosovo safe for revenge and
intolerance. We just need time."
The intervention came when NATO launched 11 weeks of airstrikes against
Yugoslavia to force Serb troops and paramilitaries, blamed for killing and
raping ethnic Albanians , out of Kosovo. The ethnic Albanians, who
represented 90% of the population before the conflict, had been seeking
independence from Serbia.
Many ethnic Albanians, who had fled to neighboring Albania and Macedonia
, returned to Kosovo in the wake of NATO peacekeepers. The returning
refugees began burning and looting Serb homes in retaliation for Serb
atrocities in the war.
But the recent violence is different from the "revenge killings" of Serbs
by ethnic Albanians immediately after Serb troops left Kosovo and
international peacekeepers entered the province. NATO and human rights
officials say few, if any, of the Serbs now being targeted participated in
the killing of an estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians during the recent
conflict. Most of the targets are widowed, elderly or ill Serbs who have
nowhere else to go or are too weak to leave.
"It's gone beyond revenge attacks," said Natasa Kandic, director of the
Humanitarian Law Center, an independent human rights group in Yugoslavia.
"It's approaching a reverse type of ethnic cleansing. Serbs are being
hunted down."
Last week, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appealed to ethnic
Albanians not to take revenge on the Serbs. "Democracy cannot be built on
revenge," Albright told residents during a visit to Pristina. "You will not
have the support of the world if you are intolerant and take the law into
your own hands."
NATO figures show 73 Serbs were killed in Kosovo from June 12 to July 24,
including 14 Serb farmers massacred in the village of Gracko. During that
same period, 327 people, nearly all ethnic Albanian, were arrested or
detained for attempted murder and looting.
Already, 170,000 of the 200,000 Serbs who had been living in Kosovo have
left for the Serb republic of Montenegro or elsewhere.
Among those leaving recently: the entire Serb population of the
southeastern town of Zitinje. The 450 people left Sunday for other parts of
Serbia. They had been subjected to weeks of sniper fire, grenade attacks
and ambushes by ethnic Albanians. Many of the nearly 650 ethnic Albanians
in the town jeered and pelted the departing Serbs with rocks.
Many ethnic Albanians, including members of the
