STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [William Randolph Hearst - and Josef Goebbels - must be applauding this report from Hell. While I wouldn't absolutely stake my life on the fact the tale isn't true, no sane person would bet a dollar that it is. One supposed Nazim Bushi (drop the last letter from each name as a handy mnemonic) was manhandled solely because he was Albanian. Sound eerily familiar? As in "600,000 people are wondering around, looking for food or buried in mass graves" (Adolfi Clintonn), solely "because of their ethnic background and the way they pray"...or whatever this Hot Springs Hitler said a little over two years ago. And focus on the title of this putative report. (The stringer must have treated herself to another shot of schnapps after concocting this one.) It couldn't possibly be that a brutal rebel uprising, originating, politically, out of nowhere but emanating from Kosovo and Albania, might create an atmosphere conducive to panic and brutality. No, it's the totally gratuitous violence of the *Slavs," whom all Western poltical dilletantes have been conditioned to view as inherently and irremediably violent and barbaric, that accounts for the rebel uprising. As with Kosovo earlier, cause is made to follow effect. Only toward the end of the "human interest," personal slant dispatch is it mentioned that the victim in question was suspected of passing on airport maps and flight schedules of government helicopters - a not unlikely possibility given the current circumstances in Macedonia. But by the time the reader gets this far, if they do at all, the impression has already been left that - once again - a minority group in the Balkans is being singled out for cruel and inhumane persecution, for positively no reason but who they are, etc. And the suburbanite couple shake their heads at the breakfast table, sighing, "This is intolerable. Something must be done about it. We should bomb the thugs who are doing this - haven't we learned any lessons from the Holocaust? At least we should send in troops to protect these poor people.... And the game begins all over again.] June 16, 2001 Macedonia Brutality Fuels Rebels by MERITA DHIMGJOKA Associated Press Writer SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- It was not the cracked bones or the painful back injuries that made Nazim Bushi's teeth clutch with anger. It was disappointment that the people who caused those injuries were fellow men in uniform, who he says turned against him solely because he belonged to the wrong ethnic group. Supporters of Bushi, an ethnic Albanian officer serving with the Macedonian police at the military airport in Skopje, say he is a victim of police brutality that has proliferated since ethnic Albanian militants took up arms in February, demanding broader rights and claiming discrimination by majority Macedonian Slavs. The incidents not only undermine government promises to improve the situation of ethnic Albanians, once the insurgency is dealt with. They could also draw ethnic Albanians to the militants and away from political parties willing to negotiate with the government. Already, the rebels claim police harassment of ethnic Albanian civilians is feeding them with new recruits. ''Young men who are beaten up by police are joining us every day,'' a rebel commander known as ''Commander Hoxha'' told The Associated Press from the rebel-controlled village of Aracinovo, barely four miles from the capital. ''They're more than we can supply with weapons.'' Independent agencies say authorities higher up are overwhelmed by the crisis and often unaware of excesses by local police, themselves stressed out by long hours and often the targets of rebel attacks. ''No action is taken against police,'' said Saso Klekovski of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation, a nonprofit humanitarian agency. ''Those in the higher levels of the government don't know what is going on in the lower levels.'' About a dozen Albanian friends and relatives came to visit Bushi last week after they'd heard the bad news. They sat listening and smoking cigarettes as he told how about 40 policemen broke into his house Sunday morning, arrested him and searched the house for weapons. None were found, he said, but he was taken to a nearby police station. There, he said he was beaten by two masked policemen, who accused him of collaborating with the rebels. ''They wanted me to admit that I had given the rebels airport maps and flight schedules of the army helicopters,'' Bushi said. About 35 hours after the arrest, police dropped him unconscious on a hill outside Skopje, where his family found him. Another ethnic Albanian serving with the Macedonian police at the airport, 1st Capt. Muhaedin Bela, was also allegedly arrested and beaten up by police last week after rebels threatened to attack the airport. Police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said he couldn't confirm or deny the reports. A police source who spoke on condition of anonymity said some police units ''are completely out of control and take orders from no one.'' Government forces have led several offensives to dislodge the rebels from their strongholds, contending they are separatists bent on carving up the country. In a move expected to heighten tensions, authorities have started arming a number of civilians, apparently Slavs, as part of a ''mobilization of police reservists.'' ''The distribution of weapons is done not only exclusively on ethnic basis but also on party basis,'' Klekovski said, suggesting that police were arming mainly supporters of the party of Prime Minister Lubco Georgievski. Similar measures helped fuel earlier wars in other former Yugoslav republics like Croatia and Bosnia. Ethnic Albanian parties in the coalition government have called on the prime minister to stop arming civilians. Many Macedonian Slavs are also frightened by the move. A Macedonian cab driver who was afraid to give his name said police knocked at his door at 4 a.m. to register his son as a reservist and hand him a gun. He said he'd rather have his unemployed son find a paying job instead of being a reservist, adding ''Give him a job, not a gun.'' � __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? 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