Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Old Serbs Become Terror Target

Old Serbs Become Terror Target
Chris Bird in Podujevo
Monday August 23, 1999
The Guardian
Jelica Cemburovic, 87, is waiting to die. She wants to die
in Kosovo so that
she can be laid to rest next to her husband in a Serbian
Orthodox cemetery in
Kosovo's northern town of Podujevo - a banal enough wish.
But Mrs Cemburovic
is not to be allowed a peaceful old age and a dignified
death.[...] The frail
old woman, with inflamed blue eyes and a heart condition, is
now a prime
target for
groups of armed ethnic Albanians who have carried out a
spate of murders of
the Serb elderly to terrify the handful of Serbs,
Montenegrins and gypsies
still left in Kosovo into leaving. At the weekend Nato
peacekeepers found an
elderly couple shot dead in their apartment in the
south-western town of
Prizren. "We presume they are Serbs," said a spokesman for
K-For yesterday.
Brutality characterises these murders, intended to act as an
example to those
who refuse to leave. Belgrade's media reported that a
62-year-old Serb woman
was found dead in the village of Landovica, near Prizren,
last week. An
elderly Serb woman was found beaten to death in her bath in
Pristina earlier
this month.  In a report this month detailing abuses against
Serbs and other
minorities in Kosovo, the US-based Human Rights Watch
recorded how two
elderly Serb neighbours had their throats slit in June.
One of the victims, Marica Stamenkovic, was found by German
peacekeepers to
have been almost decapitated. The victims had ignored
repeated warnings to
leave issued by ethnic Albanians wearing the uniforms of the
Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA).
"We sit here," said Mrs Cemburovic, an enamel plate of
bitter walnuts on her
dining room table accenting her still life. "We do not go
out anywhere."
Across the table sat her friend Jelica Miljanovic, in her
70s. After threats
from ethnic Albanians telling her to "Go to Serbia!", she
fled her apartment
to join Mrs Cemburovic. They are two of three elderly Serbs
not to have left
the town when Britishpeacekeeping troops arrived in June.
Now, red
Albanian flags, martial songs glorifying the KLA, and crowds
clogging the
streets
make a frightening din below her cramped, concrete balcony.
The two old women are now under constant protection from a
unit of British
peacekeepers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, red and
white feather
hackles on their berets. Corporal Alan Lovett, stood
standing at the entrance
to Mrs Cemburovic's apartment block with an assault rifle,
was a little
deflated by "granny patrol". "I thought I'd be fighting my
way through
towns," said the corporal, "not guarding metal factories and
old ladies."
To Mrs Cemburovic and Mrs Miljanovic, the British soldiers
outside their door
are mnogo fino, "very fine", despite the frightening time
people had earlier
this summer under bombardment by Nato jets. "If I was
younger..." mused Mrs
Miljanovic, a kittenish look on her face, lined like the
walnuts on the table.
Mrs Cemburovic - the more serious of the two characters -
said that without
the soldiers she would not be able to stay in Podujevo. The
glass in the
windows of her apartment overlooking the street were smashed
when
unidentified attackers threw rocks. She whacked her palms on
her cheeks,
saying this was how ethnic Albanians had slapped her in the
street.
"The KLA have told our neighbours not to talk to us," she
said. "The KLA run
everything here," she said. When she ventured out to the
post office to
collect her pension last week - escorted by Corp Lovett's
men - the ethnic
Albanian clerks told her there was no money for her, for
which she blames the
KLA.
The smiles on the ragged children playing around the
entrance to her
apartment block hide a disturbing malevolence. On the rare
occasions Mrs
Cemburovic leaves the flat, the children run their fingers
across their
throats to mock her.
"I said to one of their mothers once, 'Why do you let them
behave like that?'
" she said. "She wasn't in the least sorry, just said they
were
'politicised'. I think someone's stirring them up to do it."
[...]
"There is a question: how long are K-For and the other
international agencies
going to be able to provide this kind of protection?"
[...]
"My husband's at the cemetery," said Mrs Cemburovic. "I have
a place next to
him, I just want to be buried next to him. That is all."

which she blames the KLA.
:)))))))
Cioe' se non ci sono soldi per le pensioni la colpa e' del KLA :)
Chiarissimo! Le eroga il KLA le pensioni per i cittadini serbi ;) :)
-Stefano