Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Serbs and Roma flee KLA terror in Kosovo

Serbs and Roma flee KLA terror in Kosovo
By Michael Conachy
20 August 1999
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Propaganda claims that the US-NATO war against Yugoslavia was conducted
in a humanitarian effort to halt "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo lie in
tatters as Serbs and Roma (gypsies) continue to flee the province to
escape harassment, intimidation, beatings and murder at the hands of the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
As many as 170,000 Serbs of a pre-war population of 200,000 have left
the province since the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops. Less than 7,000
Roma are estimated to remain of a population of 30,000 to 40,000. Most
of those are confined to enclaves, surrounded by NATO's Kosovo Force
(KFOR) troops and living in constant fear of KLA attack.
Speaking last week in the Kosovo capital Pristina, where the number of
Serb residents has decreased from 40,000 to less than 2,000 in the past
eight weeks, KFOR spokesman Major Jen Joosten described the atmosphere
of intimidation. "Serbs cannot go to hospitals, shop, or even receive
humanitarian assistance. There must be many of whose existence we are
not even aware." After acknowledging that they cannot leave their homes
for fear of violence he tried to excuse the failure of NATO's military
to protect them. "Everything is being done to keep the Serbs here, but
KFOR can't be on every street corner or in every house," he said lamely.
Head of the United Nations mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, revealed
the extent of the KLA's campaign in a statement to an Athens newspaper
this week. "In the future, I will not allow the homes of 10 or 15 Serbs
to be burnt down every night, even if it means confrontation with the
KLA. I have told [KLA leader Hashim] Thaci that my patience has run
out." Kouchner, however, outlined no planned steps to halt the attacks
on Serbs and other ethnic groups.
There have been a series of killings in Pristina. On June 23, for
example, the bodies of three men were found in the basement of the
economics' faculty of Pristina University. They were Milenko Lekovic, a
Serb professor of economics, Miodrag Mladenovic, a Serb guard in the
building, and Jovica Stamenkovic, a Serb waiter from the café in the
faculty. They had been beaten with a blunt instrument before being shot.
Most of the Serbs remaining in the capital are the elderly and disabled
who have no means of leaving or no place to go. Two elderly women were
murdered in the first week of August; both were shot through the doors
of their apartments. A Serb woman and her four-year-old child were
reportedly shot on August 11. The woman staggered with her child to a
KFOR checkpoint where she died, the child was taken to hospital.
On Monday, two Serb teenagers were killed and five other Serbs injured
during a mortar attack on the village of Klokot, south-east of Pristina.
A documented reign of terror
The US-based Human Rights Watch organisation released a report at the
beginning of August, entitled "Abuses against Serbs and Roma in the new
Kosovo", which documents an apparently coordinated campaign of
abductions, beatings, house-burning and murders of Serbs and Roma by the
KLA. In addition to the widely publicised killings in Gracko and
Prizren, the report describes many other little known atrocities.
Researchers viewed the bodies of three Serbs killed on June 19 in the
village of Belo Polje, near Pec. Villagers claim that 10 uniformed KLA
soldiers entered the village and executed Radomir Stosic, aged 50, his
uncle Steven Stosic, 60, and their friend Filip Kosic, 46. Each of the
men was killed by a shot between the eyes at point-blank range.
According to the Serbian Orthodox Church in Pec, 30 Serbs were killed in
the municipality during June and July.
KLA soldiers in the village of Pones in the Gnjilane municipality
abducted six cowherds on June 19. The men were beaten and interrogated,
and two of them—Momcilo Dimic, 60, and Cedomir Denic, 50—were later
found dead. KFOR officers in the town of Obilic reported that eight
Serbs have been killed there since early June in what are described as
"organised attacks" in which "KLA units were implicated".
In the town of Lipljan, KFOR officers reported that a male Serb was
decapitated in the middle of the busy town market on July 9, between 11
am and 3 pm. One week later, four grenade attacks were carried out
against Serb homes in the town in the early afternoon, killing one
person. The attacks were carried out within the space of one hour and at
regular intervals.
Four elderly Serb men in the village of Slivovo were reportedly abducted
and killed in the third week of June. Two Roma men, Bajram Berisha, 34,
and Vesel Berisha, 24, were killed by unknown assailants in Mitrovica in
late June. Three Roma are believed to have been murdered in the town of
Djakovica and three families burned in their homes in the village of
Dubrava, also in June.
Researchers also document the abduction, interrogation and torture of
numerous Serb and Roma civilians—mostly elderly men. The purpose of
abductions and beatings appears to be to terrorise people into leaving
Kosovo, as most are subsequently released. Many victims exhibited
extensive bruising and knife cuts when interviewed by Human Rights Watch
researchers. Those reported abducted by the KLA but not released are
"presumed dead".
The report describes the following testimony of 71 year-old S.B. as
typical: "[KLA soldiers] grabbed me, brought me down to the cellar and
took turns hurting me. There were several of them, all in uniform...
While they were beating me, they insulted me, called me 'Chetnik,' and
told me to leave forever."
House-burnings are a commonplace occurrence. Thirty Roma homes were
torched in the Brekoc neighborhood of Djakovica within the space of
three hours on July 12. Uniformed KLA soldiers told the families to
leave their homes a few days before. The Roma neighbourhood in Pec was
almost entirely looted and burned in late June.
Most Serb and Roma homes in the village of Slovinje suffered a similar
fate, as did the local Orthodox Church. Other targets of arson include
the Serb areas of the villages and towns of Lipljan, Magura, Dolac,
Drenovac, Brestovik, Vitomira, Istok, Belo Pojle, Veric, Srbobran and
Obilic. There has also been widespread burning and looting of former
Serb and Roma areas of Pristina. Recent reports tally at least 200
villages and 41 Serbian churches have been destroyed since KFOR
established control over the province.
Human Rights Watch observed: "The most serious incidents of violence...
have been carried out by members of the KLA. Although the KLA leadership
issued a statement on July 20 condemning attacks on Serbs and Roma, and
KLA political leader Hashim Thaci publicly denounced the July 23
massacre of 14 Serb farmers, it remains unclear whether these beatings
and killings were committed by local KLA units acting without official
sanction, or whether they represent a coordinated KLA policy..."
The report concluded: "The intent behind many of the killings and
abductions that have occurred in the province since early June appears
to be the expulsion of Kosovo's Serb and Roma population rather than a
desire for revenge alone. This explanation is borne out by more direct
and systematic efforts to force Serbs and Roma to leave their homes." It
cites the fact that large numbers of Serbs and Roma report being
directly warned by ethnic Albanians, under threat of violence, to leave
Kosovo and never return.
In light of this evidence, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's
declaration in Pristina on July 29 that "Never again will people with
guns come in the night" in Kosovo, sounds like a cruel joke.
International response to KLA inspired "ethnic cleansing"
Like all of the nationalist militia groups in the Balkans, the KLA's
program is based on ethnic separatism. Its aim over the past four years
has been to sever Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and
establish an independent state as part of the long term goal of
establishing an ethnically pure Greater Albania—encompassing Albania,
Kosovo and the Albanian-populated areas of Macedonia and Montenegro.
This program requires the expulsion of the non-Albanian population.
The Human Rights Watch report makes clear that the KLA has a history of
attacks on minority ethnic groups. It states in part: "It is also
important to note that the KLA has been linked to earlier abuses against
Serbs, Roma and Kosovar Albanians during 1998 and during the first three
months of 1999. Specifically, reports by the Humanitarian Law Center,
the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Human Rights Watch's
own research indicate that dozens of Serbs, and a smaller number of Roma
and Albanians, were detained by the KLA between mid-1998 and March 1999.
At least 130 Serbs went missing during this time and are presumed dead."
This assessment underscores the fact that a bitter civil war was raging
in Kosovo between the Yugoslav army and the KLA in 1998 and early 1999,
before NATO intervention. Both sides were engaged in destroying the
lives and property of civilians from "opposing" ethnic groups. The US
and NATO elected to support the KLA and bomb Yugoslavia, because it
suited their own political, economic and strategic interests in the
Balkans, not out of altruistic opposition to human rights abuses.
Since KFOR's occupation of Kosovo, the public position of US-NATO
leaders has been to favour the creation of a "multi-ethnic" and
"democratic" Kosovo. But their policy on the ground has been to turn a
blind eye to the KLA expulsion of Serbs and Roma.
Human Rights Watch made the following assessment of the role of KFOR
during the months of June and July. "KFOR's overall record on preventing
the abduction, detention, and murder of Serbs and Roma is also poor. A
KFOR officer in eastern Kosovo told a Human Rights Watch researcher that
his unit did not even try to keep track of the abductions because of
their frequency. In many cases, KFOR officers from all contingents
expressed the view that the commission of such crimes was inevitable.
Efforts by a Human Rights Watch researcher to report an incident of
harassment in Ljubizda village on June 30 to the German KFOR contingent
required multiple visits to local posts and then to the contingent
headquarters in Prizren, where a civilian-military implementation cell
officer appeared uninterested in the details of the case."
KFOR has dismissed warnings by the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) that it may be necessary to evacuate the remaining
Serbs in Kosovo. "It is not our policy to assist people to leave. That
is their own decision and they must make their own way," KFOR spokesman
Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Hodges said this week. But as UNHCR
representative Dennis McNamara noted, the agency had experienced
instances where it had chosen not to help people to leave and they had
then been killed.
Clashes with KFOR
Most of the Serbs remaining in Kosovo are concentrated in a few towns
including Kosovo Polje, Dobratin, Gracinica, Velika Hoca, Gorazdevac,
Orahovac and the section of Kosovo Mitrovica north of the Ibar
river—the scene of recent clashes between KLA-inspired demonstrators
and French KFOR troops.
Beginning on August 6, crowds of up to 1,000 Albanians, many of them
young men wearing KLA scarves, have attempted to force their way across
the Ibar bridge into the section of Mitrovica housing several thousand
Serbs. French soldiers erected a barbed wire barrier across the bridge
after three days of clashes that left several Albanians and one French
soldier seriously injured. French Lieutenant Meriadec Raffray was in no
doubt as to who organised the demonstrations, "The KLA leaders are only
interested in keeping up the pressure," he told the media. "They want to
provoke an incident."
Kosovo Mitrovica is a mining centre, some 20 miles north of Pristina,
and has been a centre of ethnic tensions since the end of the war. The
purpose of the demonstrations is firstly to further intimidate Serbs
living in the town and to force them to leave, and secondly, to put
pressure on the French troops. Demonstrators taunted the French soldiers
with chants of "terrorists" and demanded, "French go back to France,
Americans come here."
Speaking at a news conference on August 8, KLA political chief Hashim
Thaci denied responsibility for the Mitrovica clashes and said the
demonstrators "gathered by themselves." But he then went on to launch a
tirade against French troops, accusing them of behaving in "an
undemocratic way, and a very arrogant way." Thaci claimed that by
protecting the Serb enclave, the KFOR contingent was violating the UN
resolution authorising its presence and that it wished to divide Kosovo
on ethnic lines. "Kosovo means Mitrovica and Mitrovica means Kosovo. We
are not going to allow the separation of the city," he warned.
Thaci also denounced the Russian contingent on August 1, after its
soldiers briefly detained KLA military commander Agim Ceku at a
checkpoint for failing to produce a KFOR identity card authorising him
to carry weapons and travel with an armed security detail. Thaci accused
the Russians of a "premeditated political act" that "verifies our doubts
about the ability of Russian troops to bring stability to Kosovo."
Since the withdrawal of Yugoslav Army units, the KLA has declared itself
a "provisional government" and sought to establish political control of
the whole province. It has taken over former state-owned property,
requisitioned hotels, homes, apartments and vehicles and assumed local
leadership positions. Aid agencies complain they must deal with the
organisation to get anything done. "We talked to the mayor's office and
we had to deal with the local police, but it was one and the
same—KLA," said one Norwegian aid worker.
There are signs of tension between the Albanian nationalists and the
KFOR forces. On August 7, KFOR troops raided a house where KLA "interior
minister" Rexhep Selimi and others were meeting. They discovered
weapons, ammunition, radio frequency scanners, and a very large quantity
of German marks. They also discovered a number of identity cards
labelled "Ministry of Public Order". The cards, signed by Selimi,
authorised the bearer to carry weapons, confiscate property and make
arrests.
NATO immediately issued a statement describing KFOR as the "sole
legitimate armed force in Kosovo." It warned that "any attempt by any
group to usurp this authority is not acceptable to the international
community and will not be tolerated."
KFOR's actions and statements are not motivated by "humanitarian"
concerns for the Serb and Roma refugees any more than the NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia was a response to the plight of Albanians. Having spent
billions to force the capitulation of Yugoslavia, and to occupy Kosovo
as a long-term base of operations in the region, the major powers have
no intention of ceding control to the KLA.
NATO's plans for a virtual military protectorate in Kosovo are coming
into collision with the KLA's political ambitions for an independent
Kosovo and ultimately Greater Albania. In the past the KLA has proven a
useful political tool for NATO, so much so that at the Rambouillet
conference in February that set the stage for the war, the US elevated
the KLA to the status of a legitimate participant. As far as the future
is concerned, however, the only role that NATO has for the KLA is as a
compliant and subordinate participant in its administration.
See also:
The massacre of Serbs in Gracko: Who is responsible? [27 July 1999]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jul1999/kos-j27.shtml
)
The Human Rights Watch report cited in this article may be found at:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kosov2/
Copyright 1998-99
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved

: 
#Serbs and Roma flee KLA terror in Kosovo
#By Michael Conachy
#20 August 1999
Continua, Dolly!
A questo pacifico bombardamento di notizie, articoli, testimonianze,
gli pseudoumanitari non hanno nulla da opporre!
-----signature-------------
Da quando chiamano intelligenti le bombe
preferisco che mi considerino un perfetto idiota

 20 August 1999
Gia' visto :)
E' vecchio :)
-Stefano

-Stefano
Sei talmente esaurito che riesci a scrivere di aver gia' visto un articolo
"vecchio", CON LA DATA DI IERI. Ti ho lasciata la data:
20 AGOSTO 1999...Certo, De Ce' e' VECCHIO...

 20 AGOSTO 1999...Certo, De Ce' e' VECCHIO...
Vecchio nel senso che era gia' stato postato sul NG e a cui si era gia'
risposto :)
-Stefano

>

Dove e quando e da chi e' stato gia' postato e cosa e' stato gia' risposto?
Non ti arrampicare sugli specchi.