takk til Oddmund Garvik for artikkel fra Guardian 27. april 1999
>>Kosovo 'cleaner' tells how villages were emptied
>>Interview: Truck driver who joined 2,000 ethnic cleansing volunteers says
>>some went further than their instructions
...
>>His neighbours call him 'the cleaner'. But the cleaner wants to
>>talk about human rights. Two yellow budgies in Milan Petrovic's
>>Belgrade kitchen peck gently in their grubby cage as he
>>explains the rules a Serb 'ethnic cleanser' must follow in
>>Kosovo.
>>'We're not allowed to kill them; no beating and no mutilation
>>allowed,' he says of the 10 days he spent in Kosovo driving
>>thousands of families from their homes.
>>'We give most of them 24 hours to get out. The rich ones and
>>they're all criminals you know, with satellite TVs and big houses
>>were tougher to move. But if you push hard enough, they all go
>>in the end. They're cowards, those Albanians, they run like
>>rabbits. Most of the cleaning was done by the time we got
>>there.'
...
>>' Mr Petrovic swings his Zippo lighter between thumb and
>>forefinger and announces he's going back to Kosovo tomorrow
>>'to do some more cleaning'.
>>He usually drives a truck for a living, but when the war started he
>>signed up: 'Every Serb should have signed up and shown our
>>disgust for Nato.' A day later, he was on his way to join about
>>2,000 other volunteers gathered in the southern city of Nis, the
>>staging post for Kosovo. 'We came from all over the country.
>>One guy turned up who was 72. They told him he was too old,
>>that the limit was 65.'
>>Before they left for the village of Silovo, to start driving families
>>from their homes, the deputy to general Pavocic, who was
>>running operations in Bosnia, gave them their orders: 'No
>>killings, no beatings and if they don't have the papers give them
>>24 hours to get out.'
...
>>And the men? 'If I'd been in charge, I would have executed the
>>KLA terrorists on the spot with their families, but my orders were
>>to hand them over to the army. I don't know what they did to
>>them they're probably holding them as prisoners of war.'
>>There were, he now concedes, occasional lapses among the
>>volunteer cleaners. 'One in a hundred, I'd say, did raping or
>>killing and that kind of thing, not more. About six guys in my
>>unit got a bit out of hand one night and started killing Albanians.
>>But they only killed three or four of them before they started
>>taking stuff out of their houses. The next day our army came
>>and took the six of them away.'
>>Milan Petrovic saw little of Nato's war. 'We heard the planes way
>>up above us, but I think they were concentrating on Pristina so
>>they didn't give us any trouble.'
>>His days of cleaning had a rhythm. 'Six or seven of us would go
>>from door to door. We'd get one of the Albanians who lived in the
>>village to help us out. He'd have to tell us who was who, how
>>long they'd been there, and where the terrorists were.That made
>>things a lot easier.'
>>He believes the job of the cleaner requires some of the skills of a
>>psychologist. It's easy to tell the innocent Albanians from the
>>terrorists. You can see it from the expression in their eyes, the
>>moment they open the door. The terrorists have that strange
>>look. They're scared and you can smell the fear coming off
>>them.
>>'First we say: 'Have you any weapons?' And then we look at
>>their faces and know the answer. If they're telling the truth only
>>one of us goes into the house and looks around. If they're not we
>>take them. The people who aren't terrorists, but don't have a
>>right to be here, are cleaned out in 24 hours.'
Min kommentar: Kan noen fremdeles tro på at NATO bomber for å få gjort noe
med fenomenet avisartikkelen beskriver?
Når NATO nå en gang satte i gang krigen - eventuelt framsatte alvorlige
troverdige trusler om krig - er det helt rasjonelt (men selvsagt ikke
mindre grusomt) av Milosevic å gå fram på ovennevnte måte for å hindre
geriljakrig mot den serbisk hæren i en eventuell kamp mot NATO. Jeg klipper
noe fra SV-debatt i dag (1. mai) skrevet av Dag Tangen som har formulert
det meget godt:
>Tenk deg et forsøk på å få til en avtale med Tyrkia om at
>Kurdistan skal unntas fra tyrkisk suverenitet, Enoksen. Tyrkerne nekter,
>NATO bomber Ankara. Hvordan tror du det ville gå? Husk tyrkerne har drept
>10 ganger flere kurdere enn det ble drept kosovarer i Kosovo før 24. mars.
>Sammenligning med perioden ETTER at krigens hunder er sluppet løs er
>meningsløs. Når en krig er begynt har begge parter bare et alternativ: Å
>prøve å vinne. Den pågående etniske rensingen i Kosovo er selvfølgelig for
>å hindre befolkningen å drive gerilja mot en serbisk hær i kamp med NATO.
>Igjen, hva tror Enoksen Tyrkia hadde gjort dersom NATO gjorde seg klar til
>inntog i Kurdistan? Latt alle mannlige kurdere bli i landsbyene sine?
Tvangsflytting av folk for å "hindre fisken i svømme i vannet" - det var en
metode som USA prøvde av alle krefter å implementere i Vietnam. Så vi vet
hvem Milosevic har lært av.
I tillegg er det blitt kjent at serbiske styrker flytter inn i de forvistes
hus. Dette er omtalt i et brev som KLA's overkommando skrev til SACEUR W.
Clark 18. april i anledning det forestående NATO jubileumsmøte. Brevet er
omtalt i Sunday Times 24. april 1999 i en artikkel med tittel "Rebel
struggle Nato campaign not working, say guerrillas" og skrevet av Anthony
Loyd i Skopje. Her er et lite utdrag:
>Saying that "all Albanian villages and towns in Kosovo"
>were being used by Serb units as sanctuaries, the KLA listed
>homes, gardens, yards, schools, industrial, cultural and social
>buildings as the new positions for Yugoslav tanks, armoured
>personnel carriers and infantry units.
(http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/04/24/timkoskos01011.html?9
99)
Her er de selvsagt utenfor fare. Om ikke NATO da skal teppebombe hele
Kosovo. Det er kanskje planen med B-52 flyene som kommer nå.
Knut Rognes