Den britiske Helsinki-gruppa(British Helsinki human rights group) har vore
på besøk i Kosovo, og fortel om overflod av hjelpesendingar som går til
bygging av herregårdar og eksport, eller rett i grøfta dersom det er mindre
verdifullle saker. Magrare forhold i dei serbiske enklavane.
Fine bilder har dei også, mellom anna eit med denne billedteksten: The road
to Racak: now renamed after the former head of the OSCE in Kosovo, Willam
Walker
http://www.bhhrg.org/kosovo/kosovo2000/kosovo.htm
Elles var det også interessant å få vite at dei aller fleste som blei
gravlagde i ein stor begravelse 9 desember, var UCK-soldatar drepne i kamp.
Det har ikkje kome fram i tidlegare omtaler av begravelsen som eg har lese.
Asgeir Bjørkedal
Kosovo on the eve of elections
Representatives of the BHHRG paid two visits to Kosovo to examine the
pre-election situation. This is the third visit paid to the province by the
Group since NATO’s campaign against Yugoslavia ended in June 1999.
BHHRG representatives travelled to Uroševac, Štrimlje, Suva Reka Orahovac
and Prizren areas of Kosovo that suffered much less destruction in the war
than areas in Western and southern Kosovo where heavy fighting took place.
What destruction there has been has now been cleared up – apart from the
small, burned-out houses of local Gypsies and Serbs who fled after the
Yugoslav army pulled out of
the province. Large, newly built houses dominate every street, hillside and
valley in this area many located behind high walls in the compounds
favoured by Albanian families.
Misuse of Aid
There seems to have been no planning for the construction of new buildings
– they have just spring up, something, no doubt, made possible by the large
influx of aid in the form of bricks and timber donated over the past year
by the international community. A large part of this aid seems to have been
re-routed to the Albanian-populated areas of Western Macedonia where
grandiose mansions have appeared built
in similar materials. BHHRG saw many goods on sale in the shops in and
around Tetovo which were designated for troops and other international
personnel in Kosovo.
The uncontrolled and unsanctioned building boom has not gone unnoticed by
the UN administration in Kosovo. A respected Albanian Rexhep Luci, director
of the Agency for Urban Planning, was charged with bringing an end to such
activity. However, on the night of 11th September he was found murdered
outside his home in Pristina. Luci, a member of Ibrahim Rugova’s Democratic
League of Kosovo (LDK) was targeted, it is alleged, by members of an
Albanian hotel mafia opposed to his attempts to
control illegal building. It is all too likely, on past evidence, that
building controls will not be introduced into the province in the near future.
Although the number of trucks entering Kosovo through the General Jankevic
border crossing with Macedonia has greatly diminished there is still a lot
of aid entering the country. It is also the case that a large amount of
this aid leaves the province as well – it is easy to detect that some
trucks leaving Kosovo are heavily loaded. There are also large numbers of
independent humanitarian organizations bringing goods in. It has always
been debatable whether or not anything but the most basic necessities are
required in the province. But, aid, donated no doubt, by many well-meaning
people in the West has
long been superfluous. Anything of value is likely to be stolen or
re-exported. Less valuable goods tend to be thrown away – on several trips
to Kosovo BHHRG have noticed piles of clothing and shoes discarded by the
sides of the roads. What is glaringly noticeable is the absence of anything
but the most basic UNHRC- type services for inhabitants of the few Serb
enclaves.
Serb Enclaves: Orahovac and Štrpce
In July 1999 BHHRG visited the northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica which
has since seen repeated outbreaks of violence, not only between Serbs and
Albanians but also between Serbs and KFOR troops. On this occasion they
visited the small town of Orahovac (where Serbs have been repeatedly
attacked since the war ended).
3,5000 Serbs lived in Orahovac before the war. At its end, only 1000 Serbs
remained and since April 2000 about 500 of them have left for Serbia. A
KFOR-escorted bus leaves for Mitrovica once a week - ostensibly on a
shopping trip. But many take it and never return.
The 500 or so Serbs live in a cluster of small houses on the hilltop
overlooking the town, cheek by jowl with their Albanian neighbours. A car
journey up the hillside reveals numerous vandalized shops and houses from
which many of them were chased in June 1999 - a German KFOR contingent and
some barbed wire fencing is all that protects them from harassment. Local
Serbs are keen to point out their
pleasure at the departure of Dutch troops who were originally in command of
the local KFOR and who, they say, were particularly unhelpful and brutal
towards them. The Germans, however, seem to have earned a grudging respect
among the small remaining Serbian population.
People here cannot travel, work or receive TV other than Deutsche Welle’s
Serbian language service. They have no telephones. If they need to visit a
doctor or dentist they must make an application for a KFOR escort two days
in advance although it is often impossible to predict when such visits will
be necessary.
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The situation in the villages of Štrpce and Brezovica near the Macedonian
border presents a similar picture. About 12,000 people, including
internally displaced people from other parts of Kosovo, live in these
villages.(...)
All food is provided by the international agencies, but as in other
Serb-populated parts of Kosovo there is a marked absence of the myriad
private agencies who bring aid from all over Europe to the Albanians.
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For example, Dragan Kurvic, a leading member of Arkan’s Tigers, has boasted
of his protection by KLA mafia allies which enables him to run prostitution
and other
rackets out of Pec a year after KFOR moved in. (KFOR troops need
comfort-women like any occupying army.). Before the NATO war, it was in
Pec, of course, that Arkan used to engage in what a consultant to the
British Embassy in 1996 described as a "promising model" of inter-ethnic
economic co-operation with future leaders of the KLA!
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Future prospects: Violence and the Local Elections
The conduct of the 28th October local elections in Kosovo is in the hands
of the OSCE. At the organization’s office in Orahovac BHHRG was told how
the campaign was progressing. It seems that the political parties
participating in the poll have no independent venues from which to operate
- they are all based in the same local OSCE offices. This, surely,
compromises not only the OSCE’s independence but also the independence of
the parties themselves. As many of the local personnel hired by the OSCE
have past connections with some or other political formation in Kosovo
there must be a chance that allegations of bias will be forthcoming if the
results are queried in any way.
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OSCE employees were also unable to answer the basic question of what the
elected councillors will actually do in their new posts as there is no
suggestion, yet anyway, that UNMIK and the other international bodies
charged with running Kosovo are going to pack up and go home.
Violence has already begun to mark the campaign. A UN employee told BHHRG
that a letter had been sent to LDK candidates threatening them with death
if they did not give up their candidacies. The letter was signed by the
"Albanian National Army". At the moment the various international agencies,
including the UN are contemplating how to respond to these threats. On 12th
September a journalist and
LDK supporter, Shefki Popova from the newspaper Rilindja was shot dead.
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Memorials to Violence or Harbingers of More to Come?
Meanwhile, the victors in the war with Belgrade continue to construct
elaborate tombs and graveyards for KLA warriors killed in battle. On a
hillside outside Kacanik one such group of Albanians was at work on the
evening of 9th September creating a memorial and cemetery for local KLA
fighters. The locals had listed the units to which the dead fighters
belonged as well as their names. Only four of the
approximately eighty dead men were said to have been executed by the Serbs
after capture (in Istok prison), the others were killed in action.
After viewing the KLA military grave, the gravediggers insisted that BHHRG
representatives accompany them into the town to see evidence of a mass
grave from the war which was supposed to have held civilian victims.
In Kacanik’s official cemetery the group of Albanian men pointed out 27
graves in which, they claimed, lay the victims of Serb ethnic cleansing.
Nearby was a shallow pit some 24 inches deep and about 6 feet by 20 feet
across in which these people were originally buried by members of the
Yugoslav army, who
in the company of Arkan's tigers had allegedly shot them before cutting
them up. Yet, in the next breath these Albanians claimed that the victims
had been brought down to the cemetery by Gypsies who had been paid by the
Serbs to bury them alive in the pit. It was impossible to clarify which
version of events they wanted to convey.
It is very alarming to think that such garbled testimony could form the
basis of future war crimes’ prosecutions at the Hague Tribunal. For one
thing, historical evidence shows that ethnic cleansers are unlikely to bury
their victims in the locality’s public cemetery. It is also somewhat
strange to find the pit
in the Kacanik cemetery now used as a repository for discarded cans and
plastic soft drink bottles. There is an uneasy discrepancy here between the
reverence shown for the dead KLA fighter and the insouciance shown to
civilians killed, allegedly, at the enemy’s hands.
The message from this episode seems clear. However necessary it is for the
NATO-led alliance to establish the guilt of the Serb army in Kosovo last
year it would be wise to ponder carefully the future implications of
relying on flawed witness statements like these. Such behaviour will only
lead to an erosion in the respect for the rule of law not only in the
Balkans but in the Western world itself.
Conclusion
It is widely accepted now that civil society is far from being established
in Kosovo despite the massive international presence in the province. It is
difficult to see how the forthcoming local elections will change this – so
far, they look as though they will (if only in the short term) lead to an
intensification of
Albanian-on-Albanian violence. In the long term, one more layer of
bureaucracy will be added to the long , overlapping list of personnel
charged with running the province. And, no one seems able to explain
exactly what such personnel will do.
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