Kosovo refugee escapes assassin's bullet
signonsandiego.com
By Caitlin Rother
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 28, 1999
Kosovar refugee Hasan Hoti walked across the tarmac at Lindbergh Field wearing the same navy blue suit he wore the day before NATO started dropping bombs. The day he learned he was on the Serbian government's hit list.
Hoti and another attorney were in court, defending Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, when they heard they were both on the list of intellectuals who were to be exterminated.
It was March 23. Hoti, a former judge who as a lawyer has defended hundreds of KLA fighters since 1993, figured Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic wasn't going to give in to NATO's demands.
Hoti went home, packed a few things, piled his family into their Fiat and headed for safety.
Hoti's attorney colleague and his two sons were not so lucky. They were shot to death that night.
The Hotis -- Hasan, 52, his wife, Drita, 41, and their daughter, Valentina, 16 -- arrived in San Diego on Wednesday with few of the material things they had acquired during their comfortable life in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.
They left their relatives, their friends, their apartment, the commercial building they owned and all their money.
The night of March 23, the Hotis stayed at the house of Drita's mother, about 40 miles outside town.
"Since we left Kosovo, I haven't heard from (my parents) at all, not a word," Drita said. "I don't know whether they're alive."
The next morning, they drove across the border into Macedonia, where they stayed at a friend's house in Skopje. That evening, they watched fighter jets fly overhead into Kosovo. And the bombing began.
They later learned that armed guards waited for them outside their apartment for a week after they had fled.
For weeks, the Hotis stayed close to their friend's house, watching horrific images of the war on the television news. Orphaned children and elderly women, crying and sleeping like sardines in tents at refugee camps such as Stankovec I and II.
Encinitas stock trader Anthony Elgindy saw those images as well. He was on vacation in Hawaii at the time.
He decided he wanted to do something for these people, so he got on a plane to Macedonia and toured the camps to pick out specific refugees he wanted to help.
Elgindy, 31, decided to try to bring back children who had lost their parents, and elderly Kosovars who needed medical care.
Then Elgindy met Hasan Hoti in Macedonia through a mutual Albanian friend who was looking for two lost sisters in the camps. Hoti told Elgindy the story about the hit list and that he needed help getting out of the country. Elgindy obliged.
But U.S. State Department officials said yesterday that their Kosovar refugee policy doesn't allow children under 18 to enter the United States without adult family members. They say it also doesn't allow people like Elgindy -- who are not related to any Kosovars and are not associated with a volunteer agency such as Catholic Charities -- to officially sponsor any refugees.
Unlike refugee Enver Visoka and his extended family of 16, who also arrived in San Diego this week, the Hotis had family in the United States. So the process of getting here was quite different for them.
Their son, Valton "Tony" Hoti, 21, came to Oklahoma five years ago as an exchange student in high school. He is now a student at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
With the help of a nonprofit agency in Orange County, Tony was able to sponsor his family, get them refugee visas and plane tickets into the United States. They entered through New York and arrived at Ontario Airport on May 15.
In contrast, the Visokas had to spend 27 days in Stankovec I, the largest refugee camp in Macedonia. They then were flown to Fort Dix, N.J., where they spent three weeks before they were released. Catholic Charities sponsored them and placed them with host families in San Diego.
Tony Hoti brought his family to his two-bedroom apartment, which he shares with two roommates. The family received a one-time "transitional grant" of $780 from a relief agency.
"You cannot even get an apartment for that," said Hasan, whose son translated for him. "For me to survive, I have to go and work."
Drita, who worked as a court translator, interpreting Albanian into Serbo-Croatian and vice versa, said she would like to work, too.
None of the Hotis but Tony speaks English, however. And because Hasan sees nothing he can do here to fight for the human rights of his people, he is eager to return to Kosovo.
"The first day that I'll be able to go home, if it's safe, I'll go," he said, sitting in Elgindy's plush home in the Olivenhain area of Encinitas.
The Hotis called Elgindy from Tony's apartment, and Elgindy offered to fly them down to San Diego and take care of them for the next few months.
Since virtually all Kosovar refugees are Muslim, Elgindy has rented a two-bedroom apartment for them in Clairemont near a mosque. He has promised to pay for their food and clothing for several months until they can get settled and start learning English.
"I'm very happy that it worked, that we were able to do something," Elgindy said.
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