Post from a greek newsgroup:
-----------------------------------------------------
Genocide. That's what the American-NATO bombing of Serbia is all about, our
government officials and the establishment press tell us.
The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were just minding their own business, hoping
and praying for independence from the mean Serbs, and now they are being
victimized, killed, run out of their land.
But this wasn't always the spin put on this 600-year-old struggle in the
Balkans.
I take you back to a page one story in The New York Times dated Nov. 1,
1987.
Yes, it's true that even then Serbs were talking about the possibility of a
civil war with the independence-minded ethnic Albanian population. But the
atrocities leading to such discussions were all perpetrated by today's
"victims." The victims then were ethnic Slavs. The killing was being
orchestrated by Kosovars. The refugees a decade ago were Serbs being run out
of their land.
Here are some excerpts from an on-the-scene dispatch by reporter David
Binder:
"A young army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks,
killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others."
"The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells
in its ranks."
"Ethnic Albanians in the government have manipulated public funds and
regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs."
"Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags been torn down.
Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and
some ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls."
"The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview,
is an 'ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro,
part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.' That includes large
chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia."
"Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania
governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the
capital of neighboring Albania."
"As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic
Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly
since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 -- an
'ethnically pure' Albanian region, a 'Republic of Kosovo' in all but name."
"The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to 'the worst in
the last seven years.'"
"'We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,' said a member of
the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven
the Slavic Macedonians out of the region."
"Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic
Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months."
"In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic
Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizen last
year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian
rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo
protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party."
"Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the
foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which
consists of six republics and two provinces."
"High-ranking officials have spoken if the 'Lebanonizing' of their country
and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland."
"The federal secretary for national defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told
the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to
subvert the armed forces. 'Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal
organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in
the Yugoslav People's Army,' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian
subversives had been preparing for 'killing officers and soldiers, poisoning
food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms
and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army
units.'"
"While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are
scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have
fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the
safety of the Slavic north."
This very recent history has been all but overlooked in the jingoistic
war-mongering by President Clinton and his pals in NATO leadership. Where
were they a decade ago when the shoe was on the other foot?
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't take sides in the Balkans dispute between
Serbs and Albanians, between Croats and Serbs, between Bosnian Muslims and
ethic Slavs. It's an ugly history that dates back much further than 1981.
But, unlike Americans, the people of the Balkans have long memories. And no
matter what the degenerate propaganda media tell you today while beating
their war drums, this conflict is much more complicated than black-hat Serbs
beating up on white-hat Kosovars. |
