From THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Kosovo Town's Tale of Betrayal and Massacre
SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Betrayal is the theme of the story of Slovinje, a village in Kosovo. Of the 600 homes there, 40 belonged to Serbs and the rest to ethnic Albanians. The two communities lived on opposite sides of the river but got along without major problems. They shopped at each other's stores. Their kids competed at soccer. They knew each other's names.
When the violence began in the province, the Serbs of Slovinje told their Albanian neighbors that they had nothing to fear from the army or paramilitary forces, several refugees woefully recalled.
" 'We will protect you,' they promised, and then when the army came, our own Serbs put on masks and joined in the butchery," said
Magribe Neziri. "They knew who to single out. They knew who had money."
Last Friday, the Serbian police dug up two mass graves in Slovinje, and 16 muddy corpses were laid out in a classroom of a village school, said three men who were there. The bodies were covered with black
plastic, but the heads were left exposed for identification.
Recognizing who was who proved hard, and the Serbs only gave the
Albanians an hour for the task of identification and burial. The Serbs
rampaged through Slovinje on April 15 and 16, killing more than 40
people, say more than a dozen witnesses. The dead were in the ground for two weeks, and decomposition began its work of returning dust to dust.
Ferat Gashi, 62, almost buried another young man in the grave set aside for his young nephew, Enver.
"We found Enver's driver's license in his pants, or a horrible mistake would have been made," said Gashi, 62, his face a portrait of sorrow. "But then who is to say what is truly horrible anymore?"
While 16 Albanians in Slovinje now have some privacy beneath the soil,
many others are assumed by relatives and friends to be lying dead
elsewhere, rotting in the debris of burned houses or washed up on the
rocky banks of the river.
Gashi said that when he and others had reburied their kin, the authorities had threatened them with death if they chanted any funeral prayers.
"Perhaps our silence helps them to deal with their shame," said a retired miner who was present at the pantomime of a funeral.
The story of Slovinje, 10 miles south of Pristina, Kosovo's capital, is incomplete without independent confirmation. In separate interviews, 17 Kosovar Albanians who had been in Slovinje on April 15 and 16 told their stories to The New York Times during the last week.
Five of those refugees said they had witnessed killings. A local teacher who has added up the killings from witnesses' accounts puts the total at 44. A lawyer, Naser Gashi, has compiled a list of the dead with 41 names.
Interviewers for Human Rights Watch have spoken with a half-dozen
Slovinje refugees and were told of many of the same killings. A spare but consistent account of the deaths has appeared in at least one
Albanian-language daily.
"Something terrible happened there -- that's for sure" said Benjamin Ward, a Human Rights Watch researcher. "There was a great deal of familiarity between the persecutors and the persecuted. One is struck by the degree of trauma and the residual fear. Many of these people still have family members there."
On the other hand, there are usually at least two sides to any story, and Serbian testimonies have yet to be obtained. After Serbian forces began emptying cities and villages in Kosovo and NATO air raids began, some of Slovinje's Albanians considered escaping to Macedonia over the frigid mountains.
Their Serbian acquaintances counseled against flight, several Albanians say. On the night of April 14, some leaders of the Serbian community called on some of their Albanian counterparts. "They told us the army was coming in but we shouldn't be afraid," said the teacher, who withheld his name in fear of harm to his family.
"They said we could meet with the army at the school at 7 A.M. the next
day," he said, "but at 5 the army was already blocking a main road with
tanks. Some Serbian paramilitary had been hiding in the village overnight,
hiding in the house of someone who had told us to stay."
Albanians were petrified. In a few hours they saw smoke coming from
Oklap, a nearby Albanian village. There was little to do but cower.
In the early afternoon, Serbian forces entered the village and began
shooting into homes, witnesses said. A teen-age girl, Fathushe Dubov, is
believed by some to have been the first to die. Sniper fire then cut down
Rifat and Milaim Gashi. The paramilitary forces began going from house
to house.
People were beaten, report both those who saw the violence and those
who suffered it. Money was taken by robbery and extortion. People
were ordered to flee.
Shehide Sopjani, 85, felt she was too old for such a sudden departure,
said her son, a retired miner. He said she had sat fearfully with another
son, who was nearly blind, and that son's frail wife, Qamile. The
rat-tat-tat of machine guns seemed to be everywhere.
"I told them they have to come with me or we'd all be massacred," said
the miner, who recalled that his mother then invoked an old Albanian
expression: "As the one who fed you from the breast, I tell you to run
from this house so that I can at least know one of us will remain alive."
From the foothills, he looked back but could not see much. He learned of
his mother's fate only when he took part in the burials on Friday, he said.
He was able to identify the body of his mother by her earrings. His dead
brother was recognizable by the gaps in his teeth, his sister-in-law by a
deformed leg.
"These things will haunt me forever," he said.
With tanks blocking the main way out, the only open road passed
through the Serbian part of town. As Albanians tried to drive off, they
met a roadblock. "Whoever the local Serbs didn't like, they told the
soldiers to order them out of the car," the teacher said.
Gafurr Hyseni was an activist in the Mother Teresa Society, named for
the renowned nun, who was an ethnic Albanian born in Skopje. Hyseni
was taken into a house and beaten, witnesses said. The house was set
ablaze. He never came out.
At least three other men were pulled from their cars and killed, one
witness said. One man was Jakup Kryeziv. Another was Adem Bytyqi,
who was shot dead while trying to run. Faik Krasniqi was killed and his
nose and mouth were cut off, the witness said.
Five men, including Omer and Enver Gashi, were ordered into a yard
along with their wives and children. "Three men in ski masks told
everyone but the men to run away," said Omer's wife, Nebahate, 31.
"Then we heard shooting, and no one ever saw my husband again until
the mass graves were opened."
Many Albanians fled to Smalusa, a nearby village. But Serbian forces
chased them from there as well. By the next morning, hundreds of people
from Smallusha and Slovinje found themselves in a fearsome limbo,
gathered in a field in the foothills and unsure if the killing had ended.
Another day of mayhem was ahead. Accounts differ as to who died first
in a burst of random shooting. Feroleze Bytyqi, who was there, says she
believes it was her brother Hasan Bytyqi, 18.
"He was hit in the stomach" with gunshots, said Ms. Bytyqi, 27, a
pregnant woman now living in a refugee camp. "My father asked for
someone to help his boy, but the answer he got was a beating."
Her father lifted his wounded son onto the seat of a tractor, Ms. Bytiqi
said. "The Serbs told my brother to put his hands up," she said, "and then
they shot him 10 times. I saw this. I saw my brother die."
Men were separated from women and children, three witnesses said.
Everyone was commanded to empty their pockets. Valuables were
stolen. Identification papers were put in a pile and set afire.
Several men were then singled out for beatings, including Remzi Limani,
30, Ms. Bytiqi's husband, who said he was one of them.
The Serbs taunted their captives: "You wanted NATO, so let NATO
come and save you now," two Albanians recalled.
The women and children were ordered to leave. "Go into the woods and
die of hunger," Ms. Bytiqi said they were told. The group wandered
toward the mountains, looking over their shoulders to see the fate of the
men.
The beatings were continuing, witnesses said. When a few men
successfully made a run for it, their captors were furious, witnesses said.
Other Serbs were called over, and they huddled. Suddenly, they told the
Albanians to run for their lives. Three were quickly shot as they hurried
up an incline toward the woods, witnesses said.
In all, 16 people died trying to sprint for safety, the Albanians agree. A
34-year-old barber was wounded, but his brother and a cousin helped
him stumble along, he said. He recently arrived in Macedonia and today
was lying in a clinic at a refugee camp, awaiting surgery to have a bullet
removed from his buttock.
Most men who escaped found their families in the hills around other
Albanian villages in Kosovo, several witnesses said. Some men would
return to Slovinje by night to feed their farm animals.
''There were still soldiers around, but the local Serbs told us to come
back," the teacher recalled. "They said, 'Some innocent Albanians were
killed who weren't supposed to be.' They said they were sorry and that
we could all return now, as long as we didn't bring along any
troublemakers."
On April 23, many Albanians did go back, some to search for loved
ones. This bitter homecoming lasted but a few hours before the police
began shooting into the air, the teacher said. The Albanians again fled into
the mountains.
Many chanced a second return a week later. And it was then that the
Serbian police agreed to unearth the dead. ''We were not permitted to
say even a word or look into each other's eyes," said Ferat Gashi.
This time he and dozens of others decided to leave for good. They made
their way to the border and now live with relatives or in hastily built tent
cities.
But hundreds of the Albanians have chosen to stay in Slovinje and see
what happens next, the recent refugees said. The local Serbs, they said,
have told them that everything is going to be all right.
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Our volunteer, Dusty leaves next Tuesday for Skopje. Dana leaves a week from today. You CAN send these refugees aid, and our volunteers will put it directly in their hands, not a cent removed for administrative costs.
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