independent.co.uk
Armed Albanians take revenge with campaign of murder,
house-burning and intimidation that has driven out thousands
Serbs murdered by the hundred since 'liberation'
By Robert Fisk in Pristina
24 November 1999
The postwar "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo's Serbs
appears to be nearing completion as armed
Albanians continue to murder and kidnap the tiny
minority of Serbs who remain in the province
more than five months after Nato troops arrived –
in the words of their UN mandate – "to ensure
public safety and order".
Of Pristina's 40,000 Serb population, only 400 are
left. Statistics from the Serb church and a human
rights group in Pristina suggest as many as 316
Serbs have been murdered and 455 more
kidnapped, many of them killed, since Nato's
arrival.
If these figures bear any relation to reality – and
most are accompanied by names and dates – then
the number of Serbs killed in the five months
since the war comes close to that of Albanians
murdered by Serbs in the five months before Nato
began its bombardment in March. Most Serb
victims died in the first two months after Nato's
entry, but house-burning and murder continues.
One of the most recent deaths was that of a Serb
restaurant worker employed – by a supreme irony
– at the Pristina office of the International War
Crimes Tribunal. The murder of Radovan Kukalj in
his home town of Obilic on 29 October went
almost unreported outside Kosovo.
Statistics compiled by the Nato-led K-For in
Kosovo appear to be woefully inaccurate. They
give the number of Serbs murdered since
mid-June as only 125, despite detailed lists from
the Serb Orthodox Diocese of Raska and Prizren
that include at least 184 named Serbs as murder
victims, and 104 more kidnapped between 13 June
and 22 August alone.
Files at the Serbian-administered "Centre for
Peace and Tolerance' in Pristina – which includes
Albanian victims in its statistics – say that at least
48 Albanians as well as 455 Serbs have been
kidnapped since mid-June.
But even if the true figure was closer to K-For's
statistic, not one of the brutal Serb killings is
being investigated by members of the International
War Crimes Tribunal working in Kosovo, not even
the death of their own worker, Mr Kukalj.
For while tribunal investigators still hope to bring
charges against the murderers of Albanians killed
before the war, they are prevented by the tribunal's
mandate from any detective work on the postwar
murder of Serbs. The mandate states that it can
investigate crimes committed "during the armed
conflict in Kosovo".
But since neither Nato nor K-For will admit that a
conflict continues under their control in Kosovo,
albeit a largely one-sided one in which the Serbs
are the principal victims, war crimes tribunal
officials cannot investigate the killing of Serbs.
This means their murderers have only the largely
impotent UN police force to reckon with. No
wonder, then, that minority groups continue to
flee Kosovo.
The 300-strong Croat community at Lecnice were
preparing to celebrate their 700th anniversary in
the province but left en masse last month for
Dubrovnik. And this week, the president of the tiny
Jewish community in Pristina, Cedra Prlincevic,
left for Belgrade after denouncing "a pogrom
against the non-Albanian population". He had left
Kosovo, he said, "with only the Talmud".
Foreign aid workers in Kosovo insist K-For is
now making a huge effort to protect minorities
after Nato General Sir Michael Jackson's defeatist
response to the killings – "we can only do so
much," he said several times – appeared to
encourage the killers.
"There are large numbers of Royal Irish Rangers in
the Gjilane and Stimle areas trying to defend the
small number of Serbs there," a European human
rights worker said. "Just east of Pec, Serbs are
returning from Montenegro at the rate of 40 a
week and K-For is putting enormous resources in
to re-establish them."
Swedish troops have virtually surrounded the Serb
monastery town of Gracanica, even ordering
Albanians to strip Kosovo independence posters
from their cars if they are driving in the Serb
streets.
But the same aid official, who spends much of his
time on emergency work in Pristina, admitted:
"Every single Serbian here has been intimidated –
verbally in the street, on the telephone, physically
..."
A few hours later, I was confronted by a 64-year
old Serb woman, Milunka Josic, who had just
spent the night trying to keep Albanian youths
from breaking down her front door. Her right hand
was covered in bruises. "I know the young men
who were shouting at me," she said. "They were
beating on the door and screaming, '**** your
mother' and, 'Go back to Serbia'."
In efforts to minimise the "ethnic cleansing" of the
Serbs of Kosovo, K-For has even produced graphs
which compare the province favourably to cities
which include Pretoria and Moscow, a
meaningless performance since these are among
the crime capitals of the world. But OSCE human
rights teams working with the UN police force,
say they are investigating "an increasing number of
murders, attacks and harassment of elderly Serbs".
An OSCE official reports that in Zupa, a
96-year-old Serb man was found bound and gagged
with a gunshot wound to the head. In Kamenica, a
Serb woman, 82, who had been ordered to leave
her house was burnt to death in her home.
Earlier, Serbs reported that a 90-year-old woman,
Ljubica Vujovic, had been held down in her bathtub
and drowned. Elderly Kosovo Albanians also
complain that Albanian families burnt out of their
original homes by Serbs are trying to evict them.
Witnesses, say the OSCE, are too fearful to help
the UN and K-For investigate these crimes.
Amid this anarchy, the question has to be asked:
can the shameful campaign of "ethnic cleansing"
and murder of Serbs that continues under K-For's
eyes still be explained away as revenge attacks, as
retaliation for the mass atrocities committed
against Albanians by Serb forces before and during
the Kosovo war?
A growing number of Albanian intellectuals,
including several courageous journalists on the
daily Koha Ditore newspaper, fear that the
murders and dispossession of Serbs are now being
organised. By who? By KLA cells that never
disbanded under K-For orders? By groups coming
across the border from Albania?
Serbs, of course, still remember a British minister
saying in the Kosovo war that he wanted "Serbs
out, Nato in, refugees back". George Robertson, as
Secretary of State for Defence, later claimed this
was merely a "distillation" of the G8 demands. But
"Serbs Out" has almost been accomplished. Lord
Robertson of Port Ellen is now head of Nato. |
