Some reading for Mr. Joe Lockhart, who knew all along what was going to happen.
Read on.
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USA TODAY: Many Refugees Fight to Stay: Macedonian Police Used Batons & Rifle Butts to Punch, Push, & Drag Refugees into
USA TODAY
4/7/99 Jack Kelly
Many Kosovo refugees fight to stay
By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
BLACE, Macedonia - It was meant to be the triumphal beginning of perhaps the largest humanitarian airlift in modern history.
Instead it turned into a horrifying scene that infuriated aid workers, brought refugees to tears and even led one elderly Kosovar Albanian to try to kill herself.
Ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo rest at the Corlu airport in Turkey after being airlifted from camps in Macedonia (AP).
At this stench-filled border crossing Tuesday, Macedonian police used batons and rifle butts to punch, push and drag dozens of ethnic Albanian refugees into buses and then onto cargo jets to be flown to Turkey.
"Stop! Stop!" screamed a 16-year-old refugee named Nora as police dragged her mute father, Islam, first by his right arm and then by his black beard, up a mud hill and onto a waiting bus. "Please, stop!"
As the man mumbled for help, three police officers lifted him and tossed him onto the steps of the bus. Unable to speak, with blood gushing from his head, Islam began to cry. Seconds later he fainted.
Police then grabbed Nora by her black hair, pushed aside aid workers who tried to intervene and threw her on top of her unconscious father. Then they ran after other refugees who were scattering in fear.
"Leave these people alone," said a U.S. aid worker named Diane who pushed herself between the refugees and police. She refused to be identified further for fear of retribution from Macedonian police.
"This is not a deportation. It's an airlift. Leave them alone."
It was the second straight day that Macedonia flew 1,500 ethnic Albanian refugees to a makeshift tent camp in Turkey, many of them against their will and without a clue about their destination.
Police also warned Western reporters not to tell 170 refugees on several buses where they were going.
Now, many of the refugees say they'll fight to keep Macedonia from shipping more than 100,000 of them to NATO countries, including 20,000 to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"America will be helping (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic with his plans of ethnic cleansing if it allows us to be deported," says refugee Shaban Dilji, 43. "Please, we have lost everything. Let us stay near our country, at least."
Tensions run deep
The bitter tug of war here between refugees and police underscores the ethnic tensions gripping the Balkans beyond the conflict between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
But it is more than a clash of cultures: Officials fear that if the thousands of refugees remain in Macedonia, they will upset the ethnic balance among the country's 2 million people.
Government figures show that 61% of the population is Macedonian, 23% is Albanian, 6% is Serbian and the remaining 10% is of other nationalities.
"Macedonia has a very real fear that these refugees will create a single 'Greater Albania' with neighboring Kosovo and the country of Albania and declare its independence," says Balkan expert Ronald Hatchett of the University of St. Thomas in Houston. "They're causing all kinds of trouble for the Macedonian government."
Up to 5,000 Macedonians waving Serbian flags have been demonstrating several times a week in the capital city of Skopje, calling for the refugees to go home.
"These Muslims are no good. Send them home," says Bozana Jovovich, 29, a Macedonian nurse. "The West should have no pity for them. They are troublemakers for Serbia and now for the world."
Indeed, these scenes of refugees clawing to stay put could raise fears in the West over a possible repeat of past riots among Haitian and Cuban refugees who were unhappy over their treatment in U.S. refugee camps. Such violence could give pause to any attempt to open the doors even wider.
Trying to ease fears
NATO has tried to calm fears on all sides. Although NATO's deputy secretary-general, Sergio Balanzino, insisted Tuesday that the airlift is meant only to move the refugees temporarily until they can return to Kosovo, many of the displaced people fear that they will not be allowed to return at all. They also fear that they will become permanently separated from family members whom they lost during their mass exodus across the Yugoslav border.
"These people have been through enough trauma; to add to their trauma is wrong," says Christophe Gorder, Macedonia program director for AmeriCares, a New Canaan, Conn.-based aid group. "They need to make the decision whether they want to leave themselves. To do otherwise violates their human rights."
"People have a right to know where and when they are going," says Paula Ghedini, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
On Tuesday, neighboring Albania appealed to Macedonia and the West not to send the refugees abroad and offered to accept more of their ethnic kin. Albania already has taken in more than 100,000 refugees.
Al Hilal, an Albanian aid group here, also appealed to Macedonia to let it seek out volunteers among the refugees so that no one is sent against his or her will. Macedonia did not immediately respond to their request.
The refugee airlift is meant to relieve pressure on this former Yugoslav republic, which has accepted more than 115,000 ethnic Albanians during the last week. The 20,000 refugees destined for Guantanamo Bay are expected to leave within 10 days.
Tuesday, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said that "it is our intention not to move anyone unless it is a voluntary act."
But that's not how Macedonia would like it done.
How many to take?
Macedonian Prime Minister Lupco Georgievski said Tuesday that his country was facing financial ruin if Western countries don't take the refugees.
"The (NATO) people in Brussels started the war then left for Easter holidays. They left the problem for Macedonia," Georgievski said in an interview. "How many (refugees) do we have to take to satisfy Europe and for the Kosovo people to say 'Thank you?' "
He denied that Macedonia was forcing refugees to leave and called reports to the contrary "propaganda." He also said Macedonia had done as much as it could for the refugees.
"As fast as European countries take refugees from Macedonia, that is how fast the problem will end," he said.
Georgievski also said that Macedonia would not reopen its border with Kosovo to let in up to 40,000 refugees now living in this no-man's land. As an epidemic of dysentery has spread, up to 50 people have died in the camp in the last three days.
In the latest pullout of refugees, one elderly woman, who was forced onto a bus here and later tried to slash her wrists, was taken off the jet in Turkey on a stretcher. She died later in a hospital. Doctors would not give her cause of death.
"We'd rather live in trash than be sent further away from our homeland," said refugee Taulent Muhurreim, 26, in this border camp.
"Someone needs to tell Macedonia to stop harassing us. Haven't we been through enough?" |
