Informazione
MAFIOSI, TERRORISTI E TRUPPE DI OCCUPAZIONE OCCIDENTALI
STANNO GESTENDO IL TRAFFICO DELLA PROSTITUZIONE IN KOSOVO
(sullo stesso argomento:
http://www.egroups.com/message/crj-mailinglist/246 )
---
Subject: Forced prostitution, Pristina; request from Ukraine, DANA
[fwd]
Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 21:00:16 +0200
From: "Elena Kabashnaya" <elena@...> (by way of Herman de
Tollenaere <hermantl@...>)
To: office@...
DEAR LADIES and GENTLEMEN, ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL !
This appeal is to those, who we not indifferent to
fates
of hundreds of women got into trouble and desperately
seeking for our assistance and defense.
All of them refer to lawyer's services to protect their
out
raged honour and damaged health. In most cases these
women
have no money to pay off a lawyer's fee, which is $100
just
for the beginning of a process.
There is a striking case of Larisa K. who was hired by
recruiters to work in Greece and Pristina {Kosovo] of a
promised job, she was made to be a prostitute.
Penniless,
with risk to her life, she managed to escape to
Ukraine.
Right now Larisa K. is trying to sue the recruiters, who
had damaged her morally and physically, but she has no
money to protect her rights in the court.
Every little contribution will help Larisa and many
other
women in her position to get out of predicament,
restore
their rights and start life anew. We would be very
grateful
to people, who will join "DANA" - NGO from Nikolaev,
Ukraine,
and give a helping hand to these women.
Thank you for your help !
Sincerely yours
Elena Kabashnaya
President "DANA"
P.O.Box 104, Nikolaev 54015 Ukraine
35, Admiralskaya St,. Nikolaev 54001
Tel/Fax (38-0512) 335-108
elena@...
ken@mksat,net
DETAILS OF PAYMENTS:
----------------------
IN FAVOR acc. 26206791707001/858
Kabashnaya Elena
BENEFICIARY : NIKOLAEV BRANCH CB "PRIVATBANK"
ADDRESS: 27, FRUNZE Str., NIKOLAEV UKRAINE
ACCOUNT: 3901 9 004017 003
BANK OF THE BENEFICIARY : COMMERCIAL BANK "PRIVATBANK"
ADDRESS: DNEPROPETROVSK, UKRAINE
SWIFT : PBAN UA 2X
CORRESPONDENT ACCOUNT : 890-0085-754
INTERMEDIARY BANK :THE BANK OF NEW YORK
ADDRESS: Eastern Europe Division
One Wall St., 9-th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10286,USA
SWIFT: IRVT US 3N
=
INFORMATION :
"DANA" is a Women's organization, non-government,
non-commercial organization, founded in 1995. It
is registered by Ministry of Justice of Ukraine.
Certificate namber is 98.
We run the following projects :
- "Against Trafficking in Women",
- "Women and poverty",
- "Army of saving" - posts of disribution of
clothes and hot food,
- "Homelessness"
---
http://www.albaniannews.com
Albanian Daily News
June 3, 2000
East European Girls Face Rape, Violence in Albania
VLORA - Women from Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria face
beatings, rape and prostitution when they arrive in
Albania, which has become a centre for international
trafficking in young females.
Many of the women dreamed of a European Eldorado and
did not know they were to be sold into prostitution,
but their final destination is often the mental
hospital in the port town of Vlora in southern
Albania.
For the hundreds of young women, some of them still
adolescent, the Albanian port of Vlora is an
obligatory transit point on the way to western Europe.
Some of them have refused to be broken by their
ill-treatment while others have given up and can go no
further.
Alina, 18, is one of the latter. Huddled in a corner
of a police station in Vlora, her face bruised and
swollen, she jumps at the slightest noise. Repeating
that she is Romanian, she says that her passport was
confiscated long ago by the pimp who abused her.
Police found her naked in a nearby forest, where she
had been beaten and raped.
"At least she is alive. Last night, we found the body
of a 14-year-old girl in a back street," one of the
policemen said.
Alina will be kept for a few days in a cell here
before being handed over to the port city's
psychiatric hospital. There she is likely to face
worse treatment. Reliable sources said she would
probably be drugged and raped by other inmates.
Three other Romanian women and a Moldovan share a cell
next to Alina's - two women from Bucharest, Loredana,
18, and her sister Mihaela, 16, and 15-year-old Bianca
from Mirsa in central Romania, along with Angela, a
16-year-old Moldovan.
The four were arrested as they prepared to leave for
Italy, where they had been promised well-paid jobs, a
rich wedding and a life of ease. The women also
believed they would be able to send money to help
their poverty-stricken families.
The promises bear no relation to reality and the
women's planned final destination was the brothels of
Europe's major capital cities.
"Trafficking in women is booming in the Balkans and
the former Communist countries," said Fitore Palushi,
an Albanian woman police officer. "Whether they admit
it or not, they are all for sale and they all have
their regular pimps, even though some of them do not
know it."
>From Vlora, at least a dozen women are smuggled into
Italy every night, headed for prostitution, and the
traffic is constantly increasing.
The traffic is also lucrative for the smugglers. For
just one woman handed over personally to pimps in
Italy, the smuggler will be paid 3,000 dollars, three
times the normal tariff for an ordinary illegal
immigrant.
A recent report released in France said that transit
camps exist in Albania, where women are trained to
submit to their future punters by repeated rapes and
beatings, before being sent to western Europe.
---
Frankfurter Rundschau
June 5, 2000
Kosovo-Prostitutes
WHEN THE WAITRESSING JOB IS A TRAP
Sexual slave trade a problem in Kosovo
By Stephan Israel
Pristina - The dubious clubs that spring up overnight with names like
Miami Beach, Manhattan or International Club often do not remain in
business very long. A raid by Italian carabinieri first brought the
miserable situation to light in January, when the UN peacekeepers burst
into one club to find a dozen desperate women staring back at them.
"The women were treated like slaves," said one of the investigators on
the case. Since then about 60 women have been freed from similiar
conditions. Trafficking in sexual slaves and forced prostitution have
become serious problems in Kosovo.
The women come from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Bulgaria: the poorest
regions of eastern Europe. A monthly salary of 50 to 100 dollars is
normal in all of those countries. Some of the women fell prey to
seemingly innocuous newspaper adverts promising lucrative jobs in the
West as waitresses or dancers. Some of them wound up part of a sex trade
ring after being kidnapped. Still others knew about the nightclub and
the job as a prostitute that awaited them, but not about the horrifying
conditions.
None of the 60 women were still in possession of their identification
documents when they were discovered, according to investigators in
Pristina. Passports are usually collected by the "carers" while the
women are still in their native countries; sometimes, their "escorts"
issue them false documents. It usually takes a while before the trip
gets underway, with long waiting periods par for the course.
The sex traders command a well-organised network of contacts across the
entire region. Inconspicuous motels are the scenes of out-and-out
auctions, where the women are sold for the highest bid to pimps and bar
owners.
On the way to Kosovo, the actual trafficking occurs in Struga on the
Macedonian-Albanian border and several villages around the capital,
Skopje, that are well-known for their role in illegal prostitution.
Until now Macedonian officials have shown little interest in
co-operating with the UN, says one UN investigator, who suspects that
Macedonian police are involved in the trade in women.
Kosovar club owners and pimps pay around 1,500 dollars for each woman.
The women are confined to the bars day and night and made to endure
cramped and unhygenic conditions. They are usually told that they have
to "work off" the cost of transporting them.
However, none of the women found in forced prostitution in Kosovo had
ever seen any money. Anyway, in most cases the women are auctioned off
to another club in some other region after a few weeks or months.
Contributing to the problem is the massive international presence
brought by the arrival of Nato peacekeeping forces, and the large
amounts of money now in circulation. At present more than 40,000
soldiers from all over the world are stationed in Kosovo, plus another
7,000 UN administrators and aid workers from public and private
international relief organisations.
Many of the prospective customers perusing the bars and nightclubs are
members of the international mission in Kosovo, reports one aid worker
with an international organisation. "This business is determined by
supply and demand," says the woman, who gets her information from
talking to victims. It is, she says, a cheap investment for the
traffickers, who are attracted by the low risk and the potential for
making enormous profits.
But, she adds, for the women and girls - sometimes as young as 15 - the
sex trade is an extreme form of sexual and economic exploitation. Once
they come under the slave traders' control and end up in one of the
clubs, the women have no freedom whatsoever to decide their fate,
according to the aid worker.
A campaign is now being planned for the coming weeks that is aimed above
all at the nightclubs' international "clientele." The campaign is
supposed to make it clear to these men that the women in the clubs are
not "normal" prostitutes. "You pay once, she pays her whole life long,"
one of the slogans goes.
The situation in Kosovo is not without precedent. Nightclubs and bars
sprouted up like mushrooms near the former frontline after the war in
Bosnia. Kosovo is simply the latest market in a network that is part of
a booming business. Most local women stay away from the clubs.
Kosovo, like neighbouring Albania, is both a recruiting ground and a
transit area for traffic in women. Experts estimate that around 30,000
Albanian women are currently working as prostitutes, most of them in
Italy. For eastern European women, the road also stops in Serbia or
Belgrade en route to final destinations in Bosnia, Montenegro or western
Europe.
Recently seven Ukranian women were rescued from a club in the
Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, thanks to leads provided by a
development organisation based in their home country. Aid organisations
allege that, once the women are freed from forced prostitution,
officials treat them no better than criminals, arresting them and then
deporting them. Pimps and "nightclub" owners, however, generally get off
scot-free.
In April a Serbian court in the northern section of the divided city of
Mitrovica sentenced two Moldovan women to 30 days in jail for
prostitution, and issued a three-year ban on their re-entering the
country. The UN administration, which is formally responsible for
Kosovo, did not see fit to intervene. The women usually have no
identifying papers to show police when they arrived. In what human
rights observers see as a clear case of criminalising the victim, the
women are generally taken into custody like illegal immigrants to await
their deportation. The carabinieri working for the UN in Kosovo who made
the initial nightclub raid did not know what to do at first with the 12
women they discovered.
In the meantime, local and international aid organisations in Pristina
have quietly opened a temporary refuge for women at a secret location.
The "safe house" with room for 20 women has already been full on
occasion.
Workers from the non-profit International Organisation for Migration
(IOM) assist women who want to return to their countries of origin. The
organisation locates people they can turn to and also procures new
identity documents for the women. IOM is active in some of the women's
home countries as well, working, for example, in Ukraine and Moldova in
conjunction with local charities, counselling centres and women's
shelters so that the women have somewhere to turn once they arrive home.
No one, however, is forced to return. Once back in their hometowns, the
women often fear acts of revenge by the traffickers, who feel cheated
out of their profits.
UN investigators and aid workers believe the trend in illegal
prostitution is likely to continue. "If we close a nightclub one day, a
new one is certain to open up somewhere else the next day," says one
official resignedly. The attention international organisations are now
giving to the problem could result in the unintended consequence that
the lucrative business will increasingly be driven underground, where
the women will be forced to work in anonymous, private apartments.
---
http://www.msnbc.com/news/416095.asp?cp1=1
Sex-slave trade flourishes in Kosovo
The seedy side
of peacekeeping
in a war-torn region
NBC’s Kevin Tibbles reports there is a new battle in
Kosovo; an illegal sex slave trade.
By Kevin Tibbles
NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia — A year after NATO’s bombing
campaign and occupation saved Kosovo’s Albanians from
persecution and death,a new kind of human abuse has
emerged: forced prostitution, organized by the
Albanian mob. More than 1,000 women have been smuggled
into the war-ravaged region to serve as sex slaves.
THE WOMEN in Kosovo’s sex business —
estimated by police to number more than 1,000 — come
from all over Eastern Europe, funneled into the region
by well-organized crime gangs using regular trade
routes.
The former Soviet states have become prime
suppliers of women for the multimillion-dollar sex
trade. Moldova, Ukraine and Russia, as well as
Bulgaria and Romania, are the hunting grounds for men
who deal in the seedy business of so-called white
slavery. Many young women, seeking to escape the
shackles of collapsed economies and high rates of
unemployment, are easy targets for the sophisticated
traffickers.
In Bulgaria, for example, women are offered
better lives in Western countries working as nannies
or waitresses. They respond to newspaper ads that
carry a cellular telephone number as a contact. Once
the women accept a job and put their future and
passport in the hands of an “employer,” things go
horribly different than they planned.
“We try to act professionally when we come
here, but it is hard not to be emotional,” said Jack
Simmons, a lanky Texas detective on loan to the U.N.
police force in Kosovo. “This is slavery, and these
are slaves. They are bought and sold at auctions.
They’re treated like property.”
FEAR AS A TOOL OF SUBMISSION
Melissa Colten, an American working for the
International Office for Migration, a non-governmental
organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, said
traffickers instill a deep fear in the women.
“Usually they are locked in a room for between three
and five days. Maybe they will receive water.
Everything is taken away from them. Usually they are
beaten and usually they are raped repeatedly. In some
instances they are kept awake so they lose all sense
of reality and time, and it becomes very, very
disconcerting for them.”
The purpose of the brutal treatment is to break
the women down emotionally so traffickers can control
them. Once this “training” session is over, the women
are ready for sale. Prices start at around $500 in
their country of origin. Each time they’re smuggled
across an international border, the price will
increase. By the time a woman is trafficked into
Kosovo, she could sell for as much as $2,500.
There are bolder ways of obtaining women for
forced prostitution. Many have simply been kidnapped
at gunpoint, outside nightclubs, off trains or on
street corners. Once in the hands of the slave
traders, they become “the disappeared.”
“They’re paraded. The girls tell us they’re
made to walk around in their underwear while the
buyers from Kosovo examine them, and then they make
their choices. So, it’s pretty much like a cattle
auction,” Simmons said.
Officials from Kosovo’s international police
force told NBC News that Valeshta, a town in Macedonia
near the border with Albania, is controlled by the
Albanian mob and where many of the young women say
they were sold. Recently, two Macedonian police were
beaten into critical condition simply for setting foot
in the place.
In Valeshta, reporters were immediately
accosted by three armed men who jumped from a car.
They demanded to know the purpose of the visit and
threatened the lives of any journalist venturing
further into the town.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL
Psychologists say that women forced into
prostitution must fight for their survival.
“If you put a person on the border between life
and death, then every human being would chose life,”
said Nadia Kojouharova, a psychiatrist working in the
Bulgarian capital, Sofia. “They are ready to do
everything just to stay alive. This is the situation
the girls are in. They build in their imagination that
their life doesn’t mean anything beyond survival, and
to survive each day you must obey what the pimp wants
from you.”
What the pimp wants is for the women to have
sex, often unprotected, with as many men as possible.
Records U.N. police have seized from some brothel
owners show hundreds of thousands of dollars being
made in just a few months’ time. The numbers are
shocking in the context of Kosovo, one of the poorest
areas of Europe.
Women, however, see none of the riches. They
are forced to “pay back” their purchase price to the
pimp and reimburse him for clothing, and room and
board. In the rare cases when women do pay back pimps,
they find themselves “fined” for minor infractions —
like not smiling at a client or complaining about
treatment — and falling back into debt.
“Not one girl we’ve rescued has had any money
on her,” Simmons said. “They don’t have money, they
don’t have travel documents ... they’re helpless.”
DISORIENTED PRISONERS
Many women become so confused they don’t even
know where they are. In some cases, police say,
rescued women actually thought they were in Italy,
when in fact they were being held in a Kosovo bar.
Just across the Kosovo border is the Macedonian
town of Tetovo. It is here that an off-duty Macedonian
police officer takes us on a midnight tour down a
series of broken-down roads. We pass a dozen or so
dingy-looking houses, all with red lights out front.
‘We don’t have any money. I work, but I don’t have
any money, because he doesn’t pay me.’
— ANA
Kosovo prostitute Inside one house, Ana, 19,
is from Romania. Natasha, 21, is from Moldavia. They
are slinging beer out front, but they live in a
bare-walled room behind the bar — furnished with two
unmade beds and a dirty hand-held shower in the
corner. The girls are prostitutes, although they claim
they came here to work as waitresses.
“Do you make good money here?” I ask. “No,” Ana
answers. “We don’t have any money. I work, but I don’t
have any money, because he doesn’t pay me.”
Sitting out front, smoking Marlboros and
drinking brandy, Carlo, the girls’ “owner,” swears he
splits their earnings 50-50.
“I buy them on the border with Bulgaria,” he
said. “They come from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia,
Romania, Greece, and also Albania. I own 30.”
Carlo said he often moves the women he buys on
to Kosovo, and that “they can go back home if they
like.” Still, he holds Ana and Natasha’s passports,
making it impossible for them to travel. Both girls
say they want to go home.
Back in Kosovo, the police have helped 50 such
women return home this year alone. Working in tandem
with the International Organization for Migration, the
police spirit sex slaves out of the clubs, hide them
from pimps and traders in a safehouse and then take
them over the border. The IOM also tries to help them
resettle.
FREEDOM GONE WRONG
Irina, one freed woman who asked that her real
name not be used, was found working in a Pristina
brothel and asked police to get her out. Her story of
liberation, however, doesn’t have a happy ending.
She was repatriated to Bulgaria and provided a
bed in a local women’s shelter in Sofia. She even
managed to get a job and make a few friends, usually
difficult for women who have been taken captive and
lived in fear.
“People don’t make the difference between a
voluntary prostitute and someone who is forced into
prostitution,” said the Bulgarian psychiatrist
Kojouharova. “If you have been in this business, it
stays with you forever and you cannot do anything to
delete it from your life.” Suicide is a common
occurrence, Kojouharova said.
When Irina got home, however, she disappeared,
likely a victim of the long tentacles of organized
crime. One night, after going out with a friend, she
said her good-byes and climbed onto a streetcar. She
has not been seen since.
IOM’s Melissa Colten met and helped Irina when
she was pulled from prostitution’s grasp. Her face
darkens when asked of Irina’s fate.
“My fear is that she is being trafficked again,
and that this is the completion of the vicious cycle
that is going around again for her.” Colten said she
believes Irina’s former pimps tracked her down.
In Giulani, in the heart of the American sector
in Kosovo, an American cop walks the beat. North
Carolinian Steve Dunbar patrols a place where law and
order has been put on hold. The day he found a
pregnant 15-year-old girl working “behind the scenes”
in a local coffee bar, he made freeing sex slaves his
personal mission.
“No kid should be in a business like this,” he
said, pointing to the window where the girl used to
ply her trade. Yet with so many Westerners — including
NATO peacekeepers — the gangs are working overtime to
tempt them with women. U.S. military personnel in the
area have been warned to steer clear of the sex
traders. When off duty, they are confined to a nearby
base.
“I’m not going to say that everyone is immune
to temptation,” said Maj. Debbie Allen. “What I am
going to say is that they know it is illegal ... and
that they are aware of the consequences.”
SHUTTING DOWN THE SEX TRADE
Dunbar and his fellow officers wind their way
down a dusty alley, along a stagnant canal filled with
debris and stench. They’re making their way to the Bar
Tirana, already the target of one police raid. On this
visit, they find a young woman from Moldova. “Yes, I
was bought and sold,” she said. “Of course I was.”
The police shut Bar Tirana down, forcing the
bartender to padlock the doors. They warn him that he
faces arrest if they find the bar open again.
Dunbar may be light years away from the streets
he usually patrols in Charlotte, N.C., but he said it
won’t stop him from laying down the law.
“They can go anywhere they want in Europe to do
this kind of business, but it is not going to happen
in the American Sector in Kosovo, and it’s not going
to happen in the town of Giulani as long as I am
here.”
NBC’s Kevin Tibbles is on assignment in Kosovo.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
STANNO GESTENDO IL TRAFFICO DELLA PROSTITUZIONE IN KOSOVO
(sullo stesso argomento:
http://www.egroups.com/message/crj-mailinglist/246 )
---
Subject: Forced prostitution, Pristina; request from Ukraine, DANA
[fwd]
Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 21:00:16 +0200
From: "Elena Kabashnaya" <elena@...> (by way of Herman de
Tollenaere <hermantl@...>)
To: office@...
DEAR LADIES and GENTLEMEN, ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL !
This appeal is to those, who we not indifferent to
fates
of hundreds of women got into trouble and desperately
seeking for our assistance and defense.
All of them refer to lawyer's services to protect their
out
raged honour and damaged health. In most cases these
women
have no money to pay off a lawyer's fee, which is $100
just
for the beginning of a process.
There is a striking case of Larisa K. who was hired by
recruiters to work in Greece and Pristina {Kosovo] of a
promised job, she was made to be a prostitute.
Penniless,
with risk to her life, she managed to escape to
Ukraine.
Right now Larisa K. is trying to sue the recruiters, who
had damaged her morally and physically, but she has no
money to protect her rights in the court.
Every little contribution will help Larisa and many
other
women in her position to get out of predicament,
restore
their rights and start life anew. We would be very
grateful
to people, who will join "DANA" - NGO from Nikolaev,
Ukraine,
and give a helping hand to these women.
Thank you for your help !
Sincerely yours
Elena Kabashnaya
President "DANA"
P.O.Box 104, Nikolaev 54015 Ukraine
35, Admiralskaya St,. Nikolaev 54001
Tel/Fax (38-0512) 335-108
elena@...
ken@mksat,net
DETAILS OF PAYMENTS:
----------------------
IN FAVOR acc. 26206791707001/858
Kabashnaya Elena
BENEFICIARY : NIKOLAEV BRANCH CB "PRIVATBANK"
ADDRESS: 27, FRUNZE Str., NIKOLAEV UKRAINE
ACCOUNT: 3901 9 004017 003
BANK OF THE BENEFICIARY : COMMERCIAL BANK "PRIVATBANK"
ADDRESS: DNEPROPETROVSK, UKRAINE
SWIFT : PBAN UA 2X
CORRESPONDENT ACCOUNT : 890-0085-754
INTERMEDIARY BANK :THE BANK OF NEW YORK
ADDRESS: Eastern Europe Division
One Wall St., 9-th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10286,USA
SWIFT: IRVT US 3N
=
INFORMATION :
"DANA" is a Women's organization, non-government,
non-commercial organization, founded in 1995. It
is registered by Ministry of Justice of Ukraine.
Certificate namber is 98.
We run the following projects :
- "Against Trafficking in Women",
- "Women and poverty",
- "Army of saving" - posts of disribution of
clothes and hot food,
- "Homelessness"
---
http://www.albaniannews.com
Albanian Daily News
June 3, 2000
East European Girls Face Rape, Violence in Albania
VLORA - Women from Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria face
beatings, rape and prostitution when they arrive in
Albania, which has become a centre for international
trafficking in young females.
Many of the women dreamed of a European Eldorado and
did not know they were to be sold into prostitution,
but their final destination is often the mental
hospital in the port town of Vlora in southern
Albania.
For the hundreds of young women, some of them still
adolescent, the Albanian port of Vlora is an
obligatory transit point on the way to western Europe.
Some of them have refused to be broken by their
ill-treatment while others have given up and can go no
further.
Alina, 18, is one of the latter. Huddled in a corner
of a police station in Vlora, her face bruised and
swollen, she jumps at the slightest noise. Repeating
that she is Romanian, she says that her passport was
confiscated long ago by the pimp who abused her.
Police found her naked in a nearby forest, where she
had been beaten and raped.
"At least she is alive. Last night, we found the body
of a 14-year-old girl in a back street," one of the
policemen said.
Alina will be kept for a few days in a cell here
before being handed over to the port city's
psychiatric hospital. There she is likely to face
worse treatment. Reliable sources said she would
probably be drugged and raped by other inmates.
Three other Romanian women and a Moldovan share a cell
next to Alina's - two women from Bucharest, Loredana,
18, and her sister Mihaela, 16, and 15-year-old Bianca
from Mirsa in central Romania, along with Angela, a
16-year-old Moldovan.
The four were arrested as they prepared to leave for
Italy, where they had been promised well-paid jobs, a
rich wedding and a life of ease. The women also
believed they would be able to send money to help
their poverty-stricken families.
The promises bear no relation to reality and the
women's planned final destination was the brothels of
Europe's major capital cities.
"Trafficking in women is booming in the Balkans and
the former Communist countries," said Fitore Palushi,
an Albanian woman police officer. "Whether they admit
it or not, they are all for sale and they all have
their regular pimps, even though some of them do not
know it."
>From Vlora, at least a dozen women are smuggled into
Italy every night, headed for prostitution, and the
traffic is constantly increasing.
The traffic is also lucrative for the smugglers. For
just one woman handed over personally to pimps in
Italy, the smuggler will be paid 3,000 dollars, three
times the normal tariff for an ordinary illegal
immigrant.
A recent report released in France said that transit
camps exist in Albania, where women are trained to
submit to their future punters by repeated rapes and
beatings, before being sent to western Europe.
---
Frankfurter Rundschau
June 5, 2000
Kosovo-Prostitutes
WHEN THE WAITRESSING JOB IS A TRAP
Sexual slave trade a problem in Kosovo
By Stephan Israel
Pristina - The dubious clubs that spring up overnight with names like
Miami Beach, Manhattan or International Club often do not remain in
business very long. A raid by Italian carabinieri first brought the
miserable situation to light in January, when the UN peacekeepers burst
into one club to find a dozen desperate women staring back at them.
"The women were treated like slaves," said one of the investigators on
the case. Since then about 60 women have been freed from similiar
conditions. Trafficking in sexual slaves and forced prostitution have
become serious problems in Kosovo.
The women come from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Bulgaria: the poorest
regions of eastern Europe. A monthly salary of 50 to 100 dollars is
normal in all of those countries. Some of the women fell prey to
seemingly innocuous newspaper adverts promising lucrative jobs in the
West as waitresses or dancers. Some of them wound up part of a sex trade
ring after being kidnapped. Still others knew about the nightclub and
the job as a prostitute that awaited them, but not about the horrifying
conditions.
None of the 60 women were still in possession of their identification
documents when they were discovered, according to investigators in
Pristina. Passports are usually collected by the "carers" while the
women are still in their native countries; sometimes, their "escorts"
issue them false documents. It usually takes a while before the trip
gets underway, with long waiting periods par for the course.
The sex traders command a well-organised network of contacts across the
entire region. Inconspicuous motels are the scenes of out-and-out
auctions, where the women are sold for the highest bid to pimps and bar
owners.
On the way to Kosovo, the actual trafficking occurs in Struga on the
Macedonian-Albanian border and several villages around the capital,
Skopje, that are well-known for their role in illegal prostitution.
Until now Macedonian officials have shown little interest in
co-operating with the UN, says one UN investigator, who suspects that
Macedonian police are involved in the trade in women.
Kosovar club owners and pimps pay around 1,500 dollars for each woman.
The women are confined to the bars day and night and made to endure
cramped and unhygenic conditions. They are usually told that they have
to "work off" the cost of transporting them.
However, none of the women found in forced prostitution in Kosovo had
ever seen any money. Anyway, in most cases the women are auctioned off
to another club in some other region after a few weeks or months.
Contributing to the problem is the massive international presence
brought by the arrival of Nato peacekeeping forces, and the large
amounts of money now in circulation. At present more than 40,000
soldiers from all over the world are stationed in Kosovo, plus another
7,000 UN administrators and aid workers from public and private
international relief organisations.
Many of the prospective customers perusing the bars and nightclubs are
members of the international mission in Kosovo, reports one aid worker
with an international organisation. "This business is determined by
supply and demand," says the woman, who gets her information from
talking to victims. It is, she says, a cheap investment for the
traffickers, who are attracted by the low risk and the potential for
making enormous profits.
But, she adds, for the women and girls - sometimes as young as 15 - the
sex trade is an extreme form of sexual and economic exploitation. Once
they come under the slave traders' control and end up in one of the
clubs, the women have no freedom whatsoever to decide their fate,
according to the aid worker.
A campaign is now being planned for the coming weeks that is aimed above
all at the nightclubs' international "clientele." The campaign is
supposed to make it clear to these men that the women in the clubs are
not "normal" prostitutes. "You pay once, she pays her whole life long,"
one of the slogans goes.
The situation in Kosovo is not without precedent. Nightclubs and bars
sprouted up like mushrooms near the former frontline after the war in
Bosnia. Kosovo is simply the latest market in a network that is part of
a booming business. Most local women stay away from the clubs.
Kosovo, like neighbouring Albania, is both a recruiting ground and a
transit area for traffic in women. Experts estimate that around 30,000
Albanian women are currently working as prostitutes, most of them in
Italy. For eastern European women, the road also stops in Serbia or
Belgrade en route to final destinations in Bosnia, Montenegro or western
Europe.
Recently seven Ukranian women were rescued from a club in the
Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, thanks to leads provided by a
development organisation based in their home country. Aid organisations
allege that, once the women are freed from forced prostitution,
officials treat them no better than criminals, arresting them and then
deporting them. Pimps and "nightclub" owners, however, generally get off
scot-free.
In April a Serbian court in the northern section of the divided city of
Mitrovica sentenced two Moldovan women to 30 days in jail for
prostitution, and issued a three-year ban on their re-entering the
country. The UN administration, which is formally responsible for
Kosovo, did not see fit to intervene. The women usually have no
identifying papers to show police when they arrived. In what human
rights observers see as a clear case of criminalising the victim, the
women are generally taken into custody like illegal immigrants to await
their deportation. The carabinieri working for the UN in Kosovo who made
the initial nightclub raid did not know what to do at first with the 12
women they discovered.
In the meantime, local and international aid organisations in Pristina
have quietly opened a temporary refuge for women at a secret location.
The "safe house" with room for 20 women has already been full on
occasion.
Workers from the non-profit International Organisation for Migration
(IOM) assist women who want to return to their countries of origin. The
organisation locates people they can turn to and also procures new
identity documents for the women. IOM is active in some of the women's
home countries as well, working, for example, in Ukraine and Moldova in
conjunction with local charities, counselling centres and women's
shelters so that the women have somewhere to turn once they arrive home.
No one, however, is forced to return. Once back in their hometowns, the
women often fear acts of revenge by the traffickers, who feel cheated
out of their profits.
UN investigators and aid workers believe the trend in illegal
prostitution is likely to continue. "If we close a nightclub one day, a
new one is certain to open up somewhere else the next day," says one
official resignedly. The attention international organisations are now
giving to the problem could result in the unintended consequence that
the lucrative business will increasingly be driven underground, where
the women will be forced to work in anonymous, private apartments.
---
http://www.msnbc.com/news/416095.asp?cp1=1
Sex-slave trade flourishes in Kosovo
The seedy side
of peacekeeping
in a war-torn region
NBC’s Kevin Tibbles reports there is a new battle in
Kosovo; an illegal sex slave trade.
By Kevin Tibbles
NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia — A year after NATO’s bombing
campaign and occupation saved Kosovo’s Albanians from
persecution and death,a new kind of human abuse has
emerged: forced prostitution, organized by the
Albanian mob. More than 1,000 women have been smuggled
into the war-ravaged region to serve as sex slaves.
THE WOMEN in Kosovo’s sex business —
estimated by police to number more than 1,000 — come
from all over Eastern Europe, funneled into the region
by well-organized crime gangs using regular trade
routes.
The former Soviet states have become prime
suppliers of women for the multimillion-dollar sex
trade. Moldova, Ukraine and Russia, as well as
Bulgaria and Romania, are the hunting grounds for men
who deal in the seedy business of so-called white
slavery. Many young women, seeking to escape the
shackles of collapsed economies and high rates of
unemployment, are easy targets for the sophisticated
traffickers.
In Bulgaria, for example, women are offered
better lives in Western countries working as nannies
or waitresses. They respond to newspaper ads that
carry a cellular telephone number as a contact. Once
the women accept a job and put their future and
passport in the hands of an “employer,” things go
horribly different than they planned.
“We try to act professionally when we come
here, but it is hard not to be emotional,” said Jack
Simmons, a lanky Texas detective on loan to the U.N.
police force in Kosovo. “This is slavery, and these
are slaves. They are bought and sold at auctions.
They’re treated like property.”
FEAR AS A TOOL OF SUBMISSION
Melissa Colten, an American working for the
International Office for Migration, a non-governmental
organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, said
traffickers instill a deep fear in the women.
“Usually they are locked in a room for between three
and five days. Maybe they will receive water.
Everything is taken away from them. Usually they are
beaten and usually they are raped repeatedly. In some
instances they are kept awake so they lose all sense
of reality and time, and it becomes very, very
disconcerting for them.”
The purpose of the brutal treatment is to break
the women down emotionally so traffickers can control
them. Once this “training” session is over, the women
are ready for sale. Prices start at around $500 in
their country of origin. Each time they’re smuggled
across an international border, the price will
increase. By the time a woman is trafficked into
Kosovo, she could sell for as much as $2,500.
There are bolder ways of obtaining women for
forced prostitution. Many have simply been kidnapped
at gunpoint, outside nightclubs, off trains or on
street corners. Once in the hands of the slave
traders, they become “the disappeared.”
“They’re paraded. The girls tell us they’re
made to walk around in their underwear while the
buyers from Kosovo examine them, and then they make
their choices. So, it’s pretty much like a cattle
auction,” Simmons said.
Officials from Kosovo’s international police
force told NBC News that Valeshta, a town in Macedonia
near the border with Albania, is controlled by the
Albanian mob and where many of the young women say
they were sold. Recently, two Macedonian police were
beaten into critical condition simply for setting foot
in the place.
In Valeshta, reporters were immediately
accosted by three armed men who jumped from a car.
They demanded to know the purpose of the visit and
threatened the lives of any journalist venturing
further into the town.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL
Psychologists say that women forced into
prostitution must fight for their survival.
“If you put a person on the border between life
and death, then every human being would chose life,”
said Nadia Kojouharova, a psychiatrist working in the
Bulgarian capital, Sofia. “They are ready to do
everything just to stay alive. This is the situation
the girls are in. They build in their imagination that
their life doesn’t mean anything beyond survival, and
to survive each day you must obey what the pimp wants
from you.”
What the pimp wants is for the women to have
sex, often unprotected, with as many men as possible.
Records U.N. police have seized from some brothel
owners show hundreds of thousands of dollars being
made in just a few months’ time. The numbers are
shocking in the context of Kosovo, one of the poorest
areas of Europe.
Women, however, see none of the riches. They
are forced to “pay back” their purchase price to the
pimp and reimburse him for clothing, and room and
board. In the rare cases when women do pay back pimps,
they find themselves “fined” for minor infractions —
like not smiling at a client or complaining about
treatment — and falling back into debt.
“Not one girl we’ve rescued has had any money
on her,” Simmons said. “They don’t have money, they
don’t have travel documents ... they’re helpless.”
DISORIENTED PRISONERS
Many women become so confused they don’t even
know where they are. In some cases, police say,
rescued women actually thought they were in Italy,
when in fact they were being held in a Kosovo bar.
Just across the Kosovo border is the Macedonian
town of Tetovo. It is here that an off-duty Macedonian
police officer takes us on a midnight tour down a
series of broken-down roads. We pass a dozen or so
dingy-looking houses, all with red lights out front.
‘We don’t have any money. I work, but I don’t have
any money, because he doesn’t pay me.’
— ANA
Kosovo prostitute Inside one house, Ana, 19,
is from Romania. Natasha, 21, is from Moldavia. They
are slinging beer out front, but they live in a
bare-walled room behind the bar — furnished with two
unmade beds and a dirty hand-held shower in the
corner. The girls are prostitutes, although they claim
they came here to work as waitresses.
“Do you make good money here?” I ask. “No,” Ana
answers. “We don’t have any money. I work, but I don’t
have any money, because he doesn’t pay me.”
Sitting out front, smoking Marlboros and
drinking brandy, Carlo, the girls’ “owner,” swears he
splits their earnings 50-50.
“I buy them on the border with Bulgaria,” he
said. “They come from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia,
Romania, Greece, and also Albania. I own 30.”
Carlo said he often moves the women he buys on
to Kosovo, and that “they can go back home if they
like.” Still, he holds Ana and Natasha’s passports,
making it impossible for them to travel. Both girls
say they want to go home.
Back in Kosovo, the police have helped 50 such
women return home this year alone. Working in tandem
with the International Organization for Migration, the
police spirit sex slaves out of the clubs, hide them
from pimps and traders in a safehouse and then take
them over the border. The IOM also tries to help them
resettle.
FREEDOM GONE WRONG
Irina, one freed woman who asked that her real
name not be used, was found working in a Pristina
brothel and asked police to get her out. Her story of
liberation, however, doesn’t have a happy ending.
She was repatriated to Bulgaria and provided a
bed in a local women’s shelter in Sofia. She even
managed to get a job and make a few friends, usually
difficult for women who have been taken captive and
lived in fear.
“People don’t make the difference between a
voluntary prostitute and someone who is forced into
prostitution,” said the Bulgarian psychiatrist
Kojouharova. “If you have been in this business, it
stays with you forever and you cannot do anything to
delete it from your life.” Suicide is a common
occurrence, Kojouharova said.
When Irina got home, however, she disappeared,
likely a victim of the long tentacles of organized
crime. One night, after going out with a friend, she
said her good-byes and climbed onto a streetcar. She
has not been seen since.
IOM’s Melissa Colten met and helped Irina when
she was pulled from prostitution’s grasp. Her face
darkens when asked of Irina’s fate.
“My fear is that she is being trafficked again,
and that this is the completion of the vicious cycle
that is going around again for her.” Colten said she
believes Irina’s former pimps tracked her down.
In Giulani, in the heart of the American sector
in Kosovo, an American cop walks the beat. North
Carolinian Steve Dunbar patrols a place where law and
order has been put on hold. The day he found a
pregnant 15-year-old girl working “behind the scenes”
in a local coffee bar, he made freeing sex slaves his
personal mission.
“No kid should be in a business like this,” he
said, pointing to the window where the girl used to
ply her trade. Yet with so many Westerners — including
NATO peacekeepers — the gangs are working overtime to
tempt them with women. U.S. military personnel in the
area have been warned to steer clear of the sex
traders. When off duty, they are confined to a nearby
base.
“I’m not going to say that everyone is immune
to temptation,” said Maj. Debbie Allen. “What I am
going to say is that they know it is illegal ... and
that they are aware of the consequences.”
SHUTTING DOWN THE SEX TRADE
Dunbar and his fellow officers wind their way
down a dusty alley, along a stagnant canal filled with
debris and stench. They’re making their way to the Bar
Tirana, already the target of one police raid. On this
visit, they find a young woman from Moldova. “Yes, I
was bought and sold,” she said. “Of course I was.”
The police shut Bar Tirana down, forcing the
bartender to padlock the doors. They warn him that he
faces arrest if they find the bar open again.
Dunbar may be light years away from the streets
he usually patrols in Charlotte, N.C., but he said it
won’t stop him from laying down the law.
“They can go anywhere they want in Europe to do
this kind of business, but it is not going to happen
in the American Sector in Kosovo, and it’s not going
to happen in the town of Giulani as long as I am
here.”
NBC’s Kevin Tibbles is on assignment in Kosovo.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
INTELLETTUALI DISSIDENTI? OPPORTUNISTI INGRATI E VENDUTI
Una delle voci atlantiste piu' guerrafondaie del panorama politico
europeo attuale e' quella di Vaclav Havel, grande sostenitore della
aggressione NATO contro la RFJ nel 1999 ed ora impegnato ad appoggiare
la secessione del Montenegro.
Forse l'attuale presidente della Repubblica Ceca, troppo impegnato a
calare le braghe dinanzi ai ricatti della NATO e della UE - basti
pensare che ha *regalato* a Radio Free Europe l'intero palazzo del
Parlamento di Praga! - dimentica che negli anni in cui era solo un
piccolo drammaturgo "dissidente" sopravvisse grazie all'onorario
passatogli attraverso la moglie Olga da "Atelje 212", una istituzione
culturale legata al Teatro di Belgrado, che spesso e volentieri metteva
le sue opere in cartellone... A quei tempi, nella RFSJ autonoma da
entrambi i blocchi e fautrice del "non allineamento", la tendenza
politica e culturale del "socialismo dal volto umano" e della primavera
di Praga era vista con simpatia da molti. Per tutto ringraziamento, oggi
Havel ovviamente sputa nel piatto in cui mangiava all'epoca.
Sull'argomento sarebbe interessante conoscere l'opinione del direttore
di "Atelje 212", Jovan Cirilov, che peraltro - come ogni bravo incensato
"intellettuale" - e' oggi pure lui probabilmente vicino alla opposizione
filo-occidentale.
(Fonte: "Svedok", rivista jugoslava, 25 maggio 1999
>
> YUGOSLAV DAILY SURVEY
>
> BELGRADE, 19 July 2000 No. 3113
>
> C O N T E N T S :
>
> CZECH CITIZENS CONDEMN HAVEL'S WARMONGERING STATEMENTS
> PRAGUE, July 19 (Tanjug) Dozens of Czech citizens addressed the
> Yugoslav Embassy in Prague these days, condemning or expressing deep
> regrets over what they called unseeming, warmongering statements by their
> President Vaclav Havel in the Croatian town of Dubrovnik.
> Czech students of renowned Charles University of Prague were among
> those who came to the Yugoslav Embassy in person to express support to the
> Yugoslav leadership. The students brought a letter for Yugoslav President
> Slobodan Milosevic.
> We condemn and disown the antiSlav policy of the current Czech
> government which is doing everything to win the sympathies of the United
> States and the NATO Pact. That is why the government is doing whatever they
> order, the letter said.
> Many Czechs, from all parts of the country, have telephoned the
> Yugoslav Embassy or sent letters expressing their apologies over their
> president's statements and his open interference in the internal affairs of
> Yugoslavia.
>
> ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS OF SLAV CULTURES: HAVEL IS AN EVIL AND
> FALSE PROPHET
> CESKE BUDEJOVICE, July 18 (Tanjug) Czech President Vaclav Havel,
> fake prophet of truth and love, speaks about Serbia calling for a
> demonstration of force, said a letter of apology to the Serb people sent by
> the Association of Friends of Slav Cultures and Languages from the city of
> Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic.
> The Association recalled that Havel is the author of the
> meaningless term "humanitarian bombing" and that the demolished hospitals
> and the graves of thousands of civilians killed during the 1999 NATO air
> raids "are the result of such humanity."
> The Association said that the Serbs had always helped the Czech
> people in difficult times and that this is why its members are ashamed of
> the Czech leader's statements which "are a far cry from morality and common
> sense."
> We apologize on behalf of the majority of honest Czech citizens
> which share our feelings of bitterness and shame and we beg you not to
> attribute Havel's evil statements to the entire Czech nation, the
> Association said.
> The Association is a nonpolitical organization committed to the
> affirmation of the culture of all Slav countries.
>
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
Una delle voci atlantiste piu' guerrafondaie del panorama politico
europeo attuale e' quella di Vaclav Havel, grande sostenitore della
aggressione NATO contro la RFJ nel 1999 ed ora impegnato ad appoggiare
la secessione del Montenegro.
Forse l'attuale presidente della Repubblica Ceca, troppo impegnato a
calare le braghe dinanzi ai ricatti della NATO e della UE - basti
pensare che ha *regalato* a Radio Free Europe l'intero palazzo del
Parlamento di Praga! - dimentica che negli anni in cui era solo un
piccolo drammaturgo "dissidente" sopravvisse grazie all'onorario
passatogli attraverso la moglie Olga da "Atelje 212", una istituzione
culturale legata al Teatro di Belgrado, che spesso e volentieri metteva
le sue opere in cartellone... A quei tempi, nella RFSJ autonoma da
entrambi i blocchi e fautrice del "non allineamento", la tendenza
politica e culturale del "socialismo dal volto umano" e della primavera
di Praga era vista con simpatia da molti. Per tutto ringraziamento, oggi
Havel ovviamente sputa nel piatto in cui mangiava all'epoca.
Sull'argomento sarebbe interessante conoscere l'opinione del direttore
di "Atelje 212", Jovan Cirilov, che peraltro - come ogni bravo incensato
"intellettuale" - e' oggi pure lui probabilmente vicino alla opposizione
filo-occidentale.
(Fonte: "Svedok", rivista jugoslava, 25 maggio 1999
>
> YUGOSLAV DAILY SURVEY
>
> BELGRADE, 19 July 2000 No. 3113
>
> C O N T E N T S :
>
> CZECH CITIZENS CONDEMN HAVEL'S WARMONGERING STATEMENTS
> PRAGUE, July 19 (Tanjug) Dozens of Czech citizens addressed the
> Yugoslav Embassy in Prague these days, condemning or expressing deep
> regrets over what they called unseeming, warmongering statements by their
> President Vaclav Havel in the Croatian town of Dubrovnik.
> Czech students of renowned Charles University of Prague were among
> those who came to the Yugoslav Embassy in person to express support to the
> Yugoslav leadership. The students brought a letter for Yugoslav President
> Slobodan Milosevic.
> We condemn and disown the antiSlav policy of the current Czech
> government which is doing everything to win the sympathies of the United
> States and the NATO Pact. That is why the government is doing whatever they
> order, the letter said.
> Many Czechs, from all parts of the country, have telephoned the
> Yugoslav Embassy or sent letters expressing their apologies over their
> president's statements and his open interference in the internal affairs of
> Yugoslavia.
>
> ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS OF SLAV CULTURES: HAVEL IS AN EVIL AND
> FALSE PROPHET
> CESKE BUDEJOVICE, July 18 (Tanjug) Czech President Vaclav Havel,
> fake prophet of truth and love, speaks about Serbia calling for a
> demonstration of force, said a letter of apology to the Serb people sent by
> the Association of Friends of Slav Cultures and Languages from the city of
> Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic.
> The Association recalled that Havel is the author of the
> meaningless term "humanitarian bombing" and that the demolished hospitals
> and the graves of thousands of civilians killed during the 1999 NATO air
> raids "are the result of such humanity."
> The Association said that the Serbs had always helped the Czech
> people in difficult times and that this is why its members are ashamed of
> the Czech leader's statements which "are a far cry from morality and common
> sense."
> We apologize on behalf of the majority of honest Czech citizens
> which share our feelings of bitterness and shame and we beg you not to
> attribute Havel's evil statements to the entire Czech nation, the
> Association said.
> The Association is a nonpolitical organization committed to the
> affirmation of the culture of all Slav countries.
>
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
...In seguito al collasso della Jugoslavia monarchica, nel 1941, il
Kosmet viene suddiviso in tre zone di occupazione straniera:
una italiana, una tedesca ed una bulgara.
Nell'agosto 1941 l'Italia, che occupa la parte piu' estesa, annette
questo territorio alla "Grande Albania". Tutto il Kosmet, compresa la
zona di Mitrovica, Podujevo e Vucitrn, a maggioranza serba e
formalmente sotto il controllo del governo-fantoccio filotedesco di
Nedic, e' in realta' alla merce' delle bande dei collaborazionisti
albanesi, specialmente quelle di Boletini e Deva, che seminano il
terrore sotto gli auspici della Wehrmacht.
In effetti durante la guerra nella Grande Albania verra' costituita
persino una divisione schipetara delle SS, la "Skanderbeg", cosi'
come in Bosnia la divisione "Handzar", tutta composta da musulmani.
Analogamente a quanto avviene nella Croazia di Pavelic e Stepinac,
anche nel Kosovo panalbanese i diritti di cittadinanza ai serbi sono
negati. Si mira all'annientamento della cultura e della presenza
fisica serba. Svariati villaggi e luoghi di culto vengono rasi al
suolo, e molti crimini vengono commessi contro la popolazione.
(...) Sotto il nazifascismo nella zona viene
ripristinato il sistema di proprieta' feudale: i contadini perdono
cosi' i beni ottenuti grazie alla riforma agraria del 1918, attuata
dal regno jugoslavo. Rispuntano i "bey" e gli "aga" di ottomana
memoria, che tornano a controllare la distribuzione dei prodotti
agricoli e la vita sociale in quanto rappresentanti del nuovo Stato
panalbanese. Le razzie contro il bestiame e la distruzione dei beni
degli ortodossi sono consuetudine.
Kosovo Polje e Pristina vengono abbandonate dalla popolazione
non-schipetara. Fonti tedesche di allora registrano almeno 60mila
fuggiaschi. Persino Neubacher, plenipotenziario del Ministero degli
Esteri hitleriano, deve intervenire perche' gli episodi di terrore
diminuiscano.
L'atteggiamento degli occupanti italiani nei confronti delle violenze
commesse dalle milizie collaborazioniste albanesi e' duplice.
Nell'ottobre del 1941 gli italiani sono corresponsabili della
distruzione del villaggio di Dren. Viceversa, nel dicembre 1942 a
Vitomirica attacchi a sorpresa dei fascisti locali contro la popolazione
cristiano-ortodossa costringono questa a riparare nell'accampamento dei
Carabinieri...
( http://www.marx2001.org/nuovaunita/jugo/crj/m_l/250399.htm )
---
* KOSOVARO-ALBANESI PROGRESSISTI BOICOTTERANNO LE ELEZIONI
* MEMBRI NORVEGESI DELL'UCKFOR RAZZIANO CASA SERBA
* LACRIME DI COCCODRILLO TURCHE PER LA SITUAZIONE IN KOSMET
* ANCORA DIVISIONI DENTRO "MEDICI SENZA FRONTIERE" PER IL TERRORE DELLA
NATO IN KOSMET
* IL RUOLO NEFASTO DEL SENATORE STATUNITENSE LIEBERMAN
* DOVE SONO FINITE LE ARMI DELLA "RIVOLTA DELLE PIRAMIDI"?
* LINK SEGNALATI:
> NATO in Kosovo: in bed with a scorpion
> Noam Chomsky: A review of NATO’s war over Kosovo
---
* KOSOVARO-ALBANESI PROGRESSISTI BOICOTTERANNO LE ELEZIONI
http://www.serbia-info.com/news
Numerous ethnic Albanians boycotted registration poll and will boycott
Kouchner's elections
August 03, 2000
Ethnic Albanians saw through the intentions as well
Pristina, August 3 - Leader of the Democratic Reform Party of ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, Sokolj Cuse, assessed that numerous
ethnic Albanians would boycott illegal elections prepared by U.N.
mission chief Bernard Kouchner.
"KFOR and UNMIK keep on exerting unprincipled pressures with threats and
blackmails, not only on unlike-minded ethnic Albanians who do not agree
with extremists and separatists, but also on the representatives of
other national communities - Serbs, Turks, Romanies, Goranies and other,
forcing them to register to vote and go to the polls. That is not only a
non-democratic act, but is also direct violation of the U.N. Security
Council Resolution 1244, Cuse said.
Leader of the Democratic Reform Party of ethnic Albanians, which has
been fighting for multiethnic Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia and
Yugoslavia for years, thinks that there will be no democratic elections
in Kosovo and Metohija "because Kouchner has registered some 250,000
Albanians from Albania and Macedonia".
According to Cuse, they have entered Kosovo and Metohija through a
non-secured border crossing, forcefully moved in the houses of expelled
non-Albanian population, committed numerous robberies, murders and other
crime.
"Unfortunately, not only Kouchner, but also terrorist Hashim Thaqui
relies on them. In return, they have received "recognition" of being
Kosovo and Metohija residents on the basis of false, or even none ID-s,
despite the fact that authorized bodies in Serbia have computer records
on each Kosovo and Metohija resident, Cuse said.
---
* MEMBRI NORVEGESI DELL'UCKFOR RAZZIANO CASA SERBA
HTTP://www.serbia-info.com/news
Norwegian troops took money and gold
August 11, 2000
KFOR troops took money and gold
Kosovo Polje, August 10 (Tanjug) - During a three-hour search of a Serb
house, Norwegian KFOR troops based in Kosovo Polje took 7,500 DM and
gold, while the house owner Mirka Maksimovic ended in a health center,
spokesman of the Serbian National Assembly in Kosovo Polje Zivomir Vucic
stated.
Norwegian KFOR troops in full battle dress previously surrounded with
several jeeps a vehicle of the Serbian National Assembly chairman
Ratomir Maksimovic, Serbian National Assembly Executive Board vice
chairman Zvonko Mitic and Vucic, on the pretext of exercising a routine
check.
That "routine check has lasted for three hours with arms prepared to
fire. They took our personal data, demanded that we give them our home
phone numbers and took photos of us", Vucic said.
The harassment continued in front of Mirka Maksimovic's house, Ratomir
Maksimovic's mother. Norwegian troops then searched her house.
"Ratomir Maksimovic was in front of the house, Mitic and I were not
allowed to leave the car. They took 7,500 DM and gold from Mirka
Maksimovic's house. Being a serious diabetic, Mirka got sick and
received treatment in the health center", Vucic said.
This Norwegian KFOR troops' behaviour caused spontaneous gathering of
some 200 Serb residents in front of Mirka Maksimovic's house, Vucic
said, adding that the troops have sent off a Serb translator and brought
a uniformed ethnic Albanian one.
---
* LACRIME DI COCCODRILLO TURCHE PER LA SITUAZIONE IN KOSMET
http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=184668§ion=default
Ankara Urges UN to Improve Kosovo Turks' Rights
ANKARA, Aug 1, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Turkish
Foreign Minister Ismail Cem urged Monday the head of
the United Nations interim administration in Kosovo,
Bernard Kouchner, to boost the rights of the Turkish
community in the province, a Turkish official said...
-
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/dostinic/turk.htm
Turkey Weeps Crocodile Tears
by Dan Dostinic (8-3-00)
"Ankara urges UN to improve Kosovo Turks' rights." And therein
lies a tale...
www.tenc.net
A July 31 Agence France Presse (AFP) report states that "Turkish
Foreign Minister
Ismail Cem urged Monday the head of the United Nations interim
administration in
Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, to boost the rights of the Turkish community
in the province."
The article cites Huseyin Dirioz, a Turkish foreign ministry official.
Turkey's concern stems from the decision of some 60,000 Kosovo Turks to
boycott
municipal elections because the "UN mission did not issue registration
forms in Turkish."
The article further states that "the Turks enjoyed cultural autonomy
under Belgrade's rule
and did not join the Albanian struggle for independence although the
two communities
have a common faith in Islam."
AFP does not explore the implications of the statement that the Turks,
a minority in
Serbia as are Albanians, "enjoyed cultural autonomy under Belgrade's
rule" during the
period (i.e., the 1990s) when Albanians were fighting for
'independence.'
Didn't Western leaders claim they had no choice but to bomb Yugoslavia
to restore to
ethnic Albanians the cultural autonomy they had been supposedly denied
because the
Serbian "rulers" loathed their Muslim faith? And wasn't the Muslim
faith brought to - and
in many case forced on - the Balkans by...the Turks?
Is something wrong with this picture?
If Serbian officials hate Muslims, why is it that ethnic Turks in
Serbian Kosovo "enjoyed
cultural autonomy under Belgrade's rule"? And why are the Turks
complaining that now,
under enlightened NATO rule, they can't even get the UN to print
Turkish language
election ballots?
Could it be that Belgrade was speaking the truth?
Could it be that Yugoslavia never took away ethnic Albanians' cultural
autonomy, that is,
judicial functions, schools, hospitals and mass media in the Albanian
language? Could it
be that in fact the Albanian secessionist movement organized a boycott
of Albanian
language institutions (such as schools) in order to score propaganda
points with the
West? [See footnote 2]
And consider Turkey. Turkey was a strategic participant in the 78 day
bombing of
Yugoslavia which President Clinton said was necessary in order to
insure "respect for
minority rights." (Clinton, 'New York Times,' Op-ed, May 23, 1999)
And now Turkey has 1,000 troops in Kosovo.
According to recent reports, ethnic Albanians are complaining about
lawlessness in
Kosovo [Footnote 1] Refugees are afraid to return, fearing attacks by
Albanian
extremists. A recent UN report described the UN-created Kosovo
Protection Corps as
engaging in:
"criminal activities - killings, ill-treatment/torture, illegal
policing, abuse of
authority, intimidation, breaches of political neutrality and
hate speech." ( From
The UN appoints an alleged war criminal in Kosovo, by Michel
Chossudovsky, at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/unandthe.htm )
Given these conditions, shouldn't there be a renewal of demands for
inquiries in all
capitals that took part in the bombing of Yugoslavia? The question to
which we need an
answer is: WHY?
The AFP article closes with the following: "Cem warned that Turkey
could limit its
contributions to Kosovo's security if the rights of the Turkish
community were not
rectified."
What "security" Mr. Cem?
Dan Dostinic is a Canadian antiwar activist.
www.tenc.net
Footnotes
1) In "Concentration camps in Kosovo: The KLA Archipelago" Jared Israel
offers the
following amazing description of the brave new civil government which
the UN and
NATO have installed in Kosovo. The following is from the 'New York
Times, ' hardly an
opponent of US policy in Yugoslavia. The excerpt begins with a quote
from the 'Times':
'"Tahir Canolli, 49, ran a furniture store in Pristina for nearly
three decades. He,
like many businessmen, hoped that when he returned to Pristina
from the refugee
camps in Macedonia, the harassment he experienced under Serbs
would end."'
"Note [from Jared Israel] to readers: the "harassment under
Serbs" remark,
pasted onto the article without benefit of support or explanation
(how was he
harassed and how do we know he was?) is an example of the
Obligatory Bash
( http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/obligato.htm ) which can
be found in
virtually all articles about Yugoslavia. No matter what the
subject, and especially
if the subject is KLA terror, the writer or editor offers at
least one anti-Serbian
side-swipe just to remind readers that however awful the KLA and
NATO may
be, 'The Serbs' are worse. Note that 'The Serbs' are here treated
as an
undifferentiated mass, which is only fitting for an Evil People."
'"Instead, a group of KLA fighters arrived at his shop two
weeks ago
with a paper issued from 'The Ministry of Public Order'
demanding the
keys to his 1990 Audi 80 and his store.
''They were arrogant, brutal and rude,' he said, unfolding
the stamped
order that he now carries in his pocket. 'They told me that
if I did not
comply immediately they knew a cellar I might like to
visit."'
"A cellar? As in dungeon?
"The Times report ascends from the horrible to the surreal:
'"Within hours, $50,000 worth of furniture was loaded onto
trucks brought
by the officials who had demanded his keys. The looters not
only stripped
the store of its contents but also ripped out the heaters,
lamps and
mirrors. [!] They carted away 24 large flower boxes that had
been outside
the building. The next day several flower boxes of the same
design and
with the same kinds of plants were placed outside the
building where Mr.
Thaci works."
"Mr. Thaci was indulging his feminine side, yes? Now comes a bit
of humor,
perhaps unintended:
'"Mr. Thaci's appointees said that such confiscations,
especially of
state-owned buildings, were part of their effort to
determine property
ownership. They also defended the decision to begin
collecting money
from businesses, a practice many shop owners have labeled
'extortion.'"
"Ah, those troublesome shop owners! Always throwing around
labels!
"The article continues:
'"Mr. Canolli has spent hours outside Mr. Thaci's ministries
in recent
days in the hope that he can reclaim some of his property or
be
compensated for it. But each attempt has been rebuffed.
"'I saw the K.L.A. police inspector who gave me the
confiscation order
driving my car, although it had no license plates,' he said.
'I went to his
office but was told at the door that I should never come
back or attempt to
speak with him..'"(NY Times, July 29, 1999, my emphasis).
You can read
this article in full at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/reporter.htm
2) In her excellent introduction to the wars of secession in Yugoslavia
during the
1990s, Yugoslavia Seen Through a Dark Glass, Diana Johsnstone refers to
an ICG report
called Kosovo Spring, which talks about the boycott. Johnstone quotes
from the report:
24) "The March 24, 1998 report of the International Crisis Group
entitled 'Kosovo
Spring' notes that: 'In many spheres of life, including politics,
education and
health-care, the boycott by Kosovars of the Yugoslav state is
almost total.' In
particular, 'Kosovars refuse to participate in Serbian or
Yugoslavian political life.
The leading Yugoslav political parties all have offices in Kosovo
and claim some
Kosovar members, but essentially they are 'Serb-only'
institutions. In 1997
several Kosovars accused of collaborating with the enemy (i.e.
the Serbian
State) were attacked, including Charnilj Gasi, head of the
Socialist Party of
Serbia in Glagovac, and a deputy in the Yugoslav Assembly's House
of Citizens,
who was shot and wounded in November. The lack of interest of
Serb political
parties in wooing Kosovars is understandable. Kosovars have
systematically
boycotted the Yugoslav and Serbian elections since 1981,
considering them
events in a foreign country.'"
As Ms. Johnstone notes, the ICG is very much not a pro-Serbian
institution, merely one
that is required on occasion to tell the truth:
"The ICG, while scarcely pro-Serb in its conclusions,
nevertheless provides
information neglected by mainstream media. This is perhaps
because the ICG
addresses its findings to high-level decision-makers who need to
be in
possession of a certain number of facts, rather than to the
general public. Gasi
was not the only target of Albanian attacks on fellow Albanians
in the Glogovse
municipal district, situated in the Drenica region which the
"Kosovo Liberation
Army" (UCK) tried to control in early 1998. Others included
forester Mujo Sejd,
52, killed by machine-gun fire near his home on January 12, 1998;
postman
Mustafa Kurtaj, 26, killed on his way to work by a group firing
automatic rifles;
factory guard Rusdi Ladrovci, ambushed and killed with automatic
weapons
apparently after refusing to turn over his official arm to the
UCK; among others.
On April 10, 1998, men wearing camouflage uniforms and insignia
of the Army of
Albania fired automatic weapons at a passenger car carrying four
ethnic Albanian
officials of the Socialist Party of Serbia including Gugna Adem,
President of the
Suva Reka Municipal Board, who was gravely injured; and Ibro
Vait, member of
the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and President of
the SPS district
board in the city of Prizren. Numerous such attacks have been
reported by the
Yugoslav news agency Tanjug, but Western media have shown scant
interest in
the fate of ethnic Albanians willing to live Serbs in
multi-ethnic Serbia." ( Quoted
from Through a Dark Glass at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/1yugo.htm
www.tenc.net
---
* ANCORA DIVISIONI DENTRO "MEDICI SENZA FRONTIERE" PER IL TERRORE DELLA
NATO IN KOSMET
NOTA: Tra i fondatori di "Medici senza frontiere", ONG premio Nobel che
ha gia' espulso la sua sezione greca perche' "aiutava i serbi", c'e'
l'attuale amministratore coloniale ONU, il serbofobo Kouchner.
http://www.nandotimes.com/no_frames/global/story/0,4382,500236922-500346724-502000175-0,00.html
Global: Humanitarian doctors leave Kosovo in protest
The Associated Press
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (August 7, 2000 5:16 p.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) - Accusing the United
Nations of allowing ethnic cleansing to continue in
Kosovo, the Belgian branch of the humanitarian group
Doctors Without Borders announced Monday it was
leaving the embattled area.
Doctors Without Borders "can no longer tolerate the
serious and continuous deterioration of living
conditions of the ethnic minorities in Kosovo," the
group said in a statement released in Pristina. French
teams from Doctors Without Borders will remain in the
province.
The group said the Belgian doctors had been
"eyewitnesses to the daily harassment and terror
against the Serb minority in (the towns of) Vucitrn
and Srbica and the Albanian minority in (the northern
part of Kosovska) Mitrovica."
The group said life for ethnic minorities was marked
by killings, drive-by shootings, hand grenade attacks,
verbal abuse, threats, robbery and blackmail. Many had
been forced to leave their homes, the group said.
More than a year after NATO and the United Nations
marched into Kosovo, mistrust and violence still
fester between ethnic Albanians, Serbs and other
minority groups. International officials make almost
daily appeals for tolerance, saying ethnic tensions
are preventing the southern Serb province from
achieving economic and social progress.
"Doctors Without Borders questions the appropriateness
of humanitarian medical and psychological assistance
when, in the presence of internationally mandated
protection forces, the fundamental rights of people
are being denied," the statement said.
The Paris-based group, which was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1999, has worked in Kosovo since 1993.
It provides home-based care in the ethnically divided
city of Kosovska Mitrovica.
---
* IL RUOLO NEFASTO DEL SENATORE STATUNITENSE LIEBERMAN
HTTP://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,206755,00.html
The Guardian (UK)
April 9, 1999
Democratic US senator Joe Lieberman, who introduced the Kosovo Self
Defence Act on March 25
"If, after extended air strikes, it becomes clear that Mr Milosevic
intends to continue his war of aggression, we must have an answer to the
question of what next? The bill we are proposing provides us with such
an answer, and an opportunity to send an uncompromising message to Mr
Milosevic: we will not stand idly by and allow him to brutalise the
people of Kosovo any longer..."
-
Joseph Lieberman, the KLA and Heroin
http://www.canadianserbs.com/war_stories/kosovo/facts_kosovo_drugkla.htm
Kosovo War: KLA finances war with heroin sales
May 3, 1999 - By Jerry Seper
The Kosovo Liberation Army, which the Clinton administration has
embraced and some members of
Congress want to arm as part of the NATO bombing campaign, is a
terrorist organization that has
financed much of its war effort with profits from the sale of
heroin.
Recently obtained intelligence documents show that drug agents in
five countries, including the
United States, believe the KLA has aligned itself with an
extensive organized crime network
centered in Albania that smuggles heroin and some cocaine to
buyers throughout Western Europe
and, to a lesser extent, the United States.
The documents tie members of the Albanian Mafia to a drug
smuggling cartel based in Kosovo's
provincial capital, Pristina. The cartel is manned by ethic
Albanians who are members of the Kosovo
National Front, whose armed wing is the KLA. The documents show it
is one of the most powerful
heroin smuggling organizations in the world, with much of its
profits being diverted to the KLA to
buy weapons.
The clandestine movement of drugs over a collection of land and
sea routes from Turkey through
Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia to Western Europe and elsewhere is
so frequent and massive that
intelligence officials have dubbed the circuit the "Balkan Route."
Mr. Clinton has committed air power and is considering the use of
ground troops to support the
Kosovo rebels against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Last
week, Sen. Mitch McConnell,
Kentucky Republican, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut
Democrat, called on the United
States to arm the KLA so ethnic Albanians in Kosovo could defend
themselves against the Serbs.
Mr. McConnell and Mr. Lieberman introduced a bill that would
provide $25 million to equip 10,000
men or 10 battalions with small arms and anti-tank weapons for up
to 18 months.
In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA -- formally
known as the Ushtria Clirimtare e
Kosoves, or UCK -- as an international terrorist organization,
saying it had bankrolled its
operations with proceeds from the international heroin trade and
from loans from known terrorists
like Osama bin Laden. "They were terrorists in 1998 and now,
because of politics, they're freedom
fighters," said one top drug official who asked not to be
identified.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in a recent report, said
the heroin is smuggled along
the Balkan Route in cars, trucks and boats initially to Austria,
Germany and Italy, where it is routed
to eager buyers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Great
Britain. Some of the white powder, the DEA report said, finds its
way to the United States.
The DEA report, prepared for the National Narcotics Intelligence
Consumer's Committee (NNICC),
said a majority of the heroin seized in Europe is transported over
the Balkan Route. It said drug
smuggling organizations composed of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were
considered "second only to
Turkish gangs as the predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan
Route." The NNICC is a
coalition of federal agencies involved in the war on drugs.
"Kosovo traffickers were noted for their use of violence and for
their involvement in international
weapons trafficking," the DEA report said.
A separate DEA document, written last month by U.S. drug agents in
Austria, said that while the
war in the former Yugoslavia had reduced the drug flow to Western
Europe along the Balkan Route,
new land routes have opened across Romania, Hungary and the Czech
Republic. The report said,
however, the diversion appeared to be only temporary.
The DEA estimated that between four and six metric tons of heroin
leaves each month from Turkey
bound for Western Europe, the bulk of it traveling over the Balkan
Route.
A second high-ranking U.S. drug official, who also requested
anonymity, said government and
police corruption in Kosovo, along with widespread poverty
throughout the region, had contributed
to an increase in heroin trafficking by the KLA and other ethnic
Albanians. The official said drug
smuggling is "out of control" and little is being done by
neighboring states to get a handle on it.
"This is the definition of the wild, wild West," said the
official. "The bombing has slowed it down, but
has not brought it to a halt. And, eventually, it will pick up
where it left off."
The heroin trade along the Balkan Route has been of concern to
several countries:
The Greek representative of Interpol reported in 1998 that
Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were "the
primary sources of supply for cocaine and heroin in that country."
Intelligence officials in France said in a recent report the KLA
was among several organizations in
southern Europe that had built a vast drug-smuggling network.
France's Geopolitical Observatory
of Drugs said in the report that the KLA was a key player in the
rapidly expanding drugs-for-arms
business and helped transport $2 billion worth of drugs annually
into Western Europe.
German drug agents have estimated that $1.5 billion in drug
profits is laundered annually by Kosovo
smugglers, through as many as 200 private banks or
currency-exchange offices. They noted in a
recent report that ethnic Albanians had established one of the
most prominent drug smuggling
organizations in Europe.
Jane's Intelligence Review estimated in March that drug sales
could have netted the KLA profits in
the "high tens of millions of dollars." The highly regarded
British-based journal noted at the time
that the KLA had rearmed itself for a spring offensive with the
aid of drug money, along with
donations from Albanians in Western Europe and the United States.
Several leading intelligence officials said the KLA has, in part,
financed its purchase of AK-47s,
semiautomatic rifles, shotguns, handguns, grenade launchers,
ammunition, artillery shells,
explosives, detonators and anti-personnel mines through drug
profits -- cash laundered through
banks in Italy, Germany and Switzerland. They also said KLA rebels
have paid for weapons using the
heroin itself as currency.
The profits, according to the officials, also have been used to
purchase anti-aircraft and anti-armor
rockets, along with electronic surveillance equipment.
-
http://www.antiwar.com/szamuely/pf/p-sz081000.html
Decline of The West
by George Szamuely - Antiwar.com
August 10, 2000
Joe Lieberman and the Gangsta State
"Determined to transform a potential liability into a defining asset,
Vice President Al Gore today
formally introduced Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut as his
Democratic running mate
and portrayed his selection of Mr. Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, as a
measure of his devotion to
tolerance and his willingness to break barriers" – thus the New York
Times's (8/9/00) entirely
predictable attempt to bully people into voting for Al Gore...
-
http://www.originalsources.com/OS8-00MQC/8-10-2000.1.html
The Media’s Inaccurate Report Creates Lieberman "Anti-Semitic" Incident
Milking the "Jewish Connection" Portrays Lieberman as a "Victim"
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
August 10, 2000
On Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, Vice President Gore introduced
Connecticut Sen. Joseph I.
Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate and said the inclusion
of the "first Jew on a
national ticket would help tear down a mighty wall of division." ...
-
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/garris/duringthe2.htm
Senator Lieberman - Apologist for the fascist KLA
by Jared Israel and Eric Garris (8-10-00)
"And so this Lieberman, who makes a public spectacle of his
religious beliefs, who
pontificates from a pinnacle higher than Morality, this Lieberman
fronts for the KLA,
self-proclaimed heirs to the Balli Kombëtar, the World War II
Albanian fascists (3) who
are responsible for the deaths of almost all the Jews in Kosovo.
Note that since being put
in power by NATO and the UN, the KLA has driven from Kosovo those
Jews who
escaped the Balli Kombëtar during W.W. II, driven out those
survivors of the Holocaust
and their descendants.(4)" [Excerpt from "Senator Lieberman -
Apologist for the fascist
KLA"]
www.tenc.net
In April, 1999, during the NATO War against Yugoslavia, an attempt was
made in Congress to
officially fund the arming of the Kosovo Liberation (sic!) Army (sic!
again) or KLA. Along with
Sen. John McCain, Sen. Joseph Lieberman sponsored the "Kosovo
Self-Defense Act." The text of
the statement Lieberman made at the time is posted below.
Here are a few observations to help put Lieberman's actions in
perspective.
There is virtually no doubt that at the time Lieberman was calling on
Congress to arm the KLA,
the US was already covertly providing arms and training to that
secessionist-terrorist group. As
early as the fall of 1998 we know that the Kosovo Verification Mission
was setting up tactical
liaison with and providing training for the KLA (1), all under the
guidance of seasoned US death
squad liaison expert, William Walker. (2)
In February a Bosnian Islamist daily published the following:
"TRAINING OF KLA MEMBERS IN US?
"According to Tirana daily newspapers, the Albanian Minister of
Foreign Affairs Paskal
Milo said that KLA members will be trained in the US. During his
meeting with US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Milo was informed that
Albanian guerrilla members
from Kosovo would be sent to the US for training. Milo added that
this was a promise,
which Albright gave him personally." ('NEVNI AVAZ' or 'Daily
Voice,' pro-Islamist
Sarajevo daily, 26 Feb 99)
Does a promise, apparently made by US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright in February, 1999,
to openly train the KLA contradict our assertion that the US was already
covertly training the
KLA long before February?
We don't think so. Rather, the promise of open training represented an
escalation in illegality by
the US government.
Consider, if you will, what it meant for the US to train the KLA.
1) The US was not at war with Yugoslavia in February, 1999.
2) In February, Albright described Kosovo as "a region of
Yugoslavia about the size of
Connecticut," i.e. admitted it was part of a sovereign country.
3) In February, Albright called the KLA a "sometimes brutal and
indiscriminate"
secessionist group devoted to a "simple answer to the tragedy of
Kosovo: independence
from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." (Quotes are from
"Madeleine Albright delivers
remarks on Kosovo at the Institute of Peace," Feb. 4, 1999)
For the US to train the KLA secretly was therefore to secretly violate
national sovereignty, the
cornerstone of international law. But to promise open support for
violent secessionists was to
uphold the US government's right to openly and flagrantly violate
national sovereignty, the
cornerstone of international law.
In another statement in February, Albright described how the
'international community' (led by the
US) would respond if the KLA didn't cooperate with US wishes:
"And if the Kosovar's [i.e., the KLA] crater this, it is obviously
more complicated because
there's not one any center, but they will lose the support of the
international community
and find themselves increasingly isolated and they can't operate
without the
community...('ABC this Week,' Feb. 7. 1999, our emphasis)
Obviously the KLA couldn't "lose the support of the international
community," that is, of the U.S.,
unless it had it to lose. As Albright noted, the KLA "cannot operate
without" this support. So US
Secretary of State Albright was admitting that the US government made it
possible for the KLA to
conduct terrorist attacks on Yugoslavia, a sovereign country. And mind
you, all this was weeks
before the failure of the so-called negotiations at Rambouillet.
Significance of Lieberman's 'Arm-the-KLA' Resolution
The point of the "Kosovo Self-Defense Act" was not that it was needed in
order for the KLA to
get U.S. weapons. Rather, it was intended to openly involve the US
Senate in a crime of war and
to prepare public opinion for viewing the vicious KLA fascists as
freedom fighters deserving
popular support. Lieberman refers to the KLA as "Kosovan military
forces" at a time (April 9,
1999) when the KLA was largely isolated, even among secessionist-minded
Albanians. And note,
that "Kosovan military forces" suggest there is some legitimate nation
of "Kosova" though no
such has ever existed, except as a Nazi creation. Indeed, the very word
"Kosova" is meaningless
in the Albanian language. (5)
And so this Lieberman, who makes a public spectacle of his religious
beliefs, who pontificates
from a pinnacle higher than Morality, this Lieberman fronts for the KLA,
self-proclaimed heirs to
the Balli Kombëtar, the World War II Albanian fascists (3) who are
responsible for the deaths of
almost all the Jews in Kosovo. Note that since being put in power by
NATO and the UN, the KLA
has driven from Kosovo those Jews who escaped the Balli Kombëtar during
W.W. II, driven out
those survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants.(4)
Following is the statement Sen. Lieberman gave to 'The Guardian' (UK) on
April 9, 1999.
"If, after extended air strikes, it becomes clear that Mr.
Milosevic intends to continue his
war of aggression, we must have an answer to the question of what
next? The bill we are
proposing provides us with such an answer, and an opportunity to
send an uncompromising
message to Mr Milosevic: we will not stand idly by and allow him
to brutalise the people
of Kosovo any longer.
This bill is premised on our belief that Nato ground forces will
not be put into Kosovo
unless the Serbs and Kosovans reach a peace agreement. If we adopt
that stance, though,
and Serbian aggression continues, we have an obligation to allow
the Kosovans to defend
themselves. Our legislation, by providing aid to the Kosovan
military forces, would give
them a fair chance to fight for their families and their future.
"I am aware that this proposal will raise some concerns. I recall
that when I first raised
the idea of training and equipping the Bosnian army, many critics
told us that we would
destabilise an entire region or accelerate an arms race. In the
end, I think those concerns
were shown to be misguided.
"Training and equipping the Bosnians enhanced the stability of the
area and helped end the
Bosnian war. The situation in Kosovo is different. But that does
not diminish the suffering
of the Kosovan people subjected to Serb aggression, nor negate
their right to defend their
families from the threat of genocide."
***
Further reading...
1) See 'The Cat is Out of the Bag" at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/ciaaided.htm
2) On William Walker's death squad credentials see 'Meet Mr. Massacre'
at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/meetmr.htm
3) On fascism in Kosovo see George Thompson's 'The roots of Kosovo
fascism' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/thompson/rootsof.htm
4) 'Driven from Kosovo: Jewish Leader Blames NATO - Interview With Cedda
Prlincevic' at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/prlincevic.htm
(5) '''KosovA' 'KosovO' - What's in a Name?'' by Prof. J. Peter Maher at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/JP%20maher/InAname.html
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---
* DOVE SONO FINITE LE ARMI DELLA "RIVOLTA DELLE PIRAMIDI"?
http://www.albaniannews.com
Albanian Daily News
August 10, 2000
"The Kosovars [KLA] acquired some state-of-the-art
weapons from western European countries and the U.S.,
but they relied for most of the weaponry on smuggling
through Albania's porous mountainous border."
Half of Guns Smuggled Abroad
TIRANA - Government officials say that half of some
700,000 weapons looted from army barracks have been
smuggled into neighbouring countries, while the
“complete disarming” of the population should take two
more years.
Minister of Public Order Spartak Poci said on Tuesday
that “only half” of the guns taken from army bases in
the 1997 turmoil still remain in the country.
“A considerable amount of weapons that were looted
from the army are not inside Albania’s borders, but
were smuggled abroad,” Poci said. “According to our
estimates, only 50 percent of the guns remain in
Albania, the rest were smuggled abroad.”
The minister did not provide any details on how the
government estimated the number of guns smuggling.
Unofficial sources said that this a rough estimate
based on the number of weapons seized and still in
possession in Kosovo, and figures from Italian and
Greek police gun-hunt operations.
Kosovo’s restive ethnic Albanian population was armed
thanks to a state breakdown in Albania, that made
impossible its control of the borders and army bases.
The Kosovo Liberation Army emerged as an organised
armed force in the second half of ‘97, a few months
after the riots.
The Kosovars acquired some state-of-the-art weapons
from western European countries and the US, but they
relied for most of the weaponry on smuggling through
Albania’s porous mountainous border.
Weapons were also smuggled to Italy and Greece to fuel
the local underworld there.
Albanian police have seized only 130,000 weapons,
mainly through voluntarily handing in, and from
development-for-weapons programmes.
Minister Poci said that a similar operation launched
at the beginning of this year, with the cooperation of
international donor organisations and western
government funds, yielded more than 40,000 weapons in
seven months. In addition, the police seized more than
3.5 million bullets, and military equipment such as
high-power explosives and heavy weapons.
“The disarming operation has given some impressive
results, but we will have to postpone the disarming
deadline for two more years,” said Poci, in a meeting
on disarmament in the central town of Elbasan.
The new deadline is set for August 13, 2002. The
minister said that the two-year deadline postponement
is a “sufficient period of time” to complete the
disarming process.
“The Albanian will be totally convinced that weapons
are no longer needed for their families,” Poci said,
failing to elaborate on his belief that the time
schedule was right.
Earlier this year the police found in one barn seven
air-to air missiles looted from the Gjadri air base.
When the police started the population disarming late
in ‘97, some people handed over tanks they had parked
in their backyards.
Elbasan, some 50 kilometres from Tirana, and the
surrounding villages are supposed to complete the
disarming by Sunday, August 13, this year but the
police and the local authorities have failed to meet
their target.
Some $1.5 million were invested in infrastructure
improvement, within the framework of a
development-for-weapons programme funded by the UN
Development Programme, and the governments of United
States, Britain and Denmark.
The police chief of Elbasan, Edmond Koseni, said the
police are still continuing to search for weapons, but
the priority is given to voluntarily handing over the
guns.
---
* LINK SEGNALATI
-> http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Commentary/20000809/COKOSOVO.html
Toronto Globe and Mail
NATO in Kosovo: in bed with a scorpion
The KLA is running drugs and refuelling conflict.
No wonder even innocent tourists can get arrested
SUNIL RAM
Wednesday, August 9, 2000
-> http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/chomskymay2000.htm
Foreign Policy
In Retrospect
A review of NATO’s war over Kosovo, Part II
By Noam Chomsky
The absurdity of the principle of retrospective justification is,
surely,
recognized at some level. Accordingly, many attempts to justify
the NATO
bombing take a different tack. One typical version is that “Serbia
assaulted
Kosovo to squash a separatist Albanian guerrilla movement, but
killed
10,000 civilians and drove 700,000 people into refuge in Macedonia
and
Albania. NATO attacked Serbia from the air in the name of
protecting the
Albanians from ethnic cleansing [but] killed hundreds of Serb
civilians and
provoked an exodus of tens of thousands from cities into the
countryside.”
Assuming that order of events, a rationale for the bombing can be
constructed. But uncontroversially, the actual order is the
opposite...
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
Kosmet viene suddiviso in tre zone di occupazione straniera:
una italiana, una tedesca ed una bulgara.
Nell'agosto 1941 l'Italia, che occupa la parte piu' estesa, annette
questo territorio alla "Grande Albania". Tutto il Kosmet, compresa la
zona di Mitrovica, Podujevo e Vucitrn, a maggioranza serba e
formalmente sotto il controllo del governo-fantoccio filotedesco di
Nedic, e' in realta' alla merce' delle bande dei collaborazionisti
albanesi, specialmente quelle di Boletini e Deva, che seminano il
terrore sotto gli auspici della Wehrmacht.
In effetti durante la guerra nella Grande Albania verra' costituita
persino una divisione schipetara delle SS, la "Skanderbeg", cosi'
come in Bosnia la divisione "Handzar", tutta composta da musulmani.
Analogamente a quanto avviene nella Croazia di Pavelic e Stepinac,
anche nel Kosovo panalbanese i diritti di cittadinanza ai serbi sono
negati. Si mira all'annientamento della cultura e della presenza
fisica serba. Svariati villaggi e luoghi di culto vengono rasi al
suolo, e molti crimini vengono commessi contro la popolazione.
(...) Sotto il nazifascismo nella zona viene
ripristinato il sistema di proprieta' feudale: i contadini perdono
cosi' i beni ottenuti grazie alla riforma agraria del 1918, attuata
dal regno jugoslavo. Rispuntano i "bey" e gli "aga" di ottomana
memoria, che tornano a controllare la distribuzione dei prodotti
agricoli e la vita sociale in quanto rappresentanti del nuovo Stato
panalbanese. Le razzie contro il bestiame e la distruzione dei beni
degli ortodossi sono consuetudine.
Kosovo Polje e Pristina vengono abbandonate dalla popolazione
non-schipetara. Fonti tedesche di allora registrano almeno 60mila
fuggiaschi. Persino Neubacher, plenipotenziario del Ministero degli
Esteri hitleriano, deve intervenire perche' gli episodi di terrore
diminuiscano.
L'atteggiamento degli occupanti italiani nei confronti delle violenze
commesse dalle milizie collaborazioniste albanesi e' duplice.
Nell'ottobre del 1941 gli italiani sono corresponsabili della
distruzione del villaggio di Dren. Viceversa, nel dicembre 1942 a
Vitomirica attacchi a sorpresa dei fascisti locali contro la popolazione
cristiano-ortodossa costringono questa a riparare nell'accampamento dei
Carabinieri...
( http://www.marx2001.org/nuovaunita/jugo/crj/m_l/250399.htm )
---
* KOSOVARO-ALBANESI PROGRESSISTI BOICOTTERANNO LE ELEZIONI
* MEMBRI NORVEGESI DELL'UCKFOR RAZZIANO CASA SERBA
* LACRIME DI COCCODRILLO TURCHE PER LA SITUAZIONE IN KOSMET
* ANCORA DIVISIONI DENTRO "MEDICI SENZA FRONTIERE" PER IL TERRORE DELLA
NATO IN KOSMET
* IL RUOLO NEFASTO DEL SENATORE STATUNITENSE LIEBERMAN
* DOVE SONO FINITE LE ARMI DELLA "RIVOLTA DELLE PIRAMIDI"?
* LINK SEGNALATI:
> NATO in Kosovo: in bed with a scorpion
> Noam Chomsky: A review of NATO’s war over Kosovo
---
* KOSOVARO-ALBANESI PROGRESSISTI BOICOTTERANNO LE ELEZIONI
http://www.serbia-info.com/news
Numerous ethnic Albanians boycotted registration poll and will boycott
Kouchner's elections
August 03, 2000
Ethnic Albanians saw through the intentions as well
Pristina, August 3 - Leader of the Democratic Reform Party of ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, Sokolj Cuse, assessed that numerous
ethnic Albanians would boycott illegal elections prepared by U.N.
mission chief Bernard Kouchner.
"KFOR and UNMIK keep on exerting unprincipled pressures with threats and
blackmails, not only on unlike-minded ethnic Albanians who do not agree
with extremists and separatists, but also on the representatives of
other national communities - Serbs, Turks, Romanies, Goranies and other,
forcing them to register to vote and go to the polls. That is not only a
non-democratic act, but is also direct violation of the U.N. Security
Council Resolution 1244, Cuse said.
Leader of the Democratic Reform Party of ethnic Albanians, which has
been fighting for multiethnic Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia and
Yugoslavia for years, thinks that there will be no democratic elections
in Kosovo and Metohija "because Kouchner has registered some 250,000
Albanians from Albania and Macedonia".
According to Cuse, they have entered Kosovo and Metohija through a
non-secured border crossing, forcefully moved in the houses of expelled
non-Albanian population, committed numerous robberies, murders and other
crime.
"Unfortunately, not only Kouchner, but also terrorist Hashim Thaqui
relies on them. In return, they have received "recognition" of being
Kosovo and Metohija residents on the basis of false, or even none ID-s,
despite the fact that authorized bodies in Serbia have computer records
on each Kosovo and Metohija resident, Cuse said.
---
* MEMBRI NORVEGESI DELL'UCKFOR RAZZIANO CASA SERBA
HTTP://www.serbia-info.com/news
Norwegian troops took money and gold
August 11, 2000
KFOR troops took money and gold
Kosovo Polje, August 10 (Tanjug) - During a three-hour search of a Serb
house, Norwegian KFOR troops based in Kosovo Polje took 7,500 DM and
gold, while the house owner Mirka Maksimovic ended in a health center,
spokesman of the Serbian National Assembly in Kosovo Polje Zivomir Vucic
stated.
Norwegian KFOR troops in full battle dress previously surrounded with
several jeeps a vehicle of the Serbian National Assembly chairman
Ratomir Maksimovic, Serbian National Assembly Executive Board vice
chairman Zvonko Mitic and Vucic, on the pretext of exercising a routine
check.
That "routine check has lasted for three hours with arms prepared to
fire. They took our personal data, demanded that we give them our home
phone numbers and took photos of us", Vucic said.
The harassment continued in front of Mirka Maksimovic's house, Ratomir
Maksimovic's mother. Norwegian troops then searched her house.
"Ratomir Maksimovic was in front of the house, Mitic and I were not
allowed to leave the car. They took 7,500 DM and gold from Mirka
Maksimovic's house. Being a serious diabetic, Mirka got sick and
received treatment in the health center", Vucic said.
This Norwegian KFOR troops' behaviour caused spontaneous gathering of
some 200 Serb residents in front of Mirka Maksimovic's house, Vucic
said, adding that the troops have sent off a Serb translator and brought
a uniformed ethnic Albanian one.
---
* LACRIME DI COCCODRILLO TURCHE PER LA SITUAZIONE IN KOSMET
http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=184668§ion=default
Ankara Urges UN to Improve Kosovo Turks' Rights
ANKARA, Aug 1, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Turkish
Foreign Minister Ismail Cem urged Monday the head of
the United Nations interim administration in Kosovo,
Bernard Kouchner, to boost the rights of the Turkish
community in the province, a Turkish official said...
-
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/dostinic/turk.htm
Turkey Weeps Crocodile Tears
by Dan Dostinic (8-3-00)
"Ankara urges UN to improve Kosovo Turks' rights." And therein
lies a tale...
www.tenc.net
A July 31 Agence France Presse (AFP) report states that "Turkish
Foreign Minister
Ismail Cem urged Monday the head of the United Nations interim
administration in
Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, to boost the rights of the Turkish community
in the province."
The article cites Huseyin Dirioz, a Turkish foreign ministry official.
Turkey's concern stems from the decision of some 60,000 Kosovo Turks to
boycott
municipal elections because the "UN mission did not issue registration
forms in Turkish."
The article further states that "the Turks enjoyed cultural autonomy
under Belgrade's rule
and did not join the Albanian struggle for independence although the
two communities
have a common faith in Islam."
AFP does not explore the implications of the statement that the Turks,
a minority in
Serbia as are Albanians, "enjoyed cultural autonomy under Belgrade's
rule" during the
period (i.e., the 1990s) when Albanians were fighting for
'independence.'
Didn't Western leaders claim they had no choice but to bomb Yugoslavia
to restore to
ethnic Albanians the cultural autonomy they had been supposedly denied
because the
Serbian "rulers" loathed their Muslim faith? And wasn't the Muslim
faith brought to - and
in many case forced on - the Balkans by...the Turks?
Is something wrong with this picture?
If Serbian officials hate Muslims, why is it that ethnic Turks in
Serbian Kosovo "enjoyed
cultural autonomy under Belgrade's rule"? And why are the Turks
complaining that now,
under enlightened NATO rule, they can't even get the UN to print
Turkish language
election ballots?
Could it be that Belgrade was speaking the truth?
Could it be that Yugoslavia never took away ethnic Albanians' cultural
autonomy, that is,
judicial functions, schools, hospitals and mass media in the Albanian
language? Could it
be that in fact the Albanian secessionist movement organized a boycott
of Albanian
language institutions (such as schools) in order to score propaganda
points with the
West? [See footnote 2]
And consider Turkey. Turkey was a strategic participant in the 78 day
bombing of
Yugoslavia which President Clinton said was necessary in order to
insure "respect for
minority rights." (Clinton, 'New York Times,' Op-ed, May 23, 1999)
And now Turkey has 1,000 troops in Kosovo.
According to recent reports, ethnic Albanians are complaining about
lawlessness in
Kosovo [Footnote 1] Refugees are afraid to return, fearing attacks by
Albanian
extremists. A recent UN report described the UN-created Kosovo
Protection Corps as
engaging in:
"criminal activities - killings, ill-treatment/torture, illegal
policing, abuse of
authority, intimidation, breaches of political neutrality and
hate speech." ( From
The UN appoints an alleged war criminal in Kosovo, by Michel
Chossudovsky, at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/unandthe.htm )
Given these conditions, shouldn't there be a renewal of demands for
inquiries in all
capitals that took part in the bombing of Yugoslavia? The question to
which we need an
answer is: WHY?
The AFP article closes with the following: "Cem warned that Turkey
could limit its
contributions to Kosovo's security if the rights of the Turkish
community were not
rectified."
What "security" Mr. Cem?
Dan Dostinic is a Canadian antiwar activist.
www.tenc.net
Footnotes
1) In "Concentration camps in Kosovo: The KLA Archipelago" Jared Israel
offers the
following amazing description of the brave new civil government which
the UN and
NATO have installed in Kosovo. The following is from the 'New York
Times, ' hardly an
opponent of US policy in Yugoslavia. The excerpt begins with a quote
from the 'Times':
'"Tahir Canolli, 49, ran a furniture store in Pristina for nearly
three decades. He,
like many businessmen, hoped that when he returned to Pristina
from the refugee
camps in Macedonia, the harassment he experienced under Serbs
would end."'
"Note [from Jared Israel] to readers: the "harassment under
Serbs" remark,
pasted onto the article without benefit of support or explanation
(how was he
harassed and how do we know he was?) is an example of the
Obligatory Bash
( http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/obligato.htm ) which can
be found in
virtually all articles about Yugoslavia. No matter what the
subject, and especially
if the subject is KLA terror, the writer or editor offers at
least one anti-Serbian
side-swipe just to remind readers that however awful the KLA and
NATO may
be, 'The Serbs' are worse. Note that 'The Serbs' are here treated
as an
undifferentiated mass, which is only fitting for an Evil People."
'"Instead, a group of KLA fighters arrived at his shop two
weeks ago
with a paper issued from 'The Ministry of Public Order'
demanding the
keys to his 1990 Audi 80 and his store.
''They were arrogant, brutal and rude,' he said, unfolding
the stamped
order that he now carries in his pocket. 'They told me that
if I did not
comply immediately they knew a cellar I might like to
visit."'
"A cellar? As in dungeon?
"The Times report ascends from the horrible to the surreal:
'"Within hours, $50,000 worth of furniture was loaded onto
trucks brought
by the officials who had demanded his keys. The looters not
only stripped
the store of its contents but also ripped out the heaters,
lamps and
mirrors. [!] They carted away 24 large flower boxes that had
been outside
the building. The next day several flower boxes of the same
design and
with the same kinds of plants were placed outside the
building where Mr.
Thaci works."
"Mr. Thaci was indulging his feminine side, yes? Now comes a bit
of humor,
perhaps unintended:
'"Mr. Thaci's appointees said that such confiscations,
especially of
state-owned buildings, were part of their effort to
determine property
ownership. They also defended the decision to begin
collecting money
from businesses, a practice many shop owners have labeled
'extortion.'"
"Ah, those troublesome shop owners! Always throwing around
labels!
"The article continues:
'"Mr. Canolli has spent hours outside Mr. Thaci's ministries
in recent
days in the hope that he can reclaim some of his property or
be
compensated for it. But each attempt has been rebuffed.
"'I saw the K.L.A. police inspector who gave me the
confiscation order
driving my car, although it had no license plates,' he said.
'I went to his
office but was told at the door that I should never come
back or attempt to
speak with him..'"(NY Times, July 29, 1999, my emphasis).
You can read
this article in full at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/reporter.htm
2) In her excellent introduction to the wars of secession in Yugoslavia
during the
1990s, Yugoslavia Seen Through a Dark Glass, Diana Johsnstone refers to
an ICG report
called Kosovo Spring, which talks about the boycott. Johnstone quotes
from the report:
24) "The March 24, 1998 report of the International Crisis Group
entitled 'Kosovo
Spring' notes that: 'In many spheres of life, including politics,
education and
health-care, the boycott by Kosovars of the Yugoslav state is
almost total.' In
particular, 'Kosovars refuse to participate in Serbian or
Yugoslavian political life.
The leading Yugoslav political parties all have offices in Kosovo
and claim some
Kosovar members, but essentially they are 'Serb-only'
institutions. In 1997
several Kosovars accused of collaborating with the enemy (i.e.
the Serbian
State) were attacked, including Charnilj Gasi, head of the
Socialist Party of
Serbia in Glagovac, and a deputy in the Yugoslav Assembly's House
of Citizens,
who was shot and wounded in November. The lack of interest of
Serb political
parties in wooing Kosovars is understandable. Kosovars have
systematically
boycotted the Yugoslav and Serbian elections since 1981,
considering them
events in a foreign country.'"
As Ms. Johnstone notes, the ICG is very much not a pro-Serbian
institution, merely one
that is required on occasion to tell the truth:
"The ICG, while scarcely pro-Serb in its conclusions,
nevertheless provides
information neglected by mainstream media. This is perhaps
because the ICG
addresses its findings to high-level decision-makers who need to
be in
possession of a certain number of facts, rather than to the
general public. Gasi
was not the only target of Albanian attacks on fellow Albanians
in the Glogovse
municipal district, situated in the Drenica region which the
"Kosovo Liberation
Army" (UCK) tried to control in early 1998. Others included
forester Mujo Sejd,
52, killed by machine-gun fire near his home on January 12, 1998;
postman
Mustafa Kurtaj, 26, killed on his way to work by a group firing
automatic rifles;
factory guard Rusdi Ladrovci, ambushed and killed with automatic
weapons
apparently after refusing to turn over his official arm to the
UCK; among others.
On April 10, 1998, men wearing camouflage uniforms and insignia
of the Army of
Albania fired automatic weapons at a passenger car carrying four
ethnic Albanian
officials of the Socialist Party of Serbia including Gugna Adem,
President of the
Suva Reka Municipal Board, who was gravely injured; and Ibro
Vait, member of
the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and President of
the SPS district
board in the city of Prizren. Numerous such attacks have been
reported by the
Yugoslav news agency Tanjug, but Western media have shown scant
interest in
the fate of ethnic Albanians willing to live Serbs in
multi-ethnic Serbia." ( Quoted
from Through a Dark Glass at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/1yugo.htm
www.tenc.net
---
* ANCORA DIVISIONI DENTRO "MEDICI SENZA FRONTIERE" PER IL TERRORE DELLA
NATO IN KOSMET
NOTA: Tra i fondatori di "Medici senza frontiere", ONG premio Nobel che
ha gia' espulso la sua sezione greca perche' "aiutava i serbi", c'e'
l'attuale amministratore coloniale ONU, il serbofobo Kouchner.
http://www.nandotimes.com/no_frames/global/story/0,4382,500236922-500346724-502000175-0,00.html
Global: Humanitarian doctors leave Kosovo in protest
The Associated Press
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (August 7, 2000 5:16 p.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) - Accusing the United
Nations of allowing ethnic cleansing to continue in
Kosovo, the Belgian branch of the humanitarian group
Doctors Without Borders announced Monday it was
leaving the embattled area.
Doctors Without Borders "can no longer tolerate the
serious and continuous deterioration of living
conditions of the ethnic minorities in Kosovo," the
group said in a statement released in Pristina. French
teams from Doctors Without Borders will remain in the
province.
The group said the Belgian doctors had been
"eyewitnesses to the daily harassment and terror
against the Serb minority in (the towns of) Vucitrn
and Srbica and the Albanian minority in (the northern
part of Kosovska) Mitrovica."
The group said life for ethnic minorities was marked
by killings, drive-by shootings, hand grenade attacks,
verbal abuse, threats, robbery and blackmail. Many had
been forced to leave their homes, the group said.
More than a year after NATO and the United Nations
marched into Kosovo, mistrust and violence still
fester between ethnic Albanians, Serbs and other
minority groups. International officials make almost
daily appeals for tolerance, saying ethnic tensions
are preventing the southern Serb province from
achieving economic and social progress.
"Doctors Without Borders questions the appropriateness
of humanitarian medical and psychological assistance
when, in the presence of internationally mandated
protection forces, the fundamental rights of people
are being denied," the statement said.
The Paris-based group, which was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1999, has worked in Kosovo since 1993.
It provides home-based care in the ethnically divided
city of Kosovska Mitrovica.
---
* IL RUOLO NEFASTO DEL SENATORE STATUNITENSE LIEBERMAN
HTTP://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,206755,00.html
The Guardian (UK)
April 9, 1999
Democratic US senator Joe Lieberman, who introduced the Kosovo Self
Defence Act on March 25
"If, after extended air strikes, it becomes clear that Mr Milosevic
intends to continue his war of aggression, we must have an answer to the
question of what next? The bill we are proposing provides us with such
an answer, and an opportunity to send an uncompromising message to Mr
Milosevic: we will not stand idly by and allow him to brutalise the
people of Kosovo any longer..."
-
Joseph Lieberman, the KLA and Heroin
http://www.canadianserbs.com/war_stories/kosovo/facts_kosovo_drugkla.htm
Kosovo War: KLA finances war with heroin sales
May 3, 1999 - By Jerry Seper
The Kosovo Liberation Army, which the Clinton administration has
embraced and some members of
Congress want to arm as part of the NATO bombing campaign, is a
terrorist organization that has
financed much of its war effort with profits from the sale of
heroin.
Recently obtained intelligence documents show that drug agents in
five countries, including the
United States, believe the KLA has aligned itself with an
extensive organized crime network
centered in Albania that smuggles heroin and some cocaine to
buyers throughout Western Europe
and, to a lesser extent, the United States.
The documents tie members of the Albanian Mafia to a drug
smuggling cartel based in Kosovo's
provincial capital, Pristina. The cartel is manned by ethic
Albanians who are members of the Kosovo
National Front, whose armed wing is the KLA. The documents show it
is one of the most powerful
heroin smuggling organizations in the world, with much of its
profits being diverted to the KLA to
buy weapons.
The clandestine movement of drugs over a collection of land and
sea routes from Turkey through
Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia to Western Europe and elsewhere is
so frequent and massive that
intelligence officials have dubbed the circuit the "Balkan Route."
Mr. Clinton has committed air power and is considering the use of
ground troops to support the
Kosovo rebels against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Last
week, Sen. Mitch McConnell,
Kentucky Republican, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut
Democrat, called on the United
States to arm the KLA so ethnic Albanians in Kosovo could defend
themselves against the Serbs.
Mr. McConnell and Mr. Lieberman introduced a bill that would
provide $25 million to equip 10,000
men or 10 battalions with small arms and anti-tank weapons for up
to 18 months.
In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA -- formally
known as the Ushtria Clirimtare e
Kosoves, or UCK -- as an international terrorist organization,
saying it had bankrolled its
operations with proceeds from the international heroin trade and
from loans from known terrorists
like Osama bin Laden. "They were terrorists in 1998 and now,
because of politics, they're freedom
fighters," said one top drug official who asked not to be
identified.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in a recent report, said
the heroin is smuggled along
the Balkan Route in cars, trucks and boats initially to Austria,
Germany and Italy, where it is routed
to eager buyers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Great
Britain. Some of the white powder, the DEA report said, finds its
way to the United States.
The DEA report, prepared for the National Narcotics Intelligence
Consumer's Committee (NNICC),
said a majority of the heroin seized in Europe is transported over
the Balkan Route. It said drug
smuggling organizations composed of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were
considered "second only to
Turkish gangs as the predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan
Route." The NNICC is a
coalition of federal agencies involved in the war on drugs.
"Kosovo traffickers were noted for their use of violence and for
their involvement in international
weapons trafficking," the DEA report said.
A separate DEA document, written last month by U.S. drug agents in
Austria, said that while the
war in the former Yugoslavia had reduced the drug flow to Western
Europe along the Balkan Route,
new land routes have opened across Romania, Hungary and the Czech
Republic. The report said,
however, the diversion appeared to be only temporary.
The DEA estimated that between four and six metric tons of heroin
leaves each month from Turkey
bound for Western Europe, the bulk of it traveling over the Balkan
Route.
A second high-ranking U.S. drug official, who also requested
anonymity, said government and
police corruption in Kosovo, along with widespread poverty
throughout the region, had contributed
to an increase in heroin trafficking by the KLA and other ethnic
Albanians. The official said drug
smuggling is "out of control" and little is being done by
neighboring states to get a handle on it.
"This is the definition of the wild, wild West," said the
official. "The bombing has slowed it down, but
has not brought it to a halt. And, eventually, it will pick up
where it left off."
The heroin trade along the Balkan Route has been of concern to
several countries:
The Greek representative of Interpol reported in 1998 that
Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were "the
primary sources of supply for cocaine and heroin in that country."
Intelligence officials in France said in a recent report the KLA
was among several organizations in
southern Europe that had built a vast drug-smuggling network.
France's Geopolitical Observatory
of Drugs said in the report that the KLA was a key player in the
rapidly expanding drugs-for-arms
business and helped transport $2 billion worth of drugs annually
into Western Europe.
German drug agents have estimated that $1.5 billion in drug
profits is laundered annually by Kosovo
smugglers, through as many as 200 private banks or
currency-exchange offices. They noted in a
recent report that ethnic Albanians had established one of the
most prominent drug smuggling
organizations in Europe.
Jane's Intelligence Review estimated in March that drug sales
could have netted the KLA profits in
the "high tens of millions of dollars." The highly regarded
British-based journal noted at the time
that the KLA had rearmed itself for a spring offensive with the
aid of drug money, along with
donations from Albanians in Western Europe and the United States.
Several leading intelligence officials said the KLA has, in part,
financed its purchase of AK-47s,
semiautomatic rifles, shotguns, handguns, grenade launchers,
ammunition, artillery shells,
explosives, detonators and anti-personnel mines through drug
profits -- cash laundered through
banks in Italy, Germany and Switzerland. They also said KLA rebels
have paid for weapons using the
heroin itself as currency.
The profits, according to the officials, also have been used to
purchase anti-aircraft and anti-armor
rockets, along with electronic surveillance equipment.
-
http://www.antiwar.com/szamuely/pf/p-sz081000.html
Decline of The West
by George Szamuely - Antiwar.com
August 10, 2000
Joe Lieberman and the Gangsta State
"Determined to transform a potential liability into a defining asset,
Vice President Al Gore today
formally introduced Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut as his
Democratic running mate
and portrayed his selection of Mr. Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, as a
measure of his devotion to
tolerance and his willingness to break barriers" – thus the New York
Times's (8/9/00) entirely
predictable attempt to bully people into voting for Al Gore...
-
http://www.originalsources.com/OS8-00MQC/8-10-2000.1.html
The Media’s Inaccurate Report Creates Lieberman "Anti-Semitic" Incident
Milking the "Jewish Connection" Portrays Lieberman as a "Victim"
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
August 10, 2000
On Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, Vice President Gore introduced
Connecticut Sen. Joseph I.
Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate and said the inclusion
of the "first Jew on a
national ticket would help tear down a mighty wall of division." ...
-
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/garris/duringthe2.htm
Senator Lieberman - Apologist for the fascist KLA
by Jared Israel and Eric Garris (8-10-00)
"And so this Lieberman, who makes a public spectacle of his
religious beliefs, who
pontificates from a pinnacle higher than Morality, this Lieberman
fronts for the KLA,
self-proclaimed heirs to the Balli Kombëtar, the World War II
Albanian fascists (3) who
are responsible for the deaths of almost all the Jews in Kosovo.
Note that since being put
in power by NATO and the UN, the KLA has driven from Kosovo those
Jews who
escaped the Balli Kombëtar during W.W. II, driven out those
survivors of the Holocaust
and their descendants.(4)" [Excerpt from "Senator Lieberman -
Apologist for the fascist
KLA"]
www.tenc.net
In April, 1999, during the NATO War against Yugoslavia, an attempt was
made in Congress to
officially fund the arming of the Kosovo Liberation (sic!) Army (sic!
again) or KLA. Along with
Sen. John McCain, Sen. Joseph Lieberman sponsored the "Kosovo
Self-Defense Act." The text of
the statement Lieberman made at the time is posted below.
Here are a few observations to help put Lieberman's actions in
perspective.
There is virtually no doubt that at the time Lieberman was calling on
Congress to arm the KLA,
the US was already covertly providing arms and training to that
secessionist-terrorist group. As
early as the fall of 1998 we know that the Kosovo Verification Mission
was setting up tactical
liaison with and providing training for the KLA (1), all under the
guidance of seasoned US death
squad liaison expert, William Walker. (2)
In February a Bosnian Islamist daily published the following:
"TRAINING OF KLA MEMBERS IN US?
"According to Tirana daily newspapers, the Albanian Minister of
Foreign Affairs Paskal
Milo said that KLA members will be trained in the US. During his
meeting with US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Milo was informed that
Albanian guerrilla members
from Kosovo would be sent to the US for training. Milo added that
this was a promise,
which Albright gave him personally." ('NEVNI AVAZ' or 'Daily
Voice,' pro-Islamist
Sarajevo daily, 26 Feb 99)
Does a promise, apparently made by US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright in February, 1999,
to openly train the KLA contradict our assertion that the US was already
covertly training the
KLA long before February?
We don't think so. Rather, the promise of open training represented an
escalation in illegality by
the US government.
Consider, if you will, what it meant for the US to train the KLA.
1) The US was not at war with Yugoslavia in February, 1999.
2) In February, Albright described Kosovo as "a region of
Yugoslavia about the size of
Connecticut," i.e. admitted it was part of a sovereign country.
3) In February, Albright called the KLA a "sometimes brutal and
indiscriminate"
secessionist group devoted to a "simple answer to the tragedy of
Kosovo: independence
from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." (Quotes are from
"Madeleine Albright delivers
remarks on Kosovo at the Institute of Peace," Feb. 4, 1999)
For the US to train the KLA secretly was therefore to secretly violate
national sovereignty, the
cornerstone of international law. But to promise open support for
violent secessionists was to
uphold the US government's right to openly and flagrantly violate
national sovereignty, the
cornerstone of international law.
In another statement in February, Albright described how the
'international community' (led by the
US) would respond if the KLA didn't cooperate with US wishes:
"And if the Kosovar's [i.e., the KLA] crater this, it is obviously
more complicated because
there's not one any center, but they will lose the support of the
international community
and find themselves increasingly isolated and they can't operate
without the
community...('ABC this Week,' Feb. 7. 1999, our emphasis)
Obviously the KLA couldn't "lose the support of the international
community," that is, of the U.S.,
unless it had it to lose. As Albright noted, the KLA "cannot operate
without" this support. So US
Secretary of State Albright was admitting that the US government made it
possible for the KLA to
conduct terrorist attacks on Yugoslavia, a sovereign country. And mind
you, all this was weeks
before the failure of the so-called negotiations at Rambouillet.
Significance of Lieberman's 'Arm-the-KLA' Resolution
The point of the "Kosovo Self-Defense Act" was not that it was needed in
order for the KLA to
get U.S. weapons. Rather, it was intended to openly involve the US
Senate in a crime of war and
to prepare public opinion for viewing the vicious KLA fascists as
freedom fighters deserving
popular support. Lieberman refers to the KLA as "Kosovan military
forces" at a time (April 9,
1999) when the KLA was largely isolated, even among secessionist-minded
Albanians. And note,
that "Kosovan military forces" suggest there is some legitimate nation
of "Kosova" though no
such has ever existed, except as a Nazi creation. Indeed, the very word
"Kosova" is meaningless
in the Albanian language. (5)
And so this Lieberman, who makes a public spectacle of his religious
beliefs, who pontificates
from a pinnacle higher than Morality, this Lieberman fronts for the KLA,
self-proclaimed heirs to
the Balli Kombëtar, the World War II Albanian fascists (3) who are
responsible for the deaths of
almost all the Jews in Kosovo. Note that since being put in power by
NATO and the UN, the KLA
has driven from Kosovo those Jews who escaped the Balli Kombëtar during
W.W. II, driven out
those survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants.(4)
Following is the statement Sen. Lieberman gave to 'The Guardian' (UK) on
April 9, 1999.
"If, after extended air strikes, it becomes clear that Mr.
Milosevic intends to continue his
war of aggression, we must have an answer to the question of what
next? The bill we are
proposing provides us with such an answer, and an opportunity to
send an uncompromising
message to Mr Milosevic: we will not stand idly by and allow him
to brutalise the people
of Kosovo any longer.
This bill is premised on our belief that Nato ground forces will
not be put into Kosovo
unless the Serbs and Kosovans reach a peace agreement. If we adopt
that stance, though,
and Serbian aggression continues, we have an obligation to allow
the Kosovans to defend
themselves. Our legislation, by providing aid to the Kosovan
military forces, would give
them a fair chance to fight for their families and their future.
"I am aware that this proposal will raise some concerns. I recall
that when I first raised
the idea of training and equipping the Bosnian army, many critics
told us that we would
destabilise an entire region or accelerate an arms race. In the
end, I think those concerns
were shown to be misguided.
"Training and equipping the Bosnians enhanced the stability of the
area and helped end the
Bosnian war. The situation in Kosovo is different. But that does
not diminish the suffering
of the Kosovan people subjected to Serb aggression, nor negate
their right to defend their
families from the threat of genocide."
***
Further reading...
1) See 'The Cat is Out of the Bag" at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/ciaaided.htm
2) On William Walker's death squad credentials see 'Meet Mr. Massacre'
at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/meetmr.htm
3) On fascism in Kosovo see George Thompson's 'The roots of Kosovo
fascism' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/thompson/rootsof.htm
4) 'Driven from Kosovo: Jewish Leader Blames NATO - Interview With Cedda
Prlincevic' at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/prlincevic.htm
(5) '''KosovA' 'KosovO' - What's in a Name?'' by Prof. J. Peter Maher at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/JP%20maher/InAname.html
If you find Emperor's Clothes useful, we can sure use your help.
All our expenses are covered by individual donations. Any donation will
help with our work.
To make a donation, please mail a check to Emperor's Clothes at P.O. Box
610-321, Newton, MA
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Or call 617 916-1705. Thanks very much!
www.tenc.net
---
* DOVE SONO FINITE LE ARMI DELLA "RIVOLTA DELLE PIRAMIDI"?
http://www.albaniannews.com
Albanian Daily News
August 10, 2000
"The Kosovars [KLA] acquired some state-of-the-art
weapons from western European countries and the U.S.,
but they relied for most of the weaponry on smuggling
through Albania's porous mountainous border."
Half of Guns Smuggled Abroad
TIRANA - Government officials say that half of some
700,000 weapons looted from army barracks have been
smuggled into neighbouring countries, while the
“complete disarming” of the population should take two
more years.
Minister of Public Order Spartak Poci said on Tuesday
that “only half” of the guns taken from army bases in
the 1997 turmoil still remain in the country.
“A considerable amount of weapons that were looted
from the army are not inside Albania’s borders, but
were smuggled abroad,” Poci said. “According to our
estimates, only 50 percent of the guns remain in
Albania, the rest were smuggled abroad.”
The minister did not provide any details on how the
government estimated the number of guns smuggling.
Unofficial sources said that this a rough estimate
based on the number of weapons seized and still in
possession in Kosovo, and figures from Italian and
Greek police gun-hunt operations.
Kosovo’s restive ethnic Albanian population was armed
thanks to a state breakdown in Albania, that made
impossible its control of the borders and army bases.
The Kosovo Liberation Army emerged as an organised
armed force in the second half of ‘97, a few months
after the riots.
The Kosovars acquired some state-of-the-art weapons
from western European countries and the US, but they
relied for most of the weaponry on smuggling through
Albania’s porous mountainous border.
Weapons were also smuggled to Italy and Greece to fuel
the local underworld there.
Albanian police have seized only 130,000 weapons,
mainly through voluntarily handing in, and from
development-for-weapons programmes.
Minister Poci said that a similar operation launched
at the beginning of this year, with the cooperation of
international donor organisations and western
government funds, yielded more than 40,000 weapons in
seven months. In addition, the police seized more than
3.5 million bullets, and military equipment such as
high-power explosives and heavy weapons.
“The disarming operation has given some impressive
results, but we will have to postpone the disarming
deadline for two more years,” said Poci, in a meeting
on disarmament in the central town of Elbasan.
The new deadline is set for August 13, 2002. The
minister said that the two-year deadline postponement
is a “sufficient period of time” to complete the
disarming process.
“The Albanian will be totally convinced that weapons
are no longer needed for their families,” Poci said,
failing to elaborate on his belief that the time
schedule was right.
Earlier this year the police found in one barn seven
air-to air missiles looted from the Gjadri air base.
When the police started the population disarming late
in ‘97, some people handed over tanks they had parked
in their backyards.
Elbasan, some 50 kilometres from Tirana, and the
surrounding villages are supposed to complete the
disarming by Sunday, August 13, this year but the
police and the local authorities have failed to meet
their target.
Some $1.5 million were invested in infrastructure
improvement, within the framework of a
development-for-weapons programme funded by the UN
Development Programme, and the governments of United
States, Britain and Denmark.
The police chief of Elbasan, Edmond Koseni, said the
police are still continuing to search for weapons, but
the priority is given to voluntarily handing over the
guns.
---
* LINK SEGNALATI
-> http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Commentary/20000809/COKOSOVO.html
Toronto Globe and Mail
NATO in Kosovo: in bed with a scorpion
The KLA is running drugs and refuelling conflict.
No wonder even innocent tourists can get arrested
SUNIL RAM
Wednesday, August 9, 2000
-> http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/chomskymay2000.htm
Foreign Policy
In Retrospect
A review of NATO’s war over Kosovo, Part II
By Noam Chomsky
The absurdity of the principle of retrospective justification is,
surely,
recognized at some level. Accordingly, many attempts to justify
the NATO
bombing take a different tack. One typical version is that “Serbia
assaulted
Kosovo to squash a separatist Albanian guerrilla movement, but
killed
10,000 civilians and drove 700,000 people into refuge in Macedonia
and
Albania. NATO attacked Serbia from the air in the name of
protecting the
Albanians from ethnic cleansing [but] killed hundreds of Serb
civilians and
provoked an exodus of tens of thousands from cities into the
countryside.”
Assuming that order of events, a rationale for the bombing can be
constructed. But uncontroversially, the actual order is the
opposite...
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