Sex Slavery / La tratta delle bianche nei Balcani
(sull'argomento si veda anche:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2128
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2035
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1831 )
---
Excerpts from:
"So Many Fronts, So Little Sense"
by Christopher Deliso in Kumanovo (January 18, 2003)
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/deliso66.html
(...) One of our favorite Balkan commentators, Dr. Sam
Vaknin, raises the issue of America's blemished record
abroad in terms of peacekeeping missions in an
incendiary piece on the old Central European Review.
Using the example of the rape and murder of a 13 year-old
Albanian girl by American sergeant Frank Ronghi,
Vaknin touches on the root of the problem - a colonizer
mentality whereby "natives come cheap, their lives
dispensable": "Ronghi, described as a
wholesome American phenomenon by friends,
family and commanders, blamed the day: "I don't know
what went wrong that day," he said. He might as well have
been discussing a scorched omelette.
Devoid of all emotion or compunction, he added
stolidly, reading from a crumpled piece of paper his
lines of what evidently was, to him, merely a bad script. "I
apologize from the bottom of my heart to the family. I ask
them for my forgiveness" (sic! How Freudian!). He added:
"I never did anything wrong before. I know what I did was
very wrong. That's why I pleaded guilty." In other
words: I am a good and upright man, who can tell
right from wrong and who assumes responsibility for his
wrongful acts. The brutal rape and thrashing to death
of a pre-adolescent girl is the exception in an otherwise
commendable life and virtuous conduct.
But Ronghi was unfazed by what he did. To bury Merita's
body, ensconced in two UN flour sacks, under the
staircase in the basement, Ronghi took with him another
soldier, a private, who finally turned him in. He told him:
"(it was) easy to get away with something like this in a
Third World country." Sergeant Christopher Rice,
who was on duty the night Ronghi murdered the child,
added: "he knew because he'd done it before in the
desert (in operation 'Desert Storm' in Iraq)."
(...)
On another level, as Dr. Vaknin points out, is the role
of peacekeepers in local crime and corruption. Indeed,
international peacekeepers may prop up local service
industries, but they also help retard the development of a
legal economy in transition countries. The Balkans, to cite
one example, is absolutely spilling over with sordid
stories, most of them unpublished. Worst of all is
the "untouchable" mentality that military (and military
liaison) employees develop, a natural result of having
enormous salaries in impoverished lands. Take the
Dyncorp boys in Bosnia
[http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/163052.html%5d,
with their 13 year-old imported sex slaves. In Kosovo
[http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/sslav.htm%5d,
American KFOR troops were reported to be helping the
Albanian mafia smuggle in girls from Eastern European
countries.
Macedonia is bursting with such stories. Preston
Mendenhall of MSNBC [
http://www.msnbc.com/news/725802.asp?pne=msn&cp1=1]
investigated the role of KFOR soldiers in the prostitution
business here [http://www.msnbc.com/news/842092.asp?0cv=NA01&cp1=1].
It is common knowledge that American
(and Macedonian) employees of Brown & Root made small
fortunes on corrupt dealings involving military and logistic
supplies. This not only drains American tax dollars, it also
perpetuates Macedonia's current colonization, by
pushing the reliance on easy money. Macedonians and
Albanians alike learn to ingratiate themselves with the
colonizers - thus stripping themselves of the time and
ability to do anything positive for their country.
(...)
(sull'argomento si veda anche:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2128
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2035
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1831 )
---
Excerpts from:
"So Many Fronts, So Little Sense"
by Christopher Deliso in Kumanovo (January 18, 2003)
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/deliso66.html
(...) One of our favorite Balkan commentators, Dr. Sam
Vaknin, raises the issue of America's blemished record
abroad in terms of peacekeeping missions in an
incendiary piece on the old Central European Review.
Using the example of the rape and murder of a 13 year-old
Albanian girl by American sergeant Frank Ronghi,
Vaknin touches on the root of the problem - a colonizer
mentality whereby "natives come cheap, their lives
dispensable": "Ronghi, described as a
wholesome American phenomenon by friends,
family and commanders, blamed the day: "I don't know
what went wrong that day," he said. He might as well have
been discussing a scorched omelette.
Devoid of all emotion or compunction, he added
stolidly, reading from a crumpled piece of paper his
lines of what evidently was, to him, merely a bad script. "I
apologize from the bottom of my heart to the family. I ask
them for my forgiveness" (sic! How Freudian!). He added:
"I never did anything wrong before. I know what I did was
very wrong. That's why I pleaded guilty." In other
words: I am a good and upright man, who can tell
right from wrong and who assumes responsibility for his
wrongful acts. The brutal rape and thrashing to death
of a pre-adolescent girl is the exception in an otherwise
commendable life and virtuous conduct.
But Ronghi was unfazed by what he did. To bury Merita's
body, ensconced in two UN flour sacks, under the
staircase in the basement, Ronghi took with him another
soldier, a private, who finally turned him in. He told him:
"(it was) easy to get away with something like this in a
Third World country." Sergeant Christopher Rice,
who was on duty the night Ronghi murdered the child,
added: "he knew because he'd done it before in the
desert (in operation 'Desert Storm' in Iraq)."
(...)
On another level, as Dr. Vaknin points out, is the role
of peacekeepers in local crime and corruption. Indeed,
international peacekeepers may prop up local service
industries, but they also help retard the development of a
legal economy in transition countries. The Balkans, to cite
one example, is absolutely spilling over with sordid
stories, most of them unpublished. Worst of all is
the "untouchable" mentality that military (and military
liaison) employees develop, a natural result of having
enormous salaries in impoverished lands. Take the
Dyncorp boys in Bosnia
[http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/163052.html%5d,
with their 13 year-old imported sex slaves. In Kosovo
[http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/sslav.htm%5d,
American KFOR troops were reported to be helping the
Albanian mafia smuggle in girls from Eastern European
countries.
Macedonia is bursting with such stories. Preston
Mendenhall of MSNBC [
http://www.msnbc.com/news/725802.asp?pne=msn&cp1=1]
investigated the role of KFOR soldiers in the prostitution
business here [http://www.msnbc.com/news/842092.asp?0cv=NA01&cp1=1].
It is common knowledge that American
(and Macedonian) employees of Brown & Root made small
fortunes on corrupt dealings involving military and logistic
supplies. This not only drains American tax dollars, it also
perpetuates Macedonia's current colonization, by
pushing the reliance on easy money. Macedonians and
Albanians alike learn to ingratiate themselves with the
colonizers - thus stripping themselves of the time and
ability to do anything positive for their country.
(...)