Kosova Crisis Center
link to alb-net
U.S. families apply to take 1,500
Kosova refugees (CNN)
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) -- Families in the United States have offered to take in 1,500
ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosova, the State Department said Wednesday.
The United States agreed earlier this month to take up to 20,000 of the Kosova refugees,
mainly to relieve the burden on Macedonia, which was overwhelmed by the influx at the
time.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees from the southern Yugoslav province have streamed into
Albania and Macedonia, saying they were driven from their homes by Serb forces.
At first Washington planned to move 20,000 to Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. base on Cuba, where
they would not have the right to seek asylum, but the present plan is to match them up as
far as possible with Albanian-American relatives.
State Department spokesman James Rubin said U.S. families had filled in forms for the
1,500 refugees and a U.S. team was in the Balkans trying to work out a system for the
move.
On Monday the White House said some of the Kosova refugees might go to Fort Dix Army Base
in New Jersey for processing before they move on to stay with families.
But the clear preference is to make all the preliminary arrangements in the Balkans before
they leave.
"Family reunification is the focus in our offer to relocate up to 20,000 refugees
from Macedonia and Albania who have relatives in the United States," Rubin said.
"We believe that permitting refugees to be with loved ones here in the United States
is the most humanitarian way of handling this situation. We will also relocate some
refugees in vulnerable circumstances, such as health problems," he added.
The refugees who come to the United States will acquire some rights to residence as soon
as they land but the administration expects to persuade the vast majority to go back to
Kosova when the crisis is over.
"We're going to try to create the conditions that would encourage them to go home.
The kind of programs and methods that we would use, such as return payments and
counseling, would increase the chances of them going home," Rubin said.
State Department officials said they recognized that some of the Kosova Albanians might
end up as immigrants but Washington had little choice but to let them in.
Almost all people resident in the United States can apply to bring in Kosova relatives,
included people who are themselves refugees or asylum seekers.
They can ask to take in any close relatives, including grandparents, grandchildren, uncles
and aunts, nephews, nieces and first cousins.
Ten voluntary agencies are acting as intermediaries in the reception and placement
program, which is unlikely to start operations for at least some days.
"I don't know exactly when the first people will be coming, but it will not be in the
next days," Brian Atwood, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International
Development, told a briefing Wednesday.
Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov complained at the end of last weekend's NATO summit
that many of the Western countries had not yet kept their promise to take in refugees.
Macedonia has 142,650 of them and Albania has 367,200, according to latest estimates from
the U.N. refugee agency. Up to 4,000 refugees arrived in Macedonia Wednesday, the office
of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said.
Atwood, who visited the Balkans from April 18 to 21, said the performance of international
relief agencies "has been spotty," particularly in the early days, but was
improving.
"This is not a field of dreams. You don't build refugee camps in the hopes they will
come," he added.
For more information please visit http://www.refugee.org
Caravan halted, 100 men slain,
refugees say (W. Post)
BY JAMES RUPERT WASHINGTON POST
MORINA, Albania--Yugoslav troops pulled more than 100 men from a caravan of ethnic
Albanians fleeing along a Kosova roadway Tuesday, forced them to kneel in a nearby field
and apparently executed them, refugees arriving in Albania said Wednesday.
The killings took place near the town of Meja in southwestern Kosova, the refugees said.
After the men's families were ordered to continue their journey, another caravan of ethnic
Albanians that passed the scene hours later reported seeing the field littered with
bodies.
The two caravans crossed the border from Kosova into Albania hours apart Wednesday as part
of a stream of about 4,000 new exiles. Officials with the United Nations refugee agency
said they had interviewed 60 wagonloads of refugees who told of being halted at the field
near Meja and that many reported the detention of male relatives.
``We found that six out of seven had men pulled out ... anywhere from two to six each,''
said Ray Wilkinson, a UN refugee official. ``We've talked to at least 20 people who've
reported seeing the bodies. We're confident of the basic facts but less certain about the
numbers.''
If estimates by refugees prove true--most accounts said between 100 and 200 men were
detained in the field--the killings could be the largest single corroborated mass
execution since a Yugoslav offensive in Kosova began last month.
The incidents took place just west of the city of Djakovica, which has been the scene of
other reported atrocities by Serb forces. The route taken by the refugees led them along
the same highway that was bombed by NATO warplanes earlier this month, causing what Serb
authorities said were scores of civilians deaths.
In Macedonia, the surge of arrivals deepened the risk of unrest and health problems at
overflowing tent cities, relief officials said. At the Stankovic camp, which holds 42,000
ethnic Albanians, residents fought over bread Wednesday as buses shuttled in newcomers
from the border.
Aid officials in Macedonia worry that further crowding could cause an outbreak of violence
in the camps.
``If we get another trainload or two and a few busloads again today, it's really going to
be a horrific situation there in terms of overcrowding,'' said Kris Janowski, a spokesman
for the UN refugee agency in Geneva.
Actor Richard Gere Visits Albanian
Refugees in Macedonia
Actor Richard Gere signed autographs while visiting a camp holding ethnic Albanians driven
from Kosova.
The Hollywood star, known for his support of Tibet's struggle against China, plans to
spend three days in Macedonia.
He will talk to relief officials and visit sites holding some of the 135,000 refugees who
have taken refuge in Macedonia.
Serb Death Squad? Police probe
death threat against BBC boss
By Ralph Gowling
LONDON, April 29 - The BBC said on Thursday police were investigating a death threat
against its head of news but declined comment on reports that alleged Serb guerrillas had
claimed responsibility for killing television star Jill Dando.
The mass circulation Mirror tabloid said in a front-page report that a male caller
claiming to represent a Serb death squad had phoned the BBC with the warning: "We
killed Jill Dando. We will kill Tony Hall next."
Hall, 48-year-old chief executive of BBC News, had been moved from his home with his wife
and two children and placed under 24-hour armed police guard, the newspaper said.
The Guardian carried a similar report, adding that the caller said the shooting of
37-year-old Dando on Monday was a revenge attack for last week's NATO raid on Serbian
television studios in Belgrade.
A BBC spokeswoman told Reuters: "I can confirm that a death threat has been made
against Mr Hall. It is being dealt with by Scotland Yard (police headquarters)." The
spokeswoman declined to elaborate.
A vigil for loved ones at the
Albania-Kosova border (CS Monitor)
Ethnic Albanians have come from near and far to search for relatives among the waves of
refugees fleeing Kosova.
Jonathan S. Landay Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
MORINA, ALBANIA
They have traveled the length of Albania, from the lowlands of the south to the rain-swept
mountainous north, scouring dozens of refugee camps, scanning hundreds of registries with
tens of thousands of names, and questioning scores of people.
They have slept in their car, dingy hotels, and the homes of kind strangers; they've
placed ads in newspapers and an announcement on state-run television. But one month and
almost 2,000 miles into their odyssey, Ismet Ahmeti and Baskin Jashari have yet to locate
their relatives from Kosova - 33 in all.
This week has brought them in their mud-splattered automobile on a second trip to the
refugee camps of Kukes and the nearby Morina border post, the portal through which Serbian
"ethnic cleansers" have driven most of the 367,000 ethnic Albanian refugees now
in Albania.
Mr. Ahmeti and Mr. Jashari, two longtime friends, are not alone. Untold numbers are
searching for relatives fleeing the Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosova. At the
trash-strewn Morina crossing, dozens of ethnic Albanians from Kosova linger from dawn
until dusk, aching to see loved ones emerge from behind a row of concrete tank traps and
cross the no man's land into the safety of Albania.
Refugee flow
But the vigils have become harder to keep. What was a human tidal wave has for unknown
reasons slowed to a trickle since April 18 - although the refugee flow to Albania and
Macedonia increased slightly yesterday.
And reports of Serbian atrocities are swelling by the day, deepening the dread of those on
watch. Refugees interviewed yesterday on the border say about 300 men had been pulled out
of their column of tractors and cars by the Serbs and forced to kneel in a field near the
village of Maja. What happened to them remains unknown, although many refugees fear they
have been killed.
Still, all those interviewed say they will persist for as long as they can. "I will
stay here until I lose all my hope or my family arrives," says Shaban Kamberi, a
father of five from Prizren, who last spoke to his wife three weeks ago from Switzerland,
where he was on a visit.
The slowdown in the exodus is also troubling international aid officials and NATO
governments, which believe large numbers of Kosova's 2 million majority ethnic Albanians
are still inside the war-ravaged province a month into NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. But
just how many remain - and what has happened to them - is unknown.
"Our immediate concern is their physical security," says Ray Wilkinson, a
spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "We
are a month into a crisis in which people are in a state of war, in which the controlling
authorities are intent on expelling, killing, and traumatizing [ethnic Albanians]. There
are obviously a lot of people on the run." He says the agency considers credible
reports that Serbian forces are confining people around potential NATO targets or
compelling them to dig graves and trenches.
One day this week, more than 100 ethnic Albanians wait outside the warped iron gates of
the border post. Some have arrived earlier from Kosova. Others have converged on Morina
from across Europe.
All hope to see a familiar face or catch a reassuring word from some of the several
hundred refugees dribbling in throughout the day in tractor-drawn wagons and cars and on
foot. Their attention is also drawn overhead to several American A-10 tank-buster aircraft
that are apparently hitting Serbian targets behind a nearby mountain, from where several
large blasts echo.
As each forlorn group of refugees is mobbed by photographers and handed water and food by
aid workers, watchers on a grassy bank crane their necks for a better view or saunter over
for closer looks. On this day, there are no reunions.
'We are up here every day'
More than 80 watchers are men from Petrovo, a village near the town of Prizren, who say
they were separated from their families, put on buses, and driven to the border by Serbian
police on April 22. "We are up here every day, just hoping that our families will
come," says a teacher, who declines to give his name because of fears for the safety
of his wife and children. "We are afraid they are using them for human shields."
Jashari, who works in Düsseldorf, Germany, installing ceilings with Ahmeti, also fears
the worst for his mother, his grandfather, grandmother, two aunts, and his brother and his
family. He says the last time he spoke to his mother and brother was by telephone March
24, when they told him that masked Serbian police were marauding through their hometown of
Vucitrn.
His anxiety deepened after meeting some neighbors in Kukes several days ago. They told him
they were among some 180 people who sought safety from Serbian shellfire in the basement
of his family's home. The next day they left for Macedonia but were stopped and turned
around by Serbian police. "When they went back, they saw my home was empty and had
been looted," says Jashari, whose wife and children live in Düsseldorf.
Ahmeti, whose wife and children also live in Düsseldorf, decided to come to Albania to
look for 25 family members, including his parents, after watching a news broadcast in
which he saw a niece sitting with other refugees on the steps of a building in Kukes.
"I think she was by herself because the camera moved very slowly and took in the
whole scene," he says. "I recorded the piece and studied it very closely,
playing it back slowly." He says he saw no other relatives.
With Jashari accompanying him, the pair drove through Austria, Switzerland, and Italy,
where they boarded a ferry for the Albanian port of Durres, arriving March 28. They have
been searching every day since, the names of Ahmeti's missing relatives written on a piece
of paper taped to a window of his car.
"We have been looking all over Albania - in Shkodra, Tirana, Korca, Elbassan, Lejza,
Kruje," he says, reeling off the names of most of Albania's main cities. "This
is the second time we have been here. I have gone through camps; I have looked at police
registries. I will make another tour of Albania if I have to."
By Jashari's count, the pair has visited more than 50 camps. They have also inquired after
their relatives among refugees living in factories, schools, and private homes. "I
feel like a machine," he says, standing outside a decrepit cafe near the border post.
"I don't know where else to go. If I was to return to Germany without my parents,
brothers, and sister, I could not stay there very long as they might be dying."
New Reports of Charred Bodies in a
Kosova Town (NY Times)
By ANTHONY DePALMA
KUKES, Albania -- United Nations officials said Wednesday that the latest group of
refugees entering Albania from Kosova -- almost exclusively women, old men and children --
are giving consistent reports of what appeared to be a mass execution near the city of
Djakovica.
Ray Wilkenson, a U.N. official, said the first group of refugees to cross the border on
Tuesday said they were forced to leave their homes in the villages of Meja and Oriza on
Tuesday morning. Serbian forces stopped the convoy and forced the young men to get out of
the wagons, they said.
Refugees who crossed the border a few hours later reported seeing more than 100 bodies in
a ditch and an open field.
"It looks very ominous," Wilkenson said. "If it is true, this would be one
of the single biggest atrocities" committed by Serbian forces in Kosova.
Many refugees who crossed the border Wednesday told international monitors that they, too,
had seen a large number of bodies in the center of Meja and throughout the village. Many
of the bodies had been burned, they said.
Some refugees reported that the men had been killed in retaliation for the deaths last
week of four Serbian police officers who had been shot by soldiers of the Kosova
Liberation Army.
"I didn't see it, but I know the policemen were killed because it happened just 300
feet from my house and I heard the shots," said Pashk Pnishi, 31, of Meja, who
entered Albania by car Wednesday afternoon with his mother, his wife and their three
children.
Interviewers with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees heard similar accounts of the
killing of four or five police officers from refugees on Wednesday.