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LETTERS OF SUPPORT

SERBIAN MASSACRES

 Updated at 2:20 PM on June 14, 1999

Freedom in Gjakova: Crowds Cheer "NATO, NATO" and "KLA, KLA"!

Gjakovë, June 14, (Kosovapress)

According the information provided by the 137th "Gjakova" Brigade, a long column of NATO military vehicles marched from Prizren through Gjakova and then went toward Peja. The inhabitants of Gjakova welcomed these forces cheering "NATO, NATO" and "KLA, KLA."

The atmosphere was filled with expressions of happiness and a flow of tears. The Albanian and NATO flags as well as banners reading "Kosova" and "Freedom" were passed from hand to hand.

This happy and free atmosfere was shared by the inhabitants and the soldiers of the 137th "Gjakova" Brigade alike. Although NATO forces have entered the city, Serb forces shelled as they withdrew today in the morning.

Two civilians hit mines in Shtime

Shtime, June 13, (Kosovapress)
Last night, two civilians hit mines in the place near the Shtime pines.According to our sources there one of them died while the other was injured but we have no information concerning their identity.

An Albanian Killed by a Serb in Uniform in Prishtina

Prishtina: In "Dubrovnik" St Nazmi Gojani was killed by one Serb in uniform at his house. In this case his wife and his 20 years old nephew have been injured.

Young Kosovars executed in Çikatova last night

Gllogoc,June 13, (Kosovapress) Serb forces removed from some villages of Drenica and now they took positions along the roads of Drenica. Rakinica , Vitak , Çubrel are still being shelled from Serb forces making in this way impossible moving of people and threat their security.

Some of the families that have been forced to live for months in the mountains now have started to return homes. Although their houses were burned and destroyed for them it means a lot only to be near them.The feeling of insecurity that Serb forces may be back any time, lives still among these civilians while it seems that International troops will be late to reach these places.

There are information that in this region everyday there are found dead bodies of the people massacred by Serb forces. Only during the last 3 days in the mountains of Obria and Plluzhina 11 dead bodies have been found.

KLA units are working now in cleaning the territory from mines and the great number of killed animals. Last night about 21.00 Serb forces have entered Çikatova and executed some of the youth of this village - witnesses Isa Xhemajli who managed to escape the execution.

Until now we could get no information about the number and identity of the executed persons.

It is suspected that Serb paramilitaries hide in Gjakovë

Gjakovë, June 13, (Kosovapress)
According to the information provided by the 137th "Gjakova" Brigade, Serb paramilitaries are plundering and burning down the Kosovar houses in the exit of Gjakova in direction of Prizreni and Peja.

It is suspected that Serb paramilitaries have not completely withdrawn from Gjakova and that they are hiding in mountains near the city and in the city itself.

According to the same sources, Serb forces have forced the Kosovar civilians who were seeking refugee in Berisha mountain to leave that place burning down all their shelter tends.They are in a very grave situation.

The dead body in Dobrosh identified

Gjakovë, June 13, (Kovapress)
An observer unit of the 137th "Gjakova"Brigade has informed us that the dead body found in the village of Dobrosh is identified. His name is Rexhep Rama (aged 85) from Dobroshi and he was buried by the members of this KLA unit.

We have information that 4 other dead bodies were found in Mejë, but they could have not been identified yet.

A massive grave discovered in Novolan

Vushtrri, June 13, (Kosovapress)
Today, in the village of Novolan in municipality of Vushtrri, the KLA soldiers have discovered a massive grave. It is suspected that 60 civilians have been buried there.

Two German reporters killed in Kosova (Radio21)

Two German reporters were shot dead in Kosova yesterday, some 40 kilometres south Prishtina, in a territory uncontrolled from NATO troops.

A spokesperson for the German troops said that one of the reporters died immediately, whereas the other died later in the hospital.

The incident happened close to a neighbourhood called Dulje, which was not under the control of the Canadian forces.

NATO troops kill one Serb and wound another in Prizren

NATO, German troops killed one Serb and wounded another in Prizren after they shoot and threatened NATO troops in the town.

The Serbs were in a car and they headed towards a German armoured vehicles with many civilians around, who were celebrating the arrival of NATO troops.

There were indications that the Serbs were trying to play the Kamikaze role. A German soldiers was wounded.

NATO forces marched yesterday through Prizren, Gjakova, to Peja.

Albanian civilians in Gjakova welcomed NATO forces with the slogans

"NATO, NATO", "UCK, UCK".

Albanian civilians hoisted the Albanian flag and NATO flag both.

Serb soldiers and paramilitaries were shooting while leaving the area.

NATO disarms Serb paramilitaries in Gjakova

NATO forces disarmed yesterday night a group of Serb paramilitaries in a disco club in Gjakova town.

The centre of the town has been blocked by the Serb police today, which plundered all the food packages sent there for the Albanian civilians.

Serb army and police is withdrawing from the area and Italian soldiers of NATO have been deployed in the main routes waiting for the German forces to come and be deployed in the town of Gjakova.

A 30-Minute Drive Ends in the Hugs of Neighbors (NY Times)

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

PRIZREN, Kosova -- A refugee from this town of old mosques and cobblestone streets crossed the border from Albania and drove home on Sunday. Zeqe Cocaj, 25, a prosperous baker, was cheered like a returning hero by the crowds of Kosova Albanians who lined the streets here.

"Zeqe!" shouted a friend who spotted Cocaj as he arrived in town behind the German tanks that had rolled in 20 miles from the Albanian border. "Are all of you alive? Are you all OK?"

Farther along in the mayhem of the streets, where children threw flowers at the tanks and men happily shouted "Bill Clinton, Albright!" to American reporters, Cocaj was stopped by a friend who grabbed his hand through the car window and cried: "We have electricity! We have water!"

Moments later he honked his horn and pulled over to greet a big group of friends, who shouted "Zeqe! Zeqe!" as they madly pounded on the roof of his car.

Then he turned up a side alley to 66 Vuk Karadjic, the big house in which he grew up and that he left in fear with his pregnant wife and two children on May 1, at 8:27 a.m., a moment he noted on his watch as he closed the door.

On Sunday he parked in front of the white stucco house with a tile roof, saw to his relief that it was undamaged, and was embraced by clamoring relatives and friends who had taken refuge in his house for the past two months and only on Sunday felt it was safe to go out. One 20-year-old neighbor, Skender Krasniqi, grabbed Cocaj in a bear hug, and then broke down in tears.

"I can't believe that I'm home," Cocaj said Sunday evening over a dinner of fried beef, his own bread and a salad of tomatoes and onions as he watched crowds cheer NATO tanks in the capital, Prishtina, on the family's television set.

Although there were bullet holes in neighborhood doors and windows, and Serbian troops in tanks were still driving close to Cocaj's street, his city, considered the most beautiful in Kosova, was largely spared the 78 days of NATO bombing and the burning and destruction by Serbs.

In the next three months, hundreds of thousands of poor Kosova villagers are expected to return from Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. But in these first days of open borders, most are too afraid of still-retreating Serbs and land mines in the countryside.

A typical returning refugee right now is someone like Zeqe Cocaj (pronounced ZE-cha CHO-chai) -- a businessman driven to check on the state of his shops and his house and to see if it is safe to return with his family.

Cocaj turned up at 8:30 Sunday morning under hot, sunny skies at the Albanian border post 15 miles from Kukes, a decrepit and lawless town that is the temporary home of 120,000 Kosova refugees. The border was to open at noon, when German tanks were scheduled to roll ahead of a huge convoy of news media.

Unlike most other refugees, he had not been stripped of his passport and and driver's license, because he had paid about $1,000 to Serbian police and border guards, but he was still not sure if he would be able to re-enter. He had come with his father, Avdyl Cocaj, 45, the patriarch of the family's three bakeries, to try.

"My father wants to see our house and the condition of the bakeries, so we can reopen as soon as we can," he said.

The family's troubles began in late March, shortly after the start of the NATO bombing, when Serbian police began shooting into the second-floor windows of one of the bakeries. Cocaj's father and a colleague dropped to the floor and then crawled into a storeroom, where they slept overnight.

The next day, Cocaj's father was ordered out of town by Serbian police and soon wound up in Kukes, although Cocaj did not know where his father was until he saw his name on a list of refugees on television.

"I thought my father was dead," he said.

Cocaj remained in Prizren as the Serbs stole his flour -- worth $4,500, he said -- demanded free bread daily and expelled his relatives from the countryside. By May the situation had become so dangerous that Cocaj and his family joined the long line of refugees to Kukes, a town he grew to despise.

Albania is the poorest country in Europe, and Kukes has bandits and potholes instead of Prizren's affluent merchants and walkways along the Bistrica River. His Kukes landlord charged $650 a month for a small three-room apartment, a price in the stratosphere there. "I wish to go as soon as possible," Cocaj said.

He got his wish shortly after 2 p.m., when German soldiers let him through with the press convoy. Meanwhile, gangs of local Albanians looted the border post and burned Serbian uniforms in the roadway, unheeded by any local authorities. Cocaj took the main road home, driving carefully to avoid any land mines on the edges.

He passed land of striking beauty -- fields with poppies and villages of large red-roofed houses nestled into the hillsides. Then he saw a ruined building. -- "That was a very good restaurant," he said -- burned buildings, a large dead dog in the middle of the road, broken-down buses and an enormous crater in a field where a NATO bomb was apparently dropped.

But overall, the destruction was not as bad as reported from other parts of Kosova. Close to town Cocaj passed a long column of Serbian troops, still armed, although looking bedraggled. By 2:45 p.m., he had arrived in town -- a journey that had seemed impossible but that on Sunday took only half an hour.

He was stunned to be greeted by the cheering crowds, who had gathered at the entrance of the town around a German tank and had been celebrating since the night before, when the first troops arrived. The next thing he knew, an old woman, a family friend, stuck her head into his car and gave him a big kiss.

On Sunday night after dinner Cocaj sat smoking and talking with his father, relatives and friends in the central courtyard of his house, surrounded by potted pink geraniums, a grape arbor and fledgling tomato plants. He could still hear gunshots outside his house -- Serbs shooting into the air, he insisted -- and the streets had been tense in the afternoon when busloads of Serbs, fearful of revenge from returning Albanians, left town.

But Cocaj's plans were still to go back on Monday to Kukes, pick up his wife and children, and then return home for good.

How has he changed after all that has happened? "It's a strange feeling," he said. "I feel sometimes that I've lost 10 years of my life."

In Kosova, Signs of Massacres and a Cover-Up (NY Times)

id-cards.jpg (16774 bytes)
Warrant Officer Andrew Kevill, a British intelligence specialist, examined passports and identity cards that were found in Kosova Sunday. Credit: Pool photo by Captain Gallagher

By DAVID ROHDE

HALLAC, Kosova -- After weeks of unconfirmed reports from traumatized refugees, the first direct evidence that Serbian forces carried out mass killings in Kosova -- and have tried to cover them up -- emerged Sunday at this village, where freshly turned dirt lies just feet from a wall pocked with 10 bullet holes.

A month ago Albanian refugees who fled this village reported that Serbian irregulars had killed 46 people during a two-day rampage in mid-April here and in a nearby hamlet, Ribar.

The signs of recent digging here, along with accounts from villagers who stayed behind, indicate that a mass grave as well as individual graves have been excavated and the bodies reburied. Two dozen burned-out houses in the area also stand as evidence of an attack.

Benjamin P. Ward, an investigator with Human Rights Watch who has been collecting witness accounts of the attacks in the area, said the scene corroborates what he has heard.

"It represents one of the first direct confirmations of witness statements describing the killings of civilians," he said. "Now we have the first evidence confirming that it has happened."

Residents said that in early May the local police exhumed a mass grave holding the bodies of 20 men, carried out autopsies on the victims and then ordered villagers to rebury the bodies in individual graves in the local cemetery.

In nearby Ribar, 26 individual graves of people killed in an attack by irregulars were exhumed, the bodies examined and then reburied, residents said.

Reburying bodies in individual graves and producing autopsies giving an explanation for the killings could make it more difficult to prove in court that the dead had been executed rather than killed in fighting.

Villagers also said that in the days before NATO forces entered Kosova, Yugoslav officials transferred as many as 1,500 Albanians from the prison in the nearby town of Lipljan to a jail inside Serbia proper.

Ejup Pajazi, a 56-year-old taxi driver released from the prison on Saturday, said he was told that the prisoners were taken to a jail in the city of Nis in southern Serbia. He said he did not know why he was not transferred as well.

Pajazi's allegation could not be confirmed, and a guard at the prison, which appeared quiet Sunday afternoon, said its warden was not in.

Other Albanians released from the prison were expelled by Serbian forces to Macedonia last week, saying they were rounded up after NATO air strikes began and accused of having ties to the Kosova Liberation Army. But none have crossed the border in recent days.

Severe beatings to force confessions were a daily occurrence, the former prisoners said.

In Hallac, there is a 10-foot-by-30-foot patch of freshly turned earth in an empty lot, which villagers said once held the bodies of 20 people killed by Serbian irregulars.

Two men's shoes and what appeared to be a twisted and torn shirt lay on the surface of the dark soil, presumably dug up in early May.

Villagers, who gave accounts supporting those given by refugees last month, said the killings in Hallac occurred on April 19. A dozen Serbian irregulars lined up 13 people and shot them in a vacant lot, they said. The victims included a 23-year-old father of two shot in the face after he repeatedly asked to be released, they added. Two men are reported to have survived.

Nine other men were killed in their homes, the villagers said.

Hafize Gashi, 19, gave a painstaking tour of the killing ground around her home. Her father, she said, was killed in the garden, one uncle was shot beside the well, another was shot in front of his adjacent home, and a 26-year-old cousin and a 70-year-old uncle were killed inside Ms. Gashi's home. The irregulars then lit the bodies on fire, she said.

Standing in the charred remains of the family living room, she pointed out what appeared to be a charred human knee joint lying on the floor. "We tried to gather all of the bones for burial," she said.

The irregulars forced local Gypsies to bury all 20 bodies together, villagers said. Police officers from Lipljan then arrived on May 2 and ordered exhumation of the graves.

Blaming the killings on irregulars they could not control, the police officers said the victims should be buried properly. But they barred the villagers from burying all 20 victims side by side in a long row in the graveyard, the villagers said.

Sunday, 20 fresh graves could be seen scattered in clusters in various parts of the community cemetery.

A few miles up the road in the hamlet of Ribar, 26 fresh graves could be seen in the cemetery. The victims there included men, women, children and the elderly, according to the grave markers.

Among them were a 7-year-old girl and her 73-year-old grandfather, shot by irregulars as they ran across a field to escape, residents said.

Villagers' accounts of the attack, which they said occurred on April 18, a day before the Hallac attack, also supported those of refugees who fled into Macedonia last month.

Shemsije Vishesella, a 38-year-old widow still wearing a bandage on her jaw -- which had been shattered by a bullet -- led two reporters on a tour of the gutted home where her two sons and husband were killed.

Standing in the living room in a daze, she described how the family was going through its morning routine when shots rang out outside, signaling the arrival of the Serbian irregulars. "My husband said, 'Don't be afraid,' " she recalled. "He said, 'They are coming but don't be afraid.' "

The irregulars kicked the door in and hustled her husband and their sons, 14 and 17, outside. She was led outside too and found each of them lying face down on the ground. As she showed where each one lay that morning, she stroked the grass as if she were stroking their hair.

Ordered by the irregulars to leave, she hid behind a fence, peered into the yard and was spotted and shot at. When the bullet hit her jaw, she passed out. The irregulars, she was later told, then shot her husband and sons dead, she said, as they lay beneath apple and cherry trees in the family garden.

Unfair to say looters took everything but kitchen sink (Irish Times)

Chris Stephen returned to his flat after three months

It Would be unfair to say that whoever looted my Prishtina apartment in the three months I was away has taken everything but the kitchen sink - because they managed to steal that too.

Picking my way over the papers and books strewn over the floors, I found a hole and a pile of broken plaster where the sink once was. It disappeared together with the kitchen table, our rickety chairs and the disintegrating sofa. Our landlord escaped to Macedonia, but there is little left of his three floor house, looted like thousands of other places in this city. Gone too of course was the TV and video in the flat shared with four other journalists, together with my snowboard. I can get some of the cash back from the insurance company - if I can produce a police report. This is a problem not just because it was probably the police who took the snowboard, but because there is now a big hole made by NATO where the police headquarters used to be. Like the information ministry and army headquarters, this building has been hit by a titanic explosion. But contrary to those censored television pictures, there are comparatively few such holes across this town. It is not the destruction which surprises you, graphic as it is, but the emptiness.

Yet this is the Prishtina the hardline Serb nationalists made their dream. The dream of ethnic purity. Most of the cafes, restaurants and shops are looted and burned, and covered in graffitti proclaiming the realisation of that Serbs-only dream. The few shops owned by Serbs are mostly empty.

The cinema is closed, the handsome modern sports stadium deserted, the central square where teenagers once eyed each other up is home only to black crows looking for food among the cracks in the paving stones. At night the only people on the streets are the paramilitaries, shooting in the air and still frightening the few Albanians who have clung on. Some dream. And some price to get it.

But reality changes so fast in Prishtina that being here is itself dreamlike. Walking to the apartment in the morning sunshine with a Dutch colleague, I wandered, scared, through the back roads, fearful of the paramilitaries - typically they are portly, dressed in a mix of jeans and uniforms, well armed and driving cars with no licence plates.

By the time we left, the armoured personnel carriers of the Irish Guards were thundering down the main street and the mood changed. Albanian women and children ran from their apartments to wave at the British, and the fear vanished, at least until the tanks raced away around a corner. "How long will they stay?" asked one teenaged boy. In the town centre, the entire glass wall of a bank has been destroyed by the blast of a nearby bomb, leaving only a concrete platform. Yet the door frame has been dusted off and set up, standing on its own, at one end of the platform. And just inside, in a space cleared of the glass and debris, sits a man on a chair in front of the desk, the caretaker. "I work as normal, of course," he said as we took his picture.

The next task, after visiting the apartment, was to find the parents of my former translator, Afirdite. She escaped early in the war, but they were unable to follow, spending 11 terrified weeks closed into their apartment.

Their faces show tension, but also great relief. "We spent seven days on the border, they would not let us go, so we came back," said her father. When they got back, the Serbs gave them a new identity card, telling him: "You can take this, but we will still shoot you." Nevertheless, bureaucracies being what they are, the identity card is helpfully written in both Serbian and Albanian.

Instead, they kept as low a profile as possible, with only Afirdite's mother going out to buy what food there was. From their kitchen windows they watched in the streets as some Serbian neighbours paraded in their new paramilitary uniforms. Then, the night the British arrived, they watched the same neighbours go to a skip at the car park, drop the uniforms in and set fire to them. "For the Serbs, now, it will be difficult to stay," said her mother. "And for anyone who was in uniform. . ." she fell silence, and shook her head.

There were 28 Albanian families in their block. Only two were not able to flee. There were also three Serb families, and a police unit living part-time in the basement for protection from bombs.

Two of the families have already fled, and nobody knows, or dares to look, to see if the police are still downstairs.

Another family arrives to ask if we are really British, and to rent us their battered car for a few days, and to ask how long the tanks will be here.

From the apartment we can also see wisps of grey smoke, a reminder that NATO is having a race against time to impose its will on a town much of which is descending into anarchy.

The house of the local imman was set on fire, as was that of an Albanian family only 500 metres from the main British base at a petrol station on the edge of town. A massive Challenger tank sat nearby, but its crew could do nothing but watch, saying the fire was started by two men in a black Golf car. Three kilometres outside town, Kosova Liberation Army guerrillas materialised, capturing three Serb police before letting them go. Fighting raged to the west around the town of Suva Reka between the KLA and Serb units, and in the late afternoon everyone got a jolt when news came through that the Paratroopers, now on foot patrol in the town, had come under fire, returned fire, and killed a Serb.

More reports of near-clashes came in, and by early evening the paramilitaries were back on the streets driving too fast and shooting in the air. The Albanians, officially liberated, went back inside and locked their doors.

'You know I could kill you now' the neighbour roared (Irish Times)

Kathy Sheridan accompanied a Kosavan refugee on her turbulent return journey from Macedonia to Prishtina

Today Bardha would go home. As thousands of cheering, chanting, flag-waving Albanians lined the streets of Skopje to watch the NATO tanks thunder towards the border, the 21-year-old took in a long, deep draught of the dusty, fume-filled air and raised her arms exultantly to the sky: "That smell and sound of NATO - it makes me feel so strong." It felt like the dawn of liberation, the end of fear. The heat was already stifling as we drove past Stenkovic II. Behind its bleak wire fences, the crowds of refugees who once stared out at the free world with haunted, anguished faces, were transformed. They roared out their passion for NATO and the KLA, chanting the familiar, rhythmical homage: "NAA-TO, NAATO, U-Cha-Ka".

At the Blace border crossing - a witness to unspeakable cruelty - where Bardha and hundreds of thousands of her country people once begged for hope and mercy, day after day, in the scorching sun - she presented her Yugoslav passport and her refugee papers. The passport was returned but not the papers. Suddenly, in official eyes at any rate, she was no longer a refugee.

Then through no-man's land. "Look! Look! No fuckin' Serbs," screamed a young Albanian jubilantly. Bardha stared disbelievingly as we drove through an empty Serb checkpoint.

Two and a half months after her desperate flight to Macedonia, she was back in Kosova. In front and behind us, the might of NATO was lumbering towards Prishtina, paratroops and small watchful Gurkhas inspecting the verges and derelict buildings for mines. Chinook helicopters zipped back and forth with supplies as Apaches stood look-out.

But Bardha had gone quiet. With every mile of this familiar, two-lane country road, memories were flooding back of her last desperate journey with only her passport and the clothes she stood up in, and the subsequent break-up of her close, prosperous family, today scattered throughout Europe. Now home again, the evidence of her country's devastation unfolded all around her.

Fertile land normally bursting with grain and vegetable crops has become a wasteland swarming with the white flowers of wild camoumile. Roadside motels and cafes have been smashed, looted or bombed. The reality of ethnic cleansing is evident in the carefully targeted burnt-out houses.

Every few kilometres aroused old memories of Serb checkpoints and the old terrors. Here was one where people were taken out at random and beaten; a few kilometres on, where a stork could be seen resting in its high, open nest, was another - less a checkpoint than a place where armed Serb civilians simply held up fleeing refugees at gunpoint and took what they wanted.

But up ahead, in this beautiful place where men who became like animals and expected no retribution seemed to have gone to ground, the welcoming chants of yet more Albanians were already audible. They had been there since dawn, lining the road, cheering on everything that moved. Groups of them could be seen at old homesteads down in the fields, waving energetically. NATO soldiers and crusty media veterans confessed afterwards that they had been moved beyond words.

Then a few kilometres outside Prishtina, the NATO convoy peeled off for Prizren. Inside our minibus, the excitement and tension among the Albanians rose in concert. Confidence was ebbing at losing NATO's protective shield. And there was the worry of what lay ahead. Would their homes be burnt out, looted, taken over? Forked lightning split the sky as a massive thunderstorm broke. At the entry point to the city, at what appeared to be a congregation point for Serb military and police, our mini-bus hit a flood and stopped dead in the centre of a busy road.

The answer in such a crisis is obvious. You call a garage or a friend with a tow rope. After all, we were on the edge of a city where there is petrol, electricity, water and a splendidly functioning mobile phone network. But this is no ordinary city.

Three of our number were ethnic Albanians, two of them natives of Prishtina. But so great was the fear in Prishtina that neither could get a friend or relative to leave their triple-locked homes in reply to calls by mobile phone. No sane Albanian would appear out after 5 o'clock in the evening; panicking Serbs were hijacking Albanian cars. Appeals to passing Serbs weren't even considered: tales abound of "help" turning up in the form of thugs in uniform. No-one knew of a garage owned by an Albanian.

The sound of gunfire echoed around us as the Serb military appeared to be developing an interest. With each failed attempt to start the car, Bardha and the others became more frantic. The menace in the air was palpable.

A woman of about 55 approached. She looked like anyone's respectable, permed mother, in her well-pressed dress and polished shoes and umbrella open against the deluge. Then - like a scene from a movie where the human becomes a vampire - she set eyes on Bardha. She began to howl, her voice rising to a shriek. "We will cut the throats of all Albanians tonight. You will all die tonight, we will slit your throats," she raged, on and on.

Meanwhile, in a petrol station down below us, soldiers from the Irish Guards had taken up position, awaiting a convoy. They couldn't leave but they gave us courage and lent us a towrope.

Major Ben Farrell and Colour Sergeant Andy Haines were the first NATO soldiers into Prishtina on Saturday. They had the task of advance liaison with the loathsome MUP (the Interior Ministry's police) - a job for which they had to muster all their cool professionalism in the face of an extraordinary charm offensive by the MUP, who had come armed with a bottle of Bell's whisky. Even as Serb military pulled up at the garage for petrol, with their alcoholic breath, unshaven faces and open-necked, filthy uniforms, the dapper MUPs were offering handshakes all round along with their very best co-operation.

As for Bardha, this would not be the day she would go home after all. Courtesy of a London Times journalist and his courageous Albanian driver, we made it finally to the Grand Hotel, which houses the media centre and every journalist lucky enough to get a room there.

Prishtina after dark became a ghost town, the kind of town where the side door of an innocent white Hiace van opened to reveal a platoon of Serb soldiers, where skin-headed paramilitaries and their chums in football shirts roamed the streets shooting in the air. There were, too, many stories of hijackings and beatings. A TV crew accompanying an Albanian interpreter to her home was confronted with a mob loading up lorries with household goods and told - in English: "Fuck off. This is a dangerous area for you." The interpreter remained silent and turned back with the journalists.

Frightened beyond measure by now, Bardha chose not to risk the 10-minute journey to her home. She and we - and dozens of others - ended up sleeping on the floor of the Grand Hotel lounge. The fact that sleep did not come easily had less to do with the floor than the two uniformed thugs lounging against the wall eyeing us and our bags.

Yesterday morning, Bardha finally went home. As we walked to her Serb-dominated apartment block, a group of people turned to hiss. An old family friend stood at a window, her face full of incredulity and emotion. Bardha called a quiet greeting but judged it best to keep her distance.

We entered her sister's apartment first - alert for booby traps in the doorway - a bright, comfortable, newly decorated haven occupied by her pregnant sister for only two nights before she, too, was expelled. Then her parents' apartment, where Bardha looked around in wonderment. Everything was neat, untouched. The Nike jacket she had bought days before fleeing in March was hanging in the wardrobe. The fish in the aquarium, incredibly, were alive. The water, phone and electricity worked. The morning was spent calling ecstatic, disbelieving relatives.

Down below, Serb neighbours were clearing out, loading a lorry with everything from Persil to the kitchen sink. In a sudden surge of bravado, Bardha asked if they were leaving. "What is your name? Why are you asking these questions?" a man roared at her, at this 21-year-old girl whom he knew perfectly well. "You know I could kill you now - you know that?" He wasn't joking. The ubiquitous Kalashnikov lay alongside the lorry. It was too much. She slumped into a chair and wept.

Bardha was home at last. Gunfire echoed around us all day. The city-centre mosque went up in flames, coincidentally just as the military were leaving their base at the nearby school. Albanian houses were burning around the suburbs.

Liberation may be some days away yet.

'Miracle' births provide hope to sisters at Fort Dix (Daily News)

by Barbara Laker Daily News Staff Writer

FORT DIX, N.J. - They are two Kosovar sisters who share an unbreakable bond.

The misery of war and death at home.

The joy of giving life in a peaceful yet foreign land.

Within weeks, Merita Bajgora and Fatlije Xhemajli have seen both ends of the pendulum.

In an uncanny twist of fate, Merita, 27, and Fatlije, 20, gave birth to daughters eight days apart shortly after arriving as refugees at Fort Dix.

Merita and her husband, Agron, named their little girl Adea, meaning princess.

Fatlije and her husband, Fahri, named their daughter Elta, meaning flower.

The tiny brown-haired newborns don't wear photo name tags like their parents and the 3,000 other refugees in the village. There is no need. Adea and Elta are U.S. citizens.

"I'm happy she was born here. She is American," Merita said this week through a translator, another Kosovar refugee, as she stood in the village with her daughter in the sweltering heat under a tree.

"Here it is safe," she said. "Here there is peace. I'm proud I have an American daughter."

"It's a miracle," Fahri said, smiling at his daughter.

Their happiness, however, is overshadowed by the kind of worry that doesn't allow rest. Merita and Fatlije don't know if their parents are dead or alive. A handful of other close relatives also are missing.

"We've been to the Red Cross day after day," Agron said. "Nobody can find them. There is no word."

Until recently, the ethnic Albanian family had a comfortable life in Prishtina, one of the largest cities in Kosova. Agron Bajgora ran several textile stores, lived in a five-room house with his pregnant wife and their 3-year-old son, Arnes, and drove a Volkswagen Gulf and an Audi.

His brother-in-law, Fahri Xhemajli, worked as a tailor and was looking forward to becoming a first-time father.

When Serbian soldiers invaded their town, stole their money and burned their homes, they headed to Merita's and Fatlije's parents' house.

Soon, the gun-wielding Serbs stormed there, too.

The pregnant women, their husbands, two sisters and little Arnes were ordered onto a truck headed for the Macedonian border.

Merita's and Fatlije's parents were told to go in a separate car.

During the rough, cramped truck ride, Serb soldiers tormented the pregnant women and their husbands. The soldiers put guns to their passengers' heads and laughed that they should kill them all and dump their bodies in the woods.

"One of them asked for soap so he could wash his hands after he killed us," Fahri said.

"We were so afraid. Very much afraid," Merita said.

They didn't pull the trigger.

"We were so happy our children were saved," said Merita, wearing a green "California Redwoods" T-shirt and shorts.

"It was like a bingo game with life. We were lucky," her husband said, wiping sweat from his brow.

But after the truck dropped the relatives off at Camp Stenkovec, the Serbs closed the border. The car their parents were in was turned back to Kosova. The family hasn't heard from them since.

On May 7, the pregnant sisters and their families left the camp fields of mud and plastic tarp and took a 13-hour plane trip from Skopje, Macedonia, to McGuire Air Force Base.

They knew then their babies would have a chance.

On May 23, Fatlije gave birth to the 7-pound, 7-ounce Elta at Virtua-Memorial Hospital Burlington County.

Eight days later, on May 31, it was her sister Merita's turn to deliver 6-pound, 8-ounce Adea. Two other babies also have been born to ethnic Albanian refugees at the hospital since May 6.

Both Merita and Fatlije had their husbands at their sides during the babies' deliveries. "Serbians don't allow husbands to do that," Fahri said.

The sisters spend their days caring for the babies and waiting to find out where and when a sponsoring agency will place them in the U.S.

Arriving at Fort Dix with the clothes on their backs, the sisters have relied on donated baby clothes and equipment. Lacking a baby tub, the sisters wash their newborns with baby wipes. They have just one stroller.

When peace is established in Kosova and President Slobodan Milosevic is forced out, they want to return to their homeland.

"We don't know what is there, but it's our home," Merita said.

They want their babies to have a different life than theirs.

"We want them to live in peace," Fahri said. "I hope they never have to suffer like us. I want them to grow up in a free country. That's a very important thing. You cannot grow up in fear."

Welcomed as liberators (Edmonton Sun)

nato-welcome2-afp.jpg (20893 bytes)
Canadian march into Kosova is like Holland in '45

By PAUL COWAN, EDMONTON SUN
FERIZAJ, Kosova -- In an image reminiscent of the Second World War liberation of Holland, Edmonton soldiers were bombarded with roses yesterday as they drove into the Kosova town of Ferizaj, near the Macedonian border.

The 250 or so troops from 1 Combat Enginer Regiment crossed the border from Macedonia 36 hours after it opened.

"This is the best day of our lives," said 26-year-old Vlara Mehmeti, who had been forced from her home in Prishtina by masked men shortly before the Canadians arrived.

Older residents wiped tears from their eyes and younger people cheered as the combat engineers made their way down a narrow mud street, which led to a waste area where they camped for the night.

Within 10 minutes of the troops entering the mud street, locals had filled the cabs of the trucks with red roses.

"It's amazing," said Corp. Jim MacNeish. "We were told to expect bread and instead we get roses."

A veteran of two peacekeeping tours, Corp. Mike Charleton said he has never seen anything like the welcome.

"This makes the six months we'll be here worthwhile," he said as the roses piled up on the hoods of the trucks.

As the Canadian convoy of over 30 vehicles came down the highway from the border, a small cheering crowd stood on the road as a house behind them burned. Locals said the house was torched by a Serb soldier who had taken it from its owners.

Others said the house had been used as a Serb police station and the police had set it alight before pulling out.

Serb soldiers were still occupying factories in the town of 30,000 as the Canadians arrived. But by afternoon most had fled, accompanied by civilian cars packed with belongings.

Sporadic gunfire crackled in the warm evening air as drunken revellers took to the streets. Serb minority residents of the town, comprising about 15% of the population, had left under the terms of the peace agreement.

"The only Serbs welcome here are old men and children," said Fatos Ramadani, 25, who said the Serbs killed his father.

Many of the Ethnic Albanian residents stayed in their houses throughout the occupation, only to see them looted and destroyed before their eyes.

"They took gold, jewellery and watches," said Mehmeti.

Residents said NATO bombed the factory Yugoslav troops had been using as a barracks.

Civilian houses had also been destroyed.

'But we were happy when we heard the planes," said Mehmeti.

"My nephew said that when he grows up he wants to be a NATO spy, so he can tell them where the Serbs are."

Yugoslavia out of Intertoto Cup

The UEFA Task Force has decided that as a result of the current situation in Yugoslavia no club from this country would be entitled to take part in the 1999 UEFA Intertoto Cup, which is due to begin on 19 June 1999. The place which was reserved for a club from Yugoslavia would therefore be offered to FYR Macedonia, which is the first country on the waiting list for an additional place in the competition. No decision has yet been taken regarding the participation of clubs from Yugoslavia in next season’s UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup. The deadline for entries is June 15, 1999.

HOW SERBS USED MONASTERIES TO ENTICE ETHNIC HATRED

By Michael Sells

(Michael Sells is the author of "The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia," second edition, 1998. He is professor of comparative religions at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.)

Members of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Yugoslav government are making a grave allegation. They claim that NATO is bombing the great Serbian Orthodox monasteries dating to the medieval Serb kingdoms. The web site of the Belgrade government's Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia shows pictures of monasteries allegedly damaged by NATO strikes and includes two black spaces with the word" destroyed" ominously written across them. The web page of the Serbian Orthodox Church, entitled "The Bombing of Serbian Shrines," is even more provocative. The site features a map of the major Serbian shrines in Kosova, with icons of bomb blasts over each of them, as if NATO's bombs were falling directly upon them. The religious and historical importance of the monasteries in Kosova -- an area called by some "the Serb Jerusalem" -- gives such claims a powerful impact, especially in countries with large Orthodox Christian populations. In addition, threats to sacred sites symbolize threats to the existence of the people who value them.

Yet these web sites offer no evidence to justify the "destroyed" labels or the title "The Bombing of Serbian Shrines." The sites show pictures of the monuments before the alleged destruction, but no images of the damage they claim was inflicted by NATO -- except for items like masonry cracks that could have been caused by anything. Serbian authorities have not been shy about showing graphic details of civilian destruction wrought by misguided NATO bombs. If NATO were bombing the monasteries, images of the blasted ruins would be broadcast around the world.

These new allegations against NATO are ominously similar to Serb nationalists' charges in 1986 that Kosovar Albanians were destroying the monasteries. This charge was combined with other inflammatory allegations that Kosovar Albanians were illegal immigrants who should be expelled; that Albanians were using their high birth rate as a tool to commit" demographic genocide" against Kosova's Serb minority; and that they were carrying out widespread rapes of Serb women. In 1986, Serbian Orthodox bishops repeated these allegations and charged that genocide was being carried out against Serbs in Kosova. The same charges were repeated in the famous "Memorandum" written by Serbian intellectuals attacking the Yugoslav constitution and the autonomy of Kosova. In this inflamed environment, Slobodan Milosevic made his leap to power by promising he would protect the Serb people and their shrines against their enemies.

What was the truth of these frightening allegations? There were genuine grievances by both Serbs and Albanians in Kosova, and both groups felt threatened. But Serb independent journalists and human rights workers found the more inflammatory charges to be total fabrications. A study of police records in Kosova showed only one rape of an ethnic Serb by an Albanian in an entire year. Similarly, the alleged destruction of Serb shrines turned out to involve isolated cases of vandalism, graffiti, and cutting of trees on church property -- hate crimes, perhaps, but surely not the organized, genocidal annihilation that was claimed.

Yet the charge that Albanians were out to destroy Serb sacral heritage had a life independent of any evidence to the contrary. The charge fed into a mythologized history that presented the Ottoman Turks and native Balkan Muslims as obsessed with eradicating Serbs and Serbian sacred sites. Serb nationalists make this charge repeatedly -- despite the survival of this magnificent heritage through five centuries of Ottoman rule amidst Albanian neighbors and despite the Ottoman record of supporting the Serbian Orthodox patriarchate and authorizing the building and repair of Serbian churches.

To understand the full power of the accusations of monastery destruction, we need to note the other symbols that were attached to the monasteries. The medieval Serb Prince Lazar was portrayed as a Christ figure and his death at the battle of Kosova in 1389 was presented as the "Serbian Golgotha." Serb nationalists began accusing today's Balkan Muslims of having the blood of the Christ-prince Lazar on their hands. At the same time, the bones of Serbs killed by the Nazis and their Ustasha collaborators during World War II were ritually exhumed amid nationalist propaganda demonizing all Albanians, Slavic Muslims, and Croats as inherently genocidal. Mythic time (1389), historical memory (World War II), and false allegations of contemporary Albanian genocide all became symbolically attached to the monasteries.

For the momentous June 28, 1989, 600th anniversary of the battle of Kosova, Lazar's relics were solemnly transported from monastery to monastery to arrive at the Gracanica monastery (one of the shrines now claimed to be under attack by NATO). A massive crowd viewed the unveiling of the relics at the monastery and then moved to the nearby battle site. There an even larger crowd of more than a million Serbs heard Slobodan Milosevic's belligerent speech sealing his plan to revoke Kosova's autonomy. The symbols brought together with such ritual and theatric power were then instrumentalized through the purging of the Yugoslav army, government protection of extremist paramilitary groups, and media propaganda. In a mass psychology of fear and rage, Serbian society was radicalized. Serbia's most popular celebrity today is the indicted war-criminal Arkan, and its most popular politician is Vojislav Seselj, an open advocate of the annihilation of Kosovar Albanians and all Balkan Muslims. At first the violence conceived in Kosova was channeled into the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia.

In Bosnia, Serb militias -- urged on by the allegations of destruction of Serb monasteries -- annihilated non-Serb sacral sites. All mosques and other Muslim shrines (more than 1,400) were destroyed, including world-class masterpieces built in the 15th and 16th centuries. In some towns all the mosques were destroyed in a single night's coordinated dynamiting. The Ferhad Pasha Mosque (1583) in Banja Luka was re-dynamited three times, the rubble pulverized with jackhammers and trucked away to deny the surviving Muslim community a shard of its heritage. In the town of Foca, the 16th-century masterpiece known as the Colored Mosque and all other Muslim shrines were blown up, the sites turned into parking lots. When the new Serb nationalist mayors of Foca and Zvornik were asked why all the mosques had been destroyed, they responded that there never had been any mosques in those towns.

Where the Serb army could not occupy an area, they targeted cultural sites with shelling, burning the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo -- with its priceless collection of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Slavic manuscripts -- and the National Library, with more than a million volumes -- the largest book burning in history. In three years Serb militias eradicated five centuries of Bosnian Muslim heritage and all evidence that Muslims and Serbs had shared a common civilization. Meanwhile, the Serbian monasteries of Kosova survived intact, even as they had survived centuries of Ottoman rule and Albanian neighbors.

Now we hear similarly inflammatory charges that NATO is bombing Serbian monasteries. In all the talk about the monasteries, we tend to forget that the Albanian community has its own Muslim and Catholic sites. Muslim sites include mosques, madrasas (religious schools, often with manuscript libraries), tekkes (dervish lodges), turbes (mausoleums, frequently sites of pilgrimage), hammams (bath complexes for men and women), and bazaars (often built next to a mosque to support pious endowments). Many date from the 15th and 16th centuries. Kosovar refugees interviewed on the border offer consistent reports of having witnessed the destruction of mosques and shrines. In the case of Bosnia such reports turned out to be horrifyingly true.

The Belgrade regime insists that Serbian forces must remain in Kosova in order to protect the monasteries. The Serbian monasteries survived five centuries without Milosevic's army and special police. But non-Serb peoples and monuments in the area have not fared well under Belgrade's "monument protection." Since 1986, Serb nationalists have manipulated concern for the shrines to motivate, justify, and implement "ethnic cleansing" and annihilation of centuries of non-Serb artistic and religious monuments. In exploiting Serbian monasteries and the Serbian heritage the represented to foment hate and violence, they desecrated a great Serbian heritage that deserves better.

All sacral sites in Kosova should be protected by a multinational force that includes peacekeepers from countries with large Orthodox populations. UNESCO and other organizations should monitor them and catalogue any damages. Deliberate destruction of monuments should be prosecuted as a war crime in The Hague. As for Belgrade's army, its special police, and paramilitaries -- the world has seen enough of their "protection of monuments."