Kosova Crisis Center
link to alb-net
Between Freedom and Identity
by Sevdie Ahmeti
INTRODUCTION
Any chronicle survey upon the documentation on genocide and apartheid in different regions of the world, where "ethnic minorities" compose a great majority of the inhabitants, committed by regime against other ethnicities, show the permanent activity, motivated on such genocide and apartheid. Such is the situation in Kosova, former Yugoslavia. The structures of the regime deal with negative political attitudes towards ethnic Albanians of the former Yugoslavia, with prejudices, with ethnocentrism, with stereotypical behaviors, with Albanofobia of special features and with mythomania of motivated dimensions on a genocide direction. Mental structures have increased above the grounds of an anti ethnic Albanian syndrome of the Serbian Regime, of its organs, of its institutions and of its subjects. It is created under the influence, permanently exercised by the activity of Serbia's institutions of information, of education, of church, of police, of army, of culture and of science.
Shapes of violence against ethnic Albanians and their special appearances in special occasions, do tell that it is not a situational reaction, of either officials or institutions; it has the support on the potential power, formatted within the subjects of the regime. This power stimulated and activated during intensive phases of the engagement of ethnic Albanians towards development and freedom in general, towards democracy and national freedom.
The yarn of the development of such a potential power of motivated dimensions on genocide committed by the Serb subjects and regime, their encouragers and assistants, is quite ancient, it is before the Eastern Crisis (1875).
The features of a motivated genocide by the Serb regime, officials, institutions and its subjects, convey to special genetic judgment; genocide elements were motivated against ethnic Albanians carefully and they turned into a dimension of social inheritance. No one could ever terminate this inheritance, not even Serbian socialdemocrats, internationalists or others.
SOME RECENT BACKGROUND ON THE SITUATION IN KOSOVA
Ethnic Albanians account up to 90 per cent of the population of Kosova. They had a considerable autonomy after the Constitution 1974 of the Socialist and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It had its own government and parliament, constitutional court, supreme court and representatives in all federal institutions. It had its own university where Albanian language was the language of instruction for ethnic Albanians. In July 1990 the Serbian parliament, although one of the eight units of SFRY, suspended the other unit's parliament, the Kosova parliament. This happened after the general strikes of ethnic Albanians all over Kosova. The decision of federal authorities to introduce "special measures", effectively a state of emergency and the tanks stationed outside the parliament building, on March 23 1989, when Kosova parliament under pressure from Serbia approved contested constitutional changes.
Since then, ethnic Albanians suffer a colonial life. Psychological war, and recent real war, Ill-treatments, killings, shelling and displacement of ethnic Albanians by the almost exclusively Serbian police and military forces, in joint with military ones, have become common in daily reports, in course of identity checks in the streets, followed by short periods of detention in police stations, or in the course of police searches of houses, in which they claim to be searching for alleged arms, "terrorists", etc.. Serious injuries and deaths have occurred as a result of beatings, tortures and heavy artillery attacks.
In recent times, there is an increasing pressure, which is wide spread with causalities, with a special focus starting on Drenica and then spreading nearly all over Kosova, and short term detention of individuals, are frequent.
VIOLATION AND CONSEQUENCES:
THE RIGHT TO WORK
Almost 80 per cent of the employed Albanians have been dismissed forcefully, once administrative measures have been implemented by the Serbian government. "Emergency administration" has been put over 450 enterprises, or at 95 per cent of all public enterprises in Kosova. 15,7000 (number is increasing day by day) Albanians are dismissed and most of them replaced by Serbs and Montenegrins. 120.000 Albanian families have no means of existence. At least, one million of Albanians are practically exposed to starvation.
The data presented by the Institute of Economic Sciences of Belgrade (June 1994), shows that over 80 per cent of the population of Kosova (100 per cent Albanians and among them almost 50 per cent women) are poor now.
THE RIGHT TO HEALTH PROTECTION
Health is in danger. Tens of ambulatory clinics have been shut down in villages (38 in the Commune of Prishtinë). Over 2.000 medical staff, doctors and nurses are dismissed.
Some of the clinics of the Medical Faculty have no Albanians working in them (the Gynecological Clinic), yet in some their number is very symbolic (Pediatric and Surgical Clinics).
The vaccination of children has decreased from 98.1 per cent in 1988, to 56 per cent in 1991. In 1991, there were 6 cases of children paralysis, in 1992 there were 20 cases of children paralysis. This problem of the disease alerted the WHO to intervene and organize massive vaccination against Polio in September and this November 1996. We are faced with cases of neonatal tetanus and deaths as a consequence of TBC. All this is happening, because people lost faith, they lost their trust on official Serbian Health system.
Recent Serb police and military attacks on Drenica have aggraviatated the almost harmed health situation
THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION
Sixty eight thousand Albanian secondary school students (40 per cent female) are not allowed even to enter their school buildings. The return of them to school buildings is conditioned by accepting the assimilating curricula issued by Serbia. Classes to University buildings are completely stopped. The teaching process for Albanians is proceeded in private houses, with bad conditions.
Over 22 thousand (60 per cent female) teachers are working now, over six years, without receiving any wages at all, because the Serb authorities have decided so.
THE RIGHT TO CULTURE AND SCIENCE
All financing of all cultural and scientific institutions in Kosova is stopped since six years ago. The budget for cultural and scientific activities are only for Serbs and Montenegrins. Albanians are not allowed to use cultural buildings and the sportsmen of Kosova are not allowed to practice in the sports facilities either. No entertainment is allowed.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Albanians do not have daily mass media information. Radio and television network is banned since July 5, 1990; the journal "Rilindja" is banned since August 7 1990. Journalists undergo special treatments. For expressing their opinion, some of them have been sentenced to 60 days of prison
Sanije Gashi, Editor in Chief of the only family and women's magazine in Albanian "Kosovarja", was sentenced to prison on charge of publishing the cover page of the magazine with Stop War, Stop Violence ...,one photo of an Albanian dissident and an interview titled "Black Peace in Kosova".
Public meetings are not allowed by the Serbian police. Manifestations either. When women organized protests, for example in April 1996 over 10,000 of them, in March 1998 nearly half a million of them all over Kosova, armored vehicles and armed police surrounded them. Within short times, women were forced to leave. Organizers were ordered on police information talks.
Public gatherings on various anniversaries, symposiums, literary meetings, performances, concerts, etc., are forbidden to Albanians. Taking part on weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies, also. On March 10, 1998, when ethnic Albanian citizens tried to go to Drenica, to pay tribute to the victims, identify them, and bury them, as informed before majority of victims are children and women, Serb police and military forces did not allow them. At 19.00 hours of the very day, police buried the victims, burying not only unidentified victims, but also the truth.
FREEDOM CIRCULATION
Ethnic Albanians are banned to move freely inside and outside Kosova. Every movement within a city, between cities, from towns to villages and opposite, is kept under control by police checking. Once passengers stopped, they get checked, insulted, ill-treated, beaten up, plundered, confiscated on their goods and arrested. Police causes fear and insecurity to live in Kosova.
The final point of the repression so highly degreed, where a whole population is put under unbearable living conditions, that brings foreword to their extinction, is the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians from Kosova. More than 500.000 people have already immigrated, and among them it is whole families. According to the recent data, after the Drenica conflict, 16.500 women, children and old people are displaced under the mercy of the very cold weather, feared, starving and remaining without any help, because Serb authorities want so.
JUDICIARY AND PROCESSES
Judiciary is not specific for the time being. It was an ever existing problem against ethnic Albanians in Kosova and Albanians wherever lived in the former Yugoslavia. It is characterized with drastic abuse of elementary human rights, the right to defend and the right to be treated equally.
The form of processes and chases has become a part of life to ethnic Albanians in general. The aim is open today like never before. After arbitrary arresting, with doubts on constructors, Serb authorities use unallowed means of pressure to force detainees accept guilt, wanted by police.
In spite of these facts, Serb authorities in Belgrade are still affirming, that Albanians are "equal" citizens of Yugoslavia. They affirm that the "rights" of Albanians are based upon International Conventions.
VIOLATION ON FAMILY
Albanian families approximately count on 7 members. According the data Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms manages to get, at least 25.000 people are ill-treated, during police actions in family homes, per year. This year of 1998 came with radicalized changes to worsen the situation. We take the example of the late Drenica violence that within a week we had 80 victims of Serb police and military actions and complete sites destroyed for living. Families have gone forever, like the case of 25 Jashari family members.
Before the clashes, generally speaking, in order to file violence the situation was always bad. Because of objective reasons, like the impossibility of approaching to the accident, family fear of reporting police violence, etc., do tell that reality of the situation is very tense. Cases do not manage to report. If any of them delivered, names of people as victims of violation, are not reported, some because of police threat, some because of tradition and patriarchalism (women) and some because of fear. The biggest police violence is being exercised during "weapon collecting", "terrorism hunting", when all family members incur. Sometimes the information comes with only the name of family heads. Police interventions inside families happen late at night or at early morning, when people sleep and eyewitnesses are impossible. Police search is done on purpose, to create panic among family members, fear children and women and discomfort old people. Police breaks in shouting, with their weapons clinging, awakening children and even babies.
Families are being evicted by force from their apartments and displaced from their private homes..
VIOLATION ON CHILDREN
Albanian children make up almost 50 per cent (age 1 - 17) of the Albanian population in Kosova.
Children have been victimized by the Serb police and military authorities. Terror against them does not differ from the violence shown towards adults. The most common form of violence shown towards children, has been as follows: killings, arrests, wounding, informative talks in police establishments, hostages, tortures and other various forms of ill-treatments. First week of March 1998 we had in Drenica 14 slaughtered children.
Children get arrested mostly during police expeditions in villages and in Albanian families anywhere. Some of them have been arrested and have been held as hostages instead of their parents. Some of children get taken in for police informative talks in different police stations all around Kosova, without any legal rights for defence.
Health Security information for Albanian children shows that, epidemics of various dimensions have appeared in the territory of Kosova, due to the lack of insufficient vaccination of children. The epidemic of measles, whooping cough and children paralysis, caused big damages to the physical and the psychological health of children.
They are deprived from the right to health care and education without fee. They get no stimulation for any further education at secondary schools. The wounded children had no right to be treated at hospitals these days of March 1998.
WOMEN AS POLICE AND MILITARY VICTIMS AND THE VIOLATION OF THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS
Importance of being employed
Ethnic Albanian women can not be divided from other victims. They have no possibility to act. Practically women are completely part of the repressed at home and out of home, and they are cut from the world. It is impossible to make proper analysis on women's issues, and their position, under the circumstances described above. There is a lot to be written about them, especially after the oscillation of their position towards bottom.
The situation and the position of women in Kosova is such as: on the 90 per cent of the population in Kosova as Albanians, 49,2 per cent of them are women. For the time being and the political situation as it is, less than 3 per cent of them are employed, as far as others have already been dismissed forcefully since 1990.
Social and health care system in Kosova is destroyed forcibly since 1990. Women and children are left without any care and support at all. Their health is endangered and we are faced now with increased morbidity and mortality.
Before the year 1990, about 33,5 per cent of the total number of workers were women. Economical independence meant a lot to them, to their emancipation, to decision making and to family planning.
>From the psychological point of view, dismissed women can be classified into three categories, as young women, middle age women and mature age women. Consequences of their dismissal depended on the phase of their life cycles. The mature stage is a stressing age with no perspective of survival and support, no perspective of finding another job, with loss of self confidence and with low self esteem. Beside the lack of a hope for prosperity, middle age aggravated to private undertakings, like private shops and others, but very few of them. Younger ones were in a better position, they have hope, they can sometimes find a way of living, and a tiny purpose of living.
To the first stage, stress circumstances increased, losing their own values, becoming vulnerable; they lost a part of themselves which had a psychological importance. All sorts of ages needed factors of mechanism of self defence and turned into strugglers (few of them) and surrenders (nearly all). Women - strugglers, surmounted obstacles and proved themselves. Women - surrenders, it is the enormous majority of Albanian women, "volunteered" - actually subjected on closing themselves in four walls with desperation and what is most dangerous, resigned their own self to their family and husband's fates. Fear, anxiety, helplessness and the loss of self respect have become parts of life to women in these last six years.
Exclusion of a whole community forced by the repercussions of drastic events that were and are taking place, changing our political moments and our social moments too, compress the creativity. Women are completely out of public life in Kosova.
INSECURITY
The situation of women is now like this: they experience themselves as family pillars, which they really are and try to keep in shape each member of their family, sacrificing their last strength.
We shall be presenting 4 cases of Albanian women as victims. As women of different ages, they have been killed on different circumstances. Their assassination shows the characteristics that reflect unbearable conditions for the citizens of Kosova, because of Serb anarchy, detonations, terror, uncontrolled armaments and irresponsibility of Serbia's police and Serb and Montenegrin citizens.
HAVUSHE AJETI, born in 1942, from Prishtinë, is killed inside her house yard, in front of the house stairs. Someone threw a bomb from the outside walls of the yard. No one took the responsibility. The explosive was an army one.
GRISHA KAMBERI, born in 1913, from village Çabër near Zubin Potok, died from a shock of terror. Big police forces, armed to teeth, with armored vehicles and military equipment, surrounded village Çabër. Police searched without warrant (as they usually do) 150 Albanian families "for weapons". Terror was terrifying with beatings, inhumanities and demolition of houses and furniture; age, gender and children were not spared at all. Grisha (80) fainted in a shock and never recovered, witnessing police violence against her sons and against other family members. She died four days later, with dismay in her eyes and remembering the police ultimatum that within 3 months all citizens of Çabra have to immigrate.
NYSRETE SHALA, born in 1952, from Gjilan, is killed. She was on the balcony of her house. Bullets came from her Serb neighbour's house. No one took the responsibility and no one is charged.
ZEJNIJE TAHIRI, born in 1962, mother of 4 children (the oldest 7), and pregnant on her fifth child (eighth month of pregnancy) living in the mountainous village Petrashtice, Commune of Shtimje, died after police intervention at her home. Her husband was displaced, as he was chased and persecuted by police (nine police interventions at his home). One night police breaks into the home of this family; they search all over the house, demolish everything, threat and intimidate this woman and children and afterwards leave. This happens at late hours of the night. The pregnant woman runs bleeding to her nearest neighbour, asking for help. Her neighbour takes her to the hospital in Ferizaj, but she dies on the way. The baby too. She takes the truth with her. Children were left alone in fear without parents. Mother dies and father hiding somewhere around, who finds out about the tragic event 10 days later. What's more confused, the hospital authorities deliver the certificate of HYPERTENSIO ART., and this remains to be discussed, because gynecologists say hypertension is impossible when someone dies after bleeding.
As for the year 1998, we enclose names of victims of the conflict. Statistics speak that in the first week of March 1998, 14 children were killed, 14 women, 2 pregnant women, 7 old people and 2 disabled old people. Definite number of victims is to come. This way we come to the conclusion that there were no terrorists around the region of Drenica, but people who defended their door steps against big military and police forces well equipped both on the ground and on the air.
RAPE
Rape is not reported nearly at all. At the Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms and at the Centre for Protection of Women and Children only few cases are reported. This issue is very sensitive in our society. But when we know that big police forces break into homes of people, when we know the fact that Albanian families are extended families in villages, together with the additional other fact that men are beaten up and taken to the police stations, while women remain alone with policemen in separate rooms, ill- treating them, ordered on orgies to dance and serve food and coffee, rape must be a case too. It is father's laws that keep the data out of public, so, all we know is that a wife of such and such person was ill-treated, or sister, daughter, and daughter in law of someone, etc. At the CPWC women come without names.
Tradition forces this subject into taboos.
EDUCATION
Alarming information is coming lately about the decreasing number of pupils attending schools in Kosova. In the framework of this number, girls' number that abandon schools, takes the first place. Among the circumstances that render more difficult to attend schools, like distance, clandestine (secrete classes in private houses), lack of family means, as the most important circumstance of the school drop out is insecurity. Albanian women are jeopardized today economically, physically and psychologically.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Women's position inside families has been ruined also. Women are experiencing domestic violation now more than ever before. Their gender integrity is decreasing. This political chaos, the economical violence against Albanian families has aggravated women's position and there is an objective fear of turning back to traditionalism, back to traditional families.
WOMEN'S ACTIVITIES
The position of women in Kosova is that harsh, that the activities of women's groups are not allowed. Any undertaken activity under the circumstances described above, is treated as hostile activity.
Women of Kosova are pushed by the Serbian authorities to the cultural, social and intellectual inferiority. Their human rights are violated and they are not allowed to organize any campaign against sufferance, or against violence in general.
There are many problems that women of Kosova would like to stress. Things that concern feminism, family life, marriages, divorces, deliveries and abortions, education, their abused rights as human beings and individuals, that concern their rights as human rights, economy and survival, etc., .But basically no space is left for them.
Considering the circumstances, there are groups of women that work in Kosova and their results are quite remarkable: the League of Albanian Women (NGO), Women Artists and of Veterans of Education, Women's Forum of the Democratic League of Kosova (LDK), Women in Black, Sisters Qiriazi, Kosova Legal Committee of Women and the Centre for Protection of Women and Children. These groups have quite raised the awareness of women but funds to establish ways of working and achieve changes are unachievable.
Recently, due to the escalating situation, we had the need to establish the NETWORK OF WOMEN OF KOSOVA, which includes all women's groups, associations and individuals.
NEEDS
Everyone knows that women's position is subjected to economical development which is distracted completely and the political development, distracted directly by the Serbian authorities.
Women need places where they might tell their stories and receive help without fear that someone might betray them and repeat their stories. We know that we must gain confidence already lost, because women do not trust anyone anymore. Any action they take on their own behalf is treated by the authorities as hostile.
Women need abolishing all traditions that do injustice to them. Men have become accustomed to keeping their wives in isolation, to having control over their movements, and they use the general political insecurity to keep women from venturing out.
Their health care is reduced, so they have become neglected, relegated to a lower priority when money is short.
WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS
Because of the inter-relationship between human rights abuses, women's human rights abuses and their health status, both physically and psychologically, it is impossible not to deal with such rights.
There are particular and disturbing violations of women and children's rights: discrimination both within the family structure perpetuated by family members and outside of it perpetuated by the political powers, through the police force, through day to day oppression.
The following are the major areas where we note abuses on women: right to live, right to employment, right to health care and health security, right to freedom of speech, right to dwelling, right to survival and possibility to find ways of living, violence against women's identity, the right to physical existence, right to education, right to freedom of choice and relationships, right to divorce, ...
PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES
>From the psychological point of view, we notice a high level of stress within families, trauma in both women and children, and increasing lack of material means within the extended families.
Psychological states include: low self esteem, low levels of trust, depression, highly manipulative tendencies, fear, insecurity, hopelessness, inertia, anger, aggression, psychosomatic disorders, lack of personal care,...
If women ask for help, they come furtively, look around wildly and then abruptly disappear without coming forward for help. Others usually bring their children in, with small troubles, as a way to begin to talk about themselves.
As a consequence of men's lack of ability to fulfill their perceived traditional role and provide for their families (mostly due to forceful dismissals already 8 years and lack of employment without state benefits, psychological and emotional abuse is inflicted upon women and children. The high social sanctions on divorce, or separation and the economic impossibility to live apart from families they have married in to, means women are trapped in these situations.
Trauma symptoms are noticed such as bedwetting in older children (girls), domination of fear, muteness and lack of self control. As women's sphere of life is now almost totally restricted to their homes and inside four walls, we see increased isolation with consequent psychological problems due to lack of other forums to be free or to have perspectives.