[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH «ALBEUROPA»} NEWS: Wishful Thinking: Dreaming of Democracy in Kosovo (AIM Athens, November 1, 2000)

[Wolfgang Plarre]

http://www.aimpress.org/dyn/trae/archive/data/200010/01031-004-trae-ath.htm

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TUE, 31 OCT 2000 23:08:22 GMT

Wishful Thinking: Dreaming of Democracy in Kosovo

AIM Athens, November 1, 2000 

The headline of the October 30, 2000, International Herald Tribune
trumpeted "Moderates Claim a Big Victory in Kosovo Polls" and the human
rights group International Helsinki Federation hailed "A Major Step
Towards Democratic Transition in Kosova". The victory of Ibrahim
Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo over the Democratic Party -- linked
closely with the Kosovo Liberation Army -- was a welcome relief to many.
In the year-and-a-half since the West championed Kosovo's Albanians as
popular victim-of-the-year, Kosovo's Albanians had failed to live up to
expectations: they brutally expelled the greater parts of Kosovo's Serb
and Romani populations; they killed, raped, tortured and abducted; they
torched entire settlements in the presence of KFOR soldiers; and they
expropriated property wholesale (ii). Over the brief window of attention
during which international journalists peopled Kosovo, Kosovo generated
such memorable images as elderly women slashed to death in their own
bathtubs, and a local character styling himself after Hitler. What a
relief, then, that charming, soft-focus Rugova, still sporting his
paisley scarf, again secured the endorsement of the Albanians in the
October elections -- it is again possible to imagine democracy in
Kosovo. 
     A lot of people really wanted this election to go off right. After
all, an election sanctioning more of the same in Kosovo would mean more
of the same in Kosovo: the massive outlay of huge sums of money by
Western governments, and the Bosnia program all over again -- years of
supervising and subsidizing a cause in which no one locally has any
faith, name it what you will -- democracy, tolerance, the rule of law,
multi-cultural society. By simply holding the election in a Kosovo still
plagued with exploding grenades and a populace explicitly committed to
ethnic vengeance, dominance or isolation, the international powers
administrating Kosovo sent one clear message: give us a result we can
live with, so we can leave. And because Kosovars of all ethnicities
register messages sent by internationals with the astuteness of a ham
radio, they delivered in spades. 
     Thank goodness no one was looking too closely. They might have
noticed that not a single Roma or Ashkali in the camps for internally
displaced persons in the northern half of Mitrovica voted. The 500-600
persons there weren't registered, and in fact the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) registration teams apparently
never visited the camps during the registration period. Elsewhere in
Kosovo, according to reports, Roma enlisted by the OSCE to conduct voter
registration discovered that whereas prior to volunteering, they had
been unable to go to neighborhoods inhabited by ethnic Albanians, once
they began work on voter registration, they weren't able to leave the
Romani quarter at all, either to Serb or Romani areas. Similarly, in
Macedonia, among the Kosovo Roma in the refugee camps, very few voted.
Why should they vote in Kosovo? They can't even go there. 
     According to information received by The European Roma Rights
Center (ERRC) one day before the Kosovo elections, the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had abandoned plans to attempt
returns of Roma before spring to the (ex) Romani quarter in southern
Mitrovica (burned to the ground in July 1999), a scheme that agency had
been working throughout summer 2000. According to reports, when OSCE and
UNHCR visited the area around neighborhood recently to find out what
ethnic Albanians thought about the return project, they heard things
like: "We'd rather have the Serbs move back," and "We are ready for
revenge." At least one other Romani community targeted for such returns
-- Mali Alas -- had been subjected to murderous grenade attacks in
recent months (see http://errc.org/rr_nr3_2000/snap4.shtml). 
     From being an obscure province in Tito- and post-Tito Yugoslavia,
Kosovo advanced to total isolation after 1989. In 1999, having achieved
near-perfect ethnic unity, Albanians in a fever-pitch of euphoria ran
amok on the skins and property of Serbs and Roma. That was just last
year. Some people now are trying to convince us of Kosovo's democratic
credentials-- what are they thinking of? ----------------------------

i Claude Cahn is research and publications director at the European Roma
Rights Center (ERRC). For more information on the ERRC, see
http://errc.org. ii For detailed information on the situation of Roma in
Kosovo, see: http://errc.org/publications/indices/kosovo.shtml. 

Claude Cahn (i)


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