[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=AB?=ALBEUROPA=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BB?=} PRESS: Serbs must face up to Kosovo crimes, says freed reporter (Guardian, October 12, 2000)

[Wolfgang Plarre]

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,380984,00.html

Serbs must face up to Kosovo crimes, says freed reporter 

Jonathan Steele in Belgrade 
Thursday October 12, 2000 

Like most first-time prisoners, Miroslav Filipovic, the courageous
Serbian journalist who was given a seven-year sentence for "revealing
state secrets" and "spreading false information", says he learned a
great deal from his time behind bars. 
     "I shared a cell with two or three others. The inmates were moved
around but I usually had Albanians with me. I had never had such close
contact with them before," Filipovic said in Belgrade after he was freed
on Tuesday on the instructions of the new president, Vojislav Kostunica. 
     His crime was to be the first Serb journalist to write directly
about atrocities in Kosovo and to try to explain how some Serb units
attacked Albanian civilians. 
     He was tried in a military court and held in a military prison in
Nis, in southern Serbia. Some of his Albanian fellow inmates were
convicted of membership of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Others were
awaiting trial. He believes most are innocent and ought to be freed. 
     "The Albanians treated me well. I made friends with several. I had
written about Kosovo and in some way was on their side," he said. They
listened together to radio reports of Slobodan Milosevic's downfall. 
     Exhausted but neatly dressed in a suit, ready for an interview on a
Serbian TV channel, Filipovic does not look the part of a brave
investigative reporter. Now 50, he was not trying to start a career as a
young journalist with a splash. He had not done any critical reporting
before he joined the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting
as its correspondent in Kraljevo, a town in southern Serbia. 
     "If I had known what would happen to me, I would not have written
those articles. I am not so brave," he said. "I was just in the right
place at the right time." 
     What he picked up, and then published, was a series of searing
accounts given after the war by several officers and men who had served
in Kosovo. One saw a three-year-old Albanian boy beheaded in front of
his family. Others witnessed the artillery shelling of defenceless
villages, and forces going in to massacre civilians. 
     Filipovic does not believe that collective guilt can be placed on a
whole people. The atrocities were carried out by particular units. But
he does not accept that few Serbs knew what was happening in Kosovo. 
     "Everyone who was in Kosovo knew, as well as their friends and
families. They talked about it. There are people who still cannot sleep
properly for thinking about what was done," he said. 
     Unlike most Serbs, he believes that Mr Milosevic and the other
suspected war criminals should go on trial in the Hague, not in Serbia.
"They will get a fairer trial there," he said. 
     Serbs have to start to face up to and discuss war crimes fully, he
believes. This is vital if good relations are to be restored with
Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. "We cannot go forward otherwise." 
     After some rest, Filipovic plans to write a book and more articles
on atrocities. The pieces which caused the military to put him in prison
this summer appeared only on the internet. 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000


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