From mentor at alb-net.com Thu Jun 7 15:58:29 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 15:58:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] William G. Walker: Macedonia Albanians "see themselves as second-class citizens in their own country." Message-ID: "After a decade of Macedonian independence, its Albanian citizens see themselves as second-class citizens in their own country. Despite the fact that Macedonia is a nation of many minority groups, with none representing an overwhelming majority, Slavic Macedonians occupy more than 90 percent of public-sector jobs and make up 90 percent of the police force and 90 percent of the university student population. Macedonian remains the only official language permitted, and Albanian-language universities are denied public funding." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16709-2001Jun3.html A Big Tent for Macedonia By William G. Walker Monday, June 4, 2001; Page A19 Macedonia is at a place at which taking the wrong fork in the road could lead to another Kosovo, or worse. Recent TV coverage of Albanian villagers fleeing the violence of government efforts to crush a guerrilla force -- scenes straight out of the 1999 Kosovar refugee tidal wave that engulfed the region -- only confirms this possibility. The newly announced "grand coalition" government in Skopje has the historic responsibility to formulate and deliver a bold package of reforms. If successfully implemented, such measures would contribute to forging a multiethnic society in Macedonia, one that values diversity, cooperation and coexistence among its citizens. But if the coalition fails to carry out significant reforms, the results will be catastrophic for Macedonia and the region at large. Attempts have been made by the Macedonian authorities to ease tensions between the country's Slavic and Albanian ethnic groups. To a large extent, these efforts have been too little too late. After a decade of Macedonian independence, its Albanian citizens see themselves as second-class citizens in their own country. Despite the fact that Macedonia is a nation of many minority groups, with none representing an overwhelming majority, Slavic Macedonians occupy more than 90 percent of public-sector jobs and make up 90 percent of the police force and 90 percent of the university student population. Macedonian remains the only official language permitted, and Albanian-language universities are denied public funding. This state of affairs is untenable. Much effort went into forming the grand coalition. Now it must step up and do grand things. The coalition must demonstrate with actions instead of words, and in no uncertain terms, that Macedonia is a truly multiethnic society that guarantees and respects the rights of all. Unfortunately, the present regime is unlikely to take that path unless it receives both help and pressure from the West. Having led two international peacekeeping efforts in the region -- in Croatia and Kosovo -- I am convinced there is no substitute for high-level American involvement in solving Balkan ethnic conflict. The visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region was significant and timely. But more must be done. The United States should step up its involvement by hosting a Dayton-like conference in which representatives of the coalition regime and all important sectors come together with the goal of designing a reform package to put Macedonia on the road to sustainable stability. Such a conference will have limited success, however, if the international community continues to reject all contact with the National Liberation Army (NLA). We fear that to talk with the NLA somehow will "legitimize" a violent group -- as if the NLA, with its cause, its popular support and its guns needed such legitimacy. The international community should have welcomed and built upon the recent agreement between Albanian political leaders and the NLA brokered by U.S. diplomat Robert Frowick. Instead, the agreement was condemned. History has shown that more often than not combatants such as the NLA -- the Vietcong, those in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, the FMLN in El Salvador -- will not lay down their arms if they are branded as "illegitimate" and excluded from negotiations. The KLA in Kosovo is a further example. The international community is right to denounce the tactics and violence of the NLA. But lasting peace in Macedonia will be elusive unless the NLA is engaged, either through direct talks or intermediaries. Neither side in this crisis can win a military victory. The government's efforts to do so will only drive more recruits into the ranks of the NLA. Slobodan Milosevic acted on the basis of a similar miscalculation. In the heat of the moment, the government, the NLA and the rest of us appear to have lost sight of this fact. The NLA has offered to talk instead of fight. Let's take it up on the offer, while working more closely with the coalition regime. Bold steps are needed immediately to prevent Macedonia from descending into a cycle of tit-for-tat violence and ethnic hatred. Does anyone believe that further shelling of Albanian villages and further killing of Albanian civilians will convince Macedonians of Albanian ethnicity that the government and the army welcome their presence and recognize their rights? The writer is a retired career ambassador who headed a Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. From mentor at alb-net.com Fri Jun 8 14:04:34 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 14:04:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] HRW: Rioters Burn Albanian Homes in Bitola; Mosques burned; Albanians told to leave the town or face more terror Message-ID: "The anti-Albanian riots in Bitola present a dangerous escalation of the crisis in Macedonia. The local police must fulfill their responsibility to stop the violence, not exacerbate it." Holly Cartner, Executive Director Europe and Central Asia division Human Rights Watch - Albanians told to leave the town or face more terror - Albanians beaten - Albanian homes and business burned - Mosques burned - Macedonian police officers actively participated in the violence Full report at: http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/06/Bitola0608.htm (New York, June 8, 2001) Police in the Macedonian city of Bitola did not attempt to stop rioting crowds on Wednesday night, and some police officers actively participated in the violence, Human Rights Watch said today. As a result, dozens of ethnic Albanian homes and as many as 100 shops were burned by the mob. "The anti-Albanian riots in Bitola present a dangerous escalation of the crisis in Macedonia," said Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "The local police must fulfill their responsibility to stop the violence, not exacerbate it." ... There has been no NLA fighting in or near the city of Bitola. ... The targeted homes appeared to have been carefully selected and included the homes of prominent ethnic Albanian politicians such as the Deputy Health Minister and the wealthiest ethnic Albanians. ... A village mosque was also vandalized by the rioters. Grave markers were broken, and several graves had been broken open. The windows of the mosque were broken, and rioters had set the carpets inside the mosque on fire but did not succeed in burning it down. On the exterior wall of the mosque, rioters had painted several swastikas and written "Death to the Shiptars." The term "Shiptar" is an ethnic slur when used by non-Albanians. ... Some of the witnesses reported that Bitola police officers had taken an active part in the rioting. According to Zini K. (see testimony below), at least one uniformed police officer and one uniformed soldier took part in the destruction and burning of his restaurant. According to Hamdi S., police officers stopped him from attempting to put out the fire to his home, and were shouting "Burn, burn for Macedonia." ... Anti-Albanian sentiment in Bitola is rapidly growing into a campaign by extremists to rid Bitola of its ethnic Albanian population. Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch stated that the rioters had yelled slogans including "Death to Albanians," "Pure Bitola," "Albanians Out of Bitola," "Get Out Albanians," and other such statements. The rioters told some of the ethnic Albanians that they had a week to get out of town before being targeted again. Many ethnic Albanians have fled their homes in Bitola in the aftermath of Wednesday's riot because they are afraid of further attacks. ... Zini K. managed to put out the fire, but returned the next day to find his restaurant looted and burned to the ground: "After I left, they came back to the restaurant and burned it again. It is now completely burned. Everything was looted -- our kitchen tools, tables, dishes, radio, telephone -- there is nothing left." ... The crowd started shouting, "You have one week to leave Bitola, and if you don't go to Albania we will kill you, we will make you disappear from this world." ... The crowd also beat some ethnic Albanians. Among those beaten was a fifty-year-old former local leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) and his forty-seven-year-old wife. From mentor at alb-net.com Wed Jun 13 06:27:19 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 06:27:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] NATO Urging Macedonia to Grant Albanian Rights Message-ID: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010612/wl/balkans_nato_dc_2.html Tuesday June 12 1:26 PM ET NATO Urging Macedonia to Grant Albanian Rights By Douglas Hamilton BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO (news - web sites) leaders including President Bush (news - web sites) were expected to urge Macedonia to speed up political reforms needed to end an ethnic Albanian guerrilla insurgency, a senior NATO official said Tuesday. In addition to practical arrangements for voluntary disarmament of the rebels, there must be rapid progress on giving Albanians and their language formal status in the Macedonian constitution, he told reporters. ``I'm quite sure that this will figure high on the agenda tomorrow,'' the official said at a briefing ahead of a one-day meeting Wednesday of the leaders of NATO's 19 member states, convened for Bush's inaugural visit to Europe. ``So far the international community has not succeeded in convincing the government in Skopje to speed up the political process, because we feel if the process is not sped up then the chances for the NLA to lay down their weapons and accept the usefulness of political dialogue will not be there,'' he said. The NLA is the National Liberation Army, which says it took up arms in January to win equal rights for a one-third Albanian minority who are treated as second class citizens by Macedonia's majority Slavs. A tenuous cease-fire -- the first mutual truce in five months of rebel ambushes and long-range shelling by the army -- was holding Tuesday, but guerrillas said they were now in range of the capital, Skopje and its international airport. ALBANIAN STATUS, LANGUAGE ARE CRUCH ISSUES Macedonian political leaders were due to have further consultations at Lake Ohrid in the south of the former Yugoslav republic at the weekend, with alliance and European Union (news - web sites) representatives present to facilitate final accord. The EU and NATO have been closely involved for the past three months in efforts to broker a political solution to the conflict, which threatens to spread from northern border areas into urban centers, igniting a civil war. ``This is of major concern to us,'' the NATO official said, noting that the allies have 40,000 peacekeeping troops in neighboring Kosovo who rely on rear logistics bases in Macedonia close to the scene of recent fighting. He said one part of the political solution was a disarmament plan by the coalition government of Slavs and Albanians. It aimed ``to create confidence building measures, to set out a timetable for the NLA to lay down their weapons, the possible question of an amnesty and what have you.'' ``This is one part of a package which we think is very relevant. But the other package is the really political package, which means to provide the Albanian part of the population equal rights and responsibilities,'' he continued. It was ``absolutely essential'' for concrete discussions very soon of ``possible change of the constitution to make the Albanians a constitutional part of this nation and also with regard to Albanian as a second official language.'' The Kosovo Albanian newspaper Zeri Tuesday said 90 percent of the political deal was complete, including proportional representations for Albanians in all state institutions, a state-funded Albanian university, and secularization to remove the primacy of the Orthodox Church. But the sticking points were the preamble to the constitution -- which mentions Albanians as a minority but not as one of the two founding peoples -- and official status for Albanian as Macedonia's second language. From mentor at alb-net.com Sun Jun 17 03:45:48 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 03:45:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] Macedonia Brutality Fuels Rebels Message-ID: "It was not the cracked bones or the painful back injuries that made Nazim Bushi's teeth clutch with anger." "It was disappointment that the people who caused those injuries were fellow men in uniform, who he says turned against him solely because he belonged to the wrong ethnic group." "Supporters of Bushi, an ethnic Albanian officer serving with the Macedonian police at the military airport in Skopje, say he is a victim of police brutality that has proliferated since ethnic Albanian militants took up arms in February, demanding broader rights and claiming discrimination by majority Macedonian Slavs." ``No action is taken against police,'' said Saso Klekovski of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation, a nonprofit humanitarian agency. ``Those in the higher levels of the government don't know what is going on in the lower levels.'' "In a move expected to heighten tensions, authorities have started arming a number of civilians, apparently Slavs, as part of a ``mobilization of police reservists.'' ``The distribution of weapons is done not only exclusively on ethnic basis but also on party basis,'' Klekovski said, suggesting that police were arming mainly supporters of the party of Prime Minister Lubco Georgievski. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010616/wl/macedonia_police_1.html Saturday June 16 12:40 PM ET Macedonia Brutality Fuels Rebels By MERITA DHIMGJOKA, Associated Press Writer SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - It was not the cracked bones or the painful back injuries that made Nazim Bushi's teeth clutch with anger. It was disappointment that the people who caused those injuries were fellow men in uniform, who he says turned against him solely because he belonged to the wrong ethnic group. Supporters of Bushi, an ethnic Albanian officer serving with the Macedonian police at the military airport in Skopje, say he is a victim of police brutality that has proliferated since ethnic Albanian militants took up arms in February, demanding broader rights and claiming discrimination by majority Macedonian Slavs. The incidents not only undermine government promises to improve the situation of ethnic Albanians, once the insurgency is dealt with. They could also draw ethnic Albanians to the militants and away from political parties willing to negotiate with the government. Already, the rebels claim police harassment of ethnic Albanian civilians is feeding them with new recruits. ``Young men who are beaten up by police are joining us every day,'' a rebel commander known as ``Commander Hoxha'' told The Associated Press from the rebel-controlled village of Aracinovo, barely four miles from the capital. ``They're more than we can supply with weapons.'' Independent agencies say authorities higher up are overwhelmed by the crisis and often unaware of excesses by local police, themselves stressed out by long hours and often the targets of rebel attacks. ``No action is taken against police,'' said Saso Klekovski of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation, a nonprofit humanitarian agency. ``Those in the higher levels of the government don't know what is going on in the lower levels.'' About a dozen Albanian friends and relatives came to visit Bushi last week after they'd heard the bad news. They sat listening and smoking cigarettes as he told how about 40 policemen broke into his house Sunday morning, arrested him and searched the house for weapons. None were found, he said, but he was taken to a nearby police station. There, he said he was beaten by two masked policemen, who accused him of collaborating with the rebels. ``They wanted me to admit that I had given the rebels airport maps and flight schedules of the army helicopters,'' Bushi said. About 35 hours after the arrest, police dropped him unconscious on a hill outside Skopje, where his family found him. Another ethnic Albanian serving with the Macedonian police at the airport, 1st Capt. Muhaedin Bela, was also allegedly arrested and beaten up by police last week after rebels threatened to attack the airport. Police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said he couldn't confirm or deny the reports. A police source who spoke on condition of anonymity said some police units ``are completely out of control and take orders from no one.'' Government forces have led several offensives to dislodge the rebels from their strongholds, contending they are separatists bent on carving up the country. In a move expected to heighten tensions, authorities have started arming a number of civilians, apparently Slavs, as part of a ``mobilization of police reservists.'' ``The distribution of weapons is done not only exclusively on ethnic basis but also on party basis,'' Klekovski said, suggesting that police were arming mainly supporters of the party of Prime Minister Lubco Georgievski. Similar measures helped fuel earlier wars in other former Yugoslav republics like Croatia and Bosnia. Ethnic Albanian parties in the coalition government have called on the prime minister to stop arming civilians. Many Macedonian Slavs are also frightened by the move. A Macedonian cab driver who was afraid to give his name said police knocked at his door at 4 a.m. to register his son as a reservist and hand him a gun. He said he'd rather have his unemployed son find a paying job instead of being a reservist, adding ``Give him a job, not a gun.'' From mentor at alb-net.com Tue Jun 26 22:04:27 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 22:04:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] HRW: Pamphlet Raises Ethnic Tensions. [ Ethnic cleansing in making? ] Message-ID: "We order all Shiptars [derogatory term for ethnic Albanians-tr.] who have objects for sale-shopkeepers here and around the Kwantaskhi bazaar-to leave within three days, and for those Shiptars from Aracinovo, the deadline is 24 hours. After this deadline, all the shops will be burned, and if someone tries to protect [them], the same will be killed without warning." Excerpt from the "MACEDONIA PARAMILITARY 2000 ORDER" "This pamphlet is exactly the kind of thing that could lead to widespread ethnic violence. The government and international community have to stop it now." Holly Cartner, HRW Executive director Europe and Central Asia division ----- http://hrw.org/press/2001/06/macedon0625.htm Macedonia: Pamphlet Raises Ethnic Tensions Tens of Thousands in Skopje Streets Tonight (New York, June 25, 2001) As tens of thousands of Macedonians gathered in the streets of Skopje tonight, Human Rights Watch warned that the threat of ethnic violence in the country was rising sharply. Army and special police forces were seen joining the crowd, which took over the parliament building. A pamphlet being circulated in the vicinity of Skopje by a group calling itself Macedonia Paramilitary 2000 has warned that ethnic Albanians must leave Macedonia by tonight, or be killed and have their homes and shops burned. "This pamphlet is exactly the kind of thing that could lead to widespread ethnic violence," said Holly Cartner, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division. "The government and international community have to stop it now." MACEDONIA PARAMILITARY 2000 ORDER: We order all Shiptars [derogatory term for ethnic Albanians-tr.] who have objects for sale-shopkeepers here and around the Kwantaskhi bazaar-to leave within three days, and for those Shiptars from Aracinovo, the deadline is 24 hours. After this deadline, all the shops will be burned, and if someone tries to protect [them], the same will be killed without warning. We inform Shiptars of the Macedonian republic that for every killed police officer or soldier 100 Shiptars who do not have citizenship or who took citizenship after 1994 will be killed. For every police officer or soldier disabled, 50 Shiptars will be killed. For every wounded police officer or soldier wounded, 10 Shiptars will be killed, no matter what gender or age. We inform Shiptars who do not have citizenship or got it after 1994 to leave Macedonia before June 25 this year, at midnight. After this deadline, we will start with the cleansing--"The Longest Night" courtesy of Macedonia Paramilitary 2000. We order every Macedonian, Turk, Roma, Turbesh, Bosniak and others not to shop in Albanian stores while the war is on, because with such actions they directly support the Shiptar terrorist narco-gangsters. Otherwise all the shops of those who trade with Shiptars will be burned down. We order to everyone to stick this pamphlet on their shops to allow for mass information. Those dwellings who receive this pamphlet and who do not show it in a visible place will be potential targets, no matter to whom they belong. The pamphlet was stamped with a purple rubber stamp with the image of a lion and M P 2000 written around the seal. From mentor at alb-net.com Wed Jun 27 16:58:14 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 16:58:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] Albanians live in fear of forced exodus from Macedonia Message-ID: "In the poor Albanian districts on the far side of the Vardar river, the sight of angry crowds chanting "Albanians to the gas chambers" has had its effect." "The Human Rights Watch organisation (HRW) says riots in the southern city of Bitola, where hundreds of Albanian homes and shops were set alight earlier this month, were a pogrom deliberately aimed at driving Albanians out of town." http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=80419 Albanians live in fear of forced exodus from Macedonia With the Macedonian parliament stormed by the Slavs who are furious with the Nato deal, ethnic Albanians cower in suburbs By Justin Huggler in Skopje 27 June 2001 Internal links Straw pulls out of Skopje visit as war looms Fear was running through the Macedonian capital last night as ethnic Albanians gathered in nervous huddles on street corners to discuss the storming of parliament by army reservists the night before. When Macedonia's parliament was stormed on Monday night, there was shooting in the dingy Albanian suburb of Gazibaba too. The local people say the Macedonian police, who have a checkpoint just up the road, started shooting in the air for no apparent reason. "They were trying to frighten us," one man said. "They want us to leave." They were cleaning up the debris around Macedonia's parliament building yesterday. There have been no reports of casualties in Skopje since the city saw its first serious disturbances, as angry Macedonian Slavs broke into parliament, incensed at a Nato-brokered ceasefire with Albanian rebels. In the poor Albanian districts on the far side of the Vardar river, the sight of angry crowds chanting "Albanians to the gas chambers" has had its effect. A young Albanian journalist, who gave his name only as Xhemal, had just returned to Gazibaba from driving his sister to Kosovo, where she will join more than 50,000 refugees who have already fled there from the crisis in Macedonia. Almost half the people in Gazibaba are already refugees. They fled here, to Skopje, from the towns and villages affected by earlier rounds of fighting. Now some are considering moving on again, as the capital begins to look a less safe place to stay. Some of those here came from the village of Aracinovo, just a few miles up the road. It was a Nato ceasefire deal, under which Albanian rebels were escorted safely out of Aracinovo, that enraged the mob who stormed parliament. "I wanted my parents to leave but they refused," says Xhemal. He says he will not go either. "I was born here. This is my home," he says. "We are prepared to surrender our lives. It's a hard thing to say, but I am ready to die." Xhemal said he had heard that Macedonian Slavs were planning to attack Albanian areas, to intimidate Albanians into fleeing, but this could not be verified. The Human Rights Watch organisation (HRW) says riots in the southern city of Bitola, where hundreds of Albanian homes and shops were set alight earlier this month, were a pogrom deliberately aimed at driving Albanians out of town. "Skopje will not be like Bitola," says Xhemal. "Here we have the means to defend ourselves." Others in the district agree, though they say they have no guns. The Albanian rebels of the National Liberation Amry (NLA) yesterday threatened to enter Skopje if there were attacks on Albanians there. A rebel commander called Sokolli claimed the UCK had "two brigades in the outskirts of Skopje". It echoes a claim made a few days ago by another rebel commander. Opinion is hardening on both sides of the river. "All my life, I have never been a nationalist, but now I have become one," insisted Milo, a young Macedonian. "Nato is holding back our army," he said angrily. "If they allowed us, we could kill all the terrorists in two days." But the Macedonian army was losing on the battlefield months before the controversial Aracinovo ceasefire. Questions are being asked over how much the Macedonian government did to prevent Monday night's riots. Witnesses say police did little to interfere. President Boris Trajkovski, in a nationally broadcast radio address, said yesterday that his government's aim was to "eliminate the terrorists from Macedonia". But he pledged that government forces would do so "with as little loss of human life as possible". The government was forced into accepting the Aracinovo ceasefire by Nato and EU diplomats furious it had begun an offensive there behind their backs, even as they were announcing that peace talks were working. But the Macedonian government is still smarting over its climbdown. When the Macedonia crisis first began, Nato and the EU were desperate to shore up the Macedonian government against the rebels. In the Slav-dominated centre of Skopje yesterday, graffiti showed Nato depicted with a swastika. That is a sign of how successfully the rebels have changed the agenda.