A day with the Yugoslavian Ambassador
by Miranda Worthen
On March 11, 1998, the Kokolis Program at the
Kennedy School of Government
sponsored a forum on conflict in Yugoslavia.
The speakers were the Yugoslavian
ambassador to the UN, and the Macedonian and
Albanian ambassadors to the United
States. The panel had been set up before
the massacres in Kosova, but the conversation
ended up being almost entirely about them.
The Yugoslavian ambassador
said many things which I knew to be false through
reports from various news sources including Serbian
news sources. He mentioned that
everyone killed in Kosova was a terrorist, that
they had invited the Red Cross to inspect,
that they had offered all the rights of citizenship
to the ethnic Albanians, that U.S. news
was biased and not covering the whole story,
and more.
I was outraged.
When the panel opened for questions I asked the second one. First
I announced the vigil i was holding the next
day and then i said pretty much the following:
"I have been following the situation in Kosova
very closely through Serbian, Albanian, and
U.S. news sources and I have to take issue with
much of what you have said here tonight.
First, you say that the government has invited
the Red Cross, but is it not true that today
over 51 bodies were buried in a mass grave and
then ploughed over in haste without
being autopsied or examined preventing any further
inspection by a group such as the
Red Cross?
Second, you mentioned that the U.S. news was
biased and unjust, but hasn't the Serbian
government begun prosecution of news sources
who have used words like "victim" to
describe the people who have been killed rather
than the word "terrorist?" This seems to
me a much more biased system.
Third, you said that the rights of all citizens
have been extended to ethnic Albanians, and
yet students have been denied secondary and University
educations for seven years and
80% of the Albanian government workers were fired
and many other institutions fired
Albanian workers as well. In addition,
peaceful protests by students to reclaim the right to
the Universities have been met with highly violent
opposition.
Fourth, you stated that the violence has been
contained to one village which you contend
is the hotbed of terrorist action, and yet violence
has taken place in other places as well.
For example, in Prishtina during peaceful protests
on march 2, protesters were beaten by
the police and some people are still missing,
one student was thought to have been killed."
I think that I said some more, but this i just
what i know i said from notes that I took.
Anyway, the ambassadors
from Albania and Macedonia silently clapped and everyone
looked pleased except the ambassador from Yugoslavia.
He began by saying that he
would try to answer all of the points in my "elegant
expose" but that he might miss some.
He said that the Red Cross had not been invited
to inspect the bodies of those killed. He
said that the reasons that the student protesters
in Prishtina have met with violent
opposition was that they had not gotten permits
to protest and that "in Yugoslavia, as in
any country pretending to be democratic" one
needs a permit to protest. He said that there
had been no violence at the protest on march
2nd. He said that the Albanians had been
fired from their jobs because they had refused
to acknowledge the state. He said
something to the effect of "it doesn't make sense
to have someone working in a
government hospital when they don't recognize
the government who owns it." I guess that
this is the problem of having all state owned
industries and stuff. That was all that he
answered to. Many other questioners continued
in this line and there were many
Albanians present.
After the event was
over, many people came up to me to express their gratitude for my
questions. They were all extremely pleasantly
surprised to know that I was not Albanian
and yet was still interested in the issue. I
told them that anywhere where injustice occurred,
it was unsafe for all people. I went down
to speak to the panelists after, and the Albanian
ambassador said that I was completely accurate
in all of my questions and that he could
tell that I had great compassion. Then
the Macedonian ambassador came over and
agreed saying that she was thrilled that I had
asked those questions because they were
things which they could not say because of her
position in the debate and representing her
government, but knew to be true.
Then the Yugoslavian
ambassador came over to me and we began to talk. We ended
up talking for about 20 minutes as I walked him
to his hotel room because he had been
separated from the rest of the group. I
told him how I had seen the pictures of people who
were young children under the age of 4 and asked
him how could he say that they were
terrorists. He called them "collateral
damages." I said that they were really humans and
then we got into a discussion about the possibility
of economic sanctions. It was a really
empowering and amazing experience (and amazing
that he was at Harvard so that I had
the opportunity to confront him so directly during
that time of crisis).
Later that night, while
at the copy shop making posters for the vigil I was holding the
next day, another show of support came in this
form. The man making the copies asked
me what they were about and I told him a little
about the situation in Kosova. When I tried
to pay for the copies, he gave them to me for
free saying "keep your money, there is no
price for peace."
Miranda Worthen
2708 Harvard Yard Mail Center
Cambridge, MA 02138
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