NIN, January 21 1999 [weekly from Belgrade]
During the last few months the train from Kosovo Polje to Beograd usually empties in Kragujevac, at the suburban train station in Grosnica. The passengers are mostly women and children burdened with bags with necessities, arriving to Kragujevac with the intention to escape alive from Kosovo while that is still possible. They head from the station in Grosnica on a search for relatives, friends, or unknown compatriots in the settlements around Kragujevac in order to find accommodation, at least for a while. Their clothing contradicts fairly widespread conviction in Kragujevac that "Kosovars", as the residents of Sumadija [central Serbia] call their Serb brethren, have a lot of money. Initially the new arrivals appear poorer and more hopeless than their Kragujevac hosts.
What happens when wretched poverty comes for a "visit" to the same wretched poverty becomes clear after about two weeks. When the Serbs from Kosovo realize that they are a burden for their friends and relatives who are finding it difficult to feed themselves, let alone (un)expected guests, they usually decide that "it is not so bad" down south, at home, and they head back to Kosovo. That is why during the last few months the traffic has been going both ways. Some are arriving from the Kosovo towns and villages where "Shqiptars" [Albanians], "terrorists" or "them", as the refugee Serbs call them, have killed, wounded, or kidnapped their relatives and friends. At the station in Grosnica, without entering the city, they spread out to the surrounding, mostly illegal, settlements, which were earlier built by Serbs from Kosovo. Others are waiting at the same station for a train back to Kosovo. Some of them are resigned: "If necessary, I'll die in my home, rather than sitting in somebody else's home on a corner of a chair," tells us a woman in her late fifties. She won't tell us her name nor where she is from. She is not afraid for herself, she says, but for the little ones. She points at two kids, pre-schoolers, crouching next to the bags. We conclude that they are her grandchildren.
Dead Silence
Such reactions are common. Everyone knows that Kragujevac is full of refugees from Kosovo, but if you try to find them, they do not exist. Neither according to the locals nor officially, since according to the interpretation of the Commissariat for Refugees the status of a refugee does not apply to the citizens of Yugoslavia because, of course, we all have equal rights everywhere in the country. They do not exist when you ask at a shop, full of refugees from Kosovo, where you can find refugees. The shop keeper simply shrugs and says that "there are not any here". To every additional question, asked in dead silence, the answer in "I don't know". Only some of the customers are willing to say something: some are visiting relatives during school vacations, while others "are not these new refugees". They left Kosovo a few years ago. On time.
The question which irritates them the most is whether it is true that they had all built houses earlier and are now simply moving into them. Besides "everyone knows that it is easy to make money in Kosovo". "There are maybe three houses of that sort around here," says one of the customers in a pub in Koricani, which are besides Erdec, Cava and Grosnica, the main base for the "settlers". "The smart ones came here ten years ago and have found jobs and built houses by now. Those who trusted Milosevic are now knocking at their door. If it is true that one can make a lot of money in Kosovo why don't these humbugs from Kragujevac go there and make a fortune?" says our collocutor while becoming visibly upset. It is true, he says, that Albanians used to pay well for Serb households, but not any more. "They are waiting to get them for free".
One of those who were lucky to find a roof above their head agrees to tell us his name because he "has nothing to hide". Miljan Jovovic has escaped from a village near the town of Istok with his wife Dobrila, in the ninth month of pregnancy and two-year-old son Marko. When Albanians recently stopped his friend, pulled him out of a car and wounded him in front of his wife and children, Milan decided to leave: "In our village out of about a hundred Serb houses, only 4-5 remain and they are spread far apart; if they attack us we cannot help each other. My house is surrounded by Albanian houses. I do not fear for myself. If they attack I can run away. But, what am I going to do with the child and wife? She could give birth any day," says Miljan. They left for Kragujevac empty handed after the attack which Miljan mentions many times during a short conversation. He is surprised that we do not remember the news of the attack, since it was reported on TV. "Until then, there were no serious incidents in the Istok municipality, and that was a sign that they've started there as well," jumps in Miljan's younger brother. He is here on a vacation, he says, and will soon go back home to join his parents.
The Jovovics consider themselves lucky. They went from one house to another looking for an apartment until a family, originally from Kragujevac, offered them a house for free. The grandfather had died, the house was empty and the heirs offered the house to the Jovovics as temporary accommodation. The house is modest but Miljan and Dobrila couldn't be more pleased. We met the grandson of the late owner at the house. He had come to suggest to Miljan to till the land around the house, at least to save on vegetables. The Jovovics have no income, and even if there were jobs to be found, and there aren't any, Miljan does not dare leave a woman about to give birth alone in the house with a small child and without a phone and friends or relatives nearby. So far, relatives have brought them some food, and they will figure something out later. Miljan Jovovic says that all the recent arrivals from Kosovo are wretchedly poor. All of them are having a hard time. They didn't ask for help from the authorities, nor do they expect to get it. They haven't talked to the parents for a while because they do not have a phone. They have only heard that it is "worse than ever" in Kosovo.
State Protection
At the Kragujevac city hall, we are told that they are not able to offer assistance to the refugees from Kosovo. Dr. Vesna Pajevic, the vice-president of the Executive City Council for Health and Social Services says for NIN: "During the last six months, and especially since August of 1998 we were been informed several times that refugees have been arriving from Kosovo. They are either staying with relatives or in the previously built houses. We have usually been approached by the relatives who are in trouble themselves. We tried to react, asked the Yugoslav Red Cross and the Commissariat for Refugees in Belgrade for instructions, but were told that these people are not in their jurisdiction since they are Yugoslav citizens, have all the rights anywhere in the country, jobs, duties etc. Besides, we were advised to send all people who have problems because of their nationality to the reception center in Pristina [in Kosovo]. We can not do jobs which are supposed to be under exclusive Federal jurisdiction. Now, when their lives are in danger, people are temporarily leaving Kosovo without the intention to stay here permanently".
Such people refuse to admit, says Dr. Pajevic, that they are refugees but, for the reasons only known to them, insist that they are here temporarily and on a vacation. It is true that they are very scared, they feel cheated, because all these years they have been told that the state will protect their lives and property. Now, they have realized that that was a lie. The saddest of all is that these families are the poorest of the poor and usually say that the officials have sent their families away to safety while they are in Kosovo on duty. The refugees find that additionally alarming, says Dr. Vesna Pajevic, since everyone remembers the famous rally in Kosovo Polje when the then president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, promised that noone will be allowed to hurt them [Kosovo Serbs].
"Nobody knows even approximately how many people have escaped from Kosovo. It is only certain that Kragujevac has suffered a true invasion," says for NIN Dr. Borivoje Radic, president of the Executive City Board. "It is an illusion that these people will go back. Kosovo was emptied during the 80's and that's when its fate was sealed. Slobodan Milosevic himself swallowed his pride and forgot about his statement that 100,000 people will return to Kosovo," says Dr. Radic.
For now, the refugees are trying to survive the winter and are all afraid of the forthcoming spring. If they return home, they risk to leave their lives on the sacred Serb ground. If they stay, they risk to learn about the attractions of an imminent existential agony. For a while, Kragujevac has not been a good heaven for the refugees from Kosovo.
Roma between a rock and a hard place
In the last few weeks about 100 Roma, mostly from the Kosovska Mitrovica area, have arrived to Kragujevac. Hence, that area has now been totally "cleansed" of Roma. According to Dejan Nikolic, the coordinator of the Program for the Protection of Human Rights of Roma in Kragujevac, they were the victims of double pressure in Kosovo: on the one hand, representatives of the ruling parties directed them how to vote "correctly" in the elections. Thus, their fear and ignorance were used for political ends.
On the other hand, their Albanian neighbors did not like that at all. Consequently, they started with their pressures and threats. So far, about 30 Roma have been killed, and the rest understood that they cannot survive in Kosovo. Nobody knows the exact number of refugee Roma but, according to Dejan Nikolic, it is obvious that they will not be going back to their homes since noone can guarantee their safety. If they cannot stay in Kragujevac, they will move on.
senden