BURYING THE HATCHET?
With UN prodding, Kosovo's rival
Albanian leaders have patched up some of their differences. But key questions
of money and power remain.
Nebi Qena in Pristina reports.
FOR KOSOVO'S POLITICAL PRISONERS,
THE WAR CONTINUES.
While most Kosovo Albanians celebrate
an end to the war, the agony goes on for more than 2,000 Kosovo Albanians
held in Serbian jails.
Laura Rozen in Pristina reports.
WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 65, 10 August 1999SERBIA'S STATE SWINDLE. Serbia is short-changing its citizens in almost every aspect of their lives, but still promises to rebuild everything.
Milenko Vasovic in Belgrade reports.BURYING THE HATCHET? With UN prodding, Kosovo's rival Albanian leaders have patched up some of their differences. But key questions of money and power remain.
Nebi Qena in Pristina reports.FOR KOSOVO'S POLITICAL PRISONERS, THE WAR CONTINUES. While most Kosovo Albanians celebrate an end to the war, the agony goes on for more than 2,000 Kosovo Albanians held in Serbian jails.
Laura Rozen in Pristina reports.****************************************************************************
SERBIA'S STATE SWINDLE
Serbia is short-changing its citizens in almost every aspect of their lives, but still promises to rebuild everything.
By Milenko Vasovic in Belgrade
At first sight Serbia still resembles a normal country. It has a government, police and laws, and claims to guarantee its citizens a wide range of freedoms and rights. In practice, however, nothing works properly.
If you retire, there is no pension. If you win the lottery, there is no prize. If you fall ill and go to hospital, there is no medicine. "Nema"--that is "There is none", is the only explanation.
Milena Vasic, 61, retired in January 1997. However, she has yet to receive a single pension payment. Indeed, the farmers' pension fund, which should be paying her pension, has failed to pay out anything to any of the several dozen thousand pensioners whose pensions it supposedly manages since December 1996.
Other pensioners in Serbia are more fortunate and continue to receive their pensions--which average 90 German marks a month--but they come four months late. Moreover, every year they can expect the state to "steal" two or three monthly payments from them.
According to Miodrag Djuric, President of Serbia's Independent Union of Pensioners, it is difficult to work out the extent of the debt to the pensioners, since some money is already siphoned off simply by the accounting system.
It is now common to see pensioners rummaging through rubbish containers or begging is now a common sight, such is the difficult situation they find themselves in. Some have found the struggle for existence too degrading and have chosen to commit suicide rather than battle on.
Teachers and civil servants have not been paid for three months now. Disability benefits are being paid seven months late, and child benefits more than a year late.
Meanwhile, increasingly frustrated people grumble that if they owe the state taxes, electricity and other utility bills, then interest is added to their debt, but when the state owes them money no interest accrues.
The state's indebtedness to its own citizens is already on a scale which few in Serbia believe can ever be repaid. It includes some 7 billion German marks held in foreign currency savings accounts which "disappeared" with the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, and another billion German marks invested in Dafiment Bank, a private group set up by entrepreneurs close to the regime.
Dafinment Bank attracted customers by offering especially high interest rates, but then collapsed. The debts of the bank's customers remain unpaid, the courts have ruled in favour of the customers, but there is no one to implement the rulings.
The Serbian government generally manages to keep the judiciary in check. But if the courts defy authority and rule in favour of people deemed undesirable by the regime, then implementation becomes impossible. The police, whose help would be needed to ensure that decisions are implemented, simply refuse to become involved.
The case of the Yugoslav Institute for Journalism, which was expelled from its premises by a relation of Yugoslav Vice President Nikola Sainovic, is illustrative. The institute took its case to court and won, but the decision has not been implemented, effectively rendering it meaningless.
Another state scam is the national lottery which last year encouraged Serbs to bet on the football World Cup in France. The competition proved popular and large numbers of participants believed that, according to the rules of the game, they stood to win a tidy sum of money. However, there were no pay-outs. Instead, the national lottery issued a statement to the effect that the system had been too easy and that therefore there would be no prizes.
National lottery director Ratibor Grujic, who is also associated with the Partizan football club, is a well-connected member of the regime. Moreover, the national lottery has promised to help buy flats for the families of killed policemen and thus benefits from police protection and support. Lottery "winners" have no choice but to accept that they will not receive anything.
Medical care should be free for all those with health insurance. However, when one gets ill one must dip deep into one's pocket, since the hospitals lack medicines and operating instruments. Since doctors' salaries are low and irregular, it has become customary for patients to have to tip them in hard currency for treatment.
All Serbian citizens with a car are entitled to coupons for twenty litres of petrol a month. However, despite official promises that there would be fuel for everybody, possession of the coupons is not of itself any guarantee of getting petrol. Indeed, the black market appears to be the way that most people buy petrol, because there has been virtually no fuel since the beginning of the NATO bombing.
The regime also promised salaries for the soldiers who were mobilised to fight against NATO. However, when the war ended, it turned out that, once again, there was no money and the state could not fulfill its promise. Hence the protests of reservists in Kragujevac, Kraljevo and Cacak, as well as a hunger strike in Nis.
The soldiers have been cheated in yet another way. During the conflict with NATO, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic announced awards for more than 4,000 people. In practice, however, these awards exist only on paper, because the state does not have money to produce the medals.
Even Serbia's more well-to-do have lost out to the state. The best illustration of this are the dozens of unfinished residential and office buildings in Belgrade. The many partially built flats, which will not be completed, have all been paid for in advance. The construction companies are all state-owned.
In every conceivable area of life, the standard of services is disintegrating by the day. State-owned banks manage to "lose" people's salaries, state-run bus companies cancel routes without notice and state-owned, refuse-collection companies fail to clear the rubbish.
Meanwhile, the state promises that Serbia will rebuild everything.Milenko Vasovic is an independent journalist from Belgrade.
BURYING THE HATCHET?
With UN prodding, Kosovo's rival Albanian leaders have patched up some of their differences. But key questions of money and power remain.
By Nebi Qena in Pristina
After months of feuding, Kosovo's rival Albanian leaders Ibrahim Rugova and Hashim Thaci held talks last week which appear to have gone some way to patching up their differences.
Rugova, the pacifist president of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and former undisputed Kosovo Albanian leader, and Thaci, the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), met up under the auspices of UN Administrator Bernard Kouchner.
Although all sides deemed the meeting constructive, points of conflict remain. Perhaps inevitably, a principal bone of contention is control of the resources amassed abroad during the past decade via the contributions of the Kosovo Albanian diaspora.
In the wake of the meeting, Rugova agreed to join Kosovo's Transitional Council, a move he had so far refused to make. This body, which has been created by the UN and which includes two representatives of each Albanian political party or faction, two independent Albanian politicians and representatives of Serbs and Turks, is intended to be the nucleus of a future Kosovo executive.
Despite Rugova's new-found cooperativeness, it remains unclear what role he will play in the council. Since the outbreak of fighting in Kosovo in February 1998, his party, the LDK, has fragmented. Disgruntled elements have suggested that Rugova will be participating in a personal capacity, and not as party president.
But the most critical element of the Thaci-Rugova talks was the issue of who gets the cash. The funds are those collected during the past decade among the Kosovo Albanian diaspora to finance the parallel ethnic Albanian institutions of the self-proclaimed Kosova Republic.
The man responsible for collecting these unofficial taxes, which amounted to a 3 per cent levy on the income of all emigre Kosovo Albanians, was Rugova's Prime Minister in exile, Bujar Bukoshi, who has recently returned home to Kosovo from Germany.
Over the years this fund, which is believed to be held in German and Swiss banks, grew steadily and is now, following Bukoshi's return, the subject of much speculation. According to some western sources, the sum contains several million, perhaps even several tens of millions, of US dollars.
In the past two years, as the LDK's pacifist approach to generating change in Kosovo gave way to the KLA's armed struggle, the KLA launched its own "Motherland Calls" fund and began attracting contributions from the diaspora.
At the Rugova-Thaci meeting, it seems that Rugova approved a UN proposal to form a joint commission with responsibility for overseeing the transfer of both KLA and LDK funds into a joint Kosovo Fund that would be supervised by the UN.
However, it appears that Rugova acted without consulting Bukoshi who is reported to be reluctant to relinquish control over the money and is yet to surrender any of the funds.
KLA sources say that Bukoshi is determined to retain control of the funds and to use them to finance his campaign in Kosovo's first post-war elections, currently expected in 13 months.
"If he can't get people to join him, he will buy them," said a senior KLA source, speaking under condition of anonymity. The source adds that in addition to talking with Rugova, Thaci has also met Bukoshi.
The top secret meeting was held on 3 August, that is prior to the Rugova-Thaci talks, and--according to inside sources--took place without Rugova's knowledge. However, it seems that nothing of substance was agreed at the meeting. It remains to be seen whether real groundwork has been laid for a durable between Rugova and Thaci.Nebi Qena is a journalist with Pristina daily Koha Ditore.
FOR KOSOVO'S POLITICAL PRISONERS, THE WAR CONTINUES
While most Kosovo Albanians celebrate an end to the war, the agony goes on for more than 2,000 Kosovo Albanians held in Serbian jails.
By Laura Rozen in Pristina
Albin Kurti knew he was in danger. The 24-year-old student activist took precautions, varying his route to the unheated brick offices of the independent student union of Pristina's underground university where he was co-president, speaking in code on his mobile phone, and frequently sleeping away from home. But he always suspected that if the Serbian security service wanted to get him, it would.
He was right. Kurti, his father, Zaim, and brothers, Arianit and Taulant, were arrested by Serbian special police in the Pristina home where they were hiding on April 21. His father and brothers were eventually released after being beaten. But Albin, after serving time in the Lipjan prison, was moved to a prison in the Serbian city of Krusevac, where it is reported he is currently being held.
Albin Kurti made a powerful impression on the dozens of human rights' activists, diplomats, students and journalists he met. His long dark dreadlocks, gentle smile, and treasured library of books by Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Carnegie Commission on International Peace reflected his passionate and articulate commitment to pacifism and social justice. But his pacifism and personal gentleness were challenged by the conflict overtaking Kosovo.
In the summer of 1998, the war raging in Kosovo's rural Drenica and western regions was drawing Kurti closer--not without some reservations--to the political wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), then led by the long-time dissident politician Adem Demaci. Fluent in English, Kurti served as Demaci's spokesman, and by extension, as spokesman for the KLA's political wing.
By the end of the failed Rambouillet peace talks, Demaci was replaced as KLA political leader by 30-year-old Hashim Thaci, who in his student days in the early 1990s had also led the underground university's anti-Milosevic protests. But by the end of Rambouillet, Serbian forces were already moving reinforcements into place in Kosovo, and subtleties and job titles no longer mattered. Kurti's name was on a list of key Albanians to be detained.
Another name on the Serbs' list was that of pediatrician and human rights' activist Flora Brovina. Like Kurti, Brovina was arrested on April 21, by Serbian special police who, her neighbours say, were waiting outside Brovina's Pristina home when she came back from her parents' house. A friend says that Brovina spent the war running an emergency medical centre for displaced people and women in labour. Brovina is now believed to be held in a prison in Pozarevac, Serbia. Her son Nick Brovina says she has become partially paralysed as a result of her treatment.
Brovina and Kurti are two of more than 2,270 Kosovo Albanians held as political prisoners in Serbia, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Another 1,500 Kosovo Albanians are still missing after the conflict, including 800 from the south-western Kosovo town of Djakovica (Gjakova) alone. Many of their families suspect they are being held in Serbian jails.
For the families of Kosovo's imprisoned and missing, the agony of the Kosovo war goes on. Crowds of relatives gather outside the UN headquarters in Pristina almost daily, to appeal for help in freeing their loved ones. But watching their lonely vigil outside the UN offices, it often seems that no one is listening to their pleas.
Officials in international agencies say that they are aware of the problem and are working on it. But to date they have failed to explain to the relatives what exactly they are doing or how long they will have to wait.
Brovina's friend, fellow doctor and human rights activist, Vjosa Dobruna, head of Kosovo's Centre for Protection of Women and Children, has been working to get international officials to take up the case of Brovina and the thousands of other Kosovo Albanians transported out of Kosovo as Serbian forces were withdrawing and taken to Serbian prisons.
"I dont think there are any avenues I haven't pursued," Dobruna said in a telephone interview, en route from Washington to Pristina. "I have talked to US Under-Secretary for Human Rights Harold Koh and NATO secretary general Javier Solana. I have contacted all the agencies, the ICRC, Human Rights Watch, for months since the beginning."
Dobruna and other human rights' activists are angry that international officials signed a peace agreement with Belgrade that failed to grant amnesty to the thousands of Kosovo Albanians imprisoned by the Serbs for political reasons--a clause included (but not honoured) in last October's Holbrooke-Milosevic cease-fire agreement.
But in the past week there has been some progress. Three Kosovo Albanian lawyers were able to meet with several of the political prisoners in Serbian jails. The lawyers report that conditions for the prisoners, who have been denied contact with their families, are "bad", but not as brutally terrible as those under which Serbian forces held Kosovo Albanian prisoners during the conflict.
Natasa Kandic, head of the Humanitarian Law Centre in Belgrade, organised the lawyers' visits.
"My lawyers from Kosovo have succeeded in tracking and finding some 30 to 35 Kosovo Albanians from the missing list in the prisons. All of them are from Djakovica and were arrested in April and May," Kandic said by telephone from Belgrade. "It is good news. But the list of the missing is long. From Djakovica alone, some 800 are missing. And I believe that maybe we shall find more people from the missing list in the prisons."
In addition to the 1,500 missing Kosovo Albanians, and 2,270 in Serbian jails, the Humanitarian Law Centre has complied a list of more than 250 missing Kosovo Serbs. Despite the fact that no provisions were made for the missing and imprisoned in the Military Technical Agreement signed between NATO and the Yugoslav Army at Kumanova, Macedonia, Kandic believes the Serbian authorities may be willing to negotiate a post-war deal.
"Based on some rumours here, I believe that the Serbian authorities will say, the people arrested during the NATO bombing, should have the status of prisoners of war. But after the arrival of KFOR, the missing Serbs and Romas and Albanians should have the status of disappeared. I think the Serbian authorities and the UN civil administration should begin to clarify now the issue of prisoners and missing persons."
What leverage the international authorities have over the Belgrade government to negotiate the release of the imprisoned Kosovo Albanians is unclear. But Kandic said the fate of those missing and not in Serbian prison is worse.
"You know, everybody in Serbian prisons is good news for their relatives," Kandic said. "Because, unfortunately, those on the missing lists who are not in Serbian prisons, are probably dead."Laura Rozen has been covering the Balkans for English-language media since 1996.
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