Human Rights Violations against Non-albanian Kosovars

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# UNHCR - Briefing Notes 24 August 1999
# The Forgotten of the Kosovo War Struggle to Survive
    'Internally Displaced' Serbs, Gypsies Face Meager Aid, Anguish of the Dispossessed
# Orthodox Press: Kosovo and Metohija Chronicle, August 24

 
UNHCR - Briefing Notes 24 August 1999

This is a summary of what was said by the UNHCR spokesperson at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations. Quoted text from this briefing note may be attributed to the UNHCR spokesperson named below left

Kris Janowski

1. Kosovo

UNHCR today evacuated 28 vulnerable elderly Serbs from Prizren to Serbia where they will be reunited with their families. Virtually all of the 28 have received verbal threats. They were terrified and asked to be taken out.

The latest Federal Yugoslav Government figures indicate that Kosovo is emptying out of its Serbs and only three municipalities in the extreme north of Kosovo have sizeable Serb populations. The Yugoslav government says an estimated 195,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians have now arrived in Serbia and Montenegro up from 180,000 just two or three weeks ago. Even though UNHCR cannot vouch for the accuracy of the figure, it certainly implies that Kosovo’s Serbian population is dwindling even further.

Meanwhile UNHCR's shelter rehabilitation program in Kosovo is getting into full swing, with 5,800 basic shelter kits distributed so far. These kits are designed to provide enough material to allow homeowners to temporarily weatherproof one room in their house before winter. The kits contain reinforced, heavy-duty plastic sheeting for roof repairs, as well as translucent plastic to cover broken windows. The kits also include timber, plywood, nails, staples, tape and tools. Since mid-June, UNHCR has delivered more than 750 truckloads of aid to Kosovo, much of it shelter material.

These materials are not meant to provide total reconstruction of a home. They are not meant as a permanent solution, but only as a temporary measure to get people through this first difficult winter. Our distribution partners, however, are reporting that many Kosovars have very high expectations, assuming that UNHCR is going to provide enough material to totally rebuild their homes. We've even heard of some cases where homeowners have turned down shelter kits, fearing they would be ineligible should a more substantial rebuilding package come later.

We want to stress to everyone that these kits may be the only help they receive before the onset of winter and they should make the best possible use of the materials in fixing one warm and weatherproof room. UNHCR is not a reconstruction agency -- we do emergency relief , assistance and some rehabilitation to ensure that refugee returns are sustainable. Reconstruction and long-term development are done by others.

UNHCR is handling only a third or less of the total provision of shelter kits. We're providing 16,000 basic shelter kits and another 4,400 roofing kits which are being distributed according to several criteria. Other organisations are also supplying shelter, including the European Community Humanitarian Office which is providing 20,000 basic kits, while the US is contributing 19,300. In all, the kits will benefit an estimated 387,000 people. That should be enough for the estimated population living in what we call Category 3 and 4 housing -- damage ranging from 20 to 60 percent.

(...)

This document is intended for public information purposes only. It is not an official UN document.

The Forgotten of the Kosovo War Struggle to Survive
'Internally Displaced' Serbs, Gypsies Face Meager Aid, Anguish of the Dispossessed

By William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 24, 1999; Page A01

SMEDEREVO, Yugoslavia—Dragan Krstic, his wife and their six children gathered in the single room they now call home for what has become their usual daily meal -- four thick, white strips of pork fat and a few ladles of beans.
     Two of his children have dysentery, the 30-year-old displaced Kosovo Serb said. A daughter, Jovana, has mental retardation. Back home, he had arranged to have her treated, but the war put an end to that. "I can't get care for her here," he said.
     Krstic and his family, along with about 420 other displaced people from Kosovo, are crammed into stifling, fly-infested rooms without toilets or running water at a workers' barracks in this Serbian city 30 miles southeast of Belgrade. They are among nearly 190,000 Serbs and Gypsies who have fled Kosovo since the war ended two months ago -- the majority in the face of reprisals by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.
     Unable to return to their homes in the Serbian province, yet considered a burden and not entirely welcome in other parts of Serbia, tens of thousands are eking out a meager existence as the war's forgotten refugees. Here in the decrepit barracks of an abandoned steel mill, which was bombed by NATO warplanes during last spring's air war, they complain that they are not getting enough to eat -- just one meal a day, and in tiny portions -- and lack medicine and other basic necessities.
     Vidosava Vlajkovic, a Gypsy, held out a tin plate of greasy macaroni as she prepared lunch for her husband and three children. "This is for five of us," said Vlajkovic, who is expecting her fourth child any day. "How can we sustain ourselves on food like this?" As she complained, one of her children sat on the floor chewing on a fly swatter.
     The plight of the displaced Serbs, who share the barracks complex with about 300 ethnic Serbs who fled Croatia in 1995, has drawn little attention, in part because their community has been accused of complicity in atrocities against Kosovo Albanians by Yugoslav troops and Serbian police. The Serbs here deny any involvement.
     Whether they are victims or perpetrators, targets of ethnic Albanian looting and house-burning, or looters and arsonists themselves, they harbor deep bitterness and anger. In interviews, they waver between declarations of innocence and vows of revenge, between denunciations of NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo for failing to protect them and pleas for international assistance.
     "This is all too sad, and it's no use talking about it," said Zvonko Jezdic, the barracks leader. "We have no milk for our children. What is a child guilty of? He doesn't know what war is."
     Adding to their woes is the fact that the Serbs and Gypsies who fled Kosovo officially are not considered refugees but "internally displaced people," since Kosovo is formally a province of Serbia, the dominant republic in the Yugoslav federation. Thus, caring for them is officially the responsibility of the government in Belgrade, rather than such international organizations as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The U.N. agency took charge of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians who were driven from Kosovo by Serb-led government forces during the war.
     Although U.N. agencies say they have a mandate to help the displaced Serbs, in practice they must negotiate aid deliveries with the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The aid is sent to the Yugoslav Red Cross and other local agencies, which are in charge of distribution.
     The government has barred the Serbs and Gypsies from moving to Belgrade -- in part out of fear they could fuel the opposition movement to force Milosevic and his associates from office -- and they have been spread out across Serbia, complicating relief efforts.
     "We're still experiencing some kind of glitch in the supply chain," said Maki Shinohara, a U.N. refugee agency representative in Belgrade. "In some areas, the delivery is not really systematic."
     She said the agency's top priorities in Serbia are 500,000 Serbian refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, who have been here since wars in those former Yugoslav republics ended in 1995. But the agency does not want to discriminate against internally displaced Serbs who are in "the same predicament," she said.
     About 120,000 of the displaced need food aid, said Robert Hauser, senior emergency coordinator of the World Food Program in Belgrade. Although Serbia currently has plenty of food, many of these people are suffering "food shortages at the household level" because they are too poor to buy what they need to supplement their rations, he said.
     About 90,000 of those who fled Kosovo are living with families in Serbia, and 30,000 are staying in often crowded "collective centers," such as schools, gymnasiums, monasteries, vacant buildings and factory barracks. About 70,000 others who had sufficient resources have been able to resettle independently. Those occupying schools will have to move elsewhere before classes start in early September.
     In addition, local authorities must decide what to do about enrolling displaced children in school and meeting other social obligations. In places such as this industrial town, communities have tried to accommodate the influx from Kosovo but risk becoming overwhelmed.
     "Now the number of people asking for help is growing," said Zoran Radojkovic, a Serbian relief official here in Smederevo. "We dread what they're going to ask for when winter comes." He said he expects the number of displaced people from Kosovo to reach 10,000 in the next few weeks.
     "It's a huge dilemma for us," Shinohara said. "We don't encourage these people to leave Kosovo, because we don't want to be associated with another form of "ethnic cleansing." But in extreme situations where it's a matter of life or death, we have to assist them to get out."
     Krstic and others who left said it was just such a life or death choice that forced them to flee, often as their homes were being burned by ethnic Albanians. Krstic said Serbs in his village -- Obilic, near Pristina, the Kosovo capital -- had participated in looting homes of ethnic Albanians who had been driven out during the war. But other people from the village blamed police and army units from the southern Serbian city of Nis.
     The soldiers and police "were looting and burning during the war, and when they withdrew they put us in a quarrel with our neighbors," said Slavisa Danic, 37. Before that, the two communities got along, he said. "We went to their weddings and funerals."
     As the barracks residents told their stories, a loud argument erupted over the prospects of returning to Kosovo.
     "Who wants to go back if it's not safe?" Jezdic, the barracks leader, shouted. "They're killing us, and KFOR [the NATO peacekeeping force] is not doing anything about it."
     Others cried out the names of Kosovo Serbs who have been reported killed or missing in recent weeks. Jezdic angrily kicked a burlap bundle of blankets supplied by the U.N. refugee agency and tore open a carton of its "family hygiene" provisions. The blankets are rough and smell of oil. Other supplies, especially food, are inadequate, others complained.
     "This is what we should talk about," Jezdic shouted. "Not, 'I want to go home.' "

© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church
PRAVOSLAVLJE PRESS

Belgrade, August 24, 1999
Kosovo&Metohia Events

Two processes happen simultaneously in Kosovo and Metohia: on one side the international military and civil forces and the Serbian Orthodox Church strive to establish peace and order, but on the other side the Albanian extremists commit bloody atrocities on the Serbian people and on the other non-Albanian peoples. The peace process has not yet resulted in obvious, tangible progress, yet the other process stands an excellent chance of achieving its goal. Up to now, around 200.000 Serbs have been expelled from Kosovo and Metohia, several hundreds have been killed and kidnapped, several thousands of the Serbian houses have been set on flames or taken by force, over 50 churches and monasteries have been destroyed…

Today, the Serbs have again been the victims throughout the region. Seven Serbs have been hurt in Gnjilane, when a young Albanian cast a grenade at a Serbian video club. In that attack Dimitrije Nedeljkovic (whom KFOR transported by helicopter into a hospital in Skoplje) and Milorad Cvetanovic have been seriously injured. Apart from these injured people, Zivana Antic has also been wounded in her own back yard in the second bombing attack. A group of the Albanians have beaten Nebojsa Todorovic. The houses of many Serbs have been plundered, and Zvonko Ristic's house has been set on flames.

Three grenades were cast at Zivojin Djoric's house in Vitina yesterday.

The Albanian extremists killed Dragan Nikolic in Prizren; his massacred corpse has been found in Zur village. Stevan Todorovic was killed while returning from Strpce village into Prizren. Milena Stojkovic's house was looted and burned, and another four Serbian residential objects in the old centre of Prizren were set on fire. Music School Josip Slavenski has been partly burned. Also, three Romanies were killed and twelve have been kidnapped.

Two Serbs from Tetovo have been kidnapped in Ljutoglav village.

Although trying for three days, the Russian soldiers from KFOR have not succeeded in entering into Orahovac and assuming the duty entrusted to them by the International Community. However, their arrival into Devic monastery has already shown positive results: they have started repairing buildings on the monastery estate that have been ruined by the Albanians.

Foreign affairs ministers of France and Germany - Mr Vedrine and Mr Fischer - have visited Kosovo and Metohia today. They have met with the representatives of the Serbs from Kosovo and Metohia.
 

Belgrade Events

Mr Igor Kalevinski, UN representative in Belgrade, has visited the Serbian Patriarchate today. Hvosno Bishop Atanasije has talked with him. It has been discussed about the issue of peace in Kosovo and Metohia, as well as about other problems.

Bishop of Hvosno
Atanasije

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