Arms, Leaflets, Resignations

by Violeta Orosi

In Kosovo, both ethnic Albanians and Serbs seem to be speedily searching for a way out of a several-years-long vicious circle. Each is doing so in his own way. The Democratic Alliance of Kosovo (DSK) information center said that the federal police have, for months, been carrying out an action "collecting arms from ethnic Albanians, besieging villages, entering houses, maltreating and arresting people."

According to DSK data, such actions have been carried out so far in 130 villages in Kosovo, and in the last 15 days this fate was met by the villages of Nepolja (near Pec), Jablanica (Djakjovica municipality) and Boksic near Klina.

The Pristina human rights committee presided over by Adem Demaci, has recorded cases of 1,000 citizens whose houses have been searched in the past two months, and the householders maltreated. "In a large number of cases the victims of these wild campaigns were told that their only hope of salvation lay in buying or finding arms, or in leaving Kosovo and their hearths altogether," said the committee's statement. With regard to these events, the Social Democratic party of Kosovo said that "apart from ethnic cleansing, the current state terrorism had other political goals, and the aim of provoking ethnic Albanians into a general national uprising, should not be excluded." It is interesting to note that in connection with these events, of which the Albanian language papers have written extensively, the local police have not said a word, even though the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) mission stationed in Pristina for over three months is aware of what is happening.

The Serbian organs do not seem capable of finding a solution for the realization of a program aimed at "settling all those who wish to live and work here", i.e. of keeping them in these spaces. The lack of apartments and poor working conditions resulted in 242 persons moving out of Pristina in 1992. The refugees have very bad accommodation, and not only in Pristina. Over the past weekend, the public in Kosovo was surprised by leaflets found in restaurants, villages and towns, whose content was somewhat critical of the ethnic Albanian leaders' policy. The leaflet was signed by the unknown "People's Movement for the Republic of Kosovo," and recommended that the president, government and Kosovo assembly fight against those who want autonomy, and turn their backs on "pseudo-democrats and pseudo-pluralists," and that they should not agree to "slavery in Macedonia and Serbia."

While the Serbian public here views the leaflets as differences between ethnic Albanian political groups, it has been learned that a number of earlier political emigres in Switzerland, who until the disintegration of Yugoslavia had rallied around the "Movement for the Republic of Kosovo," were responsible for the leaflet.

Fehmi Agani, vice-president of the most influential party rallying Kosovo Albanians, underscored during a talk with VREME that "criticism contained in the leaflets was unfounded, because no political party rallying ethnic Albanians took the stand of accepting autonomy." Claims of selling out Kosovo were insinuations, said Agani.