Posted on 05/01/2006 6:58:25 AM PDT by joan
Standing on the side of justice, as he said, and always with the victims, Austrian writer Peter Handke visited Kosovo several days ago.
Standing at burnt homes of the Nikolices, Kostices, Bozanices and Bandices in the villages of Retimlje and Opterusa near Orahovac, Handke said: 'These are universes of pain. I do not have the right to speak. I shall keep silent, I have to keep silent. Thank you for making it possible for me to see this horror personally. This is not the 21st century'.
Together with a group of domestic and foreign writers, Handke visited the most jeopardized locations in Kosovo under patronage of the Coordination Center.
'He was speechless but he promised to tell in his way the horror that Kosovo Serbs are exposed to', organizer of the visit Ranko Djinovic said.
'Feeling terrible that a mother cannot find her son's grave in a destroyed cemetery in Retimlje, Hendke defended a Serb woman who at that moment was verbally attacked by Albanians. He managed to get from Austrian KFOR commander a helicopter escort in continuation of the visit but was astonished to witness stoning of the convoy downtown Decani in spite of escort and a minute later while approaching the Monastery of Visoki Decani', Djinovic said.
Handke left yesterday but promised to return soon with far larger number of writers having world reputation in spite of the threats he received 'in order to awake the world that has fallen asleep'.
PARIS, April 27, 2006 (AFP) - France's best-known theatre company, the Comédie Française, has decided to censor a work by the leading Austrian playwright Peter Handke because of his support for the late Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Handke's 'Voyage to the Sonorous Land or the Art of Asking' was to have been put on next January, but was withdrawn from the repertoire a few days ahead of next week's announcement of the forthcoming season, the theatre said Thursday.
The company's administrator Marcel Bozonnet took the decision after reading a press report about Handke's presence at Milosevic's funeral in Serbia on March 18, a theatre spokesman said.
Milosevic died on March 11 in Milosevic died on March 11 in genocide and war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Handke, 63, who is well-known for his pro-Serb views, gave a eulogy at the funeral in which he said he was "happy to be beside Slobodan Milosevic, a man who defended his people."
According to the article in Le Nouvel Observateur magazine, the writer appeared "waving a Serb flag, pressing forward to touch the coffin and laying on it a red rose."
"It's true that my heart missed a beat when I read that article," Bozonnet told Le Monde newspaper.
"The theatre is a tribune, its effect goes far beyond the audience at a single performance. Even if this work of Handke is not a piece of propaganda, (performing it) lends its author public visibility. And I didn't want to give him that," he said.
"Handke's presence at Milosevic's funeral was an outrage to the victims," he said.
The oldest theatre troupe in the Western world, the Comédie Française was founded by King Louis XIV in 1681 and is based at the Salle Richelieu near the Palais Royal in central Paris. Actors take part in decision-making.
Handke's play was to have been played at the company's second premises, the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier in the Latin Quarter.
Born in 1942, Handke is a prolific avant-garde playwright and novelist best known for co-writing the screenplay for German filmmaker Wim Wenders' 'Wings of Desire'.
He has courted controversy since the mid-1990s, when he wrote 'A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia', portraying Serbia as the main victim of the Balkan wars.
Copyright AFP
There's one person who actually cares.
More accurately, there's one person who actually has his eyes open.
I will not mourn the passing of Milosevic, but his memory cannot be used as justification for the destruction of hundreds of Christian Churches in Kosovo and the eradication of the Serbian people living there.
Not that our pro-Islamofascist cheerleaders won't try, of course.
Bump!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.