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UN administrators flee Kosovo's Christian “Kristallnacht”
b92.net ^ | March 17, 2004 | B92

Posted on 03/17/2004 8:21:39 PM PST by Destro

UN administrators flee “Kristallnacht” | 23:46 | B92

PRISTINA -- Wednesday – UN administrators have abandoned offices in the Kosovo towns of Gnjilane, Prizren and Pec, fleeing what one UNMIK official described to B92 as “Kristallnacht”.

“Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo,” the official told B92 on condition of anonymity.

“What is happening in Kosovo must unfortunately be described as a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background,” he added.

Serbs and UN officers have been the target of attacks by Kosovo Albanians during most of the day and night. The most dramatic withdrawal was from Belo Polje on the outskirts of Pec, where UNMIK officials, retreating with Serb residents, where forced to shoot Albanian assailants in self-defence.

The Serbian Orthodox seminary in Pec has been razed, and Albanians celebrated its destruction by setting fire to the local church., said the UN official.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: balkans; campaignfinance; christianpersecution; churchburning; islam; kosovo; persecution
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To: Makedonski
Do you have any links about that? I believe you, but now I'm really curious to know more.
41 posted on 03/17/2004 10:06:37 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
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To: NYC GOP Chick
You could be right.

It was probably a combo of factors.

42 posted on 03/17/2004 10:07:24 PM PST by Mr. Mojo
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To: NYC GOP Chick
Well, the french and the spanish better get their troops over there QUICK. Oh and throw in a few germans and canadians while you're at it.
43 posted on 03/17/2004 10:10:23 PM PST by McGavin999 (Evil thrives when good men do nothing!)
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To: Mr. Mojo
You could be right.

I'm usually right! ;)

44 posted on 03/17/2004 10:11:41 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
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To: McGavin999
Very funny!
45 posted on 03/17/2004 10:11:52 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
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To: NYC GOP Chick
You know they're going to come crying to us don't you? These europeans insult us time after time but when they screw something up they run straight for the US military.

We're busy, let THEM fix their own mess.

46 posted on 03/17/2004 10:14:17 PM PST by McGavin999 (Evil thrives when good men do nothing!)
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To: Stopislamnow
Just a small preview of what western europe is in for.

It's going to happen sooner than the euro-weenies think.
47 posted on 03/17/2004 10:15:20 PM PST by John Lenin (John Flip'n Kerry: Two Candidates for the price of one)
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To: McGavin999
We're busy, let THEM fix their own mess.

But you know we'd never let that happen...

48 posted on 03/17/2004 10:15:48 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
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To: Destro
To sum todays events .... JULY 25 2001

Part of Mr. Bush Kosovo Speech to the troops in Kosovo

Mr Bush visit to Kosovo

It's a long list. It speaks volumes about why you are so good at your mission. You come from many nations, many cultures and many continents. Just like amongst the U.S. military personnel, many races, there are many faiths, many traditions represented. Your diversity and close cooperation, General, in the cause of peace is an example to the people of this region and is a rebuke to the ethnic intolerance and narrow nationalism that brought us here in the first place.

As we head into the 21st century, we must not allow difference to be a license to kill and vulnerability, an excuse to dominate. We will pursue a world of tolerance and freedom. From Kosovo to Kashmir, from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, freedom and tolerance is a defining issue for our world. And your service here has set an example for the whole world to see.

We're making good progress. Thanks to you and those who served before you, the people of Kosovo are able to buy food and find shelter, go to school and get medical help. Thanks to you, there will be elections here in November, elections where we want to see the widest possible participation.

Thanks to you, there are fewer arms flowing into Macedonia and a hope for peace in that land. Thanks to you and the service of our forces throughout the Balkans, the region is growing closer to the rest of Europe, but there is still a lot of work to do.

Civil institutions must be put in place and made stronger. Organized crime must be brought under control. War criminals must face justice, and Kosovo must not be a safe haven for insurgents elsewhere.

America has a vital interest in European stability and therefore peace in the region. That's why I've recently taken steps to cut off outside support for the rebels in Macedonia. That's why we need you to keep patrolling the border and cutting off the arms flow.

Each and every day, your work is important to the people of this region. America and allied forces came into Bosnia and Kosovo. We came in together and we will leave together. Our goal is to hasten the day when peace is self-sustaining, when local democratically elected authorities can assume full responsibility and when NATO forces can go home.

As well, you not only need to have a clear mission here, but you need to have a commander in chief with a clear vision who sets clear goals for our military.

49 posted on 03/17/2004 10:19:51 PM PST by Makedonski
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To: Destro
“What is happening in Kosovo must unfortunately be described as a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background”

THANK YOU BILL CLINTON!

THANK YOU MADELINE ALBRIGHT!

THANK YOU WES CLARK!

THANK YOU FOR CREATING A MUSLIM TERROR STATE IN THE HEART OF EUROPE. THANK YOU FOR EXTENDING THE REACH OF AL QUEDA'S WORLDWIDE JIHAD!

GREAT WORK!

50 posted on 03/17/2004 10:23:00 PM PST by montag813
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To: McGavin999
I think we should let a few million of them crispify first, just to make our point, then clean up their mess. Then again, we could sit back and let them all go to hell!!! Less competition from the E.U.
51 posted on 03/17/2004 10:23:34 PM PST by rottndog (woof!)
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To: NYC GOP Chick
Why not? I'm sick of them stabbing us in the back and then expecting us to come to their aid. The europeans are a bunch of whiney children. They have armies, let them fix their mess, let them put boots on the ground and spill the blood of their own for a change.
52 posted on 03/17/2004 10:32:03 PM PST by McGavin999 (Evil thrives when good men do nothing!)
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To: Makedonski
Your home page says you are Macedonian. Do you live there? Why would you want us to withdraw?
53 posted on 03/17/2004 10:35:27 PM PST by baseballmom
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To: McGavin999
I'm sick of them too, but you and I know that will never happen. Rgardless of the European crap-weasels, we could never sit back and watch Europe succumb to militant islam, or anything like that.
54 posted on 03/17/2004 10:35:42 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
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To: Mr. Mojo
...Anzar...He was way too quick to point the finger in their direction

Italy's PM said today he is also suspicious of ETA. He said (paraphrase) how convenient that the bombers left a backpack, with cell phone and explosive to be found. How convenient that the van was found with the Koran verses inside, and other evidence. He thinks it may very well be al Quaeda, but with inside mega help from ETA.
55 posted on 03/17/2004 10:39:21 PM PST by baseballmom
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To: NYC GOP Chick
Yes we can, and should. Maybe the third time of utter destruction and devastation will be a charm. Maybe then they will "get it".
56 posted on 03/17/2004 10:39:26 PM PST by rottndog (woof!)
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To: NYC GOP Chick
And who are we going to send? The troops that have just been rotated out of Iraq are exhausted. Their replacements are needed in Iraq. Shall we pull them out of South Korea? How about Haiti?

No, let the euroscum do something for themselves for a change. They've lived off our dime for too long. I'm sick of their ingratitude and their backstabbing. They have armies, let them do it.

57 posted on 03/17/2004 10:58:31 PM PST by McGavin999 (Evil thrives when good men do nothing!)
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To: Destro
The SErbs are trying to potray this as a Christian versus Muslim thing. Well, it's NOT, it's an ethnic clash.

This is NOT a religious clash, it's an ethnic clash -- the Slavic serbs and the Illurian Albanians.

from www.cia.gov

Religions:
 
Muslim 70%, Albanian Orthodox 20%, Roman Catholic 10%
note: all mosques and churches were closed in 1967 and religious observances prohibited; in November 1990, Albania began allowing private religious practice

Things aren't quite that cut and dried. Most Albanians are atheists and radically so. This is more an ethnic clash with the Albanians being the descendents of the Illurian tribes who were the original occuapants of the land. The only slamic radicals there and in Bosnia are imports sponsored by Saudi A or Iran.

The Ottoman Turks divided the Albanian-inhabited lands among a number of districts, or vilayets. The Ottoman authorities did not initially stress conversion to Islam. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, economic pressures and coercion produced the conversion of about two-thirds of the empire's Albanians.

The Ottoman Turks first focused their conversion campaigns on the Roman Catholic Albanians of the north and then on the Orthodox population of the south. For example, the authorities increased taxes, especially poll taxes, to make conversion economically attractive. During and after a Christian counteroffensive against the Ottoman Empire from 1687 to 1690, when Albanian Catholics revolted against their Muslim overlords, the Ottoman pasha of Pec, a town in the south of present-day Yugoslavia, retaliated by forcing entire Albanian villages to accept Islam. Albanian beys then moved from the northern mountains to the fertile lands of Kosovo, which had been abandoned by thousands of Orthodox Serbs fearing reprisals for their collaboration with the Christian forces.

Most of the conversion's to Islam took place in the lowlands of the Shkumbin River valley, where the Ottoman Turks could easily apply pressure because of the area's accessibility. Many Albanians, however, converted in name only and secretly continued to practice Christianity. Often one branch of a family became Muslim while another remained Christian, and many times these families celebrated their respective religious holidays together

The Balkans are a region of multiple ethnicities -- Slavic SErbs, croats, slovenes, Greeks, Macedonians and Illyrians (moern day Albanians). Trying to whitewash the problems as merely christian versus muslim is incorrect when you know that there are Muslim and Christian Albanians.

As early as the eighteenth century, a mystic Islamic sect, the Bektashi dervishes, spread into the empire's Albanian-populated lands. Probably founded in the late thirteenth century in Anatolia, Bektashism became the janissaries' official faith in the late sixteenth century. The Bektashi sect contains features of the Turks' pre-Islamic religion and emphasizes man as an individual. Women, unveiled, participate in Bektashi ceremonies on an equal basis, and the celebrants use wine despite the ban on alcohol in the Quran. The Bektashis became the largest religious group in southern Albania after the sultan disbanded the janissaries in 1826. Bektashi leaders played key roles in the Albanian nationalist movement of the late nineteenth century and were to a great degree responsible for the Albanians' traditional tolerance of religious differences.

How did this defenseless minority that is being brutally attacked and murdered became a defenseless minority?

Because Slobo's goons (and I won't insult the Serbs by considering that anything but a small minority supported Slobo's genocide) decided to kick out the ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and threw tanks and heavy artillery against a defenseless people, propelling a mass exodus into Albania.

Genocide against any ethnicity is WRONG, but let's not potray this as a religious clash, but more correctly as an ethnic one.

58 posted on 03/18/2004 12:02:51 AM PST by Cronos (W2K4!)
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To: Destro; BlessedBeGod
these Albanians are converts to Islam from several centuries back.

Actually 70% are muslim and they were only converted int he 17th century, comparatively recently in light of the fact that Albanians are descended from the Ancient illyrians. But Blessed has got the right idea -- this is an ethnic clash and even more importantly, killing of innocents on ANY side is wrong.
59 posted on 03/18/2004 12:05:00 AM PST by Cronos (W2K4!)
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To: wardaddy
Helping Ragheads kill Christians with my tax dollars....makes me sick.

Albanians aren't ragheads. By that I take it you mean Arabs. If you mean Arab ethnicity, then woo, we have rag heads like Shannon Elizabeth, Skhakira, Salma hayek, Yasmeen Bleethe etc., all Arab Christians here in the US. If you mean Muslimms then remember: Albanians are 30% Christian.
60 posted on 03/18/2004 12:06:50 AM PST by Cronos (W2K4!)
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