Posted on 03/30/2002 2:37:53 AM PST by vooch
Just like is case with other Serbian names (Kosovo="Kosova", Metohia=non-existent, Pech="Peja", etc.), the Albanians have taken this one and bastardized it. Kosovats [sp. Kosovac] (a Serb from Kosovo) thus became "Kosovar" ("Kosovo Albanian", we're led to believe). The term has been launched onto the world stage and everybody's using it even though they have no idea what it really means.
Why did a higher percentage of Serbs flee Kosovo during NATO's "bombing for humanity" than Albanians?
See, its not just me.
And you actually take these people to be independent?
Did you even read the article? You don't consider Michel Chossudovsky's sources to be credible? Which of his sources don't you feel are credible?
The OSCE report?
The Kosovo Albanian sources?
The UNHCR sources?
Yugoslavia's 1991 census?
On second thought, nevermind. If you're not bright enough consider the sources that are named in the article when you're asked one specific question, there's no way you'll be able to make intelligent commentary on the nature of the sources.
Now get back to picking out a dress for your goat. Prom is coming up.
You are more naive than I thought possible.
Kate, ABrit is just showing a lack of debating points, my daughter if put in that position would simply say......"Whatever," to avoid looking completely silly.
I would like to ask you one very specific question and I'd like a very specific answer.
Why did a higher percentage of Serbs flee Kosovo during NATO's "bombing for humanity" than Albanians?
You've convinced me that you're hopless. I asked you one specific question so as not to over burden you and you couldn't even answer that.
Did you even read the article? You don't consider Michel Chossudovsky's sources to be credible? Which of his sources don't you feel are credible?
The OSCE report?
The Kosovo Albanian sources?
The UNHCR sources?
Yugoslavia's 1991 census?
On second thought, nevermind. If you're not bright enough consider the sources that are named in the article when you're asked one specific question, there's no way you'll be able to make intelligent commentary on the nature of the sources.
The whole of the article you quote is a bad joke. I’ll just start with his first paragraph:
"NATO's justification for bombing Yugoslavia on humanitarian grounds has been refuted by the Western alliance's own official figures and documentary evidence. The recently released OSCE report entitled "As Seen, As Told: Analysis of the Human Rights Findings of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission" suggests that the allegation of mass deportations is a fabrication."1
His cited reference for this is:
1. OSCE, Kosovo/ Kosova, As Seen, As Told, An analysis of the human rights findings of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission, October 1998 to June 1999, Warsaw, 1999.
Now read what the OSCE Report actually said:OSCE
I’ll quote some in case you’re too idle to use the link:
862,000 Kosovo Moslems were expelled, men, women and children. Internally displaced, 200,000-260,000.
Kosovo Albanians were clearly targeted for expulsion because of their ethnicity. Other ethnic and religious groups, such as Turks, Gorani and Muslim Slavs, were excluded from the expulsions. Serb houses were marked with the Serbian cross so that they would not be targeted.7 Those expelled by the Serbian forces included not only able-bodied Kosovo Albanian men and women, but also children and those elderly people who were too infirm to be mobile.
It might be possible to argue that the Serbian forces were essentially looking for UCK arms or supporters, a legitimate aim for a government seeking to bring a rebel movement under control. However, the way in which these operations were carried out indicates that the intention was clearly expulsion. Villagers were given minutes to leave and told that they should go and never come back and that Kosovo was Serbian land.8 Acts of brutality and violence were used to heighten the climate of fear, create chaos and a pervading fear for life. They formed part of a policy of terror designed to trigger "spontaneous" departure.
It might also be possible to maintain that the forced movement of Kosovo Albanians by Serbian forces was to prevent civilians from becoming caught in crossfire and fighting. Serbian forces which accompanied convoys or buses to the border could arguably be seen as providing protection (for instance, from paramilitaries or air attack) for those leaving.9
Indeed, this does appear on occasion to have been the case. However, the brutality and violence with which the IDPs were generally treated - with killings and beatings - and the failure to provide food or water - indeed, the systematic destruction of food supplies - suggest that the opposite of protection was intended.
The morning after NATO bombing, Serb forces (VJ, police, paramilitaries), heavily armed and with tanks and armoured vehicles, completely surrounded the city. They started shooting into the houses at 07:00 hours. We had to wake up our children and flee but we did not know where to go. All went very fast. We did not dare to go to the main street, we just had to climb from house to house. We could not take anything but the clothes we wore. The children had only pyjamas. We could hear shots in other houses and the crying of women and children and the shouting of paramilitaries. On the way out of the city we got to the cemetery via some side lanes and we could hear shooting, so we went down in a ditch and bullets were going over our heads. One 18-year-old girl was killed. One man was hit on the shoulder by a paramilitary with the back of a rifle and we heard that he was later executed. On that day they also started to burn the houses. We could see our own house on fire as we were leaving. The whole neighbourhood was on fire.10
Frequently a Kosovo Albanian would be intimidated, injured or killed in full public view to enforce the departure of the other villagers. Houses were also looted and set alight. Those who refused to leave were often killed. The combination of shelling, shooting, burning, intimidation and killing created chaos and panic, with villagers running in fear of their lives. As one refugee expelled from Vranic/Vraniq (Suva Reka) in early April explained, the "police threatened the population and killed some to encourage others to leave".11
One interviewee described seeing a child, aged two or three, who had been impaled on a wooden pole on the road between Pristina/Prishtina and Kolic/Koliq. Written on the pole were the words, "This is Serbia. This is what we are going to do to all Albanians, because I am God and NATO means nothing to me."10 A 22-year-old man described how he saw a woman being stabbed by a Serbian police officer first in one arm and then in the other, so that the two-month-old baby that she held in her arms fell to the ground. As the baby fell the police officer shot it on the spot.11 As the Serb forces surrounded the village of Padaliste/Padalishte (Istok), they went into the house of a teacher, took three young children and told the teacher to cut off their heads. When he refused, the police cut their throats; they also killed the teacher.12 As police, VJ and paramilitaries expelled inhabitants from their homes in Kosovska Mitrovica in mid-April, an interviewee reported seeing one of them hit a six-month-old child with a hammer (the fate of the child is not reported).13 Another interviewee described how, in an IDP convoy outside Pec on the morning of 16 April 1999, Serb forces took a five-month-old baby from the arms of its mother and asked: "Do you want to come back to Kosovo?" As the baby - of course - did not answer, they told the mother: "This baby will never go back to Kosovo!" and they threw it on the ground and killed it.14
The reason lots of Serbs decided to go to Serbia is clear. They knew what was coming to them. It’s called retribution. And who could blame the Kosovo Muslims.
So as A'Brit' you wouldn't object to every single black African killing any British person they came across? Or, if you were, say, Albanian, it would now be okay for any Serbs to kill your family through 'retribution'? What a backward and uncivilised logic. How old are you?
A few pointers for you:
Kosovo is in Serbia - it's a province just like Yorkshire or Dorset (if you know Britain at all!);
Albanians migrated into other parts of Serbia from Kosovo as well (in 10s of 1,000s);
You should maybe try reading anything that people here have said;
Who are 'Kosovo Muslims'?? There are other nationalities of Muslims in Serbia apart from Albanians.
You clearly know absolutely nothing about this subject and are just wasting everyone's time. You're even still ranting on about genocide in Kosovo, when it's not even being charged by the UN!!
Unfortunately for you I can actually find some of the articles you site.
I thought you said Yugoslavia was not communist?
Right from the start, Milosevic made it quite clear what he was going to do.
"Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.''
''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.
Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party.
Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.''
But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.
Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave problems.
The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream.
Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company "
That still leaves these main headings for all areas, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
GENOCIDE OR COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE
PERSECUTIONS
EXTERMINATION, AND WILFUL
UNLAWFUL CONFINEMENT, IMPRISONMENT, , WILFULLY CAUSING GREAT SUFFERING, OTHER INHUMANE ACTS
DEPORTATION AND INHUMANE ACTS (FORCIBLE TRANSFERS)
WANTON DESTRUCTION, PLUNDER OF PUBLIC OR PRIVATE PROPERTY
By the way, if this is a kangaroo court, why don’t they just press all charges and find everyone guilty.
The answer is because its not a Kangaroo court.
EXTERMINATION, AND WILFUL TORTURE
The Serbian authorities arrested the Bosnian Serb Banovic brothers in November last year, under an indictment accusing them of war crimes against Muslim prisoners in the Keraterm camp. Their subsequent extradition sparked weeks of protest by a special forces unit known as the “Red Berets.” The unit claimed it had been duped into arresting the brothers, unaware they would be handed over to the UN tribunal.
The prosecution at the tribunal filed a motion on March 27 for the indictment against Nenad Banovic to be withdrawn.
Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic used the case to argue the merits of the tribunal and of extraditing war crimes suspects.
“His name was on the Hague list and it was our country’s obligation that he appeared before the court. The fact that the court decided there was not enough evidence, only goes to show that it really is a court and that the rights of suspects are protected,” Djindjic told reporters.
Banovic would have remained on the Hague list for the rest of his life had he not appeared before the court, added the premier. (Srna)
BELGRADE, Thursday ; Yugoslavia former deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic has agreed to hand himself in to the Hague Tribunal on condition he does not run into Slobodan Milosevic, Belgrade daily Danas reports today.
Citing well-informed sources, the daily reports that Sainovic had negotiations this weekend with representatives of the Serbian government, during which he offered to surrender as long as was able to stay in one of the secured villas available to indictees.
Sainovic, indicted alongside Milosevic for crimes in Kosovo, said he did not wish to bump into his former president, reports Danas.
Use of the villas is financed by the indictees home country.
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