What Serbs Did Seven years ago today, Can Do Again (March 30, 1999 Edition 1)

THIS MESSAGE IS A RAW REPORT OF THE GENOCIDE CARRIED OUT BY SERBS AGAINST ALBANIANS IN KOSOVO
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SERBIAN _MASSACRES_ Updated at 11:45 AM on March 30, 1999
* Grave condition, for more than 50 thousand fled people
* New serbian reinforcements in Kosova
* Rep. James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, will introduce a
resolution in Congress calling for the U.S. government to
arm the KLA
* A big machinery goneby in the Peja direction
* New order given by serbian forces, albanian population has to
flee again
* Granades even in Prishtina
* A part of Gjilani is being granaded
* Arllati, is under granades and set on fire
* Kosova Exodus Becoming Massive
* Destruction on the Serbian side
* How is it Possible to Have Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in the
Middle of Europe in the Year 1999? Refugees Tell Their Stories

Grave condition, for more than 50 thousand fled people

Istog , March 30 (Kosovapress) The humanitarian condition in the
villages of Istog commune and its environs is catastrophicei,
over 50 thousand inhabitans are displaced and they are
concentrated in free zone. Up to now villages of Kërnina, Cërca,
and Muzhevina are being displaced. A convey with 20th civilian
vehicles have been taken by serbian police and they were forced
to move in the Vitomirica direction. Inhabitans of the villages
of Uçë, Rakosh, Sushicë e Epërme and Poshtme, Mojstirë and Veriq,
have flet in the mountains and now they are in terrible
condition. they blocked by serbian forces placed in the Kodër of
Mojstirit, also quarters of Blakaj and Bytyq of Istogut ,are in
the mountains.

New serbian reinforcements in Kosova

Podjevë, March 30 (Kosovapress) From Serbia in to Kosova, across
Podjeva, yesterday a convey with 70 military vehicles , and with
rocket systems has enter in Kosova. Serbian forces are placed in
Bradash and Katunishtë. Other serbian positions are in Lupç and
Llapashticë.The city of Podujeva is already empty.Many citizens
of this village have been executed.

Rep. James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, will introduce a
resolution in Congress calling for the U.S. government to
arm the KLA

Rep. James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, will introduce a
resolution in Congress calling for the U.S. government to arm the
KLA and to send ground troops in to help. He also called on the
United States to recognize the region as an independent country,
saying it was the only way to stop the _killing_ there.

A big machinery goneby in the Peja direction

Kijevë, March 29th (Kosovapress) Yesterday, about five o`clock in
the morning,in the road axis Prishtinë -Pejë, a serbian military
convey including seven tanks, four armoured automobiles, three
pragave, seven buses and 37th trucks, have bygone. From 14.oo-
15.oo o`clock, in the road Prishtina-Peja, another military
convey with 56 military cars, from which 28 were tanks and
armoured automobiles, while 18 others were trucks have bygone.
About 17.oo o`clock,in this road from the same direction, 13
tanks and some others automobiles have passed. At 18.oo o`clock,
in this road ,33 other tanks and other transporters have bygone.
Two tractors full of civilians were joined to this convey.This
convey is forbidden between Mleçan and Kijeva. There are
suggestions, that this military convey coming from west ,has
intention to attack albanian population of Dukagjini.

New order given by serbian forces, albanian population has to
flee again

Prishtinë, March 30 (Kosovapress) Serbian police forces have
ordered all the inhabitans of the „Dragodani" quarter,
which is inhabited by albanians, to flee from their houses.
Citizens are getting away looking for shelters in the nearby
mountains and valleys.

Granades even in Prishtina

Prishtinë, March 30 (Kosovapress) Today, since early in the
morning, serbian agressive forces are shooting with granades, the
quarter of „Taslixhe" in Prishtina. As resultof this, many
houses of this quarter of Kosova`s capital are set on fire.

A part of Gjilani is being granaded

Gjilan, March 30 (Kosovapress) Yesterday, there have been many
bombardments in the city of Gjilani, in the „Çenar çeshme"
quarter.There are informations, for new victims,but up to now, we
don`t have confirmations about the exact number.

Arllati, is under granades and set on fire

Malishevë, March 30 (Kosovapress) Serbian forces have come here
last night, while today in the morning they have start to attack
with granades, to pillage, and to _burn_ the village of Arllat,
which lies in the cross-road Prishtinë- Pejë and Arllat-
Malishevë. Population of this village, has flet before few days
in the nearby mountains. In this attack tenths of tanks, praga
,armoured vehicles and other military vehicles.

Kosova Exodus Becoming Massive

From "Liberation" French newspaper Translated by Jason Eng

The Albanian prime minister, Pandeli Majko, took emergency
measures to give haven to Kosovar refugees, whose numbers are
increasing. He declared that his country expects to receive
100,000 refugees in addition to the 60,000 who have appeared in
the last three days. Majko accused the Milosevic regime of
attempting to ethnically cleanse Kosovo by resorting to a
"genocide" of the Albanian inhabitants. According to HCR, more
tha 60,000 Kosovars crossed the Albanian border since Saturday
afternoon. A spokesperson for NATO estimated the flux to 4,000
refugees per hour. The European commissioner for Humanitarian
Aid, Emma Bonino, who will travel to the Balkans on Wednesday,
confirmed that there are currently 80,000 to 100,000 refugees.

Destruction on the Serbian side

From "Liberation" French newspaper Translated by Jason Eng

According to NATO, aircraft in the course of the latest raids on
Yugoslavia have destroyed a MiG-21 combat fighter, several
Serbian Army helicopters on the ground, a "QG" of the Serbian
special police in Pristina, and an anti-aircraft radar station.

How is it Possible to Have Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in the
Middle of Europe in the Year 1999? Refugees Tell Their Stories

By Peter Finn, R. Jeffrey Smith and Daniel Williams Washington
Post Foreign Service Tuesday, March 30, 1999; Page A01

KUKES, Albania, March 29 –– She is 85 years old and
curled in a fetal position. A cold mountain wind blows over her
rail-thin frame.

Her eyes are bloodshot and tearless from exhaustion. Njalledeze
Bytyci, matriarch of four generations of the Bytyci clan,
raises her hand and says with the remnants of her spirit,
"Walking, walking."

The worst of it began on Sunday. Around noon in the village of
Leshan, Yugoslav army and Serbian Interior Ministry troops began
searching house to house, evicting families and forcing them into
a nearby elementary school. As their homes _burned_ and soldiers
fired in the air, 5,000 villagers were forced to shout "Long live
Serbia!" in unison. Men were separated from women. Then began the
long, forced march.

Sitting now on rubble surrounded by broken glass and garbage on
the outskirts of this Albanian town near the Yugoslav border,
the Bytyci clan is fortunate in the way of tens of thousands of
other refugees arriving here -- they survived. Behind them in
Kosovo lies a scorched land where, by emerging eyewitness
accounts, hundreds and perhaps thousands of unarmed civilians
have been _massacred_ by Yugoslav and Serbian forces over the
last six days.

In the last 24 hours, more than 100,000 refugees have reached the
borders between Kosovo and the rest of the world in one the
largest mass movements of people in Europe since World War II.
Many are grief-stricken, stripped of everything by Serb-led
security forces that are trying to remake the landscape of the
province by emptying it of the ethnic Albanians who make up the
vast majority of its population.

Instead of possessions, the refugees carry stories that paint a
chilling picture of a corner of Europe in the last year of the
millennium: Men with their hands behind their heads, praying to
God for life. Women summoning strength from nowhere to carry
children scared silent to safety. Old people stumbling and rising
anew to keep up with their offspring.

At three border posts -- in Albania, Macedonia and the Yugoslav
republic of Montenegro -- Washington Post correspondents today
interviewed refugees who described an ethnic cleansing campaign
underway in Kosovo on a scale that appears greater than NATO or
U.S. officials have yet reported. Refugees spoke of being herded
like animals, humiliated, terrorized and finally expelled from
their homeland. As part of their forced exodus many witnessed
executions and _massacres_, particularly of male adults.

The accounts could not be independently verified, because most
journalists and all Western observers have been expelled from
Kosovo. But refugees from small villages and the province's
largest cities told of similar events that seemed consistent with
a pattern.

What follows are their stories.

In Terna:

"We saw the Gashi family. They were _massacred_."

It was on Thursday morning, the morning after NATO airstrikes
began, that security forces began to shell the village of Terna,
near Suva Reka in central Kosovo, said Ramada Shaqiri, 37, a
carpenter. He hid in his house with his family, including his
wife and two children. They heard an explosion and gunfire nearby
but assumed it was part of the general assault on the village.

As the barrage eased, his wife ran next door, he said. When she
entered the basement of the Gashi family compound, she found the
first of 37 bodies, including the 67-year-old family patriarch,
Myslym Gashi. Ramada Shaqiri, who ran over to answer his wife's
calls, said it appeared that security forces had tossed a grenade
into the midst of the family and then opened up with automatic
weapons. He said some bodies also bore knife marks on their
faces, as if they had been slashed posthumously.

"We saw the bodies with our own eyes," he said. "We have heard of
many _massacres_. But we saw the Gashi family. They were
_massacred_."

Shaqiri said he and his wife and children fled to the
neighboring village of Leshan for shelter before they too were
rounded up and taken to the elementary school, where they were
forced to shout "Long live Serbia!" and give the Serbian three-
finger victory sign.

During the day, Shaqiri was separated from his wife and daughter.
Tonight, he sat by the side of the road in Kukes waiting for her
with his two brothers and a sister-in-law. Their possessions had
been reduced to a single bag of clothes and a plastic bag with
some bread and Coca-Cola.

"One day we will go back to Kosovo," he said. "That's our land."

In Celin:

"This is what happened."

At 4 a.m. that same day, Celin, a town of 2,500 in southern
Kosovo, was surrounded by 12 Yugoslav army tanks. Fifteen minutes
later, the shelling began.

Masir Rexhepi, 43, a professor of mathematics, said that he and
others fled their red brick houses to the hills. With him were
distant relatives Valoni Rexhepi, 17, and Admir Rexhepi, 15.
Soldiers had entered the home of the two boys and told five
occupants, all men, to remain in the house. The boys eluded them.

At 5:30 p.m., Masir and the boys sneaked back to their homes.
Masir said he was gathering valuables when he heard the boys
screaming. The bodies of their father, Naim Rexhepi, 37; his
brother, Dirgut Rexhepi, 40; and Isamedi Rexhepi lay in the
courtyard with two other men who had sought shelter at the house.
All had been shot, Masir said.

In another farmyard, Masir said, he and the boys found 13 bodies
that had been piled together and _burned_. He said he was able to
identify only five of the corpses, brothers also named Rexhepi:
Shani, Naisim, Njazi, Dever and Teki. One of the bodies was that
of a young teenager, he said.

Masir and the boys returned to the hills. By Sunday, 5,000 people
from villages in the area had gathered there. As security forces
surrounded them, the villagers took a woman's white handkerchief
and attached it to a stick. A man stood up and waved it.

The troops gathered the refugees, separating the men from the
women. They were walked in two columns, men holding their hands
behind their heads, for five miles, Masir said. They were then
loaded onto trucks and driven within two miles of the border,
where they were ordered to walk the rest of the way.

The march was a trail of horror, he said. A 22-year-old, Ayim
Ramdani, suspected of being a member of the Kosovo Liberation
Army, which has fought a yearlong insurgency to gain independence
from Belgrade, was pulled aside and shot in front of his parents,
Masir said.

A deaf and mute man, Vefai Rexhemi, who did not understand when a
Yugoslav soldier told him to give the three-finger Serbian
victory sign, was taken from a column of refugees and shot in the
head in front of his wife and two children. This afternoon, his
wife, Dardan, also deaf and mute, held her two children and wept
tears onto the ground from the back of an open truck as a
neighbor spoke of her husband's fate. Masir said others were
struck with rifle butts but that he was not assaulted. He said
that the troops stripped men, but not women, of identity cards
and _burned_ them on the road.

Masir said those were the only two _killings_ he witnessed on the
march to Albania, but he said that other men who started in the
long column were missing when the others reached Albania. No one
knows what became of them. Masir rode south into Albania today in
the back of an open truck loaded with others. Lighting a
cigarette, he recounted the events of the last week.

As he spoke, other men from Celin said: "That is what happened."

In Pec:

"Choose which one you want to kill you."

At noon on Saturday, Shaqir Zhushi stood in a long line with 11
relatives and thousands of other ethnic Albanians, waiting to
pass a checkpoint established by troops on the Ura e Zallit
bridge at the edge of the Kapeshnica neighborhood in the western
Kosovo city of Pec. After a long night of shelling by government
forces, all the residents had been ordered that morning to
abandon their homes and never return.

They stood two abreast in the line. As each person reached the
checkpoint, Zhushi said, soldiers examined their documents and
searched for money and jewelry. In the background, scores of
homes were already aflame, and smoke swirled in the air.

As Zhushi, 39, neared the troops milling around the checkpoint,
one of the soldiers recognized him and told him to step out of
the line. It was a man named Jura, a Serb who had worked with
Zhushi for 17 years on the same assembly line at a factory in Pec
that made industrial batteries. They had gotten along well: "We'd
exchanged greetings," Zhushi recalled.

Zhushi knew that Jura, like most Serbian men in Kosovo, had kept
both a military uniform and a gun on hand. He had not seen Jura
for the past eight months, when conflict between Serbs and ethnic
Albanians had grown more violent.

Jura and several others separated Zhushi from his family and
pushed him into a shop beneath the bridge that the military had
commandeered for interrogations. There, Jura and four other men
-- including three wearing ski masks -- kicked Zhushi in the legs
and back with heavy boots, he said.

They accused him of having once lived several miles to the south
of Pec in a town called Loda, which last year was a stronghold of
the Kosovo Liberation Army and the site of several fierce clashes
between the rebels and government security forces.

Jura looked straight at him and said, "Choose which one you want
to kill you."

Zhushi did not know what to say at first. "I felt that it is
finished for me," he recalled today. His first inclination was to
say, "Do whatever you like." But he finally replied: "My brother
saw when you picked me [on the bridge], and he knows you too. I'm
not the person you're looking for."

The prospect of a witness evidently made Jura more cautious, and
he demanded to know where Zhushi's brother had gone. "I said,
'He's gone.' And then I was released."

Afterward, he made his way to the Yugoslav republic of
Montenegro, joining more than 20,000 others who have fled there
from Pec in the past two days. He said he had no idea what had
become of his two brothers, two sisters, mother, aunt and his
three sons, aged 9, 6 and 5. He hopes they arrived safely in
Montenegro and that he can eventually find them.

"It's the hatred for being Albanians," he said to explain the
actions of Serbs in Pec. "Because all the time they had
[expected] we must be good servants. They didn't expect to be
caught up in a conflict with us."

In Pec:

"Why are you trying to help him?"

When seven heavily armed men forcibly entered the home of 73-year-
old Haxhi Smajlaj at 3 p.m. Saturday, all dressed in black and
wearing large Orthodox Christian crosses on gold chains, their
first questions were about money.

Haxhi, a farmer who shared a compound in Pec with three
sons, five daughters and three other relatives, said he
surrendered 200 German marks. When they asked for jewelry,
his two daughters-in-law handed over all the jewelry they
had received at their weddings.

After shooting at some walls, the men left the house, which is
located in the Dardanija neighborhood of the city. But later in
the afternoon, two others wearing dark green camouflage
uniforms came to tell Haxhi and his family that they would have
to leave immediately. Otherwise, said one of the men, they
would be killed.

Similar orders were given to thousands of others in the
neighborhood, who soon filled its narrow streets, he said. Haxhi
and his family dutifully filed outside, and a neighbor -- a Serb
-- noticed their distress. The neighbor complained to the troops,
but they ordered him to shut up. "Why are you trying to help
him?" they said. "He's an Albanian."

The last to leave the yard was Haxhi's 17-year-old son Rexhep,
and one of the soldiers pulled him aside. Haxhi attempted to
intervene, but he was struck in the back of the neck with a rifle
butt, he said. "They took him and put him behind the house,"
Haxhi said. "We were forced to go away, to leave" without him.

After arriving at the Montenegrin border town of Rozaje on
Sunday, Haxhi sent his daughters on ahead while he stayed behind.
Asked why he was walking up and down in front of the bus station
today, scanning the crowd, he said: "I am waiting for my 17-year-
old son to come."

In Ferezaj:

"Leave or die."

They crossed from Kosovo into neighboring Macedonia squeezed into
a truck -- 57 refugees in all, including 27 children of all ages.
They came from the central Kosovo town of Ferezaj. Because of the
relatives they left behind, they did not want their family name
identified beyond a single letter: the "B family."

Last Thursday, Belgrade government troops entered Ferezaj and
began to take up strategic positions, among them Albanian houses
on high ground. Then they sought out the largest and most opulent
houses in the city to convert into barracks for small units.

Soldiers, paramilitary groups and civilians broke into grocery
stores and pharmacies, looted them and set them ablaze. The
minority Serbian population in town always carried guns, the
refugees said, even when they went out for coffee.

Meanwhile, columns of refugees from the countryside began to
arrive, including relatives of the B family. "Serbs came into the
villages and told us, 'Leave or die. You called for NATO to come.
Let them save you,' " recounted one family member.

Neighbors began to arrive at their door as their own homes were
taken over by troops. At night, explosions from NATO bombing
echoed in the town. The families cowered in the basement.

"We had prepared," said the leader of the group, a young burly
man wearing a black leather jacket. "We had bread. That's all we
ate for three days. The electricity was out. We knew nothing
about the outside world except for the bombs."

On Sunday, peering out an upstairs window, they saw soldiers
seizing a house down the street. It was time to run. Carrying
only some clothes for the children, they climbed into a covered
two-ton Mercedes Benz truck and drove away. No one at roadblocks
stopped them.

"I only think they wanted us to leave, or it was God's help,"
said the young man.

In Elezhan:

"I didn't even think about the shoes."

Chahir Gahi's last meal in Elezhan, a village in southern Kosovo,
was a plate of beans he was sharing last Friday with seven
neighbors. It ended when the front door was beaten down with
rifle butts.

Yugoslav soldiers held AK-47 rifles at the necks of the diners.
"They told us, 'You want a Kosovo state, now see what you get,' "
said Gahi, a lanky 55-year-old former cement factory worker.

,-2 At homes in Kosovo, it is the custom to leave one's shoes at
the door; Gahi and his friends were given no time to put theirs
on. "I didn't even think about the shoes. We just got up and
left," he said.

His brother, Cefet, was with him. Cefet had been driven from
another village; soldiers had pointed guns at his belly and told
him to go to Kacanik, but he refused, having heard troops were
occupying the town. The brothers' wives were already in Skopje,
the capital of Macedonia.

"They left two weeks ago. They said there would be trouble once
NATO began to bomb. I thought it was silly. I didn't want to
abandon the house," said Cefet.

"We walked toward the mountains," he said. "Houses on the way
were on fire. It should have taken us perhaps an hour and a half,
but it took us eight hours to reach the border. We were hiding
from the Serbs and moved slowly."

Chahir and Cefet are now living in an old neighborhood of winding
alleys and Turkish balconies in Skopje. Eleven refugees are
sheltered in the house among the 11 permanent inhabitants.

Gahi said he would return to Elexhan, although he is certain his
house has been _burned_ to the ground. "I only regret that I had
no time to untie the cows to let them graze," he said.

In Pristina:

"It was a sign that no one was safe."

A week ago today, Jasmin Jaha, a relief worker with the
International Rescue Committee, was drinking coffee at the Cafe
Koha in Pristina, Kosovo's capital. It was a peaceful morning,
several days before NATO bombs fell on Yugoslavia. Then someone
threw a grenade into the bar.

The blast threw Jaha off his stool and shattered his legs. A
second grenade landed, but a friend grabbed it and tossed into
the street. It was the beginning of a day of terror for Pristina
-- and a long period of pain for Jaha.

Earlier in the day, Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas killed four
Serbian policeman in the town. Retaliation followed, Albanians
believe, in the form of the cafe bombing, arson at a restaurant
and shootings of several civilians that night.

Jaha was rushed to a hospital to have his leg set. He rejected
surgery to place two pins in his left leg, because he feared a
long convalescence. "I felt things here would get worse, so I
didn't want to be confined to a hospital," he said.

Three days later, the NATO bombing began, and he and other
Albanians hid in their homes for fear of Serbian reprisals. Three
days later, he fled with friends south to Macedonia.

"I have to lie on my back," he said Sunday from the back seat of
a car after crossing the border. "But I would have crawled out
to escape."

He said that Pristina began to _burn_ not long after the first
NATO bombs fell. A popular cafe called Tiffany's was _burned_
along with shops along the main commercial street. Word of the
slaying of a prominent human rights lawyer and his two sons shook
Jaha and some acquaintances. "It was a sign that no one was
safe," he said.

Finally, on Sunday, Yugoslav soldiers started going door-to-door
on his street. Jaha heard gunshots, but he did not know exactly
what was happening. Friends quickly organized a convoy.

The exit was harrowing, as it was for many Kosovars fleeing to
Macedonia. Checkpoints dotted the road south from Pristina, and
soldiers demanded money in exchange for safe passage. At the
first checkpoint, the lead driver was pulled from his car,
punched in the side of the head and put into a van. Soldiers
extracted the first of several bribes that would reach a total of
about $700 by the time the frontier came into view.

"We had money, so we could leave. People without money -- I don't
know what they can do," said Jaha. He winced as he spoke, his
face wounded in the grenade attack on the cafe. He did not sound
hopeful, even if NATO were to send ground troops to Kosovo.

"The invasion is too late if it's not coming today," he said.

---
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