Einordnungsversuch der Eindrücke einer Kosovo-Rundreise vom 12.5. bis zum 15.5. 2008

?

Panzersperren und Verschanzungen um den “Kiosk” eines “Community Stabilisation Programme” der EU

Continued »

 

 

Schnappschuss von Abraum im Roma IDP-Camp von Kosovska Mitrovica, Serbien am 14.5.2008

Continued »

Reactions to the separatist movement of Kosovar Albanians and their recognition by most of the NATO member states.

 

Reminiscent of the “Target”-Protests following the 1999 bombings of Yugoslav cities by NATO forces, hundreds of thousands of people all over former Yugoslavia protest this violation of international laws and Human Rights. Especially the “UN directive 1244″ - which clearly states Yugoslav/Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo - became a cornerstone of the recent protests as the rallying masses now use its code as a daily start time for their protests: 12:44

 

 

Primarily young people are taking to the streets to demonstrate their right to live and work in Kosovo without fears of displacement. Especially in Kosovska Mitrovica students and pupils show an unbending spirit as former students from the “University of Pristina” protest against their expulsion following the takeover by their former Albanian friends and colleagues.

 

>>Bin ich etwa in die Kulissen eines Films des Neo-Surrealisten Emir Kusturica gestolpert?!?<< – Das in ungefähr war mein erster Eindruck nach Ankunft in der Stadt. Der nördliche Teil der „Kosovska Mitrovica“ - so wurde mir gesagt und so wirkte es auch auf mich - ist von der Brücke über den „Ibar“ bis zur anderen, weniger natürlichen Grenze dieser Enklave, ganze 950 Meter breit. Auf diesem Streifen von nur wenigen Kilometern Länge leben ca. 20.000 Serben, sowie 4000 Roma, Albaner und andere Minderheiten. Diese sind vornehmlich Moslems, orthodoxe Christen und Katholiken - aber vermutlich sind auch ein paar Atheisten darunter.

Ich war aus Deutschland, genauer aus Bayern, nach Serbien in das malerische Kosovo und Metohien gereist - ca. 1400 Km, über Österreich, Slowenien, Kroatien, durch fast ganz Serbien mit dem Auto – und hier hieß es für mich „STOP“. Natürlich hätte ich weiterfahren können - Niemand hätte wird mich daran gehindert. Jedoch mochte mir auch niemand garantieren, dass es mich - es war bereits dunkel - am nächsten Morgen noch geben würde. Da ich ein vernünftiger Mensch bin, begnügte ich mich also vorerst mit ein paar Fotos von der imposanten Brücke über den Fluss, und fuhr die paar hundert Meter zu meiner Unterkunft zurück. Ich bezog mein Hotelzimmer und lud das bei meinen serbischen Freunden so geschätzte Weißbier aus, welches sie bei einem Besuch in Bayern lieben gelernt haben.

Continued »

Letters from an enclave

 

Life in Kosovska Mitrovica through childrens” eyes - to be collected here: www.letters-from-an-enclave.de

 

Personal Impressions from Kosovska Mitrovica

~

Letters, Reports and Weblogs about life in an enclave

Snapshot taken at the Roma IDP-Camp in Kosovska-Mitrovica, Serbia 14.5.2008

Terrible article and interesting comments - OBAVEZNOÂ procitajte komentare nize na ovaj uzasan clanak!!!

SCOTSMAN (UK)

Tue 11 Dec 2007

Kosovo Albanians rally in the streets of Pristina yesterday. They called for an immediate declaration of independence. It will not come so soon but it looks very likely in the next few months Picture: Getty Images

Kosovo’’s message: We will be a nation soon

CHRISTIAN JENNINGS

AS WE cross the border into Kosovo from Macedonia, I wonder if my mobile phone will beep with the incoming text message, ”Welcome to Serbia!”

Serbia‘’s mobile-phone supplier has jiggled its coverage so that some visitors arriving into parts of Kosovo are greeted, in English, by an SMS telling them they are, in fact, in Serbia, on Serb territory, not in UN-administered Kosovo with its 90 per cent Albanian majority.

As Sasha, my southern Macedonian driver, eases the Peugeot estate into second gear, I wonder if the Serb electronic greeting will work this far south. But Belgrade, electronically as well as diplomatically, seems to have lost coverage over much of Kosovo.

We are at the very bottom of Route Hawk, the NATO code-name for the road that leads 38 miles from the Macedonian border-crossing at Blace to Kosovo’’s capital, Pristina.

Every mile of the tarmac sings to a story that tells of Kosovo’’s journey from liberation by NATO in 1999 to the current brink of independence.

It is my 931st day on the ground in Kosovo and Macedonia for The Scotsman since June 1999.

Sasha’’s car radio hums and crackles, the news in Albanian telling us what we already know. That US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has said international negotiations over the future of Kosovo have reached a dead end.

Hacim Thaci, Kosovo’’s probable new prime minister following elections on 17 November, says Kosovo would not seek independence from Serbia until early next year.

Diplomacy, Ms Rice says, has been exhausted. Mediators from the EU, Moscow and Washington are delivering a report to the United Nations Security Council saying that efforts to reach a compromise between Kosovo and Serbia have failed.

“Srecen put,” - safe trip - says the Macedonian interior ministry police officer in his booth, as Sasha purrs the car into no-man’’s land before the Kosovo border post.

We splash through the concrete pool of disinfectant, put there in 2001 to keep foot-and-mouth disease from arriving in Kosovo on the wheels of Greek lorries, and after showing our passports to the Kosovo Customs Service officer, we are through. The other side of the barbed wire at the side of the road you can still see the detritus of 1999, the empty plastic mineral water bottles, the plastic bags, the discarded pink anoraks, all that is visibly left of the massive stream of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanian refugees that fled down this road in the spring of 1999.

What they were fleeing from was simple and horrible: a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by the atrocity-prone Serb paramilitaries, soldiers and policemen of the now-dead ex-president, Slobodan Milosevic.

Here at Blace was the reality of what happened, why NATO bombed the Serbs, why Kosovo is where it is now, under UN administration, and why it is adamant it will be independent from Serbia.

With an estimated 11,000 Kosovo Albanians, mostly civilians, killed by Serb forces between 1997 and 1999, stories of how they died and where are legion.

I remember how Sabri Popaj, a Kosovo Albanian farmer in western Kosovo, had taken me one day of hot, summer rain after NATO troops arrived, to a thicket of ash trees in a field of peppers near his home in the village of Bela Crkva.

Hanging in the branches were two pairs of tiny children’’s wellington boots, the mud still on them. He had taken the boots from two of the bodies of more than 60 Kosovo Albanian civilians whom Mr Popaj, hidden nearby, had watched

machine-gunned by Serb special police in the small, muddy river next to where the ash clumps grow.

We ply northwards. Every mile there seems to be a shiny new petrol station, gaudy furniture showroom, car-wash, building materials warehouse, or yet another outlet selling the massive plaster eagles that Kosovo Albanians love to mount at the entrance to their property.

Albanian diaspora money is pouring back into the soon-to-be independent province.

We pass three Serb Orthodox churches: curiously, they are not guarded by some of the 16,500 NATO soldiers stationed in Kosovo, normally the case with Orthodox sites in the province, dozens of which have been torched or blown-up by Albanians under NATO’’s often ineffectual noses since 1999.

Six miles short of Pristina, we pass the hamlet of Gracko, where in the boiling hot July summer of 1999 14 Serb farmers were shot dead as they worked their fields, the worst incidence of the endemic violence against Serbs that would last five years and lead to some 200,000-plus of them fleeing the province.

A day later, I stand outside the National Theatre in muddy, scruffy central Pristina.

A couple of thousand Kosovo Albanian students march to demand independence. Albanian and American flags wave. The rhetoric is strong. The lenses and TV cameras of a vast international press corps hum and whirr busily, people expecting a possible declaration of independence today.

But Kosovo will have to wait a little longer. Its Albanian authorities, long used to manipulating the international community to achieve their ends, are keenly aware they must have the Americans, at least, onside before the exact date of the independence declaration is set in stone.

ALBANIANS” LEADERS TO TALK WITH ALLIES IN THE WEST KOSOVO

said last night it would immediately start talks with its western backers on a declaration of independence from Serbia, which would come “much earlier than May”. The leaders of Kosovo’’s two million ethnic Albanians made the announcement as the 10 December deadline for a negotiated deal on the fate of the breakaway province passed without result.

Skender Hyseni, a spokesman for Kosovo’’s “unity team” in its talks with Serbia, said: “From today, Kosovo begins consultations with key international partners to co-ordinate the next steps to a declaration of independence. ”

Asked to clarify speculation on the timing of a declaration, he said it would happen “much earlier than May”. Diplomats say it could come next month or in February, depending on the timing of an expected Serbian presidential election.

In the ethnically-divided town of Mitrovica, a likely focus of any partition bid, Slobodan Samardzic, Serbia‘’s minister for Kosovo, opened a ministry office and promised Belgrade would “intensify” a network of parallel institutions for the Serb minority, beyond United Nations control.

He said Serbia would “fight back” if Kosovo Serbs came under attack from Albanian hardliners. “Serbia will not give in,” he said. “It’’s not finished yet.”Â

http://thescotsman. scotsman. com/internationa l.cfm?id= 1928722007

Comments from http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=3589093

1. Comment Removed
This comment has been removed by a moderator.

2. Wallace MacP, Edmonton / 4:22am 11 Dec 2007
Jugoslavia: Another country beheaded by advancing Islam.

3. Kosovo Albanian, CT / 5:40am 11 Dec 2007
I don”t understand how you two could say such things, you have no clue
what my family and other families like mine had to go through, fathers and
mothers killed children left homeless without parents. Please do not say
such things, it truly hurts me. I don”t understand how you guys categorize
Muslims as well, you think each of us is going to bomb your airport or mall,
well you know what you are absolutely wrong and full of crap yourselves. Get
the facts straight and then start speaking.

4. LillyAugusta, Belgrade,Serbia / 5:50am 11 Dec 2007
It’’s interesting how Christian only mentioned students marching,but forgot
to mention that they had flags with-”Serbs go,burn in hell forever”.
And of course he didn”t go to enclaves to see how Serbs are living like in
concentration camps!
Albanians are the only terrorists in the world who could get their own
state!

5. Maksim, SIberia / 6:02am 11 Dec 2007
#1 THANK YOU!!!

6. Boswell / 7:07am 11 Dec 2007
This article is simply a travelogue attempting to masquerade as political
and social commentary.

I could probably write a more exciting account of a trip to Tesco.

How does tarmac sing? File under waffle.

7. Guga II, Rockall / 7:48am 11 Dec 2007
Why shouldn”t Kosovo get its independence? It is about time that this
“Greater Serbia” nonsense was hit on the head. Left to their own devices,
the Serbs would still be indulging in ethnic cleansing to this day.

This is nothing to do with Moslems, it is to do with people wanting to run
their own country in order that they no longer have to live in constant fear
of being butchered.

8. Covert Action / 8:05am 11 Dec 2007
#3
why don”t you and your thieving. raping, drug-dealing pals go back to
Turkey, via Albania.

9. LillyAugusta, Belgrade,Serbia / 8:12am 11 Dec 2007
Oh,please Guga II…That ethnic cleansing of Albanians has been done by
NATO bombing,and everyone knows about it!
And if there was ethnic cleansing of Albanians,how come there is 90% of
Albanians there?Come on!
Ethnic cleansing of Serbs has been done for a long time now with the
presence and knowledge of NATO,EU,UN.. .But who cares,right?
And what about ”Greater Albania”-Kosovo( and
Metohija)+Albania+ Macedonia+ Montenegro+ Northern Greece???
It doesn”t have anything to do with Muslims,I agree,just ask Turkish
minority on Kosovo and Metohija,who are afraid of fellow Muslims-Albanians
and stick with Serbs!

10. Vaquero, Manila / 8:25am 11 Dec 2007
#3, you get your facts right! All muslims including you, believe the Quran
and the evil that it contains. Muslims started the Balkin War. The Quran
tells you that all non Muslims are infidels (devils) and that any contract
with a non muslim is null and void if the muslim cares to disolve it.

Now why not tell me I am wrong and deny the “QURAN”, so that we can all
read your reply, and applaud you.

11. Princip, Edinburgh / 8:32am 11 Dec 2007
Christian Jennings please correct yourself immediatly - the following
statement is patently wrong;

“With an estimated 11,000 Kosovo Albanians, mostly civilians, killed by
Serb forces between 1997 and 1999, stories of how they died and where are
legion. “

Who’’s estimate made when ? The truth you dont wish to print;
“on a simple crude body count you are wrong. The death toll in Kosovo was
in the hundreds before the start of the bombing campaign. It was around
5,000 by the end. Not quite the “genocide” that some people claimed,
incidentally, but not a good precedent either.”

I was working at Amnesty International during the Kosovo crisis. I first
visited refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia during the conflict and then
spent a year in Pristina seconded into the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees. Tony Blair says that we “reversed ethnic cleansing” there, but I
would not count the expulsion of over 100,000 Serbs and Roma from a province
guarded by 40,000 Nato troops as a success.”
- Conor Foley aid worker for Amnesty and UNHCR.
http://commentisfre e.guardian. co.uk/take_ two/2007/ 04/oliv.. .

The final death toll Conor Foley refers to includes all deaths. Thus this
includes the hundreds Serbian & ethnic Albanians civilians killed by NATO’’s
illegal airwar as well as those killed by KLA terrorists (with Al-Queda
links). The terrorist KLA even killed other ethnic Albanians that they
judged loyal to the Soverign state and in their evil minds saw them as
traitors - of course you fail to mention Thaci

Please be aware that the continued use of such misleading and clearly
partisan propaganda would indicate at best poor journalism & professionalism
at worst I am sure other readers can judge for themselves!

As and until a new UN resolution is passed to replace 1244 Serbia‘’s
sovereignity and territorial integrity remain irrespective of any illegal
secessionist declaration. More importantly all UN members have an obligation
to uphold UN resolutions especially when they formulated signed and thus
agreed to be obligated by it only 8 years ago.

The US, UK and France who as permanent members have an even greater
responsibility and accountability for valid UN resolution since if they did
not like them they had the right to veto and not pass it as law. Instead
they saw fit to sign on the dotted line and re-affirm Serbia’’s soverignity
regarding its province on the 10th June 1999 - post conflict and the only
ethnic cleansing and atrocities since have been against all non-Albanians in
Serbia’’s province under the noses of NATO - the “humanitarian” war machine.

One cannot overrule a UN resolution just because 8 years New Labour have
been told once more US foreign policy needs to be accepted without critique!

12. Logie Almond / 9:02am 11 Dec 2007
These are the same Kosovo Albanians that are market leaders in
people-trafficking, prostitution, drug-trafficking and gun-running.

13. LillyAugusta, Belgrade,Serbia / 9:09am 11 Dec 2007
Ah,yes,Princip, Tachi…Just the other day,on BBC World,Hashim Tachi,the
man who killed so many Serbs,said he”ll go from house to house to tell Serbs
they shouldn”t be afraid!!!Good God!
And what about Agim Ceku-the Prime Minister of Kosovo,who was killing
Serbs in Croatia-he promised he”ll protect Serbs!
Yeah,yeah,we believe you!
But US is backing them up badly,and EU is America‘’s puppy.
Americans want their NATO state in Europe and in independent Kosovo
they”ll have it.
They already have their biggest military base there-Bondsteel, and they
want it to be the capital of the independent Kosovo.

14. MoonbeamsRus, Odessa, Ukraine / 9:28am 11 Dec 2007
“With an estimated 11,000 Kosovo Albanians, mostly civilians, killed by
Serb forces between 1997 and 1999, stories of how they died and where are
legion” oh yeah ? Is that so ? So how come the UN now says about 500 were
killed before the bombing - a figure that includes police, army, Serb and
Roma civilians and those Albanians who opposed the KLA ? And what of the
Serbs, Jews and Roma mercillesly hounded out by Albanian mobs since ”99 -
what of them ? The small Jewish community in Pristina (200 families and one
synagogue) was wiped out within a few weeks of “liberation” - and how many
gypsies are left in Kosovo ? I think the Albanian propaganda is starting to
wear a little thin - it seems that only the Scotsman and the BBC still sing
the poor Albanian victims tune.

15. whatsyourname / 10:16am 11 Dec 2007
The wars are only for money, we are all doomed if we allow all these wars
to continue, there is no need for all this killing of innosent people who
are we to take each others lifes, because the Goverments are lieing to us,
They want a one world Goverment,Please whatch this
videohttp:// www.youtube. com/watch? v=vuBo4E77ZXo

16. Gusto / 10:35am 11 Dec 2007
Kosovo Albanians - that’’s like English Irish, or Scottish Welsh isn”t it?
Should Scotland call on the UN to bomb the English into submission so
Scotland can have Independence?

17. AbandonAllHope / 11:24am 11 Dec 2007
Ahhh i see terrorism and gangsterism wins through eventually. FFS another
bit of bleedin balkan strife for Serbia, well done albania/usa for your
short term visions.

18. Aspirin, West Midlands / 11:57am 11 Dec 2007
Why shouldn”t the poor little innocent hard done by Albanians have their
own country - Oh, wait a minute, they already have- it’’s Albania - but the
Kosovo Albanians moved into someone else’’s country because like all muslims
they didn”t like their own. Look ahead a few years when Glasgow Pakis or
London Bangladeshis demand independence.

19. Xhile, inthemiddle / 12:06pm 11 Dec 2007
So let’’s see what we have with Kosova.
Over a period of time, the Serbian state allows hundreds of thousand of
immigrant Albanian Muslims to settle into parts of their country until those
Muslims feel powerful enough to challenge the legitimate government.
With the help of the US and EU waging a transparently illegal war, the
Serbs are bombed into submission and are now to be stripped of their totally
lawful ownership of a part of their country which they have governed 600
years.

Britain has allowed millions of Muslims to settle into part of its
territory. The numbers and mindset of those Muslims is such that their
representatives have already called for Sharia Law to be introduced into
those areas in which they now have become the majority.

If this scenario doesn”t worry the English, Scots and Welsh, they are
either amazingly complacent, or have already left of the country.

20. Gusto / 12:12pm 11 Dec 2007
Hey! wait a minute! Article starts “AS WE cross the border into Kosovo
from Macedonia”
what?
“Macedonia, is a landlocked country on the Balkan peninsula in
southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Serbia to the north, Albania to the
west, Greece to the south, and Bulgaria to the east.”
no wonder his phone didnt work - Mr Jennings was probably in Kazachstan!
I wont let no thumb-sucker suck my thumb!!

21. Anthony, Glasgow / 12:16pm 11 Dec 2007
Have to agree with 18 & 19. Kosovo (as it is now being defined), only
became a state in 1999 when the UN defined it’’s borders. In order to give
“independence” to a selection of Albanian land grabbers, the integrity and
viability of a genuine historical country and its millions of inhabitants,
is being seriously put at risk. This will cause massive instability in the
region (which let’’s not forget sparked off WWI, and had a hand in WWII). It
is a deadly volatile region.

The Albanian Kosovans argue that they have a flag and a capital city - so
does B&Q, Little Chef and Lego Land. This will be deemed a direct
provocation to Russia, who regardless of what some might argue, have been a
stabalising force in the region, and have contained the spread of islamic
extremism.

And 3 - sorry if you”re ”hurt” or ”offended” - but freedom of speech is a
treasured right in this country.

Â

 

Zwei Welten

 

Eine CSU-Abgeordnete erklärt den Serben Bayern

Von Claudia Wangerin

Kosovska Mitrovica – diesen Ortsnamen konnte sich die bayerische Landtagsabgeordnete Erika Görlitz (CSU) nicht gleich merken, als sie die serbische Schülergruppe am vergangenen Freitag aus der geteilten 70000-Einwohner-Stadt durch ihr Dienstgebäude führte. Das 150 Jahre alte Maximilianeum war seinerzeit als Ausbildungsstätte für den jungen männlichen Adel gedacht – und viel mehr Bodenhaftung sollte man auch nicht von denen erwarten, die heute täglich dort verkehren. Wacker zählte die Parlamentarierin aus ihrer Sicht die Vorzüge Bayerns auf – von der geplanten Magnetschwebebahn Transrapid, die außer der CSU-Spitze keiner haben will, über den Atom-Forschungsreaktor in Garching bis zum bundesweit härtesten Schulsystem.

Die 16jährigen aus Nord-Mitrovica, der größten verbliebenen serbischen Enklave im Kosovo, hatten indes ganz andere Sorgen. Sie waren auf Einladung des Pfaffenhofener Vereins »Freundschaft mit Valjevo e.V.« nach Bayern gekommen, der ihren Aufenthalt durch private Spenden finanzierte. Begleitet wurden sie unter anderem von Bürgermeister Srubljub Milenkovic.

Angst vor Übergriffen und Vertreibung bestimmt ihren Alltag. Zahlreiche serbische Häuser und Kirchen sind seit 1999 niedergebrannt worden. Vladan (16) lebt in einem 700-Einwohner-Dorf in 100 Kilometer Entfernung von Kosovska Mitrovica und ist auf den KFOR-Konvoi angewiesen, um zur Schule zu kommen – der fährt allerdings nur zweimal in der Woche. Zwischendrin muß er meist im Studentenwohnheim übernachten. In Nord-Mitrovica fließt nach 19 Uhr kein Wasser mehr – die Wasserwerke befinden sich im albanischen Teil der Stadt.

Das Stichwort »Vertreibung« fällt. Frau Görlitz erwähnt ihre Schwiegereltern, die nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg als Deutsche vertrieben worden seien: »Sie leiden heute noch darunter«. Zwei Welten prallen aufeinander; und man redet höflich aneinander vorbei. Milica (16) meldet sich nicht zu Wort, weil es ihr sinnlos erscheint. »Wir haben Angst um unsere Zukunft und unser Leben« sagt sie anschließend.