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Ivo Skoric <ivo@reporters.net> Prevlaka Kosovo: medical emergency (Fwd) WSWS on the war against Yugoslavia (Fwd) Women In Black New York Vigil on Wedesday April 28 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net> Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 15:27:05 +0000 Subject: Prevlaka Does Milosevic want to re-open the war with Croatia? And does he have the means to pursue it? (the only thing that Mark T. misinterpretes in his article bellow is that the principal deep-water port of Yugoslavia today is Bar and not Kotor) ivo ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 24, 23 April 1999 http://www.iwpr.net TROOPS COME TO PREVLAKA Since 1992, this disputed peninsula has remained quiet, but effectively blocked, and talks got nowhere--leaving Milosevic another card to play against Croatia and Montenegro. This week, he checked his hand. By Mark Thompson Yugoslav soldiers entered a demilitarised zone separating Croatia and Montenegro on Tuesday, April 20--demonstrating that Belgrade still has plenty of potential to cause trouble away from the main theatre of Kosovo. Since October 1992, Prevlaka, Croatia's southern-most peninsula, has been closed to everyone except 28 UN monitors. While Croatia's ambassador to the UN, Ivan Simonovic, has complained to the Security Council that up to 300 Yugoslav troops had moved into the DMZ, the UN monitors themselves numbered only 20. This southern-most tip of Croatia lies about 40 kilometres south of Dubrovnik and only 2 kilometres from the border with Montenegro. A couple of kilometres in length and half a kilometre wide, Prevlaka projects part way across the mouth of the Kotor Bay, Yugoslavia's principal deep-water harbour. Prevlaka had been a military base for decades before Croatia won its independence, and the Montenegrin headland on the opposite, southern side of the bay is riddled with military installations--allegedly including missile sites. When Yugoslav forces withdrew from Croatia in 1992, they refused to abandon Prevlaka and its hinterland before they had secured an agreement to keep the area demilitarised, under UN supervision, until the two parties reached a final settlement to ensure security between Dubrovnik and Kotor. The wider demilitarised zone agreed in 1992 stretches to a depth of 5 kilometres on either side of the Croatian-Yugoslav border, which extends for some 79 kilometres between Kotor Bay and the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. In practice, neither side fully respects the DMZ. Yugoslav troops have never withdrawn from positions near the Bosnian border, while Croatian "special police" occupy bunkers beside Prevlaka, where they have no business being. Both sides retain heavy weapons near the border. Nevertheless, the area has remained remarkably stable for a long time. Despite occasional minor incidents or provocations, no shot has been fired since 1995. Every six months, the Security Council reviews the situation for two or three minutes before authorising a further extension of the UN monitors' mandate there. The main responsibility for the failure to resolve the issue lies with Belgrade, which has resorted to a variety of time-wasting tactics to forestall serious talks. Presumably, it has done so to retain potential leverage against both Croatia and Montenegro which is may be seeking to call upon now. Belgrade insists that Prevlaka is a territorial dispute to be solved by changing the international border--a position rejected by Croatia and the rest of the international community. For its part, Zagreb has kept fairly quiet on the issue. This is partly because President Franjo Tudjman has previously entertained a possible land deal exchanging Prevlaka for territory in Herzegovina, behind Dubrovnik. But by putting paid to any such schemes to change Bosnia's border, the Dayton Peace Agreement effectively opened the way to serious bilateral negotiations. Despite this, Zagreb and Belgrade have agreed a statement in 1996 on normalising relations, but nothing more on the issue. Meanwhile the border remained closed. This balance was disturbed by Montenegro's election results in 1998, which installed a leadership keen to rebuild commercial relations with Croatia. Late in 1998, encouraged by Podgorica's positive signals and pushed by US diplomacy, Zagreb tabled a proposal to settle the disputed issue through bilateral demilitarisation. The Security Council commended the move. Podgorica and Zagreb then agreed to open the main border-crossing, despite Belgrade's objections. Belgrade responded by excluding Podgorica from the Yugoslav team in the on-going Prevlaka talks. This was how matters stood until earlier this week when Yugoslav troops took up positions on the last road junction before the border-crossing, close to the peninsula but still within Montenegro. Croatia promptly complained to the Security Council that 200 to 300 soldiers had moved into the DMZ. It is more than likely that the incursion is indeed intended only as a signal that Milosevic could indeed make trouble in this little-regarded corner of the Balkans should he chose to do so. But sideshow or not, great vigilance should be shown by Croatia, by NATO, and above all by Montenegro, if Belgrade's symbolic act is not to result in a general heightening of tensions on all sides. Mark Thompson, author of The Paper House: The Ending of Yugoslavia (Vintage, 1992) and Forging War: The Media in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Article 19, 1994), was part of the UN mission to Prevlaka until December 1997. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net> Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 15:27:20 +0000 Subject: Kosovo: medical emergency =============================== April 22, 1999 For Immediate Release Contact: Barbara Ayotte (617) 695-0041 ext 210/(617) 776-8020 KOSOVAR ALBANIAN PHYSICIANS CALL FOR IMMEDIATE NATO GROUND TROOPS AND AIRDROP OF FOOD AND MEDICINES TO SAVE REMAINING CIVILIAN POPULATION IN KOSOVO Eighteen leading ethnic Albanian physicians from Kosovo who have fled to Macedonia today called upon NATO to employ at once all possible measures to bring food and medical supplies to the population left in Kosovo. They urge NATO to arrange for the immediate air drop of food and medicine to the populations trapped in the countryside within the next two weeks or else it may be"too late". "Mass death may be imminent" unless help reaches them in that period, they say. "Only these two measures, in the view of these respected, senior Pristina physicians, will offer any reasonable possibility of saving the remnant populations of Kosovo and effect the return of those who have been forced to flee," said Jennifer Leaning, MD, a member of the board of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) who just interviewed the physicians, now living in Skopje and Tetova, Macedonia, arriving since March 24. "These physicians experienced terrifying threats to themselves and their families as they fled or were forcibly expelled from Kosovo. Their main concern, however, is how to avert mass death among the hundreds of thousands who are still left in Kosovo," said Leaning. The Kosovar Albanian physicians from the Pristina area report that in the city of Pristina there is very little food left in the homes and neighborhoods where people are trapped. People are unable to leave their apartments because of armed forces patrolling the streets, snipers, and marauding gangs of armed Serbian civilians. A physician who left Pristina on April 15 said that his friends had reported having reserves of food for their families of only two days to one week. All the Albanian stores in Pristina have been looted or burned. Ethnic Albanians who dare to go out for milk or bread are turned away by the Serbian police and are told that only Serbs can wait in line for food. The Pristina physicians, many of who traveled regularly throughout the countryside before they were expelled, say the situation now is even more desperate. One physician made contact two days ago by cell phone with a friend in Peja (Pec) who said that 15,000 internally displaced people had just come to three small villages outside Peja, and there was absolutely no food or medicine to support them. Several physicians reported that there are now no medical supplies, surgical supplies, or medicines of any kind left in the countryside. People in the cities cannot seek care at the hospitals because it is too dangerous to go out in the streets and because the hospitals are effectively closed to Albanians since the Serb authorities dismissed all Albanian staff and expelled all Albanian patients in late March. The eighteen physicians interviewed by PHR call upon NATO to employ at once all possible measures to bring food and medical supplies to the population left in Kosovo. They urge NATO to arrange for the immediate air drop of food and medicine to the populations trapped in the countryside. They also request that NATO act with the greatest urgency to bring ground forces into Kosovo in order to rescue those now living in hiding and under siege, and to locate and liberate the large numbers of men and boys who were separated from their families by Serb forces and taken to unknown locations. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has a nine member delegation in Macedonia and Albania conducting a comprehensive survey of some 1,000 Kosovar refugees about human rights abuses suffered over the past few weeks. Three members of the team, led by Dr. Jennifer Leaning, are interviewing physicians about conditions leading to their flight out of Kosovo. For the past six months, PHR has reported on the systematic pattern of abuses against ethnic Albanian physicians and their patients by Serb authorities in Kosovo. PHR has documented murder of at least three physicians, and harassment, detention, and torture of physicians-with abuses occurring as far back as the fall of 1998. Dr. Leaning conducted a training for ethnic Albanian and Serbian physicians in mid-March on human rights and humanitarian law. Barbara Ayotte Physicians for Human Rights 100 Boylston Street, Suite 702 Boston, MA 02116 Tel. (617) 695-0041 Fax. (617) 695-0307 Email: bayotte@phrusa.org http://www.phrusa.org ============== Submitted by Nalini Lasiewicz - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net> Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 15:27:22 +0000 Subject: (Fwd) WSWS on the war against Yugoslavia American left is predictably against NATO intervention: ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: "Andreas Kuckartz" <A.Kuckartz@ping.de> Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 09:33:43 +0200 I would like to recommend the articles published by the World Socialist Web Site on the war. There are English, German and Russian language topic pages and also a Serbo-Croatian page. I especially commend a reply to one of the former opponents of the war against Vietnam who now supports the bombing of Yugoslavia. This article deals with most of the arguments of these people in detail. Andreas ----- Selected articles The Munich Agreement and the US-NATO war against Yugoslavia: The real lessons of appeasement in the 1930s http://wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/mun-a23.shtml Amidst the media propaganda: Key facts in press accounts refute official rationale for Balkan war http://wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/yugo-a22.shtml IMF "shock therapy" and the recolonisation of the Balkans http://wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/imf-a17.shtml What would be the consequences of a US declaration of war on Yugoslavia? http://wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/war-a15.shtml Behind the war in the Balkans A reply to a supporter of the US-NATO bombing of Serbia http://wsws.org/articles/1999/apr1999/dn-a08.shtml --- Topical pages [English] WSWS - The NATO Attack on Yugoslavia http://wsws.org/sections/category/news/eu-balk.shtml [German] WSWS - Krieg im Kosovo http://wsws.org/de/aktuell/europa/kosowar.shtml [Serbo-Croatian] WSWS - Srpskohrvatski http://wsws.org/hr/index.shtml [Russian] WSWS - War against Yugoslavia http://wsws.org/ru/aktuell/balkan.shtml - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net> Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 15:26:56 +0000 Subject: (Fwd) Women In Black New York Vigil on Wedesday April 28, from ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: "Indira Kajosevic" <Ikajosev@afsc.org> PLEASE JOIN WOMEN IN BLACK RACCOON, INC. In one-hour silent vigil as WE STAND FOR PEACE AND AGINST VIOLENT MEANS OF SOLVING THE CRISIS IN KOSOVO We stand on the last Wednesday of each month, in front ofthe New York Public Library from 5.30-6.30, 5th Ave. between 41st & 42nd Street. Please wear black. For more information contact Indira at 212-560-0905. BEING ABLE TO SAY NEITHER / NOR By Cynthia Cockburn A group of us in London co-ordinate occasional actions as 'Women in Black' (footnote). Although I am actively involved I do not speak 'for' Women in Black London. What follows is no more than a few personal thoughts. Just as Women in Black has no formal membership or spokes-people, neither can it really be said to have a line. But from all the occasions women have demonstrated together under this name on the streets of many different countries it is possible to work out what we are standing against and standing for. First, Women in Black is against the whole continuum of violence, from male violence against women, to militarism and war. It is for justice and peace. It is clearly for multi-ethnic democracy. It is for non-violent, negotiated, means of resolving differences. And there is an implicit analysis that a certain kind of masculinity fuels and is fuelled by militarism and war, and that this is harmful not only for women but also for men. At the time of writing, as the ethnic aggression intensifies in Kosovo/Kosova and as NATO bombing shows no signs of ending, a situation has arisen in which there is very little space indeed for this kind of politics by women. Even less than usual. The little space that is sometimes there has closed right down, not just in Yugoslavia, but in the UK too. What is happening is polarization, a kind of 'either/or' politics. Take, for example, the big demonstration on Sunday April 11 called by the Committee for Peace in the Balkans, largely framed by the Socialist Worker Party, at which the speakers included many well-known names from the British Left. Some of us took the Women in Black banner along. Many of the Women in Black network in London want to oppose NATO bombing. Our opposition (I feel safe in saying) is not to protect Serb nationalist extremism but precisely because we would see the bombardment as strengthening not weakening it. For that reason we have been holding vigils in London. But, on April 11, even as the march assembled on the Embankment, I was feeling uneasy. Because there was this ocean of pre-planned Socialist Worker placards that simply said 'stop the NATO bombing'. Any messages opposing the ethnic aggression of the Milosevic regime were overwhelmed by this uniform and singular demand. Then we reached Downing Street, where the march was joined by a strong contingent of Serb nationalists and their supporters. We were surrounded by the Serb national flag, the characteristic three finger salutes, and many people wearing the new 'target' symbols that have been adopted in Belgrade since the bombing. At the bottom of Trafalgar Square things got very confrontational. To the left, held back behind barriers, was a militant Kosovan counter-demonstration supporting the bombing. And shouting back from 'our' side of the road were angry Serb nationalists, some of them carrying a scaffold with an effigy of Clinton. At that point I took down and folded up the Women in Black banner. It seemed the wrong place to have it. Some of us women decided that we wanted to go and meet people on the Kosovan demonstration. We wanted to find out whether they were all Kosova Liberation Army, to see what other groups might be represented there behind the macho front, and talk with them. We wanted at least to let them know that there were some people on the main march who, although you wouldn't know it, not only opposed bombing, but also opposed Milosevic and what his regime was doing in Kosovo. The police tried to stop us crossing to the other side of the road. And one of them said 'You can't change your mind now, you chose this demonstration, you've got to stick with it. Don't you know which side you're on?' That seemed to epitomise the situation. We went over there anyway. What was worse, though, was that the same kind of message we were getting from the police was also coming across from the speeches in the Square. It was clearly a difficult situation for the speakers to deal with, addressing an audience in which the thing mainly visible was Serb flags. One woman speaker on 'our' platform did criticize Milosevic. She got boo-ed by the crowd. Perhaps this warned off the other speakers. I did not hear the word Milosevic mentioned again. The impressiogiven was that there was one 'enemy' and that was NATO. People spoke of 'the humanitarian disaster in Kosovo' but, since Milosevic was not named, the implication could have been that it was the result of the bombing. Nobody that I heard speak acknowledged the presence of the Kosova demonstration across the road, or expressed any discomfort in being separated in this way from the victims of 'ethnic cleansing'. Instead, the speakers dwelt on the bombing, referring to the Second WorlWar blitz of London and to our wartime alliance with valorous Serbs. It seemed to me (although I know views are divided on this) that the organizers allowed the rally to be hi-jacked by Serb nationalism. You had the feeling they were thinking: 'One thing at a time. You can't oppose bombing AND oppose Milosevic in the same breath.' But all the time I was thinking: there must be people here in Trafalgar Square from the democratic opposition to Milosevic. There are sure to be some men here in the crowd who have deserted from the Yugoslav National Army. They, like us, must feel silenced by this atmosphere. What are they feeling? Nor was the problem only one of polarization. There was a parallel problem of homogenization. In bombing 'the Serbs', NATO are effectively being racist about Yugoslavia. It is as if they think the 'pure Serb nation' is a reality in Yugoslavia in the way Milosevic would like it to be. Governments' failure to see beyond ethnicism is one thing, but the organizers of this demonstration, called to oppose governments, seemed to fall into the same trap of talking as though the people beneath the bombs are 'Serbs'. In reality, the Yugoslavia that Milosevic governs is not much more than 60% Serb. There are twenty other nationalities living there, Hungarians, Romanies, Croats, Sandjak Muslims, Montenegrans. There are people of mixed marriages and mixed parentage. Probably many of these were present in Trafalgar Square on April 11 too. What were they feeling about being addressed as if all of them were holding Serb flags? By now I was full of doubt and confusion. We had folded up the Women in Black banner. But should we be here at all? I remembered a message I had a few days before from a (so-called Serb) woman friend living in Canada. She had written, 'The stage is set right now as if anti-NATO is for ethnic cleansing, Milosevic and radical nationalism. And that is very dangerous'. Because of this, she said, 'many people have problems with protesting'. I was beginning to see what she meant. So if there was not any space for our politics here with the Left in Trafalgar Square, then where? And with whom? And I began to think about the women we work most closely with in Yugoslavia: the Women in Black group in Belgrade. They have demonstrated against the Milosevic regime, in rain and shine, in Republic Square once a week since 1991. Now what rains on them is bombs. And I went home after the demo and read through the many e-mail messages we had had from them in the preceding weeks. I did it to recover a sense of direction and belonging. I remembered that during the equally dark days of the Bosnian war, when we had had difficulty unifying women in London (who were not only British but also from every Yugoslav ethnic group), the one thing we had always been able to agree on was supporting the women peace activists in Belgrade. And what follows is what I read. I cannot use the women's real names, but I shall give a date for each of their messages. First, I read how they have persisted, against increasing odds, in keeping in daily contact with our women colleagues in Pristina, Albanian Kosovans, and have tried to keep supporting them. March 28: 'My moral and emotional imperative (no matter how pathetic it sounds) is to spend hours and hours trying to get a phone line to Prishtina.' They passed on to us news of how ordinary Serbs and Albanians there are still trying to befriend each other. April 1: 'In some buildings, in a few cases, neighbours speak, Serbian and Albanian. They have agreed: "If the police come we will speak up for you", say the Serbs who stay. And "If the KLA comes, we will speak up for you", say the Albanians.' On March 27 I heard from a (so-called Serb) friend who has now fled the country. She was not thinking of her own situation so much as that of Kosovans. 'What disturbs and terrifies me most is the news that the most prominent Albanian intellectuals are being taken away and nobody knows what is happening to them... Is that how the NATO air strikes are supposed to protect the lives of innocent Albanian (and Serbian) civilians in Kosovo?' April 9, more news from the women in Belgrade. 'I talked to 'X' two days ago (a women's human rights worker in Prishtina). She is in Skopje with her family, sixteen of them and they have gone through inferno for six days and six nights and now she is a little recovered and called me and told me some part of her story. And I told her that I am so thankful that she called because we were worrying every day. And she said "I knew you and 'Y' will worry. It was my duty to call you to tell you we are all alive and healthy". And I had tears on my face, because those words meant so much among the horrible hatred against Albanians that is going on in the last fifteen days, and much more than before. Thanks for support.' The women of Women in Black Belgrade are opposed to the bombing, but they have it in perspective. April 1: 'All those bombs don't bother me so much because I see the problem of it in smaller terms than the Kosovo problem.' They see the bombs as bad not because they are an aggression against Serbs but because they weaken the opposition to Milosevic. April 1: 'The bombings are installing Milosevic as king for life, not just president. Kosovo will, with a large amount of victims, get an international protectorate or state. But Serbia will be in shit for the next thirty years. That's what pisses me off and what I can't deal with. Talking to other activists these days I realized that some of them are frustrated that their whole work, life project, whole peace orientation is falling apart.' The atmosphere in Belgrade is getting more and more sexist and misogynist. The women write that there are many placards on the streets saying things like 'Fuck you Chelsea' (of Clinton's daughter), and endless references to Monika Lewinsky, calling 'Come back Monica', so that Clinton might 'screw her instead of Serbs'. And so on. The little space there was for active and autonomous women is narrowing down, along with tolerance of any other kind of counter-culture. March 28: 'This conspiracy of militarism - global and local - dangerously reduces our space, and soon there won't be this space. How to denounce global militarism if we don't denounce the local? How to denounce bombing if we don't denounce the massacres, the repression? With the horror the people of Kosovo are living through with this NATO intervention, they are paying a price even greater than before. NATO in the sky, Milosevic on the ground'. The writer added, 'At the moment our human ghetto functions well, with mutual support. Your support strengthens us, it means a real lot. I embrace you with the deepest friendship and tenderness.' As the bombing ended its second week, things were clearly getting tougher for women and other peace activists in Belgrade. On April 9: 'Our problem here is that we cannot say a word anymore, all human rights are suspended. Only anti-NATO appeals can be published. So Women in Black Belgrade have decided not to make any appeal, at least for the time being, because we cannot as well state that we are against Milosevic... So I live with a mask on my face, if I talk to other people. Everything changed here, and fear is everywhere'. But here in London we do not have to wear that mask. We can speak out both against the bombing AND against the Milosevic regime without any kind of risk or fear. On the demo on Sunday April 11 that was not happening. One statement had been allowed to silence the other. And I really think we have to keep both clearly there together. Even if it seems contradictory. There is a saying that 'the first casualty of war is truth'. I am feeling that another casualty in this war, right now, is the willingness to live with ambiguity and contradiction, to say 'not this (not ethnic cleansing), but not that (bombing) either'. Another casualty is the ability to say 'I don't have an answer'. Preparing for Women in Black vigils in London we are having a lot of difficulty just now knowing what positive demands we can put on our banners and placards. But maybe we have to admit that we can't have very concrete answers at this moment, because the mistakes were begun years ago. There are political principles we can suggest, of course. The trouble is these things do not translate easily into short, snappy slogans. I have felt the temptation to sloganize too. We have sat up all night wondering how on earth to write, all on a couple of pieces of cardboard, 'work through the United Nations, support genuine international peacekeeping and strenthen independent monitoring'. But the thing I most feel I want to do is just keep listening to the women who are there, the ones who are taking the risks, and whose political judgment we have by now got eight years of knowing we can trust. And the things they do clearly model for us is: keep talking, keep the channels open, cherish mixity, believe we can live together, refuse military solutions. And choose a way of doing things that ridicules and counteracts all the sexist, masculist posturing that goes with militarism on every side. FOOTNOTE: Women in Black was started in Israel in 1988 by women protesting against Israel's Occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. It was they who established the characteristic form of action, of mainly silent vigils, by women standing alone as women, wearing black, in public places, at regularly repeated times. There are Women in Black groups now in many different countries, and an e-mail network is developing in Spanish and English (the address in Spain is roal@nodo50.ix.apc.org and, in the UK, jane@gn.apc.org). In recent years Women in Black London have demonstrated against bombing and sanctions in relation to Iraq and the Gulf War, against US/British bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan, and against ethnic aggression in the former Yugoslavia. To be included in the WIB London mailing list please send your street and e-mail addresses and phone number to WIB c/o The Maypole Fund, PO Box 14072 London N16 5WB. Linda Gordon tel 608-263-1777 Professor of History fax 608-251-0595 home University of Wisconsin/Madison fax 608-263-5302 office 455 N. Park St. Madison, WI 53711 --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl