Albanesi filo-serbi perseguitati dall'UCK
Giorgio Torrieri
questa chicca letta oggi sul Daily Telegraph, che ha il grande
merito di discutere su un gruppo di persone la cui esistenza e
ignorata quasi da tutti fuori dalla Yugoslavia.
Qua in UK il fatto che centinaia di profughi Albanesi
continuano regolarmente
ad arrivare sulle nostre coste e' completamente ignorato, quindi
la domanda su quanti di essi siano albanesi kosovari "collaborazionisti"
o sospetti tali non viene discussa, ma personalmente ho il
sospetto che siano non pochi (anche ignorando zingari, turchi
e serbi).
-----------------------
KLA troops punish collaboration with
gang-rape
By Julius Strauss in Prizren
Milosevic's rival gives warning of Serb civil
war
MIHRIE BUNGU, a slight 18-year-old, is living
testimony of a new
wave of terror sweeping Kosovo as returning ethnic
Albanian
guerrillas and civilians defy calls for calm and wreak
revenge on those
implicated in a decade of harsh Serbian rule.
Last week she sat on a wooden bench gently stroking
her nine-
month-old daughter and told how she was gang-raped by
five soldiers
of the Kosovo Liberation Army because her
brothers-in-law served as
Serbian policemen.
Mihrie's story is one of a growing number of horror
stories emerging
as retribution sweeps Kosovo. A spokesman for the
United Nations
Refugee Agency said that there was evidence of a
systematic campaign
against minorities in Kosovo by returning ethnic
Albanians. He cited
the southern town of Prizren as one of the worst hit.
More than 50 Serb
houses have been burnt down there in the last week.
Many others are too scared to speak out but last week
Mihrie told The
Telegraph of her personal ordeal from the safety of a
quiet sanctuary in
Prizren where she is protected around the clock by
Nato soldiers.
Mihrie's bad luck was to be married into a family of
collaborators -
ethnic Albanians who were loyal to the Serb
authorities. Two of her
brothers-in-law worked for Belgrade's security
apparatus and her
husband helped out at the Hotel Balkan in Suva Reka, a
centre for Serb
nationalists and paramilitaries.
When the Nato air war began on March 24, Serb
paramilitaries
attacked the ethnic Albanians of Suva Reka and the
small adjoining
hamlet of Siroke. More than 120 were massacred in one
afternoon in
one of the worst single episodes of the war. The rest
fled. The Bungus,
protected by the Serbs, stayed in their house.
According to witnesses,
they took part in the ethnic cleansing and looting of
Suva Reka.
In mid-March the KLA returned to Suva Reka. After
three months of
air strikes, Belgrade had capitulated and Serb forces
were leaving the
province. The policeman Sejdi Bungu and his family
fled to a flat they
had bought in Belgrade. But Mihrie and her husband,
Hysni, decided to
stay.
On June 21 the KLA came to settle the score. Mihrie
described what
happened: "Five men broke down the door, all wearing
masks and
uniforms. They had KLA badges on. They grabbed my
husband and
took him outside and just one of them came back in.
'Who is Hysni's
wife?' he asked. I said it was me. 'Come with us for a
few minutes,' he
said. They had weapons and I did as they said."
Outside, the soldiers had a car. Mihrie was bundled
into it and driven
to another house. She said: "They took my blindfold
off and then they
took their masks off. I recognised three of them. But
they didn't say
anything. They raped me. All five of them - it took
three hours. When
we got home they took me out again and said: 'We've
killed your
husband but just stay in your house. Don't worry,
we'll come and visit
you again.' Then they left. The next day Nato came and
got me out of
the village."
Mihrie's ordeal is rare among Kosovo Albanians even
during times of
great strife. Ethnic Albanians traditionally shy away
from rape. It is
seen as conferring great dishonour on the family and
husband of the
woman. "I don't think it was about me," Mihrie said.
"I didn't do
anything wrong. Maybe it's because they couldn't catch
my
brothers-in-law. Maybe it was revenge. But once they
had gone all I
could do was cry." As Mihrie spoke, she nervously
fiddled with a
packet of cigarettes. In her arms, her baby, Mirjeta,
quietly stared.
Three of the men who raped Mihrie have since been
caught. A visit to
the German-run detention centre in Prizren confirmed
that they were
being held on changes of rape and murder, although it
is unclear when,
how and by whom they will be tried.
Ten miles up the road in their village of Siroko, the
local Albanians
had begun to return from refugee camps in Macedonia
and Albania.
Some were cleaning out their houses. One man was
making good a
concrete path in front of his food shop. Asked about
the Bungu family,
the men stopped what they were doing. "They were
policemen, with
the Serbs, they all deserve to die," one said angrily.
"They were always
with the regime. They were loyalists," another said,
enunciating the
last word as if it were the worst of insults.
But asked about the rape, each one slowly turned away,
denying all
knowledge of it. It was left for Sabit Gashi, the
local KLA commander
of Suva Reka's military police, to comment. He said:
"We don't know
the truth. We have asked Nato for more information
about the case but
so far they haven't replied. But if it proves to be
true that they raped
the woman, we condemn it." He looked away
uncomfortably.
-----------------------
--
To reply by email remove "xxxx" from the start of my email address
---------------------------------------------------------
G. Torrieri, Particle physics group, Univ. of Birmingham
Work: 0121-414-47-01 Home:0121-415-43-73
Homepage: http://www.ep.ph.bham.ac.uk/user/torrieri
---------------------------------------------------------
"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way"
-Juan Ramon Jiminiz