'March Pogrom' belies UN control myth
U of A forum to examine destruction of Christian culture in Kosovo

Opinion Page
May 16, 2004 Sunday

BY: Lorne Gunter

On the evening of March 16, four Albanian-Kosovar boys, aged 13, 12, 11 and nine decided to cross the Ibar River over a bridge from their village of Cabra to the Serbian-Kosovar village of Zupce on the opposite bank.

Fatefully, the quartet decided to try to swim back. The river was turbulent, swollen with spring rains. Three drowned. Only 13-year-old Fitim Veseli made it back to his home side.

Frantic and worried, Fitim told his parents and investigators that two Serbian men in their 20s had chased him and his companions into the river with the help of a pit bull.

Even that evening, accounts Fitim gave to two sets of investigators differed sharply. In one there were two men, in another, "perhaps" four. No eyewitnesses could be found and a UN investigator noted "very significant" inconsistencies in Fitim's testimony. In fact, the UN concluded, Fitim's description of events was "logically at odds in several respects with other evidence." UN prosecutors quickly realized there was no basis to press charges or even to continue their investigation.

Fitim would later admit he made up the story about being forced into the river.

But it was too late. Well-armed Albanians (mostly Muslims) attacked the mostly Orthodox Christian Serb population throughout Kosovo. The "March Pogrom," as the Serbs are calling it, lasted for three days. Nineteen Serbs were killed, 1,000 wounded and another 3,600 forced to leave their homes. Seven Serbian villages were destroyed, or at least depopulated. Thirty-five Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries, some dating back to the 13th century, were razed or damaged beyond repair.

Those inclined to believe that UN control of Iraq will quell the recent uprising there need look no further than Kosovo to disabuse themselves.

Since the UN and NATO began jointly managing Kosovo, following NATO's 79-day bombing campaign against the province in 1999, more than 200,000 Serbs have been forced to leave. Police files of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) show approximately 1,200 "ethnically motivated" murders in Kosovo in the past five years.

Admittedly, about 1 in 20 of those murders, UNMIK suspects, have been committed by Serbs on Albanians. The Serbs are not angels. When Kosovo Muslims' bloody purge against Kosovo's Serbs and their important cultural and religious sites erupted two months ago, Serbs in Belgrade and Nis -- Serbia proper's two largest cities -- set fire to one large mosque in each city in retaliation.

Nineteen of every 20 ethnic killings since "peace" was declared there have been committed by Muslim Albanians against Christian Serbs. Remember, Canada and the other NATO countries agreed to bomb Kosovo in 1999 (without UN sanction) to preserve the Albanians from "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs.

Once the UN took over, once a multilateral coalition with Security Council backing was in place to patrol the streets -- the supposed magic wand according to critics of the U.S. occupation of Iraq -- once such a force was in charge in Kosovo, all hell broke loose for the Serbs there.

Under UN and NATO cover, the Kosovar Albanians began ethnically cleansing their province of Serbs, many of whose families had lived there for six centuries or more. The victims quickly became the victimizers, with UN acquiescence.

The United Nations has done little but document the brutality. (Somewhat unexpectedly, UNMIK's website -- www.unmikonline.org/news.htm -- contains a substantial number of quite frank descriptions of what is occurring, but no suggestions on what to do.) UNMIK admits the March Pogrom shocked the mission "to its foundations." The rapid spread of the violence "overwhelmed" UNMIK. It was so widespread and so clearly targeted against Serbian churches and villages that it had to have been co-ordinated, UNMIK concludes.

And, indeed, the violence seems obviously to have been planned in advance, just waiting for an incident, like the phoney forced-drowning story, to use as a spark to set it off.

In all, over the past five years, in addition to nearly 1,200 Serbian Kosovars being killed and 200,000 (half the total or more) being forced to leave the province, nearly 150 Serbian Orthodox churches, monasteries and shrines have been destroyed. (For a list, plus photos, see www.kosovo.com/default4.html.)

Sacred artifacts such as ancient scriptures, icons and ornate relics have been permanently lost, defaced or sold on the black market. Since Serbs view Kosovo as the birthplace of their nation and their faith, this means many of their foundational symbols have been lost forever.

This coming Tuesday, May 18, at 7 p.m., a public forum titled Erasing History: The Destruction of Christian Culture in Kosovo, will be held in the Humanities Building, Room HC-L1, at the University of Alberta. Among those on the panel will be David Goa, curator emeritus of Alberta's provincial museum, James Bissett, Canada's former ambassador to Yugoslavia, and Ken Hykawy, a former contingent commander with Canadian forces in the area.