FREEDOM PRESS INTERNATIONAL
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The truth will out and it is revolutionary. The imperialist propaganda
behind NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia earlier this year, based on
exaggerated claims of mass Serb atrocities against the Kosovo
Albanians, is slowly but surely being exposed.
Spanish pathologist, Emilio Perez Pujol, sent to investigate Serb
atrocities, recently estimated 'that the final figure of dead in
Kosovo will be 2,500 at the most. This includes a lot of strange
deaths that can't be blamed on anyone in particular.' Sunday Times
31.10.99. Perez Pujol was apparently warned to expect 44,000 dead only
to find this to be gross exaggeration with 'few' in mass graves. His
own Spanish team found 187 bodies, several of whom had died of natural
causes.
How does this compare with official estimates? In May this year, at
the height of NATO's bombardment, US Defence Secretary, William Cohen,
estimated that up to 100,000 Albanian men were missing and might have
been murdered. Clinton and Blair consistently spoke of 'genocide' in
Kosovo on a scale implicitly comparable to Hitler's genocide of the
Jews during the Second World War. On 18th May, Robin Cook told the
House of Commons that the Serbs 'may now have killed 20,000 to 30,000
men, women and children..All of them were killed deliberately and
callously.' The image he conjured up was massacre on a grand scale:
'In village after village across Kosovo, Serb forces have massacred
civilians at point-blank range.' But only one month later, on 17th
June, Cook had revised this estimate down by at least half to 10,000,
which remains the official one despite the latest evidence. The Sunday
Times has now reported that the United Nations is expected to announce
next month that the total number of victims directly attributable to
Serb paramilitary atrocities is fewer than 2,000, some having died
from NATO's bombing.
What do all these statistics tell us? The simple truth that emerges is
that the imperialist states of NATO colluded in exaggerating the
atrocities in Kosovo so as better to justify their bombardment.
Reports such as the claim that 700 bodies had been dumped in the
Trepca mine in Kosovo have been shown to be nothing but fabrication -
not one body was found there. The stark irony is that NATO's
bombardment was itself responsible for the killings of up to 2,000
civilians across Yugoslavia - or as many as the Serbs committed once
NATO had decided to bomb. This amounts to at least 4,000 innocent
civilians who would be alive today were it not for NATO's
'humanitarian' devastation.
But there is yet another truth which deserves recognition and which
our media has conveniently sidelined. This is the truth of events in
Kosovo since the end of NATO's bombardment and its occupation of the
region. The latest report of the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) of 3rd November records that during the
past four months there have been 348 murders, 116 kidnappings, 1070
lootings, and 1106 arsons in Kosovo, all this in the context of a
campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Serb and Roma minorities in
Kosovo which NATO has failed to halt. On 15 October 1999, the Yugoslav
Red Cross and local authorities indicated that the total number of
internally displaced persons who had fled from Kosovo to both Serbia
and Montenegro stood at 230,884. As the report of the United Nations
Commissioner for Human Rights on Kosovo of 7th September observed:
'Killings, oppression, harrassment, expulsion, rape and other
violations continue to take place at an alarming rate, particularly
targeting the non-Albanian communities of Kosovo'a campaign to
vindicate the rights of the Kosovar Albanians [has been] followed by a
campaign of atrocities against the Serb, Roma and other minority
communities.'
The situation in Kosovo today contrasts starkly with the one
envisioned for it by Robin Cook in the House of Commons on 14th June.
Then he said: 'our commitment is to protect all people in Kosovo,
whatever their ethnic identity. Our objective is to create not a
single ethnic state but a multi-ethnic state under the democratic
rules and values that we understand.' Exactly the opposite has
happened. As Alex Renton of the Evening Standard reported on 12th
November following a return visit to the region: 'Multi-ethnic Kosovo
is a fantasy today. The Serbs, a presence in this land of long
memories since the very beginning, are finished here 'the Albanians
are the persecutors now.'
To those who believe that human rights can be safely left in the hands
of NATO's imperialists, Kosovo today is proof positive that it cannot.
Far from offering a Third Way, Blair offers nothing but the same old
lies and myths propagated by imperialist states for as long as they
have existed. As Marie-Louise Berneri once wrote: 'There is indeed a
third way. But it lies only in opposition to any kind of State, for,
where the State continues, the restriction of freedom at home and
imperialist ventures abroad are inevitable.'
FREEDOM PRESS
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THIS MONTH'S FOCUS: TOTAL LIBERTY
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Milutin
--
I am the Nina, The Pinta, The Santa, Maria
The noose and, the rapist
The fields overseer
The agents, of orange
The priests of Hiroshima
The cost of my desire
Sleep now in the fire
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