[PEN-L:6813] Re: Gregor Gysi letter to Slobodan Milosevic

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

     I think that this is a very interesting letter.
Unfortunately we all must face another hard fact.
Part of the fact that Milosevic has won (nor more
"petulance," Louis, now I'll just call him a schmuck
and a mass murdererer (would the 200,000+ of the
Croatian-Bosnian war be alive if he had died of a
heart attack in 1986?)), is that the refugees will not
be returning to Kosovo-Metohija, certainly not in
significant numbers, except as armed UCK/KLA
guerrillas.  The experience of Israel and the Palestinians,
and the Croatian-Bosnian war shows that, especially
the latter.  The Dayton Accords specified return of
refugees, but it has not happened.  It will not happen
in Kosovo-Metohija.  Ugly, but true.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxx>
To: Recipient list suppressed <Recipient list suppressed>
Date: Friday, May 14, 1999 1:20 AM
>Subject: [PEN-L:6800] Gregor Gysi letter to Slobodan Milosevic


>=-----------------
>A Letter from Gregor Gysi* to Slobodan Milosevic
>
>Translation: Eric Canepa (Source:  the PDS's weekly press report,
>Pressedienst, No. 18, 1999 (May 7), in internet at: www.pds-
>online.de/1/pressedienst/9918/)
>
>*Gregor Gysi is the chair of the delegation of the Party of Democratic
>Socialism (PDS) in the German Bundestag.
>
>
>Dear Mr. President,
>
>Mindful of our conversation of April 14, 1999 I am writing you this
>letter.
>
>Once again I stress my unequivocal rejection of NATO's illegal and
>completely unequal war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and
>express my great dismay at the dead and wounded, especially within the
>civilian population, and at the ever more cynical destruction of what
>increasingly turn out to be civilian installations in Yugoslavia, as
>well as my condemnation of any kind of violation of human rights in
>Kosovo.
>
>I fear that the war will set back European integration and the relation
>of a number of European states to the Russian Federation for many years
>to come.  This can only be in the interests of the U.S., as a way of
>hindering a political and economic competitor in Europe.
>
>Once again I ask you to give your consent to a UN peace force according
>to the UN charter--without participation of the aggressor NATO nations.
>
>If, in direct negotiations between the political leaderships of
>Yugoslavia and Kosovo, an accord should be reached with the
>participation of the United Nations, the return of hundreds of thousands
>of refugees must follow in a peaceful and secure manner.
>
>However, these refugees--and I will come back to this below--
>understandably have no trust in the Yugoslav army and police.  On the
>other hand, I understand that those who are now bombing Yugoslavia
>cannot secure peace. There are, however, other countries which would be
>more suited to securing that peace.
>
>The deployment of a UN peace force after the retreat of your troops from
>Kosovo would not mean occupation; it would have a time-limit set, and
>due to UN sovereignty would be a completely different approach to a
>solution than that of NATO.
>
>At the beginning of our conversation you rejected this suggestion;  at
>the end, however, you assured me that you would think it over. I regard
>the results of your conversation with the Russian president's envoy,
>Victor Chernomyrdin, and the statements of your Vice-Prime Minister, Vuk
>Draskovic, as showing that this reconsideration is continuing.  I appeal
>to you once again to open up this path.
>
>NATO would thus be forced to decide what is more important to it, the
>desire to be the sole factor in the Euro-Atlantic order, or the desire
>for peace.  Such a peace would be difficult enough to put into practice,
>but it would have a real chance [of inhibiting] the current hegemonic
>strivings, especially those of the U.S.
>
>In our conversation, as in others I had in Belgrade, we went on to speak
>of the fate of Kosovo-Albanians.  You claimed that before NATO's bombing
>of Kosovo there were--and this is incontrovertible--much fewer refugees
>from Kosovo.  As causes for their flight in the period before the
>bombing, you pointed to KLA attacks and the civilian populations's fear
>of falling victim to the battles between your army and police and the
>KLA.  The dramatic rise in the number of refugees since the end of March
>1999 is, in your opinion, solely attributable to the NATO bombing.  To
>my counter-arguments you replied that news reporting in Germany is
>one-sided, that the refugees are coached by clan chiefs, and moreover
>that the refugees only have a chance of being received in a Western
>country if they criticize the Yugoslav army and police.
>
>I told you that I wanted to travel to Albania and speak with refugees,
>and you thought that there I would see your account confirmed.  But this
>in no way turned out to be the case.
>
>At first I followed the advice of a top official in your Foreign
>Ministry, and I looked at the Germany Foreign Ministry's status reports
>and the decisions of German high courts on deportation of
>Kosovo-Albanians during this year.  I have to confirm that in these
>status reports and in the decisions of the high courts reaching through
>March 1999, expulsions and "ethnic cleansing" aimed at Kosovo-Albanians
>is expressly refuted.
>
>In these reports and decisions, the battle between your army and police
>and the KLA was confirmed as the motivation for flight;  that
>Kosovo-Albanians were persecuted due to their belonging to "an Albanian
>ethnicity" was expressly negated.  On this basis and with reference to
>the relevant status reports of the Foreign Ministry, deportations to
>Yugoslavia, especially to Kosovo, were approved by the German High
>Courts.   It is correct to say that the German administration's current
>claims that expulsions and "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo have been
>occurring for a long time, especially since December 1998/January 1999,
>and during the Rambouillet negotiations, is sharply contradicted by
>these reports and decisions.
>
>During my trip to Albania, I visited the Spitalle refugee camp and spoke
>with several refugees from Kosovo.  I myself determined the conditions,
>that is, I made the choice myself and did it randomly.  I was alone with
>their families; I took along my own interpreter;  media people were not
>present, and everything remained anonymous.  I neither asked for names
>nor for personal information.  Thus there could have been no
>understandable reason for one of these refugees not to tell me the
>truth.  I also have no reason to doubt the truth of their statements,
>especially because those concerned clearly differentiated between their
>own experience and information they heard, and after they felt more
>confident, they also spared no criticism of the KLA.
>
>They thus told of attacks and of accusations of collaboration leveled by
>the KLA whenever a Kosovo-Albanian cooperated with any Yugoslav
>authority, of the hiding of young men from rigorous recruiting, etc.  In
>no way did they deny their fear of being hit by NATO bombs.  However,
>this for them was not the reason for leaving Kosovo, no more than it is
>the bombing that makes most Serbs and other Yugoslavs leave Yugoslavia.
>
>In all their stories, the reason given me was the expulsion on the part
>of the Yugoslav army and police, which, as is known, was instituted on a
>massive scale after the NATO bombings began.  Expulsions seriously
>violate human rights.  As an example, I will report only two stories I
>was told:
>
>An exile who had to flee a city began his story with a criticism of
>Germany.  He had lived there in the state of Schleswig-Holstein from
>1995 to 1998.  In 1998 his asylum petition was finally rejected, and he
>was deported to Kosovo.  Immediately after his arrival the heavy
>fighting between the KLA and your army and police began.  Yet he
>remained.  After the beginning of the NATO bombing he was sought out by
>the Yugoslav police.  They accused him of collaboration with the KLA and
>with OSCE observers.  He denied both accusations.  The accusation of
>cooperation with OSCE observers I find specially objectionable, since
>the latter were in Kosovo with your consent.  He and his family were
>unambiguously ordered immediately to leave the country, because
>otherwise, as they were told, they would be shot.  Thus began their sad
>journey as exiles.  He also reported to me that intellectuals,
>especially medical doctors in his city, were supposed to have been shot,
>but in this case he only heard about this; he himself had not witnessed
>it.
>
>Another exile came from a village.  In this village only Kosovo-
>Albanians were living.  Serbs lived in both neighboring villages.  There
>was peaceful co-existence.
>
>According to his account, after the bombing began, Yugoslav soldiers and
>police personnel came and herded the villagers together.  They were
>given one hour to leave the village and Kosovo for good.  No accusations
>of any kind were uttered.  The Serb inhabitants of the neighboring
>villages had no part in the action.  The refugee told me that the
>inhabitants of his village returned to their houses and simply stayed
>there.  And then each night for a whole week the houses, especially the
>roofs, were shelled.  Nobody ventured out of their house.  After a week
>they were forcibly driven out of their houses and herded together.  This
>time the soldiers' and policemen's faces were painted so as to be
>unrecognizable.  When the villagers were told they would be shot if they
>did not leave the village, they left.  On the road they were sent back
>as they were told that they could take along their tractors, cars, etc.,
>but could never return.  They then got their vehicles and other things.
>Then too their sad journey as exiles began.
>
>These examples should suffice.
>
>>From this I get the following inescapable impression: until the beginning
>of NATO's war against Yugoslavia there were refugees from the armed clashes
>between your army and police on the one side, and the KLA on the other,
>which affected the civilian population.  There were excesses and
>provocations against the civilian population from both sides.  One should
>also remember the accusation--by no means effectively countered--of the
>massacre in Racak, about which I had at the time written you a strong
>letter of protest.  But at that point there was, as is known, still no
>"ethnic cleansing" or systematic expulsions in Kosovo.  This is shown not
>only by the significantly lower numbers of refugees, but also by the status
>reports of the German Federal Republic's Foreign Ministry and the decisions
>of German high courts.
>
>The battle against the KLA is certainly constitutional and legal from
>the point of view of international law.  But such armed troops [i.e. the
>KLA, ed.] do not arise if a population has not for many years been
>significantly disadvantaged, a state of affairs which began with the
>removal of Kosovo's autonomy in 1989.  This is true, despite the
>significant external support for the KLA.
>
>However, here it is decisive that the end of the Rambouillet
>negotiations and the beginning of the bombing on the part of NATO were
>clearly used massively and systematically to expel Kosovo-Albanians.
>This is also shown by the trains that are sent, filled with
>Kosovo-Albanians, to Macedonia.  These massive expulsions significantly
>violate the human rights of the people concerned.  And the account you
>gave me is clearly false.  Precisely the sudden transformation in the
>behavior of the Yugoslav army and police after the beginning of the
>bombing rules out the possibility that what is involved are only
>isolated excesses.  Here direction had to come from the center.
>Indications of massacres are also becoming more frequent.  In my view,
>these occurrences make the NATO bombardments even more insane and
>pernicious.  However, the bombing in no way justifies the actions of the
>Yugoslav army and police against the Kosovo-Albanians.
>
>As President you have a duty to care for and protect all Yugoslav
>citizens, including the Kosovo-Albanian population.
>
>I can only appeal to you to prevent without delay any expulsion or worse
>in Kosovo.  At the same time you must give credible signs of the
>possibility of a peaceful and secure return of refugees and exiles.  I
>call your attention to the beginning of this letter.  To the degree that
>you cooperate with these requests, the rejection of the illegal war of
>the U.S. and NATO against Yugoslavia will grow in Europe.
>
>I would be grateful for your answer.
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Dr. Gregor Gysi
>
>
>____________________________
>
>Eric Canepa
>56 East 87 Street (Apt 6A)
>New York, NY 10128-1039
>tel (212) 289-2001
>mobile (917) 687-3859
>fax (212) 722-6506
><ecanepa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>