My personal view on Kosovo
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Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 22:25:18 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: My personal view on Kosovo
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Dimitrina Petrova <[email protected]>
My personal view on Kosovo
Dear friends,
I can no longer resist an impulse to write to you today and share my
personal view on the Kosovo war and the role of European human rights
defenders in the course of events. I do not speak on behalf of the
organization I direct, the European Roma Rights Center. This letter is
personal.
I am sure that, like myself, many of you are having difficult time
deciding what position should human rights defenders take, and whether
they should take any position at all, apart from launching periodic
appeals to the different parties to the war to not violate fundamental
human rights.
I believe that when an abusive government engages in gross and
systematic human rights violations, the international community must
intervene, if necessary, by military force. Therefore, I trusted that
the NATO decision to bomb Yugoslavia, once the peace talks came to a
dead end, was justified. I believed that military action would be an
enforcement of that basic principle which most of us share, i.e. that
human rights are of international concern. If we don't act to defend
the victims, we accommodate with the slaughterers. It would not be
moral, and it has not been moral in the past, to sit back and watch
when thousands of people are killed, tortured, evicted from their
homes, and abused in a number of ways.
But at this stage, I strongly oppose further military action of
whatever kind. It seems to me that the continuation of the NATO air
campaign - and even more so a follow-up by introduction of ground
troops in Kosovo - is likely to cause bigger loss of life and more
severe violations of human rights than if an immediate cease fire is
opted for today.
Of course, it should be feared that if NATO stops its offensive now,
the status quo imposed by Milosevic - the status quo of an ethnically
cleansed Kosovo - will prevail. But, if the armed conflict rages on
and on - and even if in the end NATO achieves the goal of completely
reversing the ethnic cleansing - what will be the price for such a
victory? I believe that it will be the unjustifiably high price of
hundreds and probably thousands of further deaths and devastated lives
- events definitely less reversible than the current status quo.
At this stage, the continuation of the air strikes and even more so
the possible quagmire of a ground warfare, will likely bring about
more violations of human rights (particularly of the Kosovo Albanians
themselves) than it can possibly prevent or punish. Only in the case
of a miraculously fast and enormously efficient blitz offensive this
may be untrue, but the prospect of winning a blitz war against
Milosevic is now slim. Even partial achievement of NATO's goals will
take weeks and months. And time will work against the civilian
population of Kosovo, as well as against the innocent civilians of
Serbia. Retaliation against remaining Kosovars will intensify if
strikes continue, and will become truly apocalyptic if ground troops
invade Yugoslavia. How will NATO prevent the mass executions that may
follow? The Serb population will also be heavily taxed - as if living
under Milosevic has not been enough. Whole communities, including the
Roma everywhere in Yugoslavia, will be decimated by the realities of
war. Therefore, continuation of military action cannot be justified by
human rights concerns.
And this is where I have lost my peace of mind. My human rights
equation wouldn't solve. I calculate in terms of lives first, and in
lives lived in dignity, second. Listening to NATO and the mainstream
media supportive of its actions, I realize that they are trapped into
calculating according to a different scale of success and failure.
NATO experts - very predictably - build their strategy according to
the quite different rationality of military victory. As the days
passed, and as the pictures of refugees pouring out of Kosovo became
more and more haunting, while the bombs were falling on Yugoslavia, I
began to witness how, with a tragic inevitability, the game changed.
>From a campaign to defend the lives and rights of Kosovo Albanians,
which I, like many others from the human rights community, understood
and supported, it metamorphosed into something other: the monster of a
prolonged and escalated war.
There have been moments in human history, when projects based on a
good principle, once put into practice, have taken a course according
to a logic of their own, not envisioned by the proponents of the good
principle. The process of realization can start to fire back and
ultimately defeat the good principle. This is an essential aspect of
our human existence: our fallibility. It takes genuine courage,
openness and humility to acknowledge the failure of a principle one
believes in, and to surrender to reality. Because human life is part
of reality before it is grasped in any kind of principle, even the
most humane.
The human rights community in the region is confused. We read and
circulate dozens of messages on Kosovo every day, but have been trying
not to abandon our traditional political neutrality. Since March 24,
we have limited our statements only to reporting on human rights
violations. We are taking no clear stand on what the western alliance
should do next. We have left this question to the military and
political decision-makers. But we must not overlook that our silence
on the issue of what should be done is interpreted as continued
support for NATO military strikes.
Dear friends from Eastern Europe, we should want to be opinion makers
on the destiny of our part of the world, should we not? Our region is
probably heading toward a war. I think we should speak out as soon as
we have a viewpoint, even if we are not asked. (And, judging by who
dominates the discussions on the mainstream western media: we are not
asked.) In addition to our political neutrality, at least three
further factors overwhelm our judgement. First, the democratic forces
of our societies have opted for NATO membership and we are afraid not
to risk our chances of being admitted in the alliance, if strong
voices from within our countries criticize NATO. Second, our very
status and jobs as human rights defenders have been made sustainable
by the generous support of western donors, and we see no future for
our movement and even for civil society itself without continued
support from them. Third, we are already caught in the politics of
Cold War: we fear that whatever we say immediately places us in one of
two camps: we are either for or against NATO, and if we are against
some action of NATO now, we side with Russia and China, and therefore
we are enemies to democracy, etc. The western political scholars and
analysts can still afford a more nuanced view. While here, whatever we
say, will be interpreted as taking sides and used manipulatively.
Sophistication first, a little later freedom of judgement, and finally
simple, everyday common sense, are all too often casualties of war.
Having taken into account all of the above, I nevertheless emerge from
these crucifying dilemmas with a conviction that we should speak out
as soon as possible, before it is too late. It is up to us to make
human rights matter. We need a human rights discussion and a human
rights argumentation, arriving at recommendations based on human
rights concerns. I hope that many of us will prefer to voice their
concerns too.
Several years ago I bought in the United States a wall plate saying,
"War doesn't decide who is right but only who is left". I kept in on
my wall during the Bosnian war. Now I will do three things. First, I
will search among my possessions to find that plate, and will put it
above my desk again. Second, I will act accordingly: will send a
letter and encourage others to send letters to the parties to the
Kosovo conflict, appealing to them to stop immediately any military
action and return to the negotiating table. Third, I will keep my mind
open to your thoughts and reactions in these tragic days.
Warmest regards,
Dimitrina Petrova
Human rights activist
Budapest, 12 April 1999
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