Recent Romnews postings
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Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1999 15:24:39 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: Recent Romnews postings
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Recent Romnews postings
Prague / CZECH REP. (RNN Agency) August the 3rd, 1999
Three skinheads were condemned to six and a half up to eight and a
half years in prison for the murder of an 17 years old Rom. According
to the tribunal, they pursued four Roma up into a river and, armed
with baseball bats, closed them the way out.
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Prizen / KOSOVO SERBIA (RNN Correspondent) August the 4th, 1999
German KFOR soldiers in Kosovo found a possible cellar in which the
Albanian UCK forces have been torturing people. General Fritz von
Korfi, the commanding officer of the German forces, confirmed that
three Roma who claimed to have been tortured led the German troop to
the cellar in which 130 UCK fighters were quartered. The German also
found torture instruments.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Kosovo's former rebels are denying any
role in attacks against Serbs and Gypsies and have asked NATO-led
peacekeepers for help in putting a stop to atrocities against
non-Albanian ethnic groups.
Lirak Celaj, a spokesman for the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation
Army, said that rebel forces had nothing to do with recent atrocities
committed against minorities in Kosovo, including the massacre of 14
Serb farmers.
Celaj was responding to a report released Tuesday by New York-based
Human Rights Watch, which charged that Serbs and Gypsies are being
harassed, beaten and murdered in what looks like a systematic effort
to force them out of Kosovo.
"It is not true that KLA is doing it," Celaj said Tuesday. "That is
why we are asking for more close cooperation with KFOR," referring to
the NATO-led peacekeepers by their official name. "We would like to
find out who are those people who are shaming the KLA."
Celaj noted that KLA uniforms are easily obtained at shops across the
border in Albania.
Nonetheless, the allegations raised by Human Rights Watch are echoed
in excerpts of testimony from Gypsies, or Roma, made available to The
Associated Press by the European Roma Rights Center.
One person quoted by the Roma center, headquartered in Budapest,
Hungary, told of being taken into a room in the village of Drenovce,
near the Albanian border, to see a fellow Gypsy who had been severely
beaten.
"He lifted up his shirt and showed me his ribs," said the man,
identified only by his initials. "His chest was all black."
Others related similar tales of beatings, threats and intimidation by
people in KLA uniforms who accused them of spying or helping Serbs
persecute ethnic Albanians.
Although Human Rights Watch stopped short of accusing the KLA of
specific atrocities, the organization said the "frequency and severity
of such abuses make it incumbent upon the KLA leadership to take swift
and decisive action to prevent them."
The reports have troubling implications for Western leaders, who
justified their 11-week NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia by
asserting that the goal was a peaceful, multiethnic Kosovo.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright are among those pleading
with ethnic Albanians to end the violence.
Human Rights Watch cited the gunning down of 14 Serb farmers in a
wheat field July 23 as an example of Serbs being targeted for no other
apparent reason than their decision to stay in Kosovo.
"The intent behind many of the killings and abductions that have
occurred in the province since early June appears to be the expulsion
of Kosovo's Serb and Roma population rather than a desire for revenge
alone," the report said.
It also said concerns by the KFOR peacekeeping force for the safety of
its troops, their inexperience in police functions and personnel
shortages "result in an uneven response to attacks and threats against
minorities."
The report said more than 164,000 Serbs and many Gypsies, often
accused by Albanians of siding with Serbian forces, have fled the
province since the Serb-led Yugoslav army left and NATO moved in last
month.
NATO acknowledged difficulties, but defended its work.
"We have filled the security void. The entire society is getting a
jump start," said KFOR spokesman Roland Lavoie, noting that more than
700,000 refugees had returned under NATO protection.
Underscoring the problem were reports of more killings, including
Monday's death of a 90-year-old woman in Pristina. Yugoslavia's
state-run Tanjug news agency said she was found strangled to death in
the bathtub of her apartment.
KFOR said two ethnic Albanians were detained in the case.
-----------------------------------
Berlin / GERMANY (RNN Agency) August the 6th, 1999
In the entrance of the small Humbolt gallery, one find the visitor's
book. Even before one sees the exhibition, three commentaries in this
book give a hint of what to expect: "That's a man who could not
overwhelm his fear of Roma". Another wrote "These pictures are more
meant to arouse pity than they are artful" while a third wrote
"Artists always find closeness to outcasts - as they are outcasts
themselves".
The Artist and gallery's aim to present the poverty and discrimination
of the Roma is to be praised, but why did they have to sugar these
documents with an artistic shroud? The pictures are not quite artistic
but rather more traditional portraits with a strong dominance of
children's faces, such as we have already seen for example in
reportage about the Romanian "orphans". Sometimes sad, sometimes
funny, they provide a strong motive and are therefore often used for
fund raising.
The American photographer Christian de Lutz has been living for a few
years in Prague from where he travelled in East and Southern Europe
where he took pictures of Roma. His pictures are touching, but they do
not give any hint of the historical and social back-ground. They
reduce the Roma society to a few pittoresque pictures of poverty.
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