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All
over the world the U.S. and European governments fund groups with
"democracy" and "democratic" in their names.
They promise to introduce a new world, based on respect for law,
where all people are empowered, and so on.
Kosovo
is now controlled by NATO, and particularly by Washington. What
kind of democratic reforms have been introduced? What better place
to find out than in jail?
I
visited Kosovska Mitrovica (pronounced Mitrovitsa) in Northern
Kosovo in May and June, 2000. During the trip, I was allowed to
meet with Serb and Roma prisoners in the city jail as well as
with four prisoners in the jail wing of the City Hospital. This
privilege was granted by General William Nash, former commander
of the US First Armored Division, now the colonial governor of
Mitrovitsa.
I
was accompanied by a friend from California, where I live, as
well as two members of the Serbian Council of Mitrovitsa and a
woman from the Circle of Serbian Sisters. The inmates met us in
the inner courtyard. They all wore the clothing they had been
arrested in – slippers, running shoes, old, dirty pants and shirts.
They shouted with excitement, trying to get their cases across
to us. All were accused of the same thing: genocide. If this sounds
like an unusual criminal charge, read on.
They
complained about terrible food, dirty blankets, no bed linen,
no way to wash their clothing, no hot water. They were unshaved,
neglected, unbathed. When I asked the warden, an American, "Why
don't you have a laundry," he said, "Oh, that's an idea.
Hadn't thought of it..."
When
one learns that someone has been arrested, the automatic question
is, "What did they do?" Even if a person is innocent,
we assume there must be some circumstantial evidence, something
tying him or her to a crime that has in fact been committed. And
we expect the courts to proceed based on the principle that "a
man is presumed innocent until proven guilty." Even though
we know Western justice is far from blind, we do expect certain
rights: the right to counsel of one's choosing, protection against
arbitrary arrest, and so on.
Throw
all these notions out and you have the new justice in Mitrovitsa.
To start with, no crime has been committed. So of course there
is no real evidence; nevertheless there are witnesses. The accused
is presumed guilty, and a brief hearing serves to officially affirm
his guilt. He has no lawyer to speak of; that is, he is given
a lawyer, but he and the lawyer do not speak the same language.
Moreover the defense lawyer and the prosecutor work together;
they are interchangeable.
Western
law enshrines, at least as a concept, habeas corpus, the guaranty
against arbitrary arrest, but here everything is arbitrary. KFOR
(NATO in Kosovo) wanted to have 43 non-Albanians arrested and
held indefinitely. Therefore, 43 people were arrested. What people?
Serbs and Roma. But who? Who were they? Serbs and Roma.
Let
us say you are a Mitrovitsa Serb. We'll start from the beginning.
You
may be working or sleeping or playing with your children. KFOR
troops drive by. Perhaps they choose your house because your light
is on; bad luck. Your door is thrown open. Or, if your door is
locked it is broken down. More bad luck.
An
Albanian "witness" points to you and nods. Tough soldiers
grab you.
Your
wife yells, "Where is your warrant?" One of the soldiers
threaten her with a gun. You try to calm her. Your 7 year old
son comes out. ""Hold him!" you say to your wife,
but before the words have left your mouth the soldiers pull you
outside. No charge has been stated. No rights have been read.
You are grabbed, chained, crammed into a van. There is a bruise
where your elbow hit the door as they pushed you in.
You
are taken to the City Jail. After two hours, you are brought before
an Albanian judge. All proceedings are conducted in Albanian,
a language you do not speak. In the bad old days when Kosovo was
administered as a province of Serbia, court proceedings had to
be conducted in seven languages. In the new Kosovo there is no
interpreter.
Your
judge, like all the judges, is newly appointed. Like the rest,
he is a democrat of the New World Order type, either a member
or a supporter of the U.S.-run Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a
terrorist-secessionist group. The judge hates you just the way
a Ku Klux Klan member would hate a Black American. You are aware
that you are in his power, but you keep thinking: "What will
happen to my wife, to my son?"
The
Judge talks to a second man. This is the prosecutor, also from
the KLA. The Judge says something to a third Albanian who comes
and stands beside you. When you try to ask the Judge what is going
on, this third man yanks your arm, indicates silence. Respect
the Court! This, you realize, is your attorney. He is very friendly
with the prosecutor; the two converse in whispers, though you
couldn't understand if they bellowed. It dawns on you: this is
a highly streamlined system. The judge, the prosecutor and the
defense attorney are united. And as for you, well, you came into
this world alone and you'll leave alone. In between, you're alone
in Court.
There
is no jury.
You,
the perpetrator of – of what, you still don't know – are confronted
with two men and a woman who nod and point, seeming to identify
you. As what? What are you supposed to have done? You try to get
your lawyer to explain; you move your hands trying to communicate
through sign language. The judge bangs his gavel. A guard hits
you. Order in the Court.
The
witnesses are KLA; the same ones testify in case after case. When
NATO marched into Kosovo these people devoted all their time to
driving out 350,000 non-Albanians and anti-Fascist Albanians and
stealing their property. Now that job is pretty much done, and
they are lucky to have found new work as witnesses.
Your
"lawyer" neither cross examines the witnesses nor challenges
the rulings of the Judge. The Judge comes to a conclusion. You
are taken out, thrown in a cell.
Another
prisoner explains matter-of-factly: "You were found Guilty
of Genocide, paragraph 26. Two months in jail."
"How
do you know?"
He
explains: "It is always the same."
Variations
in Methods of Abuse
While
all prisoners were told they were guilty of 'Genocide; paragraph
26', there were certain variations in treatment. For example,
a 'Gypsy' man whom I interviewed in the jail wing of the City
Hospital told me he was arrested as follows: One day several ethnic
Albanians neighbors broke into his house and stabbed him in the
shoulder and neck. The wounds were not fatal; he treated them
himself. The next day, French gendarmes came and dragged him to
jail. By the way, this man was a Muslim. Many of the 'Gypsies'
in Kosovo are Muslims, or perhaps I should say 'were' since most
'Gypsies' were driven out of Kosovo during the Summer and Fall
of 1999, after the NATO takeover. The NATO-trained and NATO- armed
KLA apparatus launched an all-out
attack on these Roma people, sacking or burning their homes and
businesses, forcing them to flee the province or squat in
squalid refugee camps where they were and are harassed constantly.
(1) The Western media rarely mentions these attacks and when they
do the reports of terror are always mitigated with phrases such
as: "the
Gypsies whom Albanians accuse of collaborating with the Serbs."
(2) We
were told that 'the Serbs' were motivated by hatred of Muslims.
And yet many of the 'Gypsies' are Muslims...
Some
of the prisoners I interviewed said they had not even received
a phony trial. They were just seized, taken to jail, put in a
cell and, sometime later, informed they were guilty of 'Genocide:
paragraph 26. Two months sentence.' All the prisoners said their
sentences were extended every two months.
Brave
New Order
Perhaps
as you read this you are thinking, "This sounds terrible.
But everyone knows the KLA is crazy and hates Serbs. As soon as
responsible Western officials learn what is happening, they'll
stop this outrage."
Such
thoughts may offer comfort but, alas, Western officials do know
what's going on: they created this outrage.
KFOR
and UNMIK (the UN in Kosovo) pick the judges. They are sworn-in
in solemn ceremonies presided over by dignitaries like Bernard
Kouchner from UNMIK who make lofty speeches about democratic change,
multinational society and so on. Then the KLA judicial specialists
are turned lose to deal with Serbs and Roma.
Americans
are involved; they are everywhere. Western journalists observe
the proceedings and report that the new Kosovo judicial system
is experiencing democratic beginnings complete with the inevitable
growing pains, etc., etc.
The
reporters never honestly discuss the previous legal system in
Kosovo. In the old days, the Courts were required to have translators
in the seven main Yugoslav languages. Habeas corpus (guaranty
against arbitrary arrest) and other legal rights were strictly
adhered to. But all this has been destroyed – the old Judges,
clerks, policemen, were all driven from Kosovo or killed by the
KLA or they are in jail.
Two
Plus two
So
you rot in this awful jail two months. Then, shortly before your
sentence is complete, it is renewed for another two months and
then again: two months. The process continues indefinitely. You
are never freed. You never receive a fair trial. You live in fear:
What have they planned for you? Your two month extensions are
scribbled on a scrap of paper, as if someone were writing a shopping
list.
Prisoners
of a Lesser Humanity
I
spoke to the American who runs the Mitrovitsa Jail. I asked him,
"Do you practice US legal procedures in this jail?"
He did not. I asked, "What about their human rights?"
He replied calmly: "These are dangerous war criminals, guilty
of Genocide." His conscience was clear.
The
Hospital
Four
inmates were in the jail wing of the City Hospital when I visited
– a Roma man, a middle aged Serb, an old Serb hospitalized
for a heart attack and a boy suffering from exhaustion and malnutrition.
Four UNMIK policemen guarded them. These were men from Argentina,
India, and two other poor countries – four policemen for
these four poor souls. The policemen were very sympathetic to
the Serbs and the lone "Gypsy".
I
spoke with one of the Serb mass murderers, the boy. I will not
give any names lest the secessionists take revenge.
The
boy was 15, from Southern Mitrovica, retarded. He was a gentle
child, confused, miserable, weak from hunger and exhaustion. At
age 14 he had been dragged from his home by French gendarmes led
by an Albanian "witness". The gendarmes hauled him to
court and he was charged with torching 100 Albanian homes. Not
99 mind you, or 101 – exactly 100. "Genocide: Paragraph 26.
Guilty as charged. Two months."
I
saw this child in May, 2000. He had turned 15 in jail. He was
serving his fifth "two-month sentence". There was no
end in sight.
Beside
him lay the elderly heart attack victim. He was already paralyzed
from a stroke ten years earlier. He could hardly move let alone
walk and was blind in one eye. The charge against him was of course
"GENOCIDE, paragraph 26." Albanian secessionist witnesses
swore he had "operated in Kosovo as a Serb commando in an
Arkan unit, torching Albanian homes and killing Albanians."
How
did he performs these feats? He could not walk. Did he levitate?
The
old man's 25 year old son had been abducted by KLA thugs in July,
1998; there had been no word from him since then. Of course, the
son was tortured and he is long dead but the old man, physically
broken and deprived of his freedom, held onto the belief that
his son was alive. I did not contradict him. How could I?
What
is behind these arrests, this torture of innocents? I think two
things. First, the very irrationality of the arrests, the absurdity
of the charges and the cruelty of the terms of imprisonment serve
a function. They warn Serbs or "Gypsies" who might contemplate
resistance: no one is safe from the Occupier. A cripple may be
a dangerous Commando; a retarded child may be a mass murderer.
Imagine what crimes might be uncovered, committed by an able-bodied
man or woman who opposed NATO and the UNMIK.
Second,
and very important, these people, thrown into a nightmare with
no way out, may reach a point where some can be used against bigger
game, as witnesses in future war crimes trials, whether in the
Hague War Crimes Tribunal or in Belgrade, in show trial of leaders
of the previous Yugoslav government or officers in the Yugoslav
Army.
So
this is a holding pond; they can be scooped up later, and used.
Parting
thought: the present regime in Belgrade recently passed a measure
releasing all KLA murderers held in Serbian jails. In committing
this outrage, the regime did not even demand as a precondition
the release of the innocent Serb and Roma hostages held in the
KLA-NATO jails in Kosovo. This as much as anything demonstrates
that these authorities are simply proxies for NATO. In that sense,
they are the Serbian equivalent of the KLA.
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