This news baffles me, I must say – UNHCR reports that Serbia is among top ten countries in the world by the number of asylum seekers. Where are all these people seeking asylum? I honestly believe that conditions of life are much worse in, say, Iran or Mexico, or any African country for that matter, not to mention the fact that Serbia is much smaller than all these countries at top ten list. Statistically this would mean that everybody in Serbia must know some asylum seeker, and I don’t even know anyone that knows any asylum seekers, which is strange because I do know a lot of people in Serbia – it’s a small country, as I already mentioned.So where’s the catch? Is it Kosovo Albanians still officially being registered as asylum seekers from Serbia that puts us in the top ten, or is it the dreadful visa regime skyrocketing us among the countries much bigger and in many ways poorer than we are?
If you think you know the explanation, please share it with other readers and myself in the comments.
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That’s a good find Viktor – and a very suprising one at that. It doesn’t make sense to me either that Serbia would be in the top ten asylum seeking countries. Serbia just doesn’t fit in amongst countries such as Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan!
I don’t have any idea why this is would be. Nobody I know knows anybody who’s applied for asylum – Serbia isn’t that bad! I would be very interested to know the answer to this, hopefully, someone out there has the answer.
This confused me too. At first I thought that Serbia was in the top 10 of countries receiving asylum seekers – that they had suddenly recognised all the Serbs ethnically cleansed from Kosovo and Croatia as refugees/asylum seekers.
My suspicion is that Kosovo Albanians are counted as Serbs by the UNHCR, and this problem is compounded by the well known scam of Albanians from Albania proper pretending to be from Kosovo to get asylum.
I heard but have not been able to verify that The UK immigration services actually has a team of Kosovo Albanians who work with them to assess the veracity of claims of those claiming to be from Kosovo to weed out the frauds.
This is odd indeed! Even if they counted Kosovo-Albanians…I don’t see a reason why they now would want asylum….or these are Kosovo-Serbs as e sudden reaction after illegal proclamation of indipendence of Kosovo….
On the other side I don’t believe this statistic…it was probably made to show how desperated situation in Serbia is…just to havoc Serbian image.
Personally I don’t know anybody in Serbia that seeked for asylum, sure, almost everybody would like to trave outside Serbia, but nobody is so stupid to think that asylum is the way to travel!
Reading http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/STATISTICS/48f742792.pdf, I see that mention of Serbia is always qualified with ‘may include citizens of Montenegro’.
I am pretty sure that numbers for Serbia include all who apply for asylum with FR Yugoslavia passport. Lot of Kosovo Albanians used to use them, and it would even benefit them in their asylum claims to declare themselves as Albanians fleeing from Serbia proper…
Adam, Serbian media has been writing a lot about this, so it was easy to spot it really.
Jonathan, Sajkaca and Srdjan: I too think that it has to do with either Kosovo Albanians, or some other ethnicities still holding Serbian passports combined with Serbs, but it still puzzles me – Russia and China are hundred times bigger even if you put all Balkan nations together, still we are close behind? I don’t believe in UNHCR conspiracy against Serbia, so I am leaning towards a mistake in their calculations. It’s either that or we really are impatient in waiting for things to turn better, when in fact, generally speaking, things are much better than in other top ten countries on the list, be it Kosovo, Montenegro or Serbia proper.
France and Germany are the main destinations, also Austria, Belgium. Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, with not too many heading for the UK. The UK is pretty rigorous (/often plain nasty) in the way it deals with asylum seekers, I don’t know what sort of regime the other countries operate but given the problem of obtaining visas isn’t it plausible that some of those Serbian asylum seekers might have been trying an alternative route to employment? If any of the Kosovar bashers could be bothered to look at the figures there doesn’t seem to be much change from the first quarter of 2008 to the second quarter. And those references to their Serbian passports – don’t I seem to remember that something rather drastic happened to Kosovars’ identity documents as they crossed the border in 1999? Perhaps someone could remind me …?
I believe that Kosovo Albanians are filed abroad under ‘Serbia’ regardless of them having Kosovo passport, Serbian passport, or no passport at all for that matter. It’s just a question of slow bureaucracy I guess, no political implications there. Hell, I still have Yugoslavian passport!
Still I would like someone to correct me on this, there is a great chance that things have changed since the declaration of independence.
Viktor, well I don’t know where my mind was on that day but I missed the news – so thank you for bringing the report to my attention
Owen, we’re not necessarily ‘bashing’ Kosovo Albanians, but it does seem more likely that they would be playing a part in this data. I haven’t heard any news reports of Serbian asylum seekers in the UK, but I have read numerous cases of Kosovo Albanian asylum seekers over the years. Personally, I don’t see any legitimate reason for why a Serb would need to claim asylum in another country – emmigration for study or economic reasons, yes, but asylum, no.
Perhaps, I just missed the news again.
Adam, the UK has a very sorry history in recent years of often regarding asylum-seekers as simply economic migrants but in practice some individuals claiming asylum actually were economic migrants rather than individuals suffering persecution.
If you want to go and work in a country that you can’t get a visa for, you may choose or may be encouraged to take the asylum route. It happens. I don’t see that as any justification for scapegoating asylum-seekers generally and nor do I think that harsh visa regimes are a good thing (though I’m not clear either why Serbians should have any special right to consideration over other non-EU visitors), but that’s not the issue. My point is that economic migrants do sometimes exploit the asylum system.
So when the number of Serbians applying for asylum in the UK with its very tough asylum regime is an order of magnitude less than the number applying for asylum in other major European economies that’s perhaps the starting point at least for a bit of analysis. I’m not clear why it’s so extraordinary to suggest this. You acknowledge that Serbians might want to emigrate for economic reasons but you seem reluctant to contemplate the possibility that they might apply for asylum other than legitimately, unlike those sneaky Kosovars.
And of course even now although the Kosovars have all flown the coop there are still people who may not feel entirely comfortable in Wonderland. Fortunately some of them are determined not to succumb to having swastikas painted on their doors and having their lives threatened. I guess the ones who can’t take it aren’t proper Serbians so they don’t count.
Here’s a British article from last year on immigration fraud by Albanians who claimed to be from Kosovo but were from Albania:
Crackdown on Albanians who lied about fleeing Kosovo war
Hundreds of successful asylum seekers could have their British citizenship revoked after investigators uncovered a massive immigration fraud.
The Home Office is targeting Albanians who claimed to be victims of the war in Kosovo.
According to the Daily Mail’s sister paper, the Evening Standard, more than 80,000 refugees settled in Britain when Nato expelled Serbian forces from the province amid accusations of “ethnic cleansing” in 1999.
Now the Home Office has evidence that many were not refugees fleeing the war but economic migrants from neighbouring Albania who adopted fake Kosovar identities to claim asylum.
The clampdown, launched last month, is being aimed at those whose identities have been checked and proved false – genuine refugees from the Kosovo conflict are not affected.
The precise number of those involved is not known, but dozens of letters are thought to have been sent out so far, with more to come as information is gathered.
…
The clampdown began when British embassy officials in the Albanian capital, Tirana, examined applications from so-called Kosovars who had been given leave to remain in Britain and wanted to bring their families over as well.
Embassy staff noted that the families all seemed to be from Albania, not Kosovo, and further checks revealed that a massive fraud had been operating for years.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23400727-details/Crackdown+on+Albanians+who+lied+about+fleeing+Kosovo+war/article.do
Owen, it just seems more plausible for Kosovo Albanians to try and seek asylum in other countries due to the very dire economic situation in Kosovo and the recent violent history – to be honest, they have a much better story to tell when claiming asylum, unlike Serbs from Serbia proper. If you don’t have a plausible story to claim (and what on earth could you be claiming asylum from in Serbia?), I don’t see how they would even think it’s worth trying.
Croats seem to have more consideration than Serbs when it comes to visas for the UK at least. They don’t need one. It’s not just Serbs who should be freed from this terrible visa situation – all Europeans should have the right to travel easily and cheaply around their own continent.
Ida, it’s an interesting story, but I wouldn’t trust the Daily Star or its sister papers – not exactly the crown of British news reporting.
“Ida, it’s an interesting story, but I wouldn’t trust the Daily Star or its sister papers – not exactly the crown of British news reporting.”
Okay, then give a list of British news sources which you don’t automatically dismiss.
Here is another report of illegals allegedly from Kosovo, but within the piece it says they were sending their money to their native Albania – so it appears they were not originally from Kosovo, but Albania.
http://www.bnp.org.uk/2008/08/kosovo-illegals-swindled-120k-from-british-taxpayers/
Kosovo Illegals Swindled £120K from British Taxpayers
…Since being refused asylum in 2001, Albanians Vojsava Stena, aged 27, and her husband Altin Fusha, aged 32, moved thousands of pounds to foreign bank accounts to buy property and also snapped up a luxury BMW car while paying almost nothing in tax.
…Stena and Fusha first arrived in Britain from Kosovo in the late 1990s and set up home in Northampton, but even though they were not allowed to work or claim benefits the couple continued to dupe the authorities.
They were even the centrepiece of a Chronicle & Echo feature story on asylum seekers in February 2003 in which they expressed their desire to stay in the UK for a long time and raise children here.
But in reality Stena and Fusha were earning thousands in wages and benefits without paying tax, which they transferred in large amounts to bank accounts in their native Albania…
Ida, get real. There are a lot of taxpayers in a lot of countries paying for the fallout from Greater Serbia – it’s the fortunate among us who are only paying through our pockets.
“Ida, get real. There are a lot of taxpayers in a lot of countries paying for the fallout from Greater Serbia – it’s the fortunate among us who are only paying through our pockets.”
You mean from the same countries which were arming, supplying and secretly arming separatists BEFORE the war started?
You mean countries like Germany which profited from destroying a major competitor – Yugoslavia – in the defense and construction industries. Yugoslavia built infrastructure in countries like Pakistan, Kuwait, and in Africa – it as well built the underground bunkers in Iraq which couldn’t be damaged by U.S. and British bunker buster bombs.
A competitor was knocked out and its market, industry, property, exploitation of workers were opened up to several European countries which have taken advantage.
Also, the militaries of these countries get to conduct target practice and destruction of property where Serbian refugees have been cleansed, such as Glamoc in Bosnia.
Glamoc was a Serbian populated town – 80% – which is now used as a firing range by NATO. Much of the land is contaminated by their missiles.
In addition the NATO expansion agenda, U.S. bases and practice coordinating an attack with NATO countries was what many wanted.
Seems you are ignore the Greater Croatia and Greater Albania which has been accomplished – both of which have ethnically cleansed the Serbian population, along with the Muslim-Croat “Federation”.
The most multi-ethnic country of ex-Yu is Serbia where all ethnicities have freedom of movement and their homes and places of worship are intact.
Ida, we’ve got enough obsessed racist bigots to cope with in the EU already. A visa regime that preserves us from the half of Serbians who back parties with views like yours can’t be all bad.
Hmm… I don’t think that the visa regime will prevent people with such views coming in the EU. In fact, I believe it’s quite the opposite.
Plus, I don’t really think people with views such as Ida’s are of any danger to EU citizens. I don’t agree with one words she writes here, but I fail to understand how and why visa regime could and should preserve you from her?
“Ida, we’ve got enough obsessed racist bigots to cope with in the EU already. A visa regime that preserves us from the half of Serbians who back parties with views like yours can’t be all bad.”
I’m not ethnic Serb and I don’t live in Serbia. But I can see just what the international community did to Serbia and I saw through the set up, saw the lies, exaggerations, the abuse of Serbs, the permanent ethnic cleansing of Serbs aided by the U.S. and other countries and so on.
You are truly brainwashed and consume all the propaganda so readily.
I am 100% non Serb yet have thorough conviction of wrongs and hate done to Serbia by an agenda by my country.
Actually I see even moreso abuse than the Serbs, I feel certain that U.S. agents were involved in the training and equipping of the torture camps for Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.
You ever read the confessions of the Croat Miro Bajramovic? He confessed on his own and was not hunted, jailed or harassed – a full-hearted confessions of his murder of scores of mainly Serb civilians. And he was just one member of a death squad and unit of Tomislav Mercep?
YOU EVER READ ABOUT TOMISLAV MERCEP OWEN? I dare you to, you stupefied sucker for anti-Serb propaganda.
Ida, I apologise to Serbs for any generalised inferences based on your comments.
Owen,
I agree with Viktor, there’s no need to protect EU citizens from people with views such as Ida, whether they are Serbian or not. I may live in Serbia and be very pro-Serb, but I’m not ignorant to think Serbia was an angel during those dark years, but I also don’t think Serbia, and more importantly, the Serbian people, were the only ‘bad guys’.
Owen, Serbs are normal European citizens – no different from Hungarians, Austrians, Brits or Germans – they don’t all agree with the past, many do hold such beliefs but that’s a product of the dark and dangerous times they lived through personally. It’s gonna leave some ‘bad apples’. Please don’t generalise.I could generalise that all Brits support the invasion and subsequent disastor that happened in Iraq – but it’s not true, some protested and their voices were not listended to. Some Serbs protested and got a right beating for their efforts.
Ida is indeed correct. I used to know someone who worked as an ad hoc interpreter for the immigration service in the UK and could easily spot who and who wasn’t really from ‘Kosovo’, many of them having the flimsiest of cover stories, i.e. not knowing the geography around the villages they claimed to come from etc. etc.. One of the reasons why economic migrants from Albania, which many are, are told to ask for only albanian interpreters as they can be ‘squeezed’. It’s big business.
As for possible reasons why Serbia is so interesting for asylum seekers, is it not just because it is simply the best transit route to the EU?
“Ida, we’ve got enough obsessed racist bigots to cope with in the EU already.”
LOL! Better the racist, immigrant hating bigots at home!
I find it strange that Owen is so paranoid of Serbs in Britain when I haven’t read of any crimes committed by Serbs there, yet every other week the Albanians/”Kosovans” are in the news for robbery, violent gangs, rape/forced prostitution of girls/women, murder, and so on.
I shall put forth some examples (extracts) from recent British news (and I guess Owen is too busy reading “Bad bad Serb” propaganda to follow what’s going on in his country these days:
http://www.wktimes.co.uk/content/brent/wembleychronicle/news/story.aspx?brand=WKCOnline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newswkc&itemid=WeED14%20Oct%202008%2021%3A14%3A17%3A173
Parking meter gang killer jailed
14 October 2008
An Albanian who murdered a rival in a turf war over parking meters has been jailed for a minimum of 34 years.
Hekuran Billa, 28, of no fixed abode, shot Prel Marku, 22, through the head in a packed Albanian social club in Park Royal on October 14 2006.
Billa and the victim were both stealing from meters in an operation which could make up to £10,000 a night using stolen or homemade keys to open the strong boxes.
The gunman and an accomplice sprayed bullets around the club also wounding Petrit Brahoj and Acron Gjoni…
http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/Gangsters-raped-teenage-sex-slave.4533505.jp
‘Gangsters raped teenage sex slave’
27 September 2008
A TEENAGE “sex slave” sobbed as she told a court how she was raped and beaten after being forced to work as a prostitute by Eastern European gangsters.
The girl was just 16 when she was tricked into travelling to the UK for a job in a Peterborough pub, jurors were told.
Now 18, the Slovakian victim told Southwark Crown Court she was a virgin when an Albanian pimp raped her and sent her to work in a sleazy west London brothel…
…Also in the dock are Turks Ali Arslan (43), his brother-in-law Mesut Arslan (26), Kosovan Martin Doci (29), and Albanian Valmir Gjetja (29), who “shared a common greed at the expense of vulnerable women”, the court heard.
http://www.thisistotalessex.co.uk/romford/Bloodthirsty-Romford-bouncers-caged/article-202315-detail/article.html?logout=true
Bloodthirsty Romford bouncers caged
Monday, July 07, 2008, 10:04
A VENGEFUL gang of bouncers who took part in a violent rampage which left a clubber dead have been caged.
Soon-to-be-married Lee Rayner’s skull was almost smashed in half during a row with doormen at the Opium Lounge in Romford last June. His brother John, 21, was also badly beaten.
Albanian Rustem Geca, 24 – who led the gang – and fellow doormen Johnives Kalu, 23, Ionut Lazar, 25, Samuel Davison, 38, and Andrew Houchelli, 37, were all jailed.
Lee, 30, of Franklin Road, Hornchurch, had been out with friends when one of the group spat at a bouncer after being refused entry.
Furious Geca and Kalu rounded up the bouncers, who set off in pursuit, catching them in St Edward’s Way.
At the Old Bailey, John Rayner wept: “There was a group around him, kicking him. He was just lying in the road.”
He cradled Lee as he lay unconscious on the ground, blood pouring from his eye sockets and head…
——-
And a little lagniappe of current news on what the Albanians have been up to elsewhere in the world:
SPAIN:
http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_18577.shtml
Kosovo gang arrested in Torrevieja
Six people were arrested and are thought to have taken part in a series of burglaries in Alicante and Murcia.
Six members of Kosovo gang have been arrested by the Guardia Civil in Torrevieja.
A statement from the Civil Guard barracks in Alicante said that those arrested were thought to be part of a gang which had taken part in as many as 31 burglaries from factories in the Alicante and Murcia areas, causing ‘grand social alarm’. More than 86,000 € in cash as well as other items is believed to have been taken by the gang…
CANADA:
http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2008/10/23/7171996-sun.html
Trial hears event sequence in fatal Greektown bar stabbing
Pappas spotted a Rambo-style knife inside the waist-band of Krasniqi’s trousers as he danced.
In a nervous voice, Pappas testified he warned fellow staffers. But before anyone could do anything about the situation, Pappas saw Jordan clutching his neck with his hand as he bled profusely.
Prosecutors Christine Jenkins and Ann Morgan are alleging Krasniqi stabbed Ormonde once in the neck, severing his carotid artery and jugular.
Before the attack, Krasniqi held hands with Ormonde’s girlfriend, Zoe Papathanasakis, during a traditional Greek dance, Jenkins said in her opening to the jury.
After Zoe politely rejected Krasniqi’s invitations to dance, he began swearing and knocked one partygoer to the floor, said Jenkins. Then, the “aggressor” Krasniqi plunged his “survivor-style knife” into Ormonde’s neck in an “unprovoked and sudden” act, she added in her opening.
Pappas had a frightening encounter with Krasniqi when the waiter bumped into the customer shortly before the violence. “He said, ‘Don’t f—- with me. You don’t know who I am. I’m Benny the Albanian,’ ” recalled Pappas.
Ormonde, a trained firefighter working at a restaurant, was mortally wounded within minutes of Pappas seeing the knife, court heard…
There are also the Roma, many from Kosovo, but some from Serbia and other parts of ex-Yugoslavia who are being forcibly deported by the plane loads from Germany – (one of the first things signed by the puppet Serbian government after Milosevic’s overthrow was an agreement to accept all the Roma in Germany of ex-Yu origin). Some of these have been in Germany for decades and have children born in Germany but they, I believe, are deported too.
The Kosovo Roma are sometimes sent back to Kosovo, other times Serbia, but they are desperate to leave again because it is dangerous or very hard for them to live there.
Adam, I certainly don’t condemn all Serbs/Serbians, particularly not the ones who had the courage to go out and get beaten up and the ones who still get death threats and swastikas painted on their doors. It’s just I’m not quite so sanguine as you on the basis of the limited cross-section I’ve had direct or indirect contact with.
You’re in a better position than me to do a survey of what people in Serbia think happened in Kosova in 1998-1999.
And maybe you could also gauge what proportion of people think Mladic should be handed over to The Hague so he can be tried for war crimes and genocide, how many think he should be handed over because he and his pals are holding up Serbia’s admission to the EU and how many think he simply shouldn’t be handed over.
Viktor, thinking about it, you’re right. The visa regime doesn’t seem to protect us from people with Ida’s views.
Robert, if you refer to the paper you’ll see that the situation is very much the opposite. Serbia is only marginally more attractive to asylum seekers than Iceland. The discussion was about the reasons why so many Serbians appear to be seeking asylum elsewhere.
I think Serbian people know that the KLA was the one which initiated the attacks and terrorist activities.
I think they know that the Serbian police where being bombed and shot out, that the Albanian were planting road mines, that the KLA was killing Albanians who worked for the Serbian government.
I think they know that the first civilians attacked were some Serbian refugees from Croatia who were settled in Kosovo (but not disproportionately as there were Croatian Serbs settled all over Serbia).
I think they are aware of all the kidnapped by the KLA of Serbian civilians and some Albanians who were uncooperative with the KLA.
I think Serbs are aware that there was a large number of Kosovo Albanians who were never loyal to Yugoslavia nor Serbia.
I think they were aware that the Albanians wanted Kosovo for themselves with the Serbs out and the international community helped them which is why they wanted the Serbian forces out.
I think they are aware that the Albanian army was helping and coming into Kosovo, that there were KLA training camps in Albania and arms were coming from Albania.
I think they are aware that Albanians live in Belgrade and have full freedom of movement, yet such is not the case for Serbs where Albanians predominate.
I think they are aware that the British forces who controlled the Pristina area supervised the cleansing of over 30,000 Serbs from Pristina.
I think they are aware of how the KLA showed up in British uniforms, just after the war, and then opened fire on Serbian farmers who’d asked the British for protection during their harvest.
The Albanians then drove the farm equipment over the bodies of the Serbs they just killed making a bloody, gory mess.
I think they are aware that the CIA was working with and aiding the KLA and that the bombing was set up.
Even Helena Ranta has a book out where she says she was pressured by William Walker to lie about the so-called “Racak Massacre”.
The truth is it was KLA dead gathered after heavy fighting and then displayed the next day for the news. The dead were only “discovered” a day after the fighting and the Serbs left. Even though there were foreign news crews and journalists who went into Racak after the fighting on a Friday, the bodies weren’t there until the next day after the KLA had time to gather and dump them.
37 of 40 of the Racak “victims” had gunpowder residue on their hands showing they were firing weapons. None but one showed he’d been killed close range – and that could have been from an accident (caught in fire by his fellow terrorists).
Now look: a brand new news story of a Kosovo Albanian “refugee” seeking asylum in Canada, convicted of an arson attack he committed one month after arriving in late 2006.
Given that the Kosovo war was technically over June 1999 and is now dominated by Albanians/NATO/UN, how can Kosovo Albanians be claiming refugee status several years later?:
“The convicted man, Dervishaj, is an Albanian Kosovo refugee who had been in Canada less than a month before the explosion. He is seeking refugee status in Canada.”
See: “Man convicted in SUV arson” http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=1f83ec06-62d8-4e81-ae25-86d7327ccde8
http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=5272&blz=1
Kosovo Roma Diaspora Statement
22 October 2008
…In June 1999, the international community, including KFOR and the OSCE, did nothing to prevent the violent expulsion of ten thousands of Roma from their homes in Kosovo and the destruction of their properties.
In ten years, the international community did hardly anything to allow the return of the internally displaced Roma in Kosovo, leaving people knowingly in situations which are harmful to their lives…
Asylum applications of Kosovo Roma were rejected on no grounds. Asylum application procedures such as those in Macedonia were denounced as flawed and unfair, including by the EU Commission and the US government, with no consequence for the treatment of those who had become victims of these discriminatory practices.
Despite the ban of the UNHCR, Kosovo Roma have been subjected to pressure to either leave their host country voluntarily or to be forcibly returned to Kosovo. There have been, throughout these years, attempts to deport Roma to Kosovo, some of them stopped, in the last minute, by UNMIK. In other cases, Kosovo Roma were deported to Serbia.
…Countries such as Switzerland have recently announced that they will start returning minorities including Roma to Kosovo next year. In other countries such as Sweden, there has been an increase in negative decisions by tribunals, awakening fears of forced deportations also from these countries. The German “Bleiberechtsregelung” offers only limited opportunities for the regularisation of Kosovo Roma refugees, leaving more than 20,000 people with the threat of a being forcibly deported.
The Kosovo government has recently issued a draft strategy for the integration of Roma, Ashkali and Kosovo Egyptians. This strategy belies the fact that Roma in Kosovo were well integrated before the war. It also belies the fact that Roma were comparatively well-off, sometimes even better off than their Albanian neighbours. We fail to see in this document any recognition of the crimes committed against Kosovo Roma for which no compensation was ever offered. We fail to see any recognition of the ongoing discrimination and violence against Roma in Kosovo.
…We want to have a discussion and we do have issues to discuss. This concerns in first place the denial of asylum to Kosovo Roma…
We are deeply ashamed and outraged by the fact of being treated as a social under-class and outcasts whose destiny is left at the hands of some NGOs who act as the henchmen of Western governments and line up their pockets on our backs. We have lived in Kosovo for more than 600 years. We request the same respect than which is given to other people from Kosovo.
Ida, what were Helena Ranta’s conclusions?
Hi Owen,
Sorry, I didn’t mean to attack you personally, I just get a bit annoyed with generalisations.
I can only base my views from what I’ve seen during my time in Serbia, the population certainly seems divided but judging by the pro-European elections and the very dismal turnout at these protest rallies in the centre of Belgrade (apart from the very first one) in support of Karadzic, it seems to me that the majority of people (in Belgrade at least) just want to move on and have a better future for themselves and the future generations.
I’m no political analyst and I just don’t know enough to provide a proper commentary on the ‘real’ feelings across the whole of Serbia. The people I know, at least, couldn’t care less about Karadzic and the previous regimes and want a prosperous and secure future.
Hello Adam, I wasn’t meaning to have a go at you either. It’s just I get rather impatient with this business about people wanting to move on and have a better future and getting annoyed because other people’s issues get in the way, as if what happened was just an episode from an old soap.
Mladic and the people who sheltered him haven’t vanished from the face of the universe. Last year the EU was being fobbed off with promises that he’d be at The Hague by the end of 2007. Well, he wasn’t. The one carrot available seems to be EU membership. Of course people want to have the carrot without strings and leave the past behind. They prefer to forget that it’s other people’s past too, people who can’t leave it behind so easily.
It’s amazing what little can be done without the right figures.
The latest figures for serbian IDPs is approximately 247,000, i.e. mostly those cleansed from Kosovo:
http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpCountries)/A6A36317DA8D29A1802570A7004CAB90?OpenDocument
Could it be these people seeking asylum elsewhere?
Yes, this too could be one possible answer.
Since everything’s up for being a possible answer, http://hrw.org/reports/2008/serbia1108/
Another part of the mystery solved maybe… Everything combined could be the final answer.
The Obama of Belgrade, bringing his people together!
While we’re at it lets see what kind of operations are going on in Kosovo today – Albanian doctors involved in illegal organ transplantation for money. What else is new? The Albanians did this to the younger Kosovo Serbs they kidnapped. By the way the Sandzak Humanitarian group did meet and talk with some of the Serb captives in illegal camps in Kosovo several months after NATO arrived. They are Muslims and through their channels were able to get in. They reported that those particular captives were kept well, yet they were NEVER exchanged. Not one kidnapped Kosovo Serb was returned alive.
Kosovo: Organ transplant suspects arrested 5 November 2008 | 11:18 |
Source: Tanjug PRIŠTINA—Kosovo police have arrested a Turkish national suspected of involvement in illegal organ transplantation near Priština airport.
It was initially suspected that the man had come to the MEDICUS clinic in Priština not for a heart check-up, but to donate a kidney.
During a search of the MEDICUS clinic, one other patient, an Israeli national, was discovered suspected of being the intended recipient of the Turkish man’s kidney.
The police arrested urologists Dr Lutfi Dervishi and Dr Tun Pervorfaj, together with clinic manager Arban Dervishi, and questioned another seven people.
During the search it was established that the majority of medicines in the clinic were nearing their use-by date, while there were also blood samples not carrying any identification of origin.
The Health Inspectorate and forensic medicine experts will submit a special report in the afternoon giving more details of the clinic’s operations.
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/crimes-article.php?yyyy=2008&mm=11&dd=05&nav_id=54757
Ida, I tried simply to repeat my previous unanswered comment but Dejan’s super-clever web design thwarted me and threw me off for duplication. Hopefully this preamble will let me get the question back in by the side door:
“Ida, what were Helena Ranta’s conclusions?”
Perhaps you ought to buy her book to read more about her conclusions. What she’s said is she was pressured to say what she said and they weren’t her own conclusions.
Ranta is a dentist/forensic dentist. She was qualified to identify people. Along with her were a team of Finnish forensic scientists who conducted the autopsies along with the Serbian team and they all agreed to ever last line.
The bodies were killed in combat – the shots were not fired at close range and the evidence shows the people were moving when shot. Further 37 out of 40 had gunpowder on their hands. They were not civilians.
Additional the people were all dressed in many layers of clothes – prepared for being outside in the cold for long time and most of them had the same kind and brand of boots.
Ranta’s conclusions were that most of the dead were Kosovo Albanians, but some could not be identified and a few of those included uncircumcised men, meaning they were not Muslim.
These are believed to be mercenaries.
Ida, you can believe whatever you want to believe in your parallel universe but please don’t ask me to accept that we’re confrointing the same version of reality in this one.
Back in 2003 –
“Forensic specialists gave evidence last week into two gruesome massacres prosecutors claim Slodoban Milosevic is ultimately responsible for.
After weeks concentrating on the lines of command between combat units and Milosevic, the prosecution homed in on the sharp end of its case – the killings themselves.
First came Dr Helena Ranta, chief of the Finnish forensic team, which investigated the killing of 41 ethnic Albanians at Racak, Kosovo, in January 1999.
The Kosovo part of the case is finished with, but Dr Ranta was called back to explain comments she gave in an interview with a German magazine in which she said the bodies appeared to have been killed where they were found.
Dr Ranta dismissed suggestions from Milosevic that the bodies had been shot elsewhere and then moved to the scene as part of a conspiracy to make it look as if Serb units had carried out a massacre. “There were no indications of [the victims] being other than unarmed civilians,” she told the court.
Dr Ranta’s team was allowed into Serbia by Milosevic soon after the killing, and the Finns conducted autopsies on the bodies.
Racak is seen by many as starting the count down to the NATO bombing of Serbia. The discovery of the bodies in hills outside the village led to the failed Rambouillet peace talks, which in turn saw the alliance demand the right to install peacekeepers in Kosovo.
When Milosevic refused, NATO launched a 78-day air war which ended with Kosovo coming under United Nations control.
In court, Dr Ranta said her investigations carried out at the time and 10 months later indicated the people died where they were found.
She said bullets in the soil indicated they had been shot at close range from above while lying on the ground.
Dr Ranta said the lack of blood in the soil around the bodies could be explained because the blood was trapped in the multiple layers of clothing worn by the 41 victims.
In cross examination, amicus Branislav Tapuskovic suggested the fact they wore so many layers showed they had been living in the mountains – strengthening claims they were guerrillas, not civilians.
But Dr Ranta said the multiple layers were normal for village people in the area.
Milosevic, questioning her, said that most bullets would not be recoverable because they would get lost in the surroundings.
Dr Ranta refused to say whether the killings were part of a battle or a deliberate massacre, saying this was something for the court.
She said Serb authorities at the time had claimed 37 of the 41 dead had gunpowder on their hands based on paraffin tests. But she said most courts rejected the paraffin test as unreliable.
Milosevic accused Dr Ranta of being part of a conspiracy involving NATO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, and the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, to blame the killing on the Serbs in order to provide a pretext for military intervention.”
from:
http://www.iwpr.net/?apc_state=hsritri200303&l=en&s=f&o=166224
But now Ranta is saying she was under heavy pressure to say those things. Plus they are explaining away and excusing things which don’t work for their theory – such as the lack of blood.
And the test of gunpowder residue is still used today in many U.S. cases.
Your article is simply trying to hide the fact that Racak were KLA dead killed in armed battle.
There were foreign news crews at the scene around Racak that day and they all reported and filmed heavy fighting between the KLA and the Serbian police.
Helena Ranta didn’t inspect the bodies until days after the Racak battle. The bodies had already been moved, by the Albanians to a mosque before the Finish and Serbian teams could inspect them.
Plus Ranta is only a forensic dentist and was used as a spokesperson because she could be pressured and manipulated.
The bodies were definitely moved and there was contamination of the scene by William Walker and dozens of others, including photographers – they were pictured walking all around the scene, they admitted to placing new caps on the heads of the dead, and some people of the people were scene taking things from around the bodies and ground.
Your report just explains away the things which show they are fighters prepped for long outdoor time in cold weather – they had many layers of clothing and jackets. Many had military style boots.
You are a sucker for propaganda.
Besides, the census of the Balkans shows the Serbs are the most ethnically cleansed people of all and there is no less of the so-called “genocided” people in the respective statelets.
Croatia’s population is more pure Croat – the Croat percentage rose after the war. Bosnia still has the same percentage Muslim population – if not more than before the war. The Bosnian Muslims cleansed Serbs and Croats to the same extent as they were. Their population in the large cities and towns if greater than before the war and more pure Muslim.
Kosovo has been more permanently cleansed of the non-Albanian population, while the Albanian population is the same or greater than before the war.
The Albanians only left after the bombing started and then returned when it ended.
A German reporter in-bedded with the KLA in 1998 and 1999 saw a list of priority towns set for evacuation drawn up by the KLA 2 months before the NATO bombing. These towns, under KLA control, were the very first emptied after the NATO strikes, with the KLA ordering the people out after they started.
Over half the Albanians stayed, and in the non-KLA towns, such as Pristina, there were crowds of Albanians there to greet NATO soldiers as they arrived. These people – and there were crowds of them – had stayed in Kosovo – and non of them looked deprived of food, water, hygiene of sanitation.
I repeat: you ARE a sucker for manipulative propaganda all for western agenda in the Balkans.
Ranta say she was under pressure, but not “to say those things”. She was under pressure to be more strongly condemnatory of the atrocity. She was careful to confine herself to what she felt was legitimate for her to say on the basis of the evidence before her and her role as coroner. Why do you constantly distort the record?
Well, the post was a month ago. Everybody had a go at speculating. Has the Serbian media had enough time now to do some investigation and analysis and come up with an intelligent explanation?
I believe it’s safe to say the conversation on this blog post was the highpoint of “Serbian media investigation”.
Oh well, at least know where to go for my news about Serbia!
ida you cunt u must be a servian bich
do us a favour come and my lolly pop ,,,bitch