I sent the following letter to the N.Y. Times a week or so ago. It wasn't
published.
Jim Blaut
May 6, 1999
Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, N.Y. 10036 3959
To the Editor:
The Times news article of May 6, 1999, describing eyewitness accounts of a
massacre in Kosovo, is deeply disturbing, but the report does not answer
some questions that seem absolutely crucial to those, like myself, who
oppose the NATO bombings. Did Serb uniformed officers participate in or
witness the killings? Was the village actually occupied by the Serb army
when the killings occurred? Did Serb authorities sanction the killings?
Were
those Albanians who were kidnapped or taken away members or suspected
members of the KLA? Did Serb villagers "betray" their Albanian neighbors or
did they merely point out to the Serb authorities those villagers whom they
thought were with the KLA? Was there a history of killings of Serbs by the
KLA in that area? We need to know the answers to these questions in order
to
sort out the basic geopolitical issues: are these merely the horrible
incidents of a bloody civil war, or are they war crimes that can be laid at
the feet of a demon, "Mr. Milosevic"?
J. M. Blaut
Professor of Geography and Anthropology
University of Illinois at Chicago
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|