"Drita," speaking anonymously, told the BBC that she and seven women
were separated from their families. She said the women were gang-raped
by Serbian soldiers and four of them killed, including one woman who was
seven months pregnant.
"They started to shoot everywhere, and then they told us to leave the
house. Four of them were with masks. One was from my village; he first
started to hit me and the others. One was a captain; the captain told my
father, 'Your daughter is good for wife, for Serbian wife.'
"Four, they taken my arms. One have them make sex with me, one hit, the
others kiss.
"When you are down, you can’t get away and at that moment I think God
don’t exist. I thought, they want to kill me, but no. They didn’t want
to kill me. For me, it was better to kill me. ... I wanted to kill
myself," she said.
from MSNBC news
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/news/259314.asp#BODY
"They rounded up all the villagers. They separated men from women. To
the women they said, "You may go to the border," and they put us men in
two big rooms. They said, "Now NATO can save you," and then they started
to shoot. And when they finished shooting us they covered us with straw
and corn and set it on fire. We were one hundred and twelve people. I
survived with one other man."
from Endgame in Kosovo (Mark Danner, NYRB)
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWfeatdisplay.cgi?19990506008F@p6
In Amsterdam, a McDonalds school for blacks will open in September. In
the south-eastern extension of the city (built from the 1970’s), ethnic
Dutch are now a minority. The area is classified as an urban problem
area, but also has a large concentration of service employment for
inward commuters. The proposed "ArenA-Academie" is not purely a
McDonalds project, although McDonalds was one of the earliest and most
prominent supporters of the project. A group of children from a local
"black" school, (that is, almost entirely not ethnic Dutch), will be
removed from the official educational system. They will be transferred
to the new "academy". They will no longer receive education for official
diplomas, but will get specific training for specific employers. In this
way employers with high labour turnover can fill low-pay jobs. One is
McDonalds: other sectors include cleaning and residential care. The
ArenA Stadium is another employer, and gives the "academy" its name.
No-one in Amsterdam's political elite sees anything wrong with closing
access to the educational system, for ethnic minority children. There is
no opposition, partly because it is normal practice in the Netherlands,
to train specific minority groups to fill labour shortages. A project
called the "700-Turks project", for instance, was set up to train
cleaners. All of this is part of national and city government policy.
The ArenA-Academie was proudly presented as a private-public
partnership.
Would I accept this project, to save Albanian women from gang-rape? No.
Would I accept this project, to save 110 men from death? No.
Am I being asked to accept this project, to save the victims of
persecution in Kosovo? Yes.
The man who condemns black children to a lifetime inferior status is Wim
Kok, the same man who two days ago (25 May) was greeted by hundreds of
Albanians in a refugee camp, the same man who sent a contingent of
F-16's without hesitation. Like New Labour, his Partij van de Arbeid is
enthusiastic about workfare projects. But even if there were no link in
the form of Wim Kok or Tony Blair, one thing is dependent on another.
The F-16's, and the ethnic drone underclass, form part of a single
society. They certainly form part of the same nation state, and they are
both (ultimately) policy decisions of the same cabinet.
The NATO does not offer the option, of saving "Drita" from gang-rape,
but specifying that no-one in Kosovo will end up in a workfare project.
It does not offer the option, of allowing disadvantaged groups to
withdraw from workfare projects in the Netherlands, or Britain, or
Germany. The NATO, Wim Kok, and Tony Blair offer a complete package
deal: they have the political and military power, and the rest concede
that power. A nation state is not a supermarket, where you can assemble
your desired society from selected items. Even less so, a military
alliance at war.
Acceptance of NATO assistance to the victims of persecution in Kosovo,
is acceptance of the NATO, acceptance of its member states, and of their
societies. Without the NATO societies there can can be no NATO, and
therefore (realistically) no assistance. Like the Warsaw Pact, the NATO
is conditional on certain types of society, culture, and state. Without
them it would disappear, like the Warsaw Pact. The Amsterdam decision to
place ethnic minorities in specific low-status jobs was entirely
democratic and legal. It could not be reversed with abandoning democracy
in the Netherlands - which directly contradicts the fundamental values
of the NATO.
There is no way out of this choice, at least not in the short term. That
is not to say, that the NATO's strategy does in fact save anyone. It has
not been effective, even for its own aims, so far. But there is no other
army waiting at the Kosovo border, complete with an alternative package
of social policy. There is no "false dilemma". There is a real dilemma,
founded on irreconcilable differences in ethical belief. There is no
possibility of compromise. No discussion is possible because there is no
common ground. Either you abandon the victims of persecution in Kosovo -
or you accept the social structures of the NATO member states, and the
values on which they are based. That is the choice that Tony Blair and
Wim Kok and Joschka Fischer put before you, and on that point they are
absolutely right.
--
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/glosse/2323/1.html
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