Kosovo Serb Refugees: Unimportant Detail or The Real Ethnic Cleansing?

AIM Athens, 2.07 1999

"The real ethnic cleansing has just begun" kept repeating Greek media and public figures (including the country's most popular one, Archbishop Christodoulos). They were doing so not in early April 1999, to refer to the abhorrent operation of Serb forces against Albanians in Kosovo, but in mid-June 1999, to describe the certainly tragic mass exodus of Serbs from the same region, resulting from fear of, or actual "reprisal" attacks of Albanians against them.

This phrase clearly indicated that all those Greeks went beyond condemning the Serb exodus: they did not (want to) believe that there had previously been a mass ethnic cleansing of Albanians. As another very popular figure, composer Mikis Theodorakis claimed (in "Exousia" 26 May 1999), "a number of Western sources have proved the magnitude of the deceit and the propaganda about Milosevic's 'ethnic cleansing' of Kosovo." All these "neo-negationists" (just like the "Holocaust denial" authors before them) would agree with -hastily considered as liberal- Serb intellectual Aleksa Djilas. He told "RFE/RL's Watchlist" (24 June 1999) that in Kosovo "maybe some massacres, maybe some rapes did take place, perhaps even some crimes against humanity, but reports of Serbian atrocities have been exaggerated."

"NATO needs the massacres to justify its actions," Djilas added. "It is a satanic propaganda" Mikis Theodorakis argued a month ago. "Why do they bomb with such rage the towns and the villages of Kosovo, inhabited by 90% Albanians? They obviously want to kill them, injure them, terrorize them, and in the end expel them from their homes so that CNN can film the refugee convoys and justify the other massacre of the other non-combatants [in Serbia itself]." "RFE/RL's Watchlist" editor Charles Fenyvesi concluded his interview with Djilas stating: "he sounded just like the Germans who think that the worst atrocity of World War II was the relentless Allied bombardment of their country." A comparison also suited for Theodorakis.

Some claim that the communist culture Djilas and Theodorakis grew up in helps explain such statements: they are motivated by "primitive anti-Westernism." However, they may also tend to reflect "primitive nationalism." Both in Greece and in Serbia, ethnonationalism has been remarkably intolerant towards the primordial, evil "other" identified as the Muslims, be they Turks or Albanians. Djilas had argued ("Argument" April 1998, quoted in Noel Malcolm "Kosovo: A Short History", p. xxxi) that "whatever Israel does to the Palestinians we Serbs can do to the Albanians"

French classicist and Greece expert Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who had publicly opposed NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, offered the following analysis of the recent "nationalist, and sometimes hyper-nationalist, orientation of the Greek political scene" and one of its emanation, the "Greek-Serb friendship" ("Eleftherotypia" 1 July 1999):

"This 'Greek-Serb friendship' is a phenomenon of very recent years. Indeed, does anyone remember any reference to such a 'Greek-Serb friendship' fifteen years ago? I believe that the 'Greek-Serb friendship' is related to the reemergence in Greece, during the last decade, of the old anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim phantasms. ( ) I often hear from Greek friends, in various versions and variants, the following type of argument: Islam, both Turkish and Albanian encircle Greece. As you know, this argument is not simply accepted by some, but it is a deep-rooted perception. (...) It is totally irrational. In my opinion it is a pure phantasm."

Such phantasms have led so many Greeks and Serbs, as well as Russians and other people brought up in societies based on Orthodox Christian traditions, to overemphasize the "Serb dimension" of both the war against Yugoslavia and the flight of residents from Kosovo. This is no excuse though for Westerners, and especially human rights activists, to deride such this dimension. In late June 1999, a delegation of human rights activists from Balkan and Western NGOs - non-governmental organizations - (both unfortunately and inappropriately including a Danish parliamentarian) visited Moscow to inform Russian human rights groups, parliamentarians and public opinion in general on the real dimension of the Kosovo crisis. The visit's motivation was that, throughout that crisis, Russians appeared to have tilted towards the official Serbian position, though to a much lesser extent than Greeks.

During the three-day related public meetings or briefings in the Duma and the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russians seemed to have no problem to speak of Milosevic's main responsibility in the crisis. However, they all disagreed with NATO's military reaction to it; while, as the Serb exodus from Kosovo had started, they were insistently probing the NGO delegates for their position on the matter. This was happening the very day that UNHCR representative in the region Paula Ghedini was telling BBC World (28 June) that "UNHCR is concerned: we do not want the return of one population to lead to the exodus of another;" and the BBC journalist was speaking of a "terrible irony." Three days before (25 June), one of the leading NGOs in the world and one of the few with a continuous and consistent presence in and reporting from the region, Human Rights Watch (HRW), had issued Kosovo Flash #50 on "Violent Abuses by KLA Members: Beatings, Killings and Rape Taking Place in Kosovo." So one expected the NGO activists to immediately declare their concern and dismay at this new wave of refugees and their condemnation of Albanian reprisals.

Regretfully, this was not what emerged from many hours of related exchanges and debates. To his credit, the Kosovar delegate, himself a refugee, did so in several occasions. Most of his colleagues though gave answers that created the impression they challenged the legitimacy of all questions about Serb refugees. "How dare you ask about them when we have had a genocide against Albanians?" appeared to be the bottom line. When queried about NATO actions, not only most NGO delegates firmly supported the strikes and were indignant of any opposition voiced against them, but they could not find a word of criticism for the whole NATO activity in the area. Never mind that HRW again, as well as Amnesty International and a score of freedom of expression groups, had publicly challenged, for example, the use of cluster bombs against targets near civilian areas and the bombing of the Serb radio and television (not to mention the denunciation of NATO's misleading propaganda campaign). At moments, some delegates appeared, in the words of one of their colleagues, to behave like "NATO spin doctors." As if they were confirming the fears of the UNHCR representative in Belgrade, Eduardo Arbleda, ("International Herald Tribune" 29 June 1999) that "there is a risk the international community will not maintain its objectivity and sensitivity."

There was certainly a suspicion that many Russians who insisted so much on the Serb exodus were biased and unwilling to acknowledge the crisis' main problem, the massive, brutal and unprecedented for late twentieth century Europe violations of the rights of Kosovo Albanians. This impression was legitimized sometimes by an implied effort to just equate the Albanian with the Serb exodus. Nevertheless, if one wanted to win over the argument with Russians on such points, or even better to convert them to what is the appropriate human rights approach, this could not succeed through an almost complete depreciation of the importance of the violations of the human rights of Serbs by Albanians or by NATO. Or, even worse, by giving arrogant if not offending answers. Such an attitude apparently created among many Russian interlocutors similar suspicions about the true motivation of some NGO delegates, and the possible use of double standards by them. If one takes into consideration that, in the Duma, the parliamentarians who the NGO delegation discussed with belonged to the reputed pro-European political forces of Yabloko and Gaidar (including heralded human rights personality Serguei Kovaliov), one wonders what, with their antagonizing attitude, the human rights delegation hoped to achieve. If one wants to help convince Russians to adopt European values, this approach was certainly very counter-productive.

The author of this article was a "dissenting" member of that NGO delegation. Coming from Greece, a country where public opinion and intellectuals are even farther away than the Russian interlocutors from the liberal cosmopolitan values, he had for years appreciated the international NGOs' constructive approach to Greek authorities and other Greek interlocutors, in an effort to help improve the country's human rights record. Hence, he was puzzled by the current attitude towards Russian opinion makers. In his humble opinion, to avoid a "dialog of the deaf" with forces coming from countries which have lagged behind in adopting liberal political values, one must address their concerns carefully and patiently. As he said in Moscow, NATO is no credible source for deciding which human rights violations have occurred in the Kosovo crisis; on he contrary, it too is not free from allegations of humanitarian law violations. However, there is abundant credible NGO material to make anyone state with certainty that there was a brutal, and especially systematic and organized, ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. While the unquestionably condemnable current violence against Serbs (but also Roma that no Russian seemed to care to mention) is of much lesser extent and, especially, does not appear to result from a systematic and organized Albanian plan.

We all owe to the human rights values we fight for, and all states including Russia pretend to adhere to, to make sure that the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia be empowered to investigate and prosecute all related crimes. Russia must fully back its work, as Serb public opinion (but also Greek, Russian and other similar ones) would more readily accept the Court's verdicts if they are not challenged by any side. This is a prerequisite for the misled publics in these countries to be able to come to terms with truth. And the truth is, as Pierre Vidal-Naquet put it to the Greeks, that "Kosovars exist (...) [and they have suffered from] the most atrocious massacres in Europe since 1945."

The truth is also that, as he added, "nevertheless, the expulsion of Sudet Germans from Czechoslovakia (immediately after the end of the Second World War) was also a brutal form of ethnic cleansing, just like what happened to Palestinians in Israel." Thus, a genuine human rights advocate must argue today that, should Serbs end up permanently leaving Kosovo as a result of present conditions, this will be recorded as another brutal exodus of a "vanquished" people that can only further dishonor humankind.

Panayote Dimitras (AIM)