Edi on Tue, 22 Jun 1999 09:20:11 +0100 |
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Syndicate: from edi for the syndicate lis |
hi everybody, from edi in tirana. my telephone was broken and i couldn't read the post, but today it is fixed and i have been reading throuhg the posting about "moral responsibility". it is not the first time i read posting of this nature in the list, but i didn't want to really join in, because very easy and very soon the discussion might become emotional, between albanian and serb point of view. but this time, when the conflict seems to be over, and when more evidence on what has really happened there, is being shown i found interesting the current discussion, and decided to write something. there's is a lot of argument on NATO air campaign against Serbia. i know that everyone has its own opinions and the right to express them in condemning or supporting this action. i myself don't want to take any part in this argument, but being albanian, knowing that out there is a defensless population being slaughtered and even burned (as if slaughtering wasn't enough), i gave my support to NATO intervention, even though i repeat i get involved emotionally here. in some of the posting i read it is said that there could have been done more for a peacful solution, starting from Dayton, and supporting the peacful movement in Kosova. maybe this is right, but this suggestion comes in a moment when Kosova is a burned land, full of mass graves and most of its population walking for several months now. while regarding the support to the peacful movement in Kosova, the outcome was that about 10 years ago, Kosova lost even the scrumbles of the autonomy it had during Tito time. it is true that before NATO bombing started in Kosova there weren't 1.000.000 people living in camps, but there were already a quarter of that amount displaced internally with their homes burning, and i didn't hear any calls to stop it; there were already 40.000 serb troops in Kosova that for sure didn't go in vacation there; furthermore, a peacful effort, Rambouillet (i don't know how realistic it was), took place only after masacres had already started, months before NATO start bombing (it was Jannuary already when Racak occurred). i don't konw why, but i have a feeling that people that now is condemning NATO's intervention, if that didn't happen would condemn NATO for allowing the so-called "repetition of Bosnia". i know what it means to live under a autocratic regime, in which alternative ideas might cost one's life, since we have had that for long in albania. but i can not accept the fact that during all these years and during all the months of the explosion of Kosova matter, i didn't hear any single word >from any serbian intellectual that at least expressed disagreement for atrocities commited against inocent albanian population. and i am not speaking for the period of three months ago, because the first masacre where children and women were killed, occurred more than one year ago. well i feared i would become emotional if i entered the argument, and so i did. but there is one thing i would really look for to have a profoundly sincere answer (as much as possible), from my serbian friends (the ones i know personally and others i don't). have you ever really considered albanians living in Kosova as equal to you, deign to live the same life, to have the same rights, exercise the same freedom? please take a moment to reflect before you answer. this is a question that maybe has to do the moral responsibility and that is rooted deep in the centuries. some years ago, i never was able to understand what kosovar friends told me about their relationship with the serbs and of what they went through in their daily life, and i never took it seriously. it is only now that i saw what happened (without never getting "why") that i can scarcely get what i have heard from them before. therefore the above question is really important to me. it is important because i want to normally talk to my serbain colleagues, invite serbian artists to tirana, i want serbian artists to have shows in prishtina and i don't want to fear for their security. it is important because we must find a common language, because serbs must not flee Kosova (even though there are many cases in which it was serbian neighbours that killed the next door people, as there are some cases that serbian neighbours garded empty houses of their albanian ones). this is not a solution. this is the hardest matter on which we should focus now, start thinking practically how to make the two live together without problems. of course big deal is on the albanian side, and i can understand if one goes back and find only the ashes and some bones of his kids, you would hardly like to pretend that nothing happened. but the serbs too have to change a lot as well, and this change and the desire to live together with albanians of kosova can start only if they change the way they have always considered them; and i believe that this is a collective as well as individual moral responsibility. best to all, edi. ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress