LATimes, Friday, June 25, 1999

Ethnic Albanians Demand Jobs Back at Radio and TV Station

Kosovo: British forces are called in to mediate when Serbs respond
to the ousted workers in Pristina by brandishing weapons.

By VALERIE REITMAN, Times Staff Writer

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia--It was just after 3 p.m. on July 5, 1990, Miradije Kuqi recalls,
when a Serbian police officer walked into the control room of Kosovo's
major radio and television station, pointed an AK-47 automatic weapon at
the technician's throat and demanded to know why the Serbian news out of
the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, wasn't on yet.
It's time for the Albanian-language news, she replied.
That was the last time news of the ethnic Albanian community in Kosovo
aired. The Serbs expelled several hundred ethnic Albanian workers from
Radio and TV of Pristina, which had featured programming for the
province's many ethnicities, including majority ethnic Albanians and
minority Serbs, Turks and Gypsies.
The Serbian employees--who made up about 15% of the station's 1,350
employees at the time--took over. Since then, the station has been used
as a propaganda organ for Yugoslavia's Serbian-dominated government.
On Thursday, a few hundred ethnic Albanian former employees converged
at the front door and demanded their jobs back.
The Serbs refused, brandishing guns. British troops patrolling this
provincial capital were called in to mediate.
It was a scene that is likely to be repeated in the coming weeks at
dozens of institutions around Kosovo, the war-scarred province of
Yugoslavia's dominant republic, Serbia. Ethnic Albanian workers,
emboldened by the presence of NATO-led peacekeepers and a fledgling
democratic government being created by the U.N., will try to undo
Kosovo's long-standing ethnic apartheid.
In the early 1990s, Kosovo Albanians were expelled by the Serbian-led
government from their jobs at most government agencies, schools,
hospitals and corporations, though they made up an estimated 90% of the
province's prewar population of 2 million.
For those workers, the decade has been tough. They tried running
private shops or businesses, one of their few options to replace
once-steady paychecks.
Qazim Oruqi, 59, who had been the chief editor of the radio station's
music programs for both Serbs and ethnic Albanians, barely managed to
survive while trying to replace the paycheck he lost. His subsequent
ventures--opening a store, playing music in bars, even repairing
shoes--failed.
"It was impossible for Albanians to profit on anything," he said
Thursday.
Putting the system back together equitably won't be easy, particularly
since there is no judicial or arbitration system in place in Kosovo. The
Serbs who have remained in Pristina--and there are many--want to keep
their jobs, and representatives from the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and the United Nations say they are committed to
establishing a multiethnic society.
But tolerance is in short supply. Many ethnic Albanians say it will be
impossible to work with Serbs.
"Here was the nest that supported [Yugoslavian President Slobodan]
Milosevic the most--ordinary journalists, managers, editors," said Selim
Arifi, 59, formerly the chief news editor for Albanian-language radio
programming at Radio and TV of Pristina. "You have to know these were the
journalists who always supported the war against the Albanians."
Freedom of the press was nonexistent. Once taken over by the Serbs,
the station stopped reporting about mass rallies for Kosovo independence
or about ethnic Albanians shot by police or the military, said Nexhmedin
Shehu, 53, a former senior official in the TV division.
If a similar situation existed in the United States, it might take
armies of lawyers to sort through everyone's claims. In the
make-it-up-as-you-go-along rules that now apply in Kosovo, the task has
fallen to peacekeeping forces following the withdrawal of Yugoslav police
and troops from the province as part of the peace accord that ended
NATO's 11-week bombing campaign.
In fact, it will be peacekeepers ordinarily responsible for dealing
with the news media who will be leading negotiations between the Serbs
and three representatives of the station's former employees.
The talks are due to resume today and are likely to take a "long
time--all day and night," said one British soldier trying to disperse the
angry crowd, which scattered about two hours after the incident.
"We are all traumatized," one former worker at the station shouted to
the crowd as he appealed for calm. "The last 10 years we have been under
all kinds of stress because we are frustrated. But this is the day we've
waited for for 10 years."

To Kissie.

If there is one good thing Kfor could do, and Nato and America could do, is stop brandishing the whole Serb population for what their dictatorial leaders did, and start supporting the growing opposition.

---

Angry Yugoslav
Soldiers Keep Up
Protests In Serbia
06:40 a.m. Jun 26, 1999
Eastern

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Angry
Yugoslav Army reservists kept
up protests and roadblocks in
central Serbia Saturday,
demanding unpaid wages and
calling for President Slobodan
Milosevic's resignation.

Hundreds of soldiers, some of
them drunk and armed, had
blocked bridges and roads in
various towns in central Serbia
for four days. Some used
armoured personnel carriers
and heavy trucks to bring
traffic to a halt while in other
areas soldiers just stood
blocking the road.

By mid-morning Saturday
witnesses said reservists in
Kraljevo, about 100 miles
south of Belgrade, were still
blocking a bridge in the center
of town.

Friday dozens of soldiers stood
on top of an armoured
personnel carrier parked in
front of the bridge over the
Ibar river.

The soldiers waved a Serbian
flag, fired a few rounds from a
Kalashnikov rifle and shouted
slogans as they drank beer
and other liquor.

Their protest, like that in other
parts of central Serbia around
Kragujevac, Trstenik and
further north in Velika Plana,
began as a demand for unpaid
wages and daily allowances for
time served in Kosovo during
the 11-week NATO bombing
campaign.

Senior army officials visited the
protesters, persuading some
to remove blockades after
paying them at least part of
their wages. In some areas
around Kragujevac, the
soldiers removed roadblocks
but kept up their protest from
the side of the road.

In Kraljevo at least, where
some soldiers said they had
been paid their missing
salaries, the blockade
continued with growing attacks
on President Slobodan
Milosevic's government.

The soldiers blamed him for
making their families go
hungry while they were away
fighting. Others said they had
no money for electricity but it
didn't really matter since the
power stations had been
bombed and they had no lights
anyway.

All around the town were
freshly painted signs of a fist
with the word ``resistance''
painted above them.

The Beta news agency
reported a protest in
Milosevic's home town of
Pozarevac, with about 50
reservists standing in front of
the municipal assembly Friday
to demand their salaries.

Most of the towns in central
Serbia are run by politicians
who oppose Milosevic.

They will be the site of protest
rallies planned by opposition
parties, due to begin Tuesday
in Cacak near Kraljevo.

The Alliance for Change, an
umbrella opposition group,
plans a series of rallies in
Serbia to demand democratic
change. The group plans to
circulate a petition calling for
Milosevic's resignation.

Who was it that said Kosovar Albanians just live on wellfare and breed like animals??
I still know it Maja did Daniel'llla did. Nazick agreed. Well all i have seen on my workfloor are very educated Albanian people.And you know what the stories even confirm it.
Having a large family for those still too stupid to understand doesn't mean your uneducated.
I came from a large family myself, but we are certainly not unaducated.
Emina

Zoja,

Your post about the protesting
YUGO soldiers in Central Serbia
is exactly what we all predicted,
in the sense that the final phase of
the disintigration of Greater Serbia
will be 'anger turned inward'.

The real CIVIL WAR
is about to start in Serbia.
Serbian civilians are about to
encounter with the real face
of the Army and Police
that they hailed as heroes.

The carnage is not over
and inocents will die.

Real evil still reigns supreme in Serbia.

Zoja,

ref : role of the church

While the returning Army and Police
will send people running to churches,
the church has the infrastructure
to spread the truth,
directly with the people,
who are now themselves victims.

Yes - the Orthodox Church must bring the message
directly to the people.
ONLY the Church is now in the position
to circumvent the MILO'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE.

This is great news.
It is also a logical sequence of event.
"Greater Serbia" will be a schoolbook
case-study in the organic evolution of states and tyrants,
with a special focus on
the powers of state-run media.

Hell, even people in the west have been under
the influence of Serb State TV
(read Nick, Daniela, Alexei, etc).

Too bad Milosovnick will commit suicide
and take from us the satisfaction
of seeing him hang.

m'sieu jack:


wish you werent right, but we knew, didnt we?


damned straight, as was said here recently by some yankee loose cannon.


not that it was an exceptional thing to "know". and we "knew" that too.


one couldnt say "the tragedies are just beginning" as they've been well underway for quite awhile.


but now, brethren, sistren, it's CRESCENDO TIME.


ps to kissie: how old are you? are you only NOW realizing what you said about "who says the BSest BS"?


then stick around...you've got one HELL of an education coming, luv.


(insert heavy sigh)

Pec. Italian zone. KLA has its own "governing" bodies and doesn't give a damn about Italians. Roads (and not only roads) bombed by NATO. Fleeing Serbs, that succeeded, gather in the
monastery. Out of the monastery there's no way. No information about thousands of Serbs from the regional villages. A very old granny, beaten up, told, that her daughter had been raped and killed. A middle-aged man, picked up by Italians and
delivered to the monastery, showed his back with "UCK" carved on it with a knife. "Peacekeepers" refused to guarantee security to those within the monastery.

To: Angry Yugoslav

Agreed. But think, that whatever the leadership was before, the US needed it to justify "actions". And the worse the leadership - the better. The US were not actually interested in the changes. Then and now. The interest was dismantling of the FRY.

Kissie.
Your right about one thing when people demonstrated in Beograd because they did not want Milosevic they should have got help from the start.This is btw not the first time im saying that.

About the uck some people brought it on themselves.If you saw evil you harvest evil.(sorry im not familiar enough with english to use the right phrase), but i quess you know what im getting at.

For the disarment of the uck yes i think its time for that, but again it has to come from both sides.Meaning AlbanianKosovars need to feel safe and Serbian Kosovars.That is the only solution people need to learn to trust eachother.That counts for you as well wherever you are whatever your age is.

And i have one question for you.About the dismanteling of the FRY.
Would you rather see milosevic and his gang going on with their aggressive tactics?

Emina

Kissie.
Your right about one thing when people demonstrated in Beograd because they did not want Milosevic they should have got help from the start.This is btw not the first time im saying that.

About the uck some people brought it on themselves.If you saw evil you harvest evil.(sorry im not familiar enough with english to use the right phrase), but i quess you know what im getting at.

For the disarment of the uck yes i think its time for that, but again it has to come from both sides.Meaning AlbanianKosovars need to feel safe and Serbian Kosovars.That is the only solution people need to learn to trust eachother.That counts for you as well wherever you are whatever your age is.

And i have one question for you.About the dismanteling of the FRY.
Would you rather see milosevic and his gang going on with their aggressive tactics?

Emina