(Luan
Qorraj)
LINK: The headlines have been bleak this past month – a
murder or an armed attack almost every two or three days. Unfortunately, like
in the attack in Peja where two young girls were killed, or the killings in
Gorazhdevac, some of the victims were children.
And still the violence goes on.
Although four years have passed since the last Yugoslav
tanks left Kosovo, a huge amount of weapons are reportedly floating around.
Weapons, once brought in to fight the oppressors are now spread throughout
Kosovo – 2 out of 3 households possess and according to the United Nations
Development Program UNDP, the total number of illegal weapons is well over 300,000.
That’s at least 300,000 good reasons to support the campaign to rid Kosovo of
these weapons, according to UNDP.
Edward Rees: there are between 320 thousand
and 460 thousand weapons in Kosovo- illicit small arms. This is a large number
of weapons given the size of the territory and the size of its population.
However, “per capita basis” this number of weapons isn’t necessarily any more
than other European countries, like France or Denmark, the major difference is
that the vast majority of these weapons are not registered and are not
controlled. So the police force or the government has no idea where they are or
for what purpose are they being used.
Kosovo has an estimated two million inhabitants. That is a
lot of weapons in the hands of the population, says Edward Rees. What makes the situation difficult to tackle
is that no one really knows where all the weapons are, and whom they belong to:
Edward Rees: it is a large number of weapons
when you consider the fact that three out of four people also believe that
these weapons are a danger to the safety of their families. It is not the Wild
West, we don’t have people walking down the streets of Prishtina or Viti
carrying weapons but everyone knows that there are a lot of weapons in the
population and it is a source of insecurity.
Besides being a source of
insecurity those weapons have been a source of many, many accidents during the
past four years. Every other day a
newspaper story on a tragedy or an incident,- which occurred simply because a weapons
was available or the person with access to it wasn’t capable of handling it
properly. The consequences are even more tragic when weapons are found by
children. UNMIK police spokesperson
Angela Joseph.
Angela Joseph: We’ve had incidents where
children have accidentally shot themselves. We’ve had incidents where children
accidentally shot their relatives because of weapons lying around in the house,
or even hidden in the house.
The Kosovar public is aware of the problem – around 70
percent, according to a survey carried out by UNDP, identify guns as a clear
and present danger to the security of their families. A fact underlined by UNDP which last month launched a public
awareness campaign to hammer home the message.
In addition, UNMIK and KFOR have pronounced a month-long weapons amnesty
due to take effect on the first of September – this is aimed at collecting as
many small arms as possible. The weapons will then be melted down to make
coins, which will be sold and the money gathered will go into the community
kitty. UNMIK police spokeswoman Angela Joseph stresses that people handing in
their weapons do not have to be afraid of consequences.
Angela Joseph: When a weapon is brought to
the police station, the police will not register the person that is bringing
the weapon to the police station. The weapon will be taken anonymously that is
all. So, no one that brings a weapon to the police station has to fear anything
ore have to give his name. You will not have to do that
But the question in a lot
of people’s minds is why would this amnesty be more successful than the
previous ones. According to UNDP’s Edward Rees, the answer to that is simple,
there are a lot of people who wish to hand in their weapons since a lot of them
have understood that the times of troubles are over:
Edward Rees: This is the third weapons
amnesty and in the previous two weapons amnesties, I understand administered by
UNMIK and KFOR they collected in the vicinity of about 500 weapons each, in
addition to large numbers of ammunition and hand grenades and mines and so on.
Perhaps the difference in this amnesty is that time is slowly passing the
1990’s are seemingly a thing of increasingly distant past.
And hopefully it will
remain the past.
That brings us to an end of this UNMIK ON AIR program,
thanks for listening.