UNMIK ON AIR

CRIME WATCH

Friday 21 February

Luan Qorraj

Hello and welcome to this week’s radio edition of Crime Watch.

Kosovars, like the people of other Balkan nations, are well known customers on all western-European border crossings. A steady stream of people who were trying to find a better life in the west during the 60’s and the 70’s became a river during the last decade of the past century, when thousands of people were leaving Kosovo in order to escape drafting for the Yugoslav army or in search of economic survival.

Even though it is no more a river, almost four years after the conflict, there are a lot of people who are using various legal and illegal channels to leave Kosovo. Now days they are not running away from military service but, in a Kosovo with over 450 thousand unemployed the future does not seem to bright for many young people. So they decide to try it out in the west where, with some luck, they might get a job and maybe even spare a few hundred Euros to send back to their families in Kosovo.

But there are not too many countries that freely issue visas for Kosovars, and there are numerous problems on a lot of borders crossings that people holding an UNMIK travel document can be facing. So the choice for the ones who are desperate enough to leave is a forged passport. In most cases a Yugoslav blue passport, but passports of western countries are much more sought after, and much more expensive.

An UNMIK border police officer, Achermann Fredy, says that the border police is thoroughly checking all the passports since people who may be trying to leave the country are not always ordinary immigrants but sometimes the same systems are used also by the criminals who are trying to escape:

CUt 1 : Special tasks of border police officers is fighting organized crime, not just illegal immigration and prostitution but, also discovering false passports. The forgers usually cooperate with organized crime - they do not deal only with selling false passports to immigrants, but they sell them to criminals also.

Prishtina airport is the starting point for many Kosovars who wish to get away - and not just Kosovars. Since there is no visa required to enter Kosovo the airport has became a transit point for many people who wish to use it as a gate to the west. Just last year there were over 1 thousand false passports seized and in one instance there was an entire charter-flight full of mid-easterners with forged documents landing in Slatina. Most of them have spent a long time to collect the money needed for a false passport and in some cases they have even sold their property in order to get one: Stavros Patsias from the Prishtina airport border police:

CUT 2 : Most of the people are admitting to us that they paid a lot of money, sometimes two thousand but, in most cases 3 thousand Euros. We have people admitting that their sold their land, their cattle , cows and other possessions in order to purchase these false documents, taking risks, so that they would be able to get abroad

And the end of their stories is never beautiful. Most of them are simply turned back to the countries from which they came from but, sometimes, illegal immigrants get arrested and even prosecuted for possession of false documents. The result of the ordeal is that people in search of a new future lose their money, possessions and sometimes the years that they spend in prisons. But that is of no importance to the forgers. Michael Naseband from the border police:

CUt 3 : The only people who are benefiting from this business are the ones who deal with organized crime and make a lot of money from these documents, from poor people who spend all their money on these kinds of documents. And they can be arrested and sentenced for possessing them.

And Stavros Patsias who has been a border police officer for a long time warns those ones willing to risk everything in order to leave the country that false passports are just not worth it. Even if you do not get caught the first time, there are many, many controls:

CUT 4 : Do not pay any money for falsified documents , you do not stand a chance. Even if you pass a million controls you may get arrested somewhere else, on another plane stop – you will have to go through police controls again and when they realize that the document is falsified, you are paying money for nothing

And with this comment from Stavros Patsias we will close today’s radio edition of Crime watch. If you know anything about people who are dealing with false documents or any other criminal activities call 038 504 604 6666 , again, 038 504 604 6666. And if you have worries about your safety , there is no need, all phone calls can be made anonymously.