UNMIK ON
AIR
WEEKLY
REVIEW
21 June
2003
Hello and welcome to UNMIK on Air’s weekly round-up program with Martin Redi.
In the show today
Kada Hotic: God helps
us that everyone gets healed and can live a normal life, God bless us all; give
us intelligence and humanity, because, when you hurt, it hurts me too.
Remembering Srebrenica…
And Strawberry fields
forever: War widows in Jakova remake their life growing strawberries.
But first.
Clashes in Belgrade as police swooped in on the
apartment of Veselin Sljivancanin, a leading war crimes suspect wanted for his
role in the Vukovar killings in 1991. One of the so-called Vukovar 3,
Sljivancanin is accused of involvement in the deaths of more than 200
Croatians, who were taken from Vukovar hospital and later executed. Indicted by
the Hague tribunal 8 years ago, he had been on the run for the last 2 years
until his capture last week.
The
ten-hour action, which left more than 50 police officers and 30 protestors
wounded, has been criticized in some quarters for taking too long – some
reports even suggest the police was seeking maximum media coverage. The real
question though is why it took so long for security forces to arrest
Sljivancanin.
Serbian
minister of internal affairs Dusan Mihajlovic.
Dusan Mihajlovic:
He was practically in hiding here, in his place of birth. It was very hard to follow the tracks. Like
the members of his family said, he came back home and that was the opportunity
for the police to try once again to bring him to the court that is looking for
him.
The
unrest following Milosevic’s arrest was not unexpected but the violence this
time round was, given the strong security measures taken after the
assassination of premier Zoran Djindjic. More interesting though is the fact
that the arrest came just two days before a US deadline to withhold a
multi-million dollar aid package if Serbia didn’t step up cooperation with the
Hague tribunal. The 110 million dollars is now guaranteed after the State
Department certified that Serbia’s cooperation is sufficient to allow continued
US aid. Not surprisingly, Serbian officials, like Prime minister Zoran Zivkovic
prefer to put on a different spin.
Zoran
Zivkovic:
many believe that only when there is a need because of some important event or
because of certain pressure, or I don’t know what, that somebody is arrested
and sent to Den Haag. Believe me, this time it’s not the case. When all
technical conditions had been achieved for someone indicted by The Hague to be
arrested, he was arrested and that will be the case with all the others that
The Hague is looking for and with everyone that we have to deliver according to
our domestic law.
Prosecutors
at The Hague have welcomed the arrest of Sljivancanin, whose trial is expected
to start this August.
Kada Hotic: I’ll never
understand what happened. I’m not a politician, I’m an ordinary woman, but I’ll
never understand why there are wars, everything can be resolved through
dialogue.
Kada Hotic from Srebrenica, the Bosnian town now synonymous
with the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War.
On July 1995 Kada Hotic lost her son and husband, and
many other close relatives, after General Mladic and his army entered
Srebrenica. In her mid sixties, Kada has rebuilt her life and now lives close
to her daughter and grandchildren in Sarajevo. Returning to Srebrenica is not
an option, but Kada has neither bitterness nor hatred towards the people who
once were neighbors and friends. But
she still can’t understand what evil seed took root in people, making them
worse than furious animals.
Kada Hotic: I often think about the
criminals, Oh my God, how they could do it, those victims were humans also we
are all flesh and blood and if someone ordered them to do it, it must have been
hard to obey it must have been very hard for them. But I pray to God they’ll
face the court, and take their responsibility. I can’t help them neither can I
forgive them. But I’m not cursing anyone. I wouldn’t like their children to
face any evil. God helps us that everyone gets healed and can live a normal
life, God bless us all; give us intelligence and humanity, because, when you
hurt, it hurts me too.
It’s very difficult to face the truth, says Kada, it’s
bitter, painful, but it’s any day preferable to uncertainty.
Kada Hotic: When they identified my husband I
asked them – can you discover the way he was murdered. Did he suffer? And they
told me it was a burst of machine-gun fire. I asked one man hit by a bullet –
does it hurt when the bullet hit you, No, he said, you feel nothing. And that
gave me some relief. But often I think about when my husband was taken out to
be executed what fear did he feel and I know he was thirsty and hungry; I must
know the truth, I can’t live without the truth. And thank God there are those
commissions dealing with this issue.
Kada Hotic: We have to lay the foundation for
the future generation. I’m worry about my three grandchildren, about my
daughter, and my wish is they live in healthy conditions, with healthy people,
no matter what ethnicity they are. All over the world mixed people live
together and that’s so normal and no one should be disturbed by anyone’s
religion. For me, every place of worship is the same and if only our
politicians have had just a bit of Tito’s wisdom. Tito was a great man, you
don’t have to recognize it, but the world recognized him. People can live
together if they find an agreement, no matter who they are and what language
they speak and what God they pray to, all of us are human.
Remembering Srebrenica - Kada Hotic talking to UNMIK ON AIR.
Zyke Balaj: We mainly work in the field
we pick the strawberries, sell them on the market, things like that. This year
we earned well. It is the second year that we are doing this and up to now
we’ve had good profits. There are still unpicked strawberries. That is good.
Zyke Balaj, a mother of
three from the Gjakova region, her husband still listed as missing since the
war.
Korenica, a small
village just outside Gjakova is home to 10 members of the Balaj family. For as
long as they can remember, they were involved in strawberry production, but the
war put an end to that. Zyke has had to
learn, not just to deal with the loss of her husband, but to pick up the pieces
of her life in economic terms as well. The strawberry business had always been
in the hands of her husband, but Zyke has learnt both to run the business and
manage the family. For the past two years, Zyke and three other war widows have
been involved in a strawberry-growing project developed by the Swiss NGO Inter
Cooperation. Nora Gola, is a
Horticulture advisor with Inter Corporation.
Nora Gola: It was felt that they have the
possibility and the need to create earnings from their own work. They have the
land, the water, more than enough working force so it was possible for them.
Possible yes, but not easy for the 4 women and their 14
children, the project has offered a new lease of life. The strawberry fields
their husbands once managed are once again bearing fruit. Life, these women
well know, is for the living, but the pain of lost family members is still
there. Xhevahire Balaj, is Zyke’s sister in law – the two women live together,
work together and bring up their children together.
Xhevahire Balaj: We had a lot of problems from
the war. Four of our people from the house. My husband is missing, my brother
in law too, our father in law and there is another missing brother in law who
was unmarried. After we came back from Albania and survived some quite
difficult times, we had to start living again, try and do something so that our
children would grow to do something.
Already several women from the area have expressed interest
in starting similar ventures. The strawberry fields wont bring back loved ones,
but for those who survived the horrors of the conflict, they offer the chance
to start again.
That does it for this weekly review edition of UNMIK on AIR.
Thanks for listening.