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KOSOVA UNDER SERBIAN OCCUPATION
Serbian police have expelled nearly all Albanian physicians, dismissed 7000 students, prohibited the use of Albanian as a language of instruction, closed the University of Prishtina, replaced the Albanian judges with Serbian jurists, and engaged in random beatings, kidnappings, torture, house searches and killing. The Serbian government has shut down Albanian Radio and television operations and used its own media to promote anti-Albanian racism in the region.
Economic strangulation has been a key element of Serbia’s takeover of Kosova. "Compulsory administration" has been imposed on most of Kosova’s more than one hundred economic centers, resulting in the collapse of Kosova’s economy. More than 75,000 Albanian families are unemployed. It is estimated that close to half a million Albanians are suffering from food shortages, and there is a very real danger of widespread starvation. Many analysts believe that the Serbian government is trying to bring the Albanian population to its knees through hunger.
With no real recognition and intervention by the International community to prevent the daily brutality inflicted on innocent civilians, Albanians had no choice but to resort the self-defense of their families, neighbors, property, and communities. The ill-equipped Kosova Liberation Army emerged from this struggle to survive and it has declared itself as a defense force with no terrorist aims. The most recent events in Kosova, from February 28 to March 8, 1998 in the Drenica region, including the villages of Prekaz, Voynich, Llausha, and Likosan clearly demonstrate what has been feared all along; namely that the atrocities that the world witnessed in Bosnia will be repeated in Kosova and will result in completely lopsided conflict in which the unarmed civilian population of Kosova is massacred. A full-scale civil war is certain to involve the larger Albanian population in Macedonia, Montenegro, Southern Serbia, and Albania, and this would make the nightmare of a second genocidal war in Europe in this century a reality.
CONCLUSION
The Albanian American Civic League believes that the west must play an immediate role in stopping the Serbian assault on Albanian villages, which has its aim the "ethnic cleansing" of the Albanians of Kosova. Because of the importance of the Balkans to our national security, President Clinton had already dispatched some six hundred American troops in neighboring Macedonia, as observers, and we have committed a substantial contingent of American soldiers in Bosnia. With the recent, tragic Serbian assault in Kosova, it is now time to take strong measures to prevent further bloodshed.
President Bush on his way out of office and President Clinton on assuming office clearly put Slobodan Milosevic on notice that "a line has been drawn in the sand of Kosova." President Clinton should now make good on this foreign policy declaration by implementing a swift and powerful counterstroke against any further aggressions against the Albanians in Kosova.
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