Vesna Manojlovic on Sat, 17 Apr 1999 12:03:17 +0200 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
Syndicate: Refugees |
[ daoud was working for connect (http://www.connectbooks.com/ ) in bosnia since after srebrenica; last year he finished the book 'hearts and minds' - posters from war in bosnia; last three months was living with me in amsterdam and last week went to macedonia to work with international medical corpes. i don't know yet to what other list to post this.. becha] Subject: Refugees Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 19:52:33 PDT daoud sarhandi wrote: > I got here Sunday night but it wasn't until Thursday/Friday that the full weight > of this reality hit me. We work in 24-hour shifts in the camps and on the > border. > > So Thursday morning I was on the border and in charge of one shift. There were > 3-4000 refugees up there when I arrived in Jazince, an hour's drive from Skopje. > It's hard to find words to describe the scene - a scene from hell. Babies, > children, pregnant women, the old, disabled, mentally retarded, crippled, > dragging their sad suitcases with whatever they can pack in ten minutes. Some > still in their pajamas, slippers. Many had been living in fear in the mountains > for two weeks, all had witnessed the most hellish atrocities you can imagine, > and then all were forced to sit in no man's land - a strip of mud sodden ground > 500 metres wide between Kosovo and Macedonia under the hateful eyes of the > Macedonian guards - as bad as the Serbs, who feel no pity, no shame, no humanity > - little Nazis one and all. > > And so we did our best. We have brilliant Kosovar doctors. We had 350 > patients in 24 hours. I did my best with the local Red Cross to keep the people > fed and with water and to keep them together. In crowds and panic like that, > and especially when the buses arrive, it's not easy and the Macedonians don't > give a shit if children are seperated from mothers, grandparents from their > relatives. It's insane. It's barbaric. It's unbelievable. The whole scene > would make you feel totally ashamed just to a part of the human race if it were > not for the dignity amid this catastrophic chaos - among these refugees. I > could go on and on and I will write about this if I can - about the smell of > blood and tears and sweat and fear. About the sound of 1000 children crying. > About the Macedonians who actually force these people to go through 'customs' > before they pack them onto buses and a new 'life'. This is ethnic cleansing. > And then just when you've finished with one group of heaving sighing screaming > humanity you see another group - a whole village or part of a town move down the > road and into no-man's land - now covered with the deris of these unwanted peole > - with their debris and excrement. And so you have to begin again. > > So far 800,000 have been ejected in this way. One million to go. If we don't > succeed in stopping it. > > You may have heard that some refugees were mistakenly killed by NATO rockets. > Well it may be true. Some of the survivors were among our group yesterday. But > don't worry too much about that. All those we spoke to were agreed that the Serbs treat > them 10, 100X worse. At least this was just a mistake. The last thing these > people want is for NATO to stop or they know they'll never go home. > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/east/ to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress