by Jelena Tasic | 
|
| |
| How to stay: Igor Saric and Dalibor Vasiljevic |
| 
|
| |
|
|
Orahovac, Belgrade - In the location of the once renowned Serbian Cafe in the Serbian part Orahovac now there is a "mini Serbian city hall" consisting of the UNMIK Local Office, the Office for Social Welfare and the firefighting unit which, because of the number of fires in 1999 and 2000, was the most active in Kosovo and Metohija. A few houses away is the OSCE local office, a satellite office of this organization in Orahovac.
The full name of the UNMIK Office is Sub-Office of the Local Office for the Communities of Velika Hoca and the upper part of Orahovac. It represents an integral part of the Municipality and employs the Serbs working in the municipal administration. With the upcoming Kosovo parliamentary elections UNMIK began to put pressure on these employees to go to work in the Municipality in the lower part of the city. They were given a short time to think it over.
| We never talk to each other about how we are living "Since 1999 to today absolutely nothing has changed. Maybe a few things have been built but life has not changed. They're not killing us physically anymore; now they're doing it psychologically. I was 15 when all this began and now I'm 20. The higher ups need to understand that those of us here have lost relatives, property and, worst of all, a part of life. I lost five years; others lost much more. You know what's strange about us? I'm talking to you about how we are living but we never talk to each other about it. We always talk about something else," says Igor Saric. |
"Even though UNMIK and the Albanians believe that the ghetto only exists in the minds of the Serbs and that the city is otherwise free and that nothing will happen to us down there, they are nevertheless insincere in their wish for us to go there. When the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police entered Orahovac in 1998 after three days of attacks by the KLA, the Albanian population scattered and our officials - this was under the Milosevic regime - went through the streets with loudspeakers calling on Albanian citizens to return to their homes, jobs and properties because nothing would happen to them. The officials barely managed to convince them to return from nearby villages. We have been waiting for a similar gesture on the part of Albanian officials for the past six years. If they wanted Serbs in the lower part of the city, they would openly invite us," emphasizes Dejan Baljosevic.
| Vito di Kotor and the Decani library Free publications for the population of Kosovo and Metohija are also provided by KFOR and OSCE. The newsletter of KFOR's Multinational Brigade South-West in Serbian is called Prozor (Window), and Ditari in Albanian. The Serbian edition frequently carries Albanian articles without any checking of facts presented in them. Thus, issue 56 of Prozor carries an unsigned article regarding the adding of Visoki Decani Monastery to UNESCO's list of world heritage sites that not only uses the Albanian name of the monastery but states that this Serbian holy shrine built in the 14th century as the endowment of King Stefan in Decani was "initiated by monk Vito di Kotor from Montenegro, a Catholic Christian, which is why the Western Catholic artistic tradition has left numerous traces and influences on the building". The same article goes on to note that the monastery library "contains numerous manuscripts from the 12th and 13th century whose importance as sources of medieval Balkan history should not be overestimated". |
He adds that so far the Albanian side has not accepted the idea that everyone, Serbs and Albanians alike, should walk unescorted to the nearest cafe in the lower city after meetings in the municipality. "We then proposed that we get together initially in the Serbian part of the city, where there is freedom of movement for everyone. They didn't want that, either. Everyone is afraid of the extremists. Why did the international community cunningly entrust the issue of Serbian returns to the people who are least interested in seeing it happen? The political reputation of mayors is based on the number of Serbs who move out, not the number who return. No one wants to risk his popularity with his electorate before the parliamentary elections and maybe even his life for our sake," claims Baljosevic.
In Orahovac there are two postal systems, that of Serbia and Kosovo. Both have their offices. The main task of the Kosovo Post Office (PTK) is to charge customers in upper Orahovac for phone use and to collect payment, exclusively in euros. "As far as electricity and water are concerned, although they supply us irregularly, all the Serbs will pay their bills only when we see proof that 80 percent of Albanians are paying their bills," the Orahovac Serbs say categorically.
There is also a primary medical care facility in the Serbian part of the city, which is an integral part of the Orahovac Health Center. It employs a general practitioner and, since not long ago, a dentist. A similar facility exists in neighboring Velika Hoca. In more serious cases patients are transported to the hospital in the Serbian part of Kosovska Mitrovica on days when the convoy is regularly scheduled.
The German non-governmental organization "Students For Life" opened an Internet club in upper Orahovac in order to break through the media and information blockade of isolated Serbian youth. The French NGO ADSI helped with the opening of the children's nursery school Baltazar, which recently began to receive funding from the municipal budget.
The elementary and general secondary schools formerly located in the lower part of town are now housed in the modified building of the former July 4 Culture Hall in the Serbian part of Orahovac. Dositej Obradovic and Vuk Karadzic Elementary Schools, which still exist separately on paper, have been merged into a single school. Secondary school students from Velika Hoca travel to and from school with the school minibus, which was donated in 2001 by the Japanese government.
At the end of the same year the organization World Vision also built a multiethnic elementary school called Buducnost (the future) using the money of the Japanese government at the intersection of Albanian, Roma and Serbian parts of the city. The school is attended by Albanian, Roma and Egyptian children, while Serbian parents will not enroll their children in Buducnost. They believe that security in the city is inadequate, and that "insisting on a multiethnic school is just political marketing to satisfy the ambitions of the international community".
Orahovac buys its goods in several private shops. Saturday is market day in the lower part of the city and Bulgarian, Romanian and omnipresent Chinese traders and their goods gather in the square in front of the church in Orahovac. The number of cafes has been reduced to two: Amor and Blue Lagoon, with service comparable to that in Belgrade.
Local residents obtain newspapers and magazines during visits to northern Mitrovica and Gracanica, or in the OSCE office, which gets Blic and Danas, sometimes with a few days' delay. Danas is not highly regarded because popular belief has it that Natasa Kandic, the director of the Humanitarian Law Fund, owns the paper. In addition to Radio Television Kosovo and Albanian TV stations, Orahovac can also watch Radio Television Serbia's First Channel and BK TV.
In the Serbian part of Orahovac there is a Local Information Center, one of five established by UNMIK throughout Kosovo and Metohija. Stanoje Brkic and Zvezdan Moravcevic publish reports regarding events throughout the Prizren region in the Serbian language biweekly Today and Tomorrow, which is distributed for free to Serbian readers throughout the Province.
"Once a week we get a vehicle from the municipal administration which we can use to go out in the field and distribute our paper. There are few Serbs here and it's difficult to move around and get any sort of news. For security reasons we could not travel to Prizren, Sredacka Zupa and the few Serbian settlements left for a month and a half after March 17," explains Stanoje Brkic.
That normal news coverage for Serbs in this part of Metohija is pure fantasy is also confirmed by Radio Station Fokus where for the past five years, five young radio enthusiasts have been volunteering their services and cooperating with all Serbian radio stations in Kosovo and Metohija and central Serbia, including ANEM. "The procedure for getting an escort is to file a request where we want to go 72 hours in advance followed by an informational interview why we are asking for an escort so there is no possible way we can react immediately to an event," says Igor Saric.
According to Dalibor Vasiljevic, the music editor, Fokus also has problems with Internet service and consequently rebroadcasts Radio Belgrade's daily news in its own news program. "Once a week we have a KFOR magazine, a review of events in the Prizren region. We play all kinds of music. We work from 10 in the morning to midnight but we have problems with electricity blackouts. We don't have enough money to feed a generator," says Vasiljevic, an autoelectrician by trade driven by circumstances in Orahovac to dedicate himself to music.
Igor Saric claims that Fokus is "a part of life in Orahovac" but that he does not see his own future in it any more. "I've graduated from secondary school. I had a strong desire to stay. This radio station is a part of me, this is the place I was born but after March 17 and some other incidents, I don't think there is any point in staying. We have no opportunities here, no jobs. We're all 20 or so years old. It's stupid to ask for money from our parents when they themselves can barely make ends meet," says Igor Saric.
To be continued
Ecumenical News International
Daily News Service / 13 September 2004
Serbia's Orthodox bishops appeal to UN on Kosovo
By Clive Leviev-Sawyer
Sofia, Bulgaria, 13 September (ENI)--Serbia's Orthodox church has appealed to the international community to help the return of people expelled from Kosovo because of the 1999 conflict and to provide urgent assistance for the restoration of churches
destroyed in the fighting.
"The church expects and hopes that the UN and the EU live up to their historical responsibility and undertaken commitments for the renewal and protection of the spiritual and cultural heritage of Kosovo and Metohija, which is undoubtedly of global
significance," the church's bishops said in a message after a three-day meeting last week.
The bishops' message was sent to international bodies including the United Nations, the UN cultural organization UNESCO and the European Union.
Kosovo is officially a province of Serbia and Montenegro, but it has been run by a UN mission and NATO peacekeepers after an air campaign by NATO in 1999 pushed back Serb forces which had been cracking down on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.
But the NATO-led peacekeeping force faced criticism for a slow reaction in March this year when ethnic riots left 19 dead, hundreds of homes burned and ransacked, and more than 4000 Serbs displaced, when the majority Albanian population turned on the Serbian minority.
Serbia's B92 radio station reported on Saturday that Kosovo's ombudsman, Marek Antoni Nowicki, said the situation in the south-eastern part of the province was so drastic it was driving Serbs out of the province into Serbia.
The Orthodox bishops said a plan by the Serbian government forthe decentralisation and self-government by the various communities in the province was "the only realistic prerequisite for the preservation of the multi-ethnicity of Kosovo and protection of human rights".
