A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

The Serbian Offensive

During the late 1990s, young Albanians grew restive and impatient with the campaign of non-violent resistance and began to turn to the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA). The Serbian response was furious and violent. In February 1998, Serbian forces attacked several villages in the region of Drenica, to the west of Prishtina. There, 80 villagers were killed. Thus began a year of growing violence, brutality, and displacement.

The crisis put enormous pressure on the parallel society. Instead of providing basic normal services, its members found themselves having to meet the growing emergency.

Peter Lippman and Teresa Crawford, both from the Advocacy Project, visited Kosovo in the spring of 1998 to work with the non-violent opposition movement. One of the groups they visited was the Center for the Protection of Women and Children in Prishtina. The Center had been founded in 1993 by two prominent doctors, Vjosa Dobruna and Sevdie Ahmeti, to provide medical support. By 1998 it was struggling to cope with the influx of refugees from Drenica. Peter noted in his diary:

"Fifteen women work at the Center, putting in long hours. They receive 50 to 70 visitors a day and hold two workshops a week, on such subjects as contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. Up to 60 people attend each workshop. Many of Prishtina's high school students have come through the Center.

"The Center serves both Albanian and Serbian women. There has been some discomfort on the part of the Albanians when Serbs come to the Center, but this tension has decreased. Vjosa said she considered it a success that Serbian women, who have access to better care than the Albanians, would come into the Center."

The League of Albanian Women also opened a center after the massacres at Drenica, called the Center for the Rehabilitation of Women and Children in March 1998. Zahidi Zeqire, one of the organization's founders, recalled:

"Women began to come to our center to sleep and to get food. During this period we worked non-stop. We cared for around 300 children of the Jashari, Ahmeti, and Sejdiu families from Drenica. They were all here. They slept at relatives' houses and came here for help by day. Some of them eventually went home, and some went abroad. Since March of 1998, over 400 pregnant women have stayed here and given birth. Only one of their children died." 

Zahide Zeqiri.

The founder of the League was a prominent pediatrician and human rights activist named Flora Brovina. Flora was highly visible during and after the Drenica offensive. She worked with displaced villagers, and along with other women activists helped to organize a solidarity march by thousands of women from Prishtina who tried to take food to refugees hiding in the woods. The march was stopped and turned back by the Serbian police.

Flora paid a high price for her heroism. She was seized by the Serbian police during the NATO intervention and taken to Serbia, where she remained in jail for over 18 months. 

All of these initiatives were a response to the repressive Serbian tactics, and in their own way they also strengthened civil society. On May 11, 1998, Aferdita Kelmendi (the radio journalist) and her husband Florin established a new radio station known as Radio 21. The airwaves were controlled by Serbian authorities, so Radio 21 turned to the internet. Using a donated computer, it put out a 15-minute program each day in Albanian and English, using Real Audio software. The program was picked up and rebroadcast on a BBC satellite.

Working under this kind of pressure gave the staff of Radio 21 valuable experience and ensured that the station would emerge as a leader of the media after the war.