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 Dogs Were Our Radar - Coping With War

In March 1998, the international community attempted to negotiate a settlement to the Kosovo crisis at the Rambouillet summit in France. The meeting ended without agreement, and Serbia began a large build-up of troops in Kosovo. Two weeks later, NATO started a massive bombing campaign against Serbian targets, in an attempt to force Serbia to comply with the terms negotiated at Rambouillet.

Destruction in Peja.
Sevdie Ahmeti, one of the founders of the Center for Protection of Women and Children, was one who stayed in Prishtina throughout the NATO intervention:

"It would have been incorrect for me, as a human rights worker, to leave Kosovo. But what we experienced can't be described. I've seen things like that in the movies. It was hell."

"We would watch from behind our curtain to see what was going on in the streets. Only old people and women went out. After noon, there was no one in the streets, no one to be seen. Cars without license plates drove around. No one spoke loudly. The dogs barked all day. They were like our radar, a sign that the NATO planes were coming."

"Early one morning masked people broke in our door. Because of the noise, we thought it was a NATO bomb. They shouted, 'Police!' There were three men. One stayed at the door. They had machine guns and knives. The police hit me on the back. It was painful. They were hitting us and demanding hard currency. They broke my brother-in-law's ribs. They tortured him, then my husband, and then me. It was two hours of torture-you can imagine what they did."

Sevdie Ahmeti, in December 1999.

"They then ordered us to leave the country. We sent our children to another place, and I separated from my husband. I dyed my hair and covered my head like a villager. After 10 days of fear, some friends came to help me. They fed me and reunited me with my husband.

"My house was broken into nine times. They took our computer, our VCR, camera, and many valuable things. They also came to the office. They didn't steal equipment, but they took my papers, notebooks, and very valuable material."

"You'll see a difference between the people who left and those who stayed. I'm very happy to see that people are coming back. But even a small noise makes me tremble. Everyone writes about the refugees who left the country, but what about the 700,000 who remained inside? They are forgotten."
Another of those who remained was Marte Prenkpalaj. Marte was working in the region of Has, which was one of the first to be cleared by Serbian forces. Dhe, and others, watched from a hill opposite while the attackers arrived at the village of Krusha e vogel. They saw men being rounded up and killed. The women and children were driven down to the river.

Marte Prenkpalaj.

Marte took a tractor, drove it across the river, and started to pick up the panic-stricken women. When they saw this, others from her village rushed down to join her. They managed to rescue scores of villagers and took them along when they too abandoned their own village.