'We Albanians hate terror' (Albanian propaganda)

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  • VMRO
    Senior Member
    • Sep 2008
    • 1462

    'We Albanians hate terror' (Albanian propaganda)

    'We Albanians hate terror'

    The six-month war between ethnic Albanians and Macedonian forces ended in 2001 with the signing of a cohabitation agreement. But the Albanian Liberation Army of Kosovo and Macedonia claims that the rights of ethnic Albanians are being ignored by the Macedonian authorities. In November 2007 Macedonian police launched an armed offensive on the Albanian village of Brodec. They were looking for terrorists. Local man Ziber Ziberi says that of the five villagers killed and 13 arrested, not one was a terrorist


    Albanian man in ruined house An Albanian man sifts through the rubble of his house after the 2001 conflict. Photograph: Yannis Behrakis

    At 6am our village, Brodec, was attacked without warning by Macedonian special police. First they shelled us from the surrounding hills, then they came in with helicopters and armed vehicles. The noise was unbearable. My wife, children, mother and mother-in-law ran to a small space under the stairs to hide.

    They remained hidden there for several hours – the shelling lasted from early morning to 3pm. My son was ill at the time and he should have been taken to a doctor, but it was impossible to move from the shelter.

    There are 300 children in the village; they were supposed to go to school that day, but instead they ran to hide in cellars. The shelling made holes in the walls of our houses, but it was our mosque that took most of the damage. You could literally see through it. The house of my immediate neighbour was burned to the ground by a fire that spread after a grenade hit. The flames were so big we couldn't put them out.

    Fortunately, the winds were not strong that day, otherwise the whole village would have burned. My neighbour has six children – his daughter was supposed to get married this year. Now they are left with nothing. As their neighbours we are the only ones they can turn to for help. Nobody from this village will seek compensation for the damage from the state authorities. We have come to expect nothing from Macedonia.

    In the afternoon the shelling stopped and the police entered the village. The streets were swarming with them – all we could see was uniforms. They entered houses, searching for people and beating some of them up. Five people were killed, one of them butchered with a knife.

    The police behaved like animals. My youngest son, who is four, saw them as they entered our house. Now he wets his bed every night. He is afraid of the dark and of police uniforms. I fear he will suffer from this for the rest of his life.

    The police said that they were looking for criminals. Indeed, there were some criminals – smugglers from Kosovo, who occasionally come to our village from the mountains across the border. They stay for a while and then disappear. But we never support them – we are peasants and we hate terror.

    Who could hate terror more than us, the Albanians? We survived the war in 2001, when our families fled and sought refuge in Kosovo. Men from our village remained and fought for the rights of all Albanians. You must understand, our war was not fought for territory. We don't need land – we only seek our rights.

    In 2001 Macedonia agreed to grant amnesty to Albanian fighters. But now they are retaliating – I believe it's their revenge.

    There are 1,300 people living in Brodec – all of them Albanians. Most have Macedonian citizenship, but some don't, because Macedonia refused to grant citizenship to Albanian nationals after gaining independence from Yugoslavia. My mother only received citizenship recently, after a long struggle with the authorities. She was stateless for 17 years.

    The Macedonian police arrested 13 of our men and boys. My brother among them. Not one of them is a member of a criminal group. Actually, the criminals the police were looking were never caught. The police have taken innocent people to prison, and convicted them of terrorism. Some of them are too young to be terrorists – one of them is even handicapped.

    The police gathered them together in the courtyard of my mother's house and left them lying on the bare ground. It was November, and they were on the ground for several hours, lying in their own blood. There were also dead bodies among them.

    They have been in prison for several months now, and the court process has not yet started. Why do they keep them there? My youngest son keeps looking for his uncle around the village. We told him that he had gone away, but he asks about him every day. With my nephew it's worse. He has stopped going to school, and he doesn't learn anything any more. He ony wants to see his father.

    We try to visit my brother in prison as often as possible. We have to shout through a glass wall to talk to him.

    My mother has not visited the prison yet. She has not seen her son since last November. It would be no use taking her with us beacuse she is ill and has hearing problems; she wouldn't be able to talk to him and she would only cry. She doesn't speak much, but she cries a lot.

    Since the attack 10 more people have fallen ill and died in the village. I'm sure it's because of the terror they went through.

    The police behaved as if they themselves were terrorists – they were wearing masks on their faces. Whom do they fear? Us? We provide for their paychecks. We pay the taxes in this country.

    It was all a farce. Innocent people are now behind bars while the criminals the police were looking for walk free. What good could accession to the European Union and Nato be for Macedonia if there is no justice for us, the Albanians?

    • Ziber Ziberi was talking to Uros Skerl Kramberger.
    Verata vo Mislite, VMRO vo dushata, Makedonia vo Srceto.

    Vnatreshna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizacija.
  • Makedonetz
    Senior Member
    • Apr 2010
    • 1080

    #2
    bla bla bla Shiptar
    Makedoncite se borat
    za svoite pravdini!

    "The one who works for joining of Macedonia to Bulgaria,Greece or Serbia can consider himself as a good Bulgarian, Greek or Serb, but not a good Macedonian"
    - Goce Delchev

    Comment

    • fyrOM
      Banned
      • Feb 2010
      • 2180

      #3
      It would be a great laugh but bad propaganda should never be left by the government. A leaf out of israels attitude to bad propaganda would not go astray. It would not be enough to prosecute the individuals concerned and jail them. A press call specifically including foreign jounalists should be called at every occation to damd their lies. Further in conjunction to anouncements of the accuseds guilt a special mention should be made to the lies their relatives are making. By repatedly doing this the aim should be to show a pattern od deceit so that anytime an Albanian opens his it will be a common assumption in the world that he is lying even if it is only to say there is daylight outside.

      Comment

      • blackcactus
        Member
        • Sep 2008
        • 242

        #4
        Not to say this isn't propaganda

        But if we read this as an event that happened in Albania with Albanian police in a ethnic Macedonian village we would be very angry indeed, and would probably be blind to the fact it might be propaganda, Albanian Macedonians reading this will of course think the worst, as we would if the shoe was on the other foot

        If the villagers honestly viewed the police in this way, then there is a huge problem to address

        What needs to be established are the facts, an investigation should be carried out, not because the police are guilty, but because serious accusations have been made

        An inclusive policy towards all citizens is very important, including the villagers that made those observations (rightly or wrongly), it will send a message that the Macedonian nation is for all it's people, and must be seen to be for all it's people
        Last edited by blackcactus; 06-21-2010, 01:39 AM.
        The one who tells the story rules the World - Hopi proverb

        “Your highness, when I said that you are like a stream of bat's piss, I only meant that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark” - Monty Python

        Comment

        • Frank
          Banned
          • Mar 2010
          • 687

          #5
          We should be lucky there wasn't an aid confoy to be seen, the Macedonian Govt all would be in a Hague Court and the EU would have decided to change the name of our Country behind closed doors.

          Oh and yes the Shiptars would still be as innocent as apple pie
          Last edited by Frank; 06-25-2010, 01:34 PM.

          Comment

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