Luchrtbrug Kosovo Nu!

[Hein van Meeteren]

"J.L. Swarte" wrote:
>
> Maar dan ook nu!

Extra argumenten:

Most of the refugees at Blace, a refugee camp at the Macedonian-Serbian
border, are from the provincial capital, Pristina. They are shopkeepers
and secretaries, bar owners, nurses, electricians. Many have neatly cut
hair and wear what were smart suede jackets, even fur coats, says one
report.

"One woman, wearing a fur, was covered in complete filth and was
standing
in a deep puddle of human diarrhea, for there are no toilettes."

Hooper writes: "During the three hours I was there at the sodden meadow,
people were collapsing and being stretchered to a rudimentary medical
center at the rate of one every three or four minutes. There were so
many,
and so few stretchers, that volunteers often carried them in blankets.
One
woman was taken away unconscious in a wheelbarrow...

"The refugees' plight is made more unbearable by abuse, threats and
maltreatment by the riot police. Standing behind the main customs shed,
I
saw an elderly man trying to climb up to the water tankers being kicked
back down the slope. I saw guards repeatedly use their truncheons on
those
at the front of the crowd who were clamoring to escape."

"The riot police call the refugees 'pigs' and 'bits of shit,'" one young
volunteer stretcher bearer tells the GUARDIAN.

The next scourge at Blace is likely to be an epidemic. Already, there
are
reports of meningitis and polio.

Headlines the INDEPENDENT: "DYING, AS THE WEST BICKERS: Refugees from
Kosovo are dying of disease and exhaustion while Western governments
wrangle over plans to fly victims from the war zone."

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the line of people
escaping from Kosovo extends back 18 miles.

"I looked towards the hills that surround this awful scene," writes W F
Deedes, "and there were all the signs of spring. Just above this
squalor,
the hillside was bursting out in new green and some of the trees were
wearing white for Eastertide.

"Then I looked down again at an old woman stumbling past me, crying and
in
the last stages of exhaustion. I thought: what have we got to flatter
ourselves about at this new millennium? Man's inhumanity to man has lost
none of its venom."