Confronting Ethnic Cleansing in Tetovo, Macedonia
Michael Seraphinoff
July 21, 2002
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The Issue
The term "ethnic cleansing" first gained
widespread usage in the English language by way of Serbo-Croatian
during the time of the war in Bosnia following the break up of
Yugoslavia in the mid 1990s. It might be defined as a systematic
campaign of terror waged by one ethnic group in a region in order
to drive out another group that makes its home there.
The victims of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans belong
to nearly every ethnic group, as do the perpetrators. Serbs have
ethnically cleansed Bosnian Muslims from villages in eastern Bosnia.
Croats have ethnically cleansed Serbs from the Krajina region
of Croatia. Albanians have ethnically cleansed Gypsies and Serbs
from Kosovo and Macedonians from western Macedonia. Greeks have
for over a hundred years been engaged in a campaign of ethnic
cleansing of Macedonians from northern Greece. And Macedonians
are also responsible for a recent incident of ethnic cleansing,
when a Macedonian mob in the central Macedonian town of Bitola
burned down the shops and homes of Albanians there in retaliation
for the murder of Macedonian soldiers from Bitola by Albanians
in the western Macedonian town of Tetovo.
The fact that members of nearly every ethnic group
have at some time victimized their neighbors has provided outsiders
with an easy rationale for ignoring desperate pleas for help from
individuals and communities under attack. "Those people have
always been killing each other" is a mantra that is often
used to drown out the cries of the victims.
For those who choose the lovely simplicity of this
response, there is little that one can say or do that would stir
them to action on behalf of the victims of ethnic cleansing. It
is responses such as this that allowed a ship filled with thousands
of Jews to be sent back to Germany from a U.S. port of entry during
the height of the Holocaust. This is why 6000 unarmed men in Srebrenica,
Bosnia could be slaughtered by Serbian soldiers while U.S. jet
fighter planes sat idly nearby in 1995.
This is why nearly a million people of Rwanda, men,
women and children, could be slaughtered by their raging neighbors
while the world looked on.
Yet I know that there are those who would, in the
name of justice, bear witness to such crimes against humanity.
To them I offer the following documented accounts of the brutal
campaign of intimidation and murder of Macedonians in western
Macedonia by organized Albanian groups. In the absence of widespread
public knowledge and condemnation of the ethnic-based violence
committed against these people, their suffering will only serve
the aims of their tormentors. It will only serve the forced eviction
of the minority ethnic Macedonian community in western Macedonia
from ancestral homes in thousand-year-old settlements.
Background
The fighting in western Macedonia began as isolated
attacks in the early spring of 2001 by armed and uniform wearing
Albanian insurgents who claimed that their quarrel was with the
government and its forces in Macedonia.
They also claimed that their goal was to achieve
more equal rights for the Albanian minority population of Macedonia.
However, in July of 2001 after achieving a sufficient mobilization
of the local Albanian population, they began the conquest of territory
where the Albanian population formed the majority.
Western journalists have continued to portray this
insurgency as some kind of armed civil rights movement, but the
reality on the ground is quite different. The insurgents have,
in fact, achieved a permanent occupation of territory through
an on-going campaign of ethnic cleansing. It is now clear that
in July of 2001 there was a sudden shift in the focus of their
movement from conflict with police and army units to systematic
terrorization of the civilian ethnic Macedonian minority in the
occupied territories.
Evidence
One of the first documented cases of such terrorization
in occupied western Macedonia occurred on July 8, 2001 in the
village of Neproshteno, about 7 miles north of the city of Tetovo.
Thirty year old Darko Boshkovski was alone, unarmed and in civilian
clothes when he was abducted from his car at a road block near
his home that day. He reported that it was about 6:30 in the evening
when a group of about 150 men in Albanian National Liberation
Army NLA uniforms stopped his car and forced him at gun point
to accompany them first to the nearby village of Poroj, and then
to Drenovec 2, and finally to the village of Gjermo.
There he was locked in a horse stall with two horses.
He was blindfolded and questioned about his father, a retired
policeman who had worked on drug-related crimes, and his possible
family connection to Interior Minister Ljube Boshkovski. Then
his arms were stretched and bound behind him with a rope that
also bent his back to the point where breathing was made difficult.
He was then repeatedly beaten over the course of the evening by
a series of men, some with fists, others with clubs or shovels.
He was also tied to a horse and dragged around the barn and later
force fed horse urine and dung.
About 1:30 in the morning NLA commander Avzi came
and told him that they were releasing him. They then took him
by car to the city of Tetovo and delivered him to his waiting
family, his wife and parents, who had paid a ransom for his release.
He was warned not to reveal what had happened to him under the
threat of further violence.
He was later treated for numerous wounds, including
serious internal injuries, at the local hospital and later at
a sanatorium in Serbia. When his family was finally able to return
to their home in the village months later they discovered that
their house, shop and outbuildings had all been looted and burned.
Darko's automobile, a tractor and all of the goods from their
building supply business had been stolen.
A year later the family remains homeless and destitute.
All that they had slowly built up or acquired over the years was
gone. And visits to the village or nearby town are made all the
more painful by the open presence, after the public amnesty of
the rebels, of those who tortured him and destroyed his family's
home and livelihood in western Macedonia. It wasn't just the Macedonian
authorities and press who were reporting such incidents either.
According to a report issued on July 26 by the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, their mission human rights
specialists found evidence of numerous human rights violations
by the rebel NLA forces. Their report on their meeting with three
young Macedonian men who were being treated for injuries at the
hospital in Tetovo on Friday, July 20, 2001 is typical of what
they found during their investigation.
Although the young men refused to participate in
a formal interview, the Mission report states that they were able
to learn the following: "These persons appeared extremely
fearful of Mission's presence, but ultimately consented to showing
their injuries to the investigator. There were chafing marks on
their wrists that appeared consistent with their hands being bound.
By observing the pattern of the bruises and abrasions, it appeared
they had been beaten whilst their hands were bound behind their
backs. From the appearance of their injuries, it appeared they
had been struck with rifle butts and wooden or metal rods, objects
typically associated with the kinds of deep bruising observed
on the subjects.
[One person stated briefly that a particular pattern
of injuries had been caused by being struck with a wooden broom
handle and a police baton.]
All had been beaten on the soles of their feet as
well as on the back of the legs.
One had reduced kidney function upon admission,
but was improving. These impressions were later confirmed in conversations
with the attending doctor. It was also discovered that the 3 young
men had attended an engagement party and were standing outside
the house of one of them when a car with 3 armed NLA members drove
up and accosted them. They were roughed up, blindfolded, and driven
to a location where the beating was administered."
These two incidents were among the first of what
soon proved to be a series of abductions and beatings of unarmed
individuals or small groups of Macedonian civilians in the western
part of the country. By July 23, the OSCE Mission had received
credible information that at least 25 people had been abducted
at gun point in the Tetovo region. The ethnic cultural basis for
these attacks can be seen in the case of Macedonian Orthodox Christian
priest Perica Bojkovski. He was first threatened by an Albanian
armed group on July 14, 2001. At that time he was pulled out of
his car by an armed group that blocked the road at the village
of Odri. At that time men dressed in the black uniforms and wearing
the insignia of the Albanian NLA beat the priest and told him
not to come back to his parish.
Three weeks later on August 9 Father Bojkovski was
stopped again during a visit to one of the mountain villages that
were his responsibility. At the time he was riding in a car with
Pero Marchevski on the way to the village of Dobroshte. They were
both dragged from the car by armed men wearing NLA uniforms. They
were taken by car to the village of Djepchishte, where they were
put in a barn. There they were questioned about the names of reserve
policemen and the location of army and police units in the villages
they visited. When their interrogators didn't receive the answers
they sought, they began to beat the two men with guns and fists.
They also put a gun barrel in the priest's mouth during the interrogation.
Their captors then drove them to another location
in the village where about fifteen young men in civilian clothes
awaited them in a cellar.
This new group continued the beating, which included
demands that the priest sing Albanian nationalist songs and the
call of the Moslems to worship.
Eventually the priest lost consciousness and was
revived with cold water. When it was discovered that he was coughing
up blood, he and his companion were driven back to the village
of Dobroshte, where they were again beaten and then released at
their car.
Father Bojkovski was later treated at the Military
Hospital in Skopje, where doctors found injuries over the entire
length of the priest's body.
This maltreatment of a cleric who carried no weapons
and traveled openly in his religious dress on his priestly duties
was clearly intended to intimidate the Christian Macedonians in
that parish. It was meant to teach the lesson that no one from
their ethnic religious cultural community was safe there any longer.
Ethnic cleansing in western Macedonia by organized Albanian armed
groups took on a truly mass character on the 23rd of July 2001.
At that time the NLA launched a series of attacks on the mixed
Macedonian-Albanian villages of Tearce and Neproshteno and the
all-Macedonian village of Leshok in direct violation of a cease
fire that their leadership had signed on to the preceding week.
Poorly armed policemen and a few local reservists tried to defend
the villages, but they were overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught
of hundreds of heavily armed NLA fighters.
The NLA soldiers went door to door rousting people
from their homes, from the smallest child to the oldest grandmother.
Several thousand people were driven out with little or no time
to gather any possessions and with little hope that there would
be anything to return to later. Long lines of people, many hundreds,
were forced to make their way on foot to the nearby Macedonian
hamlets of Ratae and Zhilche.
Some did resist. Men who had invested years of their
lives in the creation of a home, and those who could not bring
themselves to abandon homesteads and communities with over a thousand
years of family history in them. Some defended their homes with
guns. Many resisted the invaders until it was clear that they
could not win, and then they retreated along with their families.
Others resisted until they were wounded or killed
by the NLA. About a dozen men of Leshok and Neproshteno were wounded
that day and one, Gjoko Lazarevski, died from his wounds. He was
30 years old. He had just completed construction of a new home,
and he was soon to be married.
The NLA aggression and ethnic cleansing of Leshok,
Gjoko Lazarevski's home village, was among the most indefensible
acts of the recent conflict.
The aggression took place in direct violation of
a cease-fire agreement signed by the NLA with NATO mediation.
It involved the occupation of a village that had never had a single
Albanian inhabitant in its several thousand year history. It resulted
in the criminal looting and destruction of the lifelong personal
possessions and property of all of the residents.
The NLA would later, completely outside the military
conflict, set explosive charges under the foundation of a Macedonian
and world cultural monument in Leshok, a beautiful Orthodox church,
first built in the 14th century and expanded into a grand cathedral
in the 20th century, reducing the Church of St. Atanasij to a
pile of rubble. And one young man who tried to resist this ethnic
cleansing was made the ultimate example of what resistance would
bring, when he paid with his life.
The campaign of ethnic cleansing that day also included
one of the worst crimes of terror imaginable, the abduction that
ends in disappearance of individuals from a community. On July
23, 2001 NLA gunmen abducted 52 year old Cvetko Mihajlovski from
a wheat field near his home in the village of Neproshteno. At
the same time they took his 37 year old son Vasko, whose wedding
had taken place the night before, and an elderly neighbor, 69
year old Krsto Gogovski, from their homes in the same village.
They were led at gunpoint in some unknown direction and have never
been reliably heard from since.
That same day 62 year old Dimo Dimoski, who was
visiting his wheat field in the neighboring settlement of Djepchishte,
was also taken by NLA gunmen.
And the next day 60 year old Sime Jakimovski was
literally taken off the street of a suburb of Tetovo called Drenovec
1. The day after that, July 26, 2001, in that same northern suburb
of Tetovo, where some of the most heated fighting between NLA
and government troops would occur, 47 year old Gjoko Sinadinovski
and 28 year old Bobi Jeftimovski were taken. Elsewhere on that
same day the NLA apparently also took 48 year old Ilko Trajchevski
and his 25 year old son Vasko Trajchevski. Two weeks later, also
in the vicinity of Drenovec, two brothers, 59 year old Slavko
and 42 year old Boshko Dimitrievski were taken by the NLA.
The families and friends of these 12 men have endured
over a year of agony-filled uncertainty concerning the fate of
their loved ones. NLA commanders claim no knowledge of these men.
Swedish Ambassador to Macedonia Lars Wahlund recently headed an
international commission to determine the facts of some 20 cases
of unsolved abductions during the time of the conflict last year.
His commission concluded that NLA commanders probably know the
fate of the Macedonians abducted, and Macedonian officials may
know the fate of several missing Albanians and a Bulgarian, but
no one will reveal what they know.
Angelina Mihajlovska has waited for over a year
for news of her husband Vasko. The day after their wedding she
and her husband and most of the guests at their wedding were kidnapped
by the NLA. She and some others were released after three days.
But there is a rumor that she received her husband's ear and a
hand later from local NLA commander Leka. This was said to be
in retaliation for Vasko having pulled a gun on Leka when he and
his men appeared at their wedding. The commission concluded that
it was likely that Leka in particular does know the fate of 8
of the Macedonian men seized in his district of operations in
July of 2001. Several bodies exhumed from a site near Neproshteno,
according to the commission report may yet prove to be some of
the missing. But people like Angelina Mihajlovska have no choice
but to continue a campaign of public protest before the public,
the government and the international community in Macedonia until
the fate of their loved ones is resolved.
And today they must occasionally pass amnestied
NLA leaders such as commander Leka on the streets, men who probably
know of their missing men even if they are not directly responsible
for their fate.
During the six month's of the open conflict 15 civilians
from the Tetovo region are known to have been killed and many
others injured. The dead included Naca and Petar Petrovski, a
mother and son whose car hit a land mine set by Albanian rebels
on the road between Leshok and Zhilche in mid July of 2001. It
also included the particularly gruesome murder of two night custodians
at the Hotel Brioni in the village of Chelopek. One night late
in August Albanian gunmen appeared at this Macedonian-owned business.
They took the two hotel employees present at the time prisoner,
named Svetislav Trpkovski and Bogoslav Ilievski. They then mined
the premises with explosive charges and blew up the hotel, at
the same time killing the two workmen, who they had tied up and
left inside the building to die.
Other grisly crimes committed against Macedonian
civilians by armed Albanian groups during this period included
the abduction and torture on August 8, 2001 of four construction
workers from a site on the Tetovo-Skopje highway.
These four men, who were later released, reported
to authorities that in addition to beatings, they were subjected
to sexual abuse by their Albanian captors, and in a final act
of barbarism before letting them go, they carved the initials
of the rebel group into the living flesh of the backs of their
captives with knives.
Abductions, robberies and brutal beatings of unarmed
civilians in the Tetovo region have continued since the open conflict
ended in the fall of 2001.
On the 3rd of November 2001, for example, 32 year
old Cane Trpevski was returning to his home in the village of
Ratae from Tetovo, where he had gone to pick up his monthly wages,
when he was captured by an armed Albanian group. They robbed him
and then held him for two days. During that time they beat him
over the entire length of his body, while keeping his hands tied
and with a feed sack placed over his head. He reported that the
worst part of his ordeal had been the fact that during that entire
time they had refused to give him a single drop of water to drink.
Reserve policeman Dushko Simoski received similar
treatment as recently as April 14, 2002, when he was taken prisoner
by an armed Albanian group in the village of Shemshevo. They also
held him bound and blindfolded in a livestock stall, while brutally
beating him for over two days, before he was finally released.
Of course, active policemen and soldiers of the Macedonian army
have suffered their share as well at the hands of Albanian armed
groups, but at least their suffering came in the course of their
sworn service, for which they are honored today for their sacrifices.
The continued campaign of terror, death and destruction
includes the looting and burning of over thirty churches in the
Tetovo region since hostilities began last spring and many hundreds
of houses. As recently as this past month the looting and destruction
of Macedonian homes continued in outlying villages such as Otunje
or Varvara, and even certain Tetovo neighborhoods continue to
lose residents who find life unbearable there.
It also includes the destruction of many Macedonian-owned
businesses, thus denying the people their livelihoods. These have
included destruction of a textile factory and bakery in the village
of Tearce, small shops, restaurants and gas stations in Tetovo,
and the infamous destruction of the Brioni Hotel in the village
of Chelopek. Of course, many thousands of people were denied their
livelihood simply because they did not dare to go to work this
past year. Farmers couldn't reach their fields and other workers
couldn't drive the roads to various workplaces. And the Popova
Shapka major ski center on the picturesque mountain above Tetovo
had no tourist season this past year.
Conclusions
While the practice of ethnic cleansing is universally
condemned as a crime against an entire people, it is rarely ever
stopped or reversed once it begins somewhere. The fear and hatred
that it creates only serves to accelerate the further division
of the ethnic communities. It takes some enormous effort of public
will and the expenditure of considerable resources by a society
or state or the international community to halt the process.
Therefore, it is particularly important at this
time that Macedonians, inside and outside the country, consider
carefully whether they are willing to support their countrymen
trapped today in the tragedy of the on-going ethnic cleansing
of the Tetovo region. Real security must be reestablished there.
Schools, churches, businesses and homes must be rebuilt. Hope
for a peaceful and prosperous future there must be restored.
However, this will only be possible with money and
support from outside.
The Macedonians of Tetovo cannot do it by themselves.
And so far they have mainly received only "lip service"
from concerned government agencies, including the international
community. Far too little help has actually reached them. As a
result, Macedonians continue to offer their property for sale
in predominantly Albanian areas, with the aim to leave Tetovo
and their unhappy memories of recent life there forever behind
them.
This is something that should concern all Macedonians.
All who take some pride in the language, the history, the culture,
the land and the people, should consider what kind of a Macedonian
homeland will remain if the historically Macedonian, resource
rich Tetovo region loses its entire Macedonian population and
is finally traded off in a "land for peace" arrangement
not unlike the one that Israelis and Palestinians are slowly being
drawn into. Only a long-term effort by the entire Macedonian community
can possibly avert such a disaster from happening. There certainly
are things that each of us can do individually, and things that
we can do collectively. Victor Bivell has suggested one of the
most important of these in his recent article, "Restoring
Peace and Prosperity to Macedonia - The Rule of Numbers",
where he urges serious consideration of how to facilitate the
return of Macedonian emigrees and their off-spring to their homeland.
But this must include some serious consideration of how to facilitate
return to places such as Tetovo, where Macedonians today understandably
look only for ways to escape.
Michael Seraphinoff July 21, 2002
Ph.D. Slavic Languages and Macedonian Studies, University
of Washington, USA Author of the book, The 19th Century Macedonian
Awakening, University Press of America, 1996. Examiner Responsible
for Macedonian for the International Baccalaureate Organization,
Cardiff, Wales, UK
Sources for this article:
OSCE Human Rights Report, July 26, 2001 web posted:
realitymacedonia.org.mk
Dnevnik, "Pogreban Gjoko Lazarevski - branitel
na Lesok" 7/31/01 dnevnik.com.mk
Nova Makedonija, "Teroristite me kidnapiraa,
me tepaa i me teraa da pejam kako odja!" 17 Avgust 2001
Macedonian Information Agency, "Terrorists
demolished more than 30 churches and monasteries" web posted
October 16, 2001 realitymacedonia.org.mk
Dnevnik, "They were beating me for two days,
without even giving me some water" web posted: November 8,
2001, realitymacedonia.org.mk
Dnevnik, "Dene sozivot, noke - bez zivot!"
12/02/01 dnevnik.com.mk
Sitel TV, "All the Civilian Casualties"
Saroska, Marina (transl. Ilievska, Aleksandra) web posted: December
11, 2001 realitymacedonia.org.mk
Dnevnik, "Opustoseno seloto Varvara - Tetovsko"
3/13/02 dnevnik.com.mk
Vest, "Potresna ispoved na zitel od tetovskoto
selo Neprosteno" 4/6/02 vest.com.mk
Dnevnik, "Nasilstvata na albancite prodolzuvaat",
Nikolovski, Dejan. 4/25/02
Australian Macedonian Weekly, "Restoring Peace
and Prosperity to Macedonia - The Rule of Numbers", Bivell,
Victor. July 2, 2002
A1 Vesti, "ONA i MVR ja znaat vistinata za
kidnapiranite" 7/8/02 a1.com.mk
