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| THE REFUGEE JOURNEY | |
 March 31, 1999 
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Refugees continue to pour across the borders. We have three reports from Independent Television News from Tom Bradby, Colin Baker, and Mark Austin.
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| Know nothing of their future. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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WOMAN: (speaking through interpreter) It would have been better to die together with our kids in our home than to suffer like this. TOM BRADBY: Tonight, the Crizin family have nothing, know nothing of their future, and are left to suffer the despair of the dispossessed.
WOMAN: I just wanted to say just if somebody can hear me, just if somebody can help us. Our people -- I don't know what to say. I stay in the basement three days and wait for somebody to kill us. COLIN BAKER: Her two sisters were killed, but she's concerned now for those still alive in Kosovo. WOMAN: If they stayed there one day more, today they are going to die, some of them. COLIN BAKER: Estler Bislamy came on the train with her family. They'd hidden from the Serbs for a week. ESTLER BISLAMY: We were more than 2,000 people in one train with -- without no tickets, like animals in train. We walked for a while. It didn't matter where, because it was away from the past.
ESTLER BISLAMY: To die. What else? To die. COLIN BAKER: Their stories are all identical: Of fear, of shootings, of death, of anarchy targeted against the ethnic Albanians, and once again, stories of trains being used in Europe like cattle trucks, to remove the unwanted. |
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| Changing Milosevic's mind. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARK AUSTIN: Do you think you'll ever go back to your homes? WOMAN: What? MARK AUSTIN: Do you think you will ever go back to your homes? WOMAN: No, no, I'm afraid. No. Never. Never. MARK AUSTIN: In the panic to leave, families have been split up, children lost. MAN: I don't know where is my woman, where is my children, where is my sister and family. MARK AUSTIN: You don't know where they are? MAN: No, don't know. Maybe today come, I don't know.
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TOM
BRADBY: Across the border in neighboring Albania, the sheer volume of
refugees was creating new tensions, which were spilling over into lawlessness.
Some locals were robbing refugees, this man arrested in the square this
morning. The police were wearing balaclavas because they did not want
to be recognized by friends and neighbors as they tried to ensure it
was brought to a halt. Most locals are helping, but they can't cope
with the numbers, and the police began to panic today, shouting at the
refugees to load up so they could be transported South. 
This
child was put on the wrong truck, and almost left without his mother.
Of course, many were crying today, the adults faced with questions no
parent wants to answer, and none here can. What is happening? Why is
it happening? What will become of us? At the border, the people still
came. 
What
becomes more and more striking as each day passes is the sheer scale
of this tragedy. Standing here, thousands and thousands continue to
stream past. And as they come, the Serbs are taking away their documents
and their passports so that they have no proof of their nationality.
Bedri and Savdir had abandoned their tractor and come on foot. Both
their children had chicken pox, and had cried all the way. They were
totally exhausted, but local Albanians bundled them into a car and took
them to hospital. They explained they had had to take the children from
their beds once the Serbs began shelling the village. 
COLIN
BAKER: They are using trains now to cleanse Kosovo, a race of people
being killed and expelled, a dark shade of history repeated, and a cry
uttered six decades ago is now heard again: "Who will help us?"
But not the Macedonians this time. The refugees were kept on the train
at the border. Only a few were allowed off. They had been rounded up
at gun point by the Serbs, made to board the train. They thought they
were going to their deaths. Then they saw the border. But instead of
safety, only despair, as they realized they were being sent back, back
to the hell they thought they'd escaped 12 hours earlier. But the train
did come back this morning. This time, the refugees, 2,000 of them,
were allowed to walk across the frontier, their last week's experiences
horrifying.
COLIN
BAKER: What did you think was going to happen to you when they put you
on the train?
MARK
AUSTIN: In the freezing mountains high above Kosovo, the old and the
weak are struggling to survive. These are the stragglers in the exodus
of fear. Stuck in the snow, a van we found carrying a cargo of human
misery. 
They
are the women and the children from one small village in Kosovo. Their
husbands and fathers are missing. The driver told us they were taken
away by Serb paramilitaries. If it's true, they may never see their
men folk again. This woman, who's walked for 36 hours with her daughter,
said her husband was a fighter in the Kosovo Liberation Army. He'd been
captured with others, and she said they were herded together at Serb
military installations, the targets of NATO bombing. 
They
are uncorroborated stories, like all the stories emerging from Kosovo
at the moment. But almost everyone fleeing from their homeland is saying
the same thing. Heavy overnight snow in the mountains has stemmed the
flow of refugees. Those who made it across say thousands of others are
stranded, cold and hungry. 
But
the vast majority of the ethnic Albanian population are either out or
coming out. These refugees are now safe. They tell us the only people
left in their town are those too weak to leave or those still fighting
the Serbs. Through a campaign of systematic violence and killing or
simply through the threat of it, the Serbs have achieved what they want
to achieve. This tiny republic of Yugoslavia is under intense strain,
but they are keeping the border open for refugees. Some have relatives
here, but most are in desperate need. 
WOMAN:
Please help us. You see my baby asleep. I don't know where to go. Not
just I, but all the people from Kosovo. Please help us. 
MARK
AUSTIN: Going back into Kosovo, these two nuns to look for their fellow
sisters who have been working inside the province. But otherwise, it
is a one-way flow, the other way.