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| SERBIAN VOICES | |
 April 13, 1999 
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Many Serbians have complex feelings about the plight of Kosovar Albanian refugees. In the past, Serbs too have been made to flee their homes. Correspondent Elizabeth Brackett reports on how several Serbian refugees living in the United States view the battle over Kosovo.
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Television pictures of suffering Albanian refugees provoke strong and complex feelings from 43-year-old Maria. Four years ago, Maria, who does not want her last name used, was driven from her home in Croatia.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But Maria was not the victim of Serbian aggression.
She is a Serb. Her family had lived for generations in the small town
of Knin in an area of Croatia known as the Krajina. It had been seized
by breakaway Serbs when the Yugoslav Civil |
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MARIA: (speaking through interpreter) It just happened one night. The Croats just started bombing, killing. After that, they started like ethnic cleansing. They went from house to house. They didn't care who was left.
MARIA: (speaking through interpreter) You cannot imagine that you're never going to come back again, the place where you were born. That is the worst for me. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: And there was more tragedy. Maria's husband had been drafted into the Yugoslav Army. Learning that his village had been attacked, he tried to get home.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Maria's son, Dragan, now works at a precision tool-making company outside of Chicago. He and his family were given refugee status and allowed into the United States two years ago. Dragan was not with his family when they fled their village in the Krajina. He, too, had been drafted into the Yugoslav Army. Two days after his father was killed and his family forced out of Knin, he was captured by Croatian forces and spent nine months in a Croatian prison camp. He lost 46 pounds in the camp, and says he still bears the physical and psychological scars.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: He still has nightmares about what he says was his worst experience, burying war victims. DRAGAN: (speaking through interpreter) In a period of eight hours, there was something like 180 women and children killed by the Croats. We had to dig a big pit and then stand in the pit while other prisoners threw the bodies of the women and children around us, and then we had to cover them. |
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Their experiences leave Maria and her son sensitive to the Albanians' plight, but they do not equate it with what they went through. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What do you think when you watch TV and see all the Albanians leaving Kosovo?
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: You don't see it as the same thing that happened to those people is the same thing that happened to your family? What's the difference?
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Even though many of those Albanians have also lived there for centuries. DRAGAN: (speaking through interpreter) Why are they trying to take what's Serbian? Nobody bothered them until they started all this. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Three hundred and fifty thousand Croatian Serbs were forced out or fled their homes in the Krajina, and many remain bitter that the world took little notice of their plight. Croatian Serbs like Dalibor, who only wanted his first name used, see only hypocrisy in NATO's decision to bomb Serbia.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: This was Dalibor's family home in the Krajina. He says it was burned by the Croatian Army. Dalibor, also a Yugoslav Army draftee, got home in time to join his mother, father, and brother just before they fled. DALIBOR: All the journey was difficult. We hadn't -- we didn't have food, we didn't have something to drink.
DALIBOR: I feel compassion for all people who are refugees, no matter they are Albanians, Serbs, Croatians, or Muslims. I feel compassion for them all, but the thing is, what was the cause of their escaping from Kosovo? ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What is the cause? What do you think it is? DALIBOR: NATO. NATO is the cause.
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: All three displaced Croatian Serbs say they have seen these pictures, and they have heard the refugees talk of the killing of young Kosovo Albanian men. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Did you see the pictures? DALIBOR: Yeah. What? ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Do you think they're not -- they're faked or not true?
DALIBOR: Everybody shows on TV that only Albanians got killed. It's expected in a war that everybody had casualties. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What about Albanian civilians? DALIBOR: What about Serbian civilians? ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The owner of the company Dragan works for is a Serbian American from Kosovo. Denny Denic has been in the United States for over 30 years and has built a highly successful business manufacturing precision carbide cutting tools. Ironically, the tools he makes are now being used to build the Stealth fighters, bombers, and F-16's used in the air war over Serbia. DENNY DENIC: Well, I feel terrible, you know, that something that I'm doing that is being used there, but as I said, it's not my choice. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Would you consider not making it anymore, the tools? DENNY DENIC: Well, I can't -- you know, I can't say that, you know. As I said, this is a business decision, not a political, but I feel bad about it. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Denic has always been a strong supporter of US policy until now, and just like the newly arrived Serbs, he will not say ethnic cleansing is taking place in Kosovo. DENNY DENIC: Personally, I don't believe there is any ethnic cleansing. Again, I don't want to believe it. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: You don't want to believe it, but do you believe it? I mean, when you see people coming out and telling these stories of "We were given five minutes to leave, there were Serbian troops, we were forced to leave at gun point--" are they making this up?
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Denic says Slobodan Milosevic was right to reject the Rambouillet Agreement, and will never willingly allow armed peacekeeping troops on his soil. DENNY DENIC: I mean, you're going to lose your sovereignty. This is my house, and I'm going to control in my house. This is my company here, and I control it. You know, we could go back now to Croatian War. Who protected those Serbs there? Did anybody try to resettle those people back? ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Sovereignty, not Milosevic, is also the key for Dalibor. DALIBOR: Milosevic deserves to be killed from Serbs, but Kosovo is another question. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What's that mean? DALIBOR: Kosovo is a -- Kosovo is Serbian matter, a matter of Serbian people, not Milosevic matter. We can't give up Kosovo just like that.
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MARIA:
(speaking through interpreter) It's hard when you see how tough it is
for them. I feel sorry for them because I went through the same thing.
War
erupted in 1991, and was being patrolled by a UN peacekeeping force.
In August 1995, the Croatian Army swept into the Krajina and drove out
tens of thousands of Serb residents. The Serbs called it ethnic cleansing.
Foreign governments issued protests, but took no action to roll back
the Croatian advance or to halt the expulsion of local Serbs.
ELIZABETH
BRACKETT: Terrified, Maria grabbed three of her four children, put them
on the family's tractor, and joined several thousand other Serbs fleeing
from their homes.
MARIA:
(speaking through interpreter) He came to look for us, but when he got
to our town, everything was bombed. He couldn't make it. The Croatian
soldiers surrounded our house and killed him. 
DRAGAN:
(speaking through interpreter) I still have the scars from where they
put handcuffs on me and connected the electricity from the outside phone
lines to them. When they would turn it on, it was so, so much of a shock,
it threw me out of the chair. I was knocked unconscious every time.
MARIA:
(speaking through interpreter) It's hard. It's bad, what's going on
over there, but they have their own country of Albania, and we have
nothing. 
DRAGAN:
(speaking through interpreter) There is a difference. The Serbs lived
in the Krajina from the 4th Century, and all we wanted was our own land,
and we were protecting what we had. We weren't asking for Croatia's
land. The Albanians want Serbian land. Kosovo is Serbia, and they want
that. 
DALIBOR:
Why didn't NATO attack Croatia in 1995 when we were expelled from Croatia?
Same number, same number of -- there was about 350,000 people, Serbs,
who were expelled by Croatian Army in 1995, and nobody mentioned that
at that time. 
ELIZABETH
BRACKETT: What do you think now when you see Albanians fleeing Kosovo?
DENNY
DENIC: Well, it's propaganda, you know. You know, if you're going to
watch Serbian TV, you're going to see the opposite. They'll tell you
they are running away from the bombs.