Racak attacked again

By Julius Strauss in Racak

18 January 1999

Serbian police launched a surprise attack on the ethnic Albanian village of Racak yesterday just as hundreds of Albanian civilians, western monitors, aid workers and journalists were sifting through the gruesome evidence of Kosovo's largest massacre discovered there the previous day.

Albanian women and children were left screaming and begging for help as gun-fire erupted in the village and western monitors in armoured cars deserted their forward positions to the Serbian forces.

The attack was an act of gross defiance, coming after the west condemned the latest massacre in the strongest terms on Saturday. Among the 40 dead was a child and three women. Most of the other corpses showed signs that they had been executed with a single bullet to the head or neck.

On Saturday evening the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, responsible for monitoring the peace in Kosovo, assured villagers and journalists that their teams would stay in Racak to deter the Serbs from attacking the survivors of the massacre. The west voiced its outrage over the latest atrocities. Nato threatened.

A hundred or so villagers, who had ventured back after fleeing Friday's onslaught, slowly gathered the dozens of bodies that littered the backyards and hill-sides in the village. Some had grotesque grimaces on their faces, one was missing his head.

Yesterday morning we visited the mosque where they had been laid out in lines. Relatives trickled through the door and wailed with anguish as they saw their loved ones. For some it was the first time.

One of the bodies was of 12-year-old Halim Beqiri, lying next to his father Rizah and uncle Zenel. They had all been shot by Serbian police as they fled the village. Half a mile up the road, we found the boy's mother Emine.

She said: "We were still in our pyjamas when the Serbs attacked. We grabbed our clothes, carrying them in our arms. Later, as we fled, the Serbs came and began shooting at us."

"We scrambled behind some rocks but then my husband and son fell. Both were next to me, my son only about four feet away. But the bullets were so intense I could not reach out to even touch him. I lay there and watched him die."

For the next six hours Emine cowered where she lay surrounded by her dead relatives. Then when the Serbs finally left, she returned to her home. Yesterday as we interviewed her in the early morning, the neighbours gathered in the house which stands aside a stony, icy track.

Suddenly panic broke out. "The Serbs are coming back," somebody shouted. The children and women began to cry. One little girl, the dead boy's smaller sister became hysterical. I tried to calm her, cuddling her and telling her not to worry, that the OSCE were nearby and would protect them.

The Beqiri women and children begged us to take them out of the village, but there were many of them. I conferred with my colleague but we decided that with the monitors present they would be safer in the house than on the open road. We also worried that the Serb authorities would use the action to accuse the international media of meddling.

Back in the centre of the village the OSCE monitors had grown tense. Chris, an English observer, said that the Serbs had drawn up lines just the other side of the valley. I told him about the family.

One Albanian man said: "The Serbs have told us that they will come back and kill us all." "That's just a rumour they're spreading among themselves," an American monitor said disparagingly. But Chris disagreed: "After yesterday, who knows?" he asked.

Then all hell broke loose. An OSCE man shouted that they had been ordered out of the village immediately. The monitors began to rev the powerful engines of their armoured cars. Sustained automatic fire erupted close by.

The Albanian civilians, many of whom were visiting their dead relatives lying in the mosque, looked up with dismay. The children began to wail and the women cry. "The Serbs are coming, the Serbs are coming." But the monitors were intent on saving themselves first. As one of their Albanian translators ran to warn the civilians, a monitor shouted: "Not a word to them, in the car."

More shooting erupted and one by one OSCE monitors and western journalists, most of whom drove armoured Land Rovers, snaked their way out of the village. The Albanians stared vacantly after them. For the international community, it was an ignomious moment. The women and children of the Beqiri family had been abandoned at the other end of the village to the mercy of the Serbs.

At the next junction, away from the immediate fire, the convoy broke up. Panicked monitors continued shouting, some hysterically. As the shooting increased, the unarmoured press corps followed them to safety along with many of the news agencies.

In Stimlje, two miles away, the cars regrouped. Serb special police were being deployed. The monitors stood on their cars peering through binoculars as the Serbs methodically set up mortars and began firing them at the Racak. Gunfire echoed off the hills.

I purposed to go back to the last junction before the village where two television crew and a handful of photographers had remained. Most of them wore bullet-proof jackets. Their cars were armoured.

Although mine was not, I found two more volunteers for the trip, a German freelance photographer and an American newspaperman. "Is there shooting on the road," I asked the OSCE. "You'll be the first to find out," he quipped.

The trip passed quickly and we only heard one shot nearby. At the junction we waited. The shooting calmed and then began again. This time more fierce and much closer. "The police are moving into the buildings," somebody said. "We're going to get cut off." But nobody was sure. On a nearby hill we saw Serbian police take up their positions next to a white Land Rover.

Then as we waited, at the entrance to the village, we saw a small rag-tag body of people emerge. Slowly and erectly the women and children of the village walked towards us led by one old man. As the gunfire crackled, tears ran down their faces but they did not rush, preferring a proud exit to a crawl through the fields.

In a day that neither the west nor the Serbs can be proud of, it was a rare display of dignity.