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Murder in Colombia
American Indians seek to avenge the murder of one of their leaders by leftist rebels.
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[12/13/99]

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As more and more evidence surfaces that the estimates of Albanian deaths offered during the war were greatly exaggerated, the powers that be desperately attempt to prove that the numbers were large enough -- 10,000 according to the report -- to justify their actions. What the "accounting" fails to account for is Kosovo's grim post-war reality.

According to Jiri Dienstbier, the U.N. special representative on human rights in the former Yugoslavia, "the spring ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians accompanied by murders, torture, looting and burning of houses has been replaced by the fall ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Romas, Bosniaks and other non-Albanians accompanied by the same atrocities."

I was in San Francisco on April 15 when President Clinton told the American Society of Newspaper Editors: "We are in Kosovo because we care about saving lives and we care about the character of the multi-ethnic, post-Cold War world." And just in case we didn't get it, he repeated that our military involvement was guided by "the principle of multi-ethnic, tolerant, inclusive democracy. We have been fighting against the idea that statehood must be based entirely on ethnicity."

But Kosovo is fast becoming a state based entirely on ethnicity. According to the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, 150,000 non-Albanians have fled Kosovo since NATO declared victory -- the result of what the high commissioner called "a disturbing pattern" of killings, beatings and kidnappings promulgated by Albanians. About as far as you can get from "multi-ethnic, tolerant and inclusive."

Of the 40,000 Serbs once living in Pristina, only 400 are left; 40,000 to 50,000 Gypsies have fled; the 300 Croats whose families had lived in the province for 700 years left in October for Dubrovnik; and the president of Pristina's Jewish community fled to Belgrade, condemning the "pogrom against the non-Albanian population."

And not only does the Kosovo Liberation Army remain armed and murderous, it now has political legitimacy. A report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe cites case after case of KLA members spearheading the campaign of terror against non-Albanians.

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