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| Speaking out: Ethnic Albanian activist Albin Kurti is under house arrest in his home in Kosovo. One charge against him is
'disrespect' of UN institutions. Robert Marquand |
In Kosovo, a critic who just won't quit
House arrest hasn't stopped Albin Kurti from railing against foreign diplomats who are expected Monday to announce their failure to broker an independence deal.
from the December 10, 2007 edition
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Kurti's own rhetoric runs right through Kosovo's psychological fault lines, through the hearts and minds of Albanians.
The possibility of prolonged delays or further concessions on Kosovo's final status – will likely stoke Kurti's popularity and street power.
"Kosovars hope Kurti is wrong, and fear he might be right," as one local journalist says. A senior diplomat in Vienna worries the Vetevendosje! (Self-Determination) movement that Kurti leads could quickly "catch fire" if the US and EU do not show resolve. "It would not be helpful," the diplomat said in an understated tone.
Currently, Kurti is under house arrest and on trial in a UN court for his role in a protest last February that started nonviolently, but resulted in two deaths and 82 injuries when Romanian peacekeepers shot supposedly nonlethal rubber bullets into a crowd of 2,500 people. One charge against him is "disrespect" of UN institutions.
Kosovo experts like Louis Sell, a former US diplomat here, say that putting Kurti under house arrest on flimsy charges is not a good example of the ideas of rule of law and freedom of expression that the international community is trying to push in Kosovo.
"A charge of acts 'disrespectful' to the UN is ludicrous," Mr. Sell says. "It's the kind of charge that puts away an inconvenient opponent, and kills off his support, and it's happening under the guise of a vision to teach people how to be good democrats!
"The UN and Kosovo leaders don't want [Kurti] to criticize a process for not delivering, when it sometimes appears that it might not deliver."
Kurti himself sits restlessly in his apartment, cellphone at ear, on the fourth floor of a Pristina suburb, with a banner hanging outside that reads, "the imprisonment of Albin is a shame of the servile politicians ... a scandalous demagoguery and hypocrisy of [the UN]. Intellectuals, where are your voices? Why the deathly silence?"
In recent weeks Kurti was allowed outside his apartment between the hours of 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. – which he calls "house arrest light." "It means I am as free as Kosovo is independent," he quips.
At home, Kurti, trained as an electrical engineer, outlines his basic ideas: The international community has drifted into a misframing of the Balkan and Kosovo issue. The rectitude that brought NATO bombing and drove the Serbs out of Kosovo has been forgotten. Meanwhile, eight years of limbo for Kosovo has brought UN corruption, an unhealthy dependency on foreign aid, and a diplomacy that has begun to favor Belgrade. Kosovar cries for independence, he says, now just irritate many foreign ministries.
"Kosovo is not the problem, Serbia is the problem. About 250,000 non-Serbs were killed in the Balkans in the 1990s," he says. "There was a genocide in Bosnia and Croatia. NATO intervened in Kosovo finally, but there were never any ground troops, which is the final signal of liberation," he says.
"The international community thought after the war that democracy in Belgrade would bring independence for Kosovo. It didn't.
"Basically, the disintegration of Yugoslavia is still not complete. Kosovo isn't free; even Montenegro is independent. Serbs are achieving politically and by delay what they didn't get in the war. This isn't justice."
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