Madam, – Zivko Jaksic refers on March 27th (Nato’s good war in Kosovo) to the “staged” massacre in Racak.
On January 15th, 1999, in the village of Racak in Kosovo, 45 Albanian civilians were executed by Serb forces. That is a fact that was verified by a multitude of independent organisations, including the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre. At The Hague recently, the massacre at Racak was cited as just one of many massacres that were deliberately instigated or covered up by the Serbian authorities and which led to the convictions of five members of the Serbian high command including the deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia and the chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav army.
I am not trying to persuade Mr Jaksic of the truth. I am simply drawing your attention to the questionable practice of providing publicity to those intent on denying proven war crimes. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – As a Kosovar academic I am surprised that a paper of The Irish Times'shigh reputation would publish a letter from Zivko Jaksic which in such a short space makes so many extremely false and offensive statements about life and death in my country.
Mr Jaksic refers ironically to Nato’s “humanitarian” intervention in Kosovo. Since some 12,000 Kosovar civilians were killed by the Serbian military – not to speak of vastly more innocent victims in Bosnia only a few years earlier – the Nato intervention was by any standards genuinely humanitarian in inspiration. It also enabled 900,000 terrorised refugees to return to their homes, a great number of which had been needlessly destroyed.
Mr Jaksic writes of a “staged” massacre in Racak. This description is a poisonous insult to the victims. If there was any staging, it was done by the perpetrators of this mass murder, namely the Serbian armed forces. The international community was only a humiliated witness, as in the notorious Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia.
Mr Jaksic’s statement that Nato’s action in Kosovo was linked to a “steel line facing Russia” and to “the installation of radars and missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic” is groundless speculation.
Furthermore, Mr Jamie Shea was not introduced as Nato spokesman after the tragic Nato bombing of an Albanian refugee column. He was in place and doing his job very effectively from the start of military action.
Mr Jaksic writes of “the coercion of Serbia to join Nato”. So far, there is no country that has become member of Nato by coercion. If, however Serbia wishes to become a member of Nato, much preliminary reform needs to be undertaken. And some of the countries making the appropriate assessment may well be previous victims of Serbian military brutality.
Finally, if Mr Jaksic has any doubts about Kosovar independence I would invite him to try to visit my country without showing his passport. If he can make it, I would be very happy to have a drink with him in Pristina. – Yours, etc,