Report from Serbia
People defiant as NATO bombs
Won't surrender Kosovo to criminal U.S. attack
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark of the
International Action Center, accompanied
by journalist Gloria La Riva, arrived in Yugoslavia March
28. They were forced to leave four days later after the
U.S. began hitting the Yugoslav capital with cruise
missiles.
By Gloria La Riva
Belgrade, Yugoslavia
"It is NATO forces that are creating the humanitarian
crisis. It is NATO bombs that are killing our people," said Dr.
Sonja Pavlovic, intensive care physician at the Clinical Center
of Serbia in Belgrade.
The doctor uncovered the body of a 24-year-old woman who had
just died from blast trauma and cardiac arrest. She was in the
town of Leskowitz when it was hit by a U.S. missile.
In the next bed, a 15-year-old boy lay in a coma, seriously
injured from another cruise missile.
The doctors at the hospital are receiving more and more
patients brought in from the most heavily bombed towns in
Kosovo and other parts of Serbia. Hospitals in those areas are
either heavily damaged by bombs or overburdened by
casualties.
Deaths and injuries are reported from various parts of
Serbia.
Dr. Pavlovic said that "On the 24th, the very first day of
bombing, a home with 11 refugees in the village of Kushumliya
was struck directly. This town is in Serbia but not in Kosovo.
They were all killed."
Suffering, anger and resistance
As the bombing of Yugoslavia intensifies, everyone we spoke
with expressed their unity and outrage at the unprovoked
aggression against their homeland. They say they have no choice
but to fight.
The resistance is visible. There are mass rallies in
Belgrade's central square every day.
The rallies began on Saturday, the 27th, with a youth
anti-war concert. The crowd resolved that day to gather every
noon in Republika Square. On the 31st, 10,000 people, mostly
young but of all ages, jammed the square chanting anti-Clinton
slogans. They carried signs: "NATO = fascism, Clinton =
Hitler."
A new slogan could be seen in the crowd: "Sorry, we didn't
know it was invisible." It was a mark of defiance to the
bombing and a humorous reference to the supposedly invulnerable
F-117 stealth bomber shot down by Yugoslav forces.
One 12-year-old girl, Maria, said to me, "It's terrible that
Clinton would attack children. We want this war over, but we're
not afraid."
Belgrade is mobilized for war. Every day and night air raid
sirens go off as radar detects the presence of missiles or
planes.
Virtually all housing in Belgrade built since World War II
has bomb shelters. I spoke to a large number of women with
children at a bomb shelter near our hotel as their children lay
sleeping.
Milja, a member of the Rom people, said, "Many of us in
Kosovo are gypsies, but we feel as Serbs. And we, the people,
are 11 million soldiers here in Serbia."
Arifuvic Anoma said, "We can't eat or drink because of fear.
Five nights we've been sleeping here. My children aren't guilty
of anything. I would like Clinton's daughter to come here and
dare him to drop those bombs."
A 21-year-old woman said, "I'm not afraid. I'm only here
because of my children."
Now it's the Baghdad Café
Anti-American sentiment runs extremely high in all levels of
society. In the five-star Intercontinental Hotel, the New York
Café was just renamed the Baghdad Café.
On our second day in Yugoslavia we traveled one hour north
to Novi Sad. It is the largest city in Vojvodina, an autonomous
province of Serbia. We saw damage to a complex of several
factories. There had been a direct missile hit on the center of
the complex where there's a small traffic police training
school.
As elsewhere in Serbia, the clocks had all stopped at 8:02
p.m. on March 24 when the bombing began. We saw a damaged
kindergarten, the Petlic, whose windows were all blown out.
Glass was strewn over the area where the children took their
naps.
The director of Naftagas in Novi Sad, Srboljub Stankovich,
expressed a sentiment we heard all over Serbia: "Every bomb is
directed not just at the Serb nationality. For every 100 people
in Vojvodina, 44 are not Serb. We are 26 nationalities
here.
"People are very calm. We know truth, law and justice are on
our side."
A missile hit just 30 yards from the Technogas Co., which
produces oxygen tanks. The director told us that many people
would have been killed had it blown up.
One building of Novograp Construction Co., which employs 80
workers, was completely demolished. These workers have been
rebuilding a historic monastery in northern Greece. The manager
said, "Within two days our workers, the village pensioners and
the neighbors came together to clear the rubble and we're
rebuilding as we speak."
A woman engineer, the manager of a heavily damaged
neighboring plant that produces refrigeration, thermal and
water installation equipment, sobbed as she said, "Our workers
are every nationality. We are brothers and sisters. We're Serb,
Hungarian, German, Albanian, and we're all suffering. We're 104
workers and now we have no work. Families are coming to my door
and asking me for food. I plead with you to help stop
this."
Clark honored by scholars
Ramsey Clark's presence in Yugoslavia has been regarded by
the people as a heroic act in defiance of U.S. policy. He's
been on national television every evening and was given an
honorary degree at the University of Belgrade today by hundreds
of scholars, who came from all over the country to honor
him.
He told the Yugoslav people, "You're really defending the
rights and freedoms of all people by defending yourselves. You
were given the choice by NATO: `Accept a foreign military
occupation of your soil and severance of your nation or we'll
bomb you.' So by your stance you are defending freedom and
independence and the right to preserve your different cultures,
your history and honor."
This article is copyright under a Creative
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