TFF PressInfo

This is the founders’ end-of-the-year statement and a few highlights of our activities this year. It suggests that TFF will promote reconciliation and forgiveness in the year 2000 and beyond. We suggest this theme because it has been singularly missing in the century and the very decade we are now leaving behind. We agree with Desmond Tutu that there can be no future without forgiveness. Hope for change and reconciliation are now the lenses through which the future must be imagined. Why? Because if we let the present global system of violence — against other humans, other cultures and Nature — continue unabated, it is unlikely that there will be anybody around to celebrate New Year 2100. The wonderful thing about forgiveness, reconciliation and hope is that we have to take the initiative ourselves; they cannot be demanded of somebody else. You cannot force another human being to forgive you;...

“Given that democratic countries have free and independent media, President Clinton’s visit to Kosovo on November 23 would be a golden opportunity to take stock of the US-led Western policies to bring peace to the region. Here is a selection of questions with some media advisory. In other words, if I imagine I had been granted an interview as a journalist, this is what I would focus on,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. (1) Mr. President, US warplanes bombed Yugoslavia and the Kosovo province with you as the Commander-in-Chief of US forces. Does it worry you that the whole campaign was justified and conducted on the basis of what has turned out to be grossly mistaken or falsified information about a genocide planned by Belgrade? [During the campaign, President Clinton, Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright are on record with figures of between 10,000 and 100,000 missing and probably killed in...

“The UN and NATO missions in Kosovo violate Security Council Resolution 1244, which clearly guarantees the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). The Security Council has just reaffirmed that Kosovo is a part of FRY. Resolution 1244 also demands the full cooperation of FRY in implementing the mission’s tasks. All this is pure pretence, as any visitor to Kosovo will learn – and mission members will tell you privately. The Report of the Secretary-General (S/1999/987 of September 16) does not even bother to mention whether KFOR/UNMIK cooperates with Belgrade. It seems pretty clear, rather, that the international community has fooled Belgrade and considers it so weak that it does not even have to be polite or give the world the impression that it respects the country’s sovereignty. This coincides with credible press analyses that U.S. decision makers think Kosovo must become independent. The international...

“Do you remember Kim, the 9-year-old Vietnamese girl, running as she was hit by napalm from U.S. warplanes in 1972? That picture haunted John Plummer for 24 years; he had been a helicopter pilot and helped organise the napalm raid. His marriage crashed, he isolated himself and took to drinking; he eventually became a Methodist pastor in Virginia. In 1996, Kim and John met and he says: ‘Kim saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow… She held out her arms to me and embraced me. All I could say was “I’m sorry; I’m sorry” – over and over again. And at the same time she was saying, “It’s all right, I forgive you.” They are now good friends and call each other regularly. This may be a unique story, but how can we talk about restoring peace after wars’ hurt and harm without paying attention to the human aspects of...

“Da li se još sećate Kim, devetogodišnje vijetnamske devojčice koju su 1972. godine pogodili napalmom američki ratni avioni? Ta slika je 24 godine proganjala Džona Plamera; on je pilotirao helikopterom koji je omogućio taj napad napalmom. Njegov brak je propao, on se izolovao od prijatelja i rodbine i propio; posle svega postao je metodistički pastor u Virdžiniji. Kim i Džon su se sreli 1996. godine i on kaže: „Kim je videla moj bol, moju tugu, moje sažaljenje… Ispružila je ruke i zagrlila me. Jedine reči koje sam uspevao da prozborim bile su: ‘Žalim, žao mi je’ – i to sam ponavljao i ponavljao. Ona je tada govorila: ‘U redu je, u redu, opraštam ti.” Njih dvoje su sada dobri prijatelji koji se često čuju i razgovaraju. Možda je ovo jedinstvena priča, no kako uopšte možemo govoriti o obnavljanju mira posle ratom nanesenih ozleda, štete i zla, a da svoju pažnju...

“Those who wrote the Report of the UN Secretary-General on the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) must have had other aims than accurate reporting. The report is biased, embellished, slanted. It omits important aspects which point toward the fact that this mission ignores Security Council Resolution 1244 on which it is based and is a failure in the making on its own criteria,” says TFF director Jan Oberg upon his return from TFF’s 37th mission to the region and his visit to Pristina, Skopje and Belgrade. “The report (S/1999/987 of September 16) covers the period in which at least 150,000 legitimate non-Albanian (Serbs, Roma, etc.) citizens were driven out of the province. Normally this would be called ethnic cleansing. It has happened under the very eyes of 45,000 NATO soldiers, 1,100 UN civilian police and thousands of other internationals, including the OSCE and EU. The report does NOT state that...

“Ubeđen sam da je u načinu na koji je Zapad postupio sa Kosovom na delu bilo nekoliko momenata koji su ostali uglavnom zanemareni pa čak i potisnuti u drugi plan (takvi kao kolektivna psihologija, duboko usađeni kulturni kodovi i preovlađujuće zapadne ekspanzionističko-misionarske vrednosti), pa sam stoga ubeđen da bi nam moglo veoma koristiti da i o njima malo porazgovaramo. Na primer: da li Zapad predvođen Amerikom u suštini samo prikriva sopstvenu latentnu, duboko usađenu autoritarnu ideologiju koja ga tera na dominaciju nad čitavim svetom dok samo naizgled pokušava da postigne globalnu demokratiju, partnerstvo i multikulturalnost? Zar nije i Zapad na svoj poseban način – isto kao i Milošević i Hitler, svako na svoj način – taj koji profitira od teškoća i kriza koje proživljavaju drugi dok se samo pretvara kako im pomaže? Zapanjujuće je koliko su brzo javnost, političko-diplomatski krugovi i mediji uspeli da tu krizu premeste u prošlost kao...

“I believe there were overlooked or suppressed dimensions such as collective psychology, deep cultural codes and domain Western expansionist/missionary values at work in the West’s handling of Kosovo, and I think we do wise to discuss them. For instance, does the US-led West in fact hide a latent, deep-seated authoritarian ideology that seeks world dominance while pretending to create global democracy, partnership and multiculturalism? And does it in its own manner – like Milosevic and Hitler in their different manners – thrive on somebody else’s crisis while pretending to help them?It is fascinating to see how quickly the public, the politico-diplomatic discourse and the media have managed to relegate the crisis, this turning point in contemporary history, to the past. But what has happened in, and to, the West itself during the Balkan wars and during Kosovo in particular deserves a bit of introspection – and perhaps we won’t like...

“Now is the time to begin to reflect on what actually happened this spring in Kosovo and, thus, to the world. I believe that historians will agree that from March 24, 1999 international politics and relations as well as the global system has changed in a deep sense,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. “Many consider NATO’s intervention a moral success, a just war, a victory for democratic values. But I believe we need to look at it from a variety of angles to a) understand it more deeply and b) to work out ideas, concepts and policies so that anything similar will never happen again elsewhere. It is indeed peculiar that this war – conducted from a moral high ground and with the aim to promote the finest ideals of Western culture – has hardly been evaluated in just such terms. I am not a philosopher of ethics, but here...

“Doslo je vreme da se osvrnemo na ono sto se stvarno dogodilo ovog proleca na Kosovu a dogodilo se ne samo Kosovu vec i citavom svetu. Ubedjen sam da ce se istoricari sloziti sa mnom kako su se od 24. marta 1999. na ovamo medjunarodni odnosi i politika a i sam globalni sistem uveliko promenili,” kaze direktor TFF-a, Jan Oberg. “Veliki je broj onih koji intervenciju NATO-a smatraju pobedom moralnosti, pravednim ratom i pobedom demokratskih vrednosti. Ja medjutim verujem da na nju moramo gledati iz nekoliko razlicitih uglova zato da bi (a) mogli da je sto dublje shvatimo i razumemo i zato da bi mogli da na osnovu nje (b) razvijemo niz ideja, gledista i principa koji bi nam pomogli da sprecimo da se nesto slicno ikada vise, bilo gde drugde uopste ponovo dogodi. Zaista zacudjuje da ovaj rat – vodjen s toliko moralne nadmenosti a s navodnim zadatkom da...

Stereotyping and discrimination Ask yourself whether NATO’s bombing and subsequent occupation could have been done against any other nation in today’s Europe. Whether any other country than Yugoslavia and any other people but Serbs is so despised? The plight of the Albanian refugees is in focus, but how well and how extensive did media cover that of the Serbs, Goranis, Montenegrin, Turks and Gypsies in Kosovo? The refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania entered our living rooms – but did the human suffering of people living in and fleeing to bombed-out Yugoslavia? Recent Albanian extremist violence against Serbs is reported with “understanding,” presented as (justifiable) revenge for what Serb police, military and paramilitary units did. But the media which told the story this way never “explained” that Serb ethnic cleansing after NATO started bombing could be “understood” as (justifiable) anger at what THEY saw as the destruction of their entire...

Stereotipi i diskriminacija Zapitajte se da li bi NATO-ovo bombardovanje i okupacija koja mu je sledila uopšte bilo moguće u bilo kojoj drugoj zemlji današnje Evrope. Postoji li ijedna druga zemlja sem Jugoslavije i ijedna nacija osim Srba koja bi bila dovoljno prezrena? U žiži interesovanja medija bile su patnje i stradanja albanskih izbeglica, ali da li su i koliko mediji pokrili patnje srpskih, goranskih, crnogorskih, turskih i romskih izbeglica s Kosova? Izbeglički logori u Makedoniji i Albaniji su se prosto preselili u naše dnevne sobe – no da li se isto dogodilo i sa patnjama ljudi koji su živeli pod bombama ili su od njih bežali širom bombama razvaljene Jugoslavije? O nedavnom nasilju albanskih ekstremista protiv Srba izveštava se s „razumevanjem“, ono se predstavlja kao (opravdana) osveta za sve što su srpska policija, vojska i paravojne jedinice uradile. Međutim, nijednom mediju koji ovu priču priča na ovakav način nije...