Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network --------------------------------------------------------------------- ## author : tkeenan@BINGHAMTON.EDU ## date : 09.05.99 --------------------------------------------------------------------- [This article has been excerpted.] CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS: NEWS ON LINE; For First Time in War, E-Mail Plays a Vital Role By NEIL MacFARQUHAR 29.3.99 (New York Times): The E-mail messages from Yugoslavia spill forth by the thousands, each freighted with a miniature etching of life under the bombs. "It's as big as a house -- the peasants had gone into the hole and were looking around," a woman wrote from near the town of Sabac, in southern Serbia, describing a bomb crater to Dr. Krinka Petrov, a literature professor at the University of Pittsburgh. "Someone said it was made by a bomb launched from one of those invisible airplanes because it was so big. The man whose cornfield this was said he was going to charge tickets for those who wanted to see the hole." This is the first instance of warfare where a small but significant slice of the population has Internet access. The Yugoslavs, a technically savvy group for decades, have used the Web to create an entire news network consisting of E-mail exchanges, chat rooms and bulletin boards -- where no rumor is too small to dissect at length and almost no hamlet too remote to mention. Members of the diaspora community, not sated by 24-hour cable television news, catch themselves hunched over their computer screens for five, six, seven hours a day, trolling for reports from home. "Sometimes if I log on in the middle of the night, the people over there are giving me a play-by-play thing," said Momir Milinovich, a 27-year-old law student at the University of Illinois at Urbana. "They type things like 'The bombs are flying right over our heads.' " Those living through the bombing in Serbia often find E-mail better than uneven international telephone lines as a means to reassure loved ones that they are O.K. It is also a way for them to get around their state-controlled news media if they do not have access to satellite television. ..the Internet's power to reassure equals its ability to spread unease. Many Web correspondents who had been communicating with ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo find...their previous E-mail correspondents have fallen ominously silent. "The feeling is...we are participating in this war in a strange way because of the Internet," said Aleksander Slavkovic, 32, a computer engineer in Pittsburgh. "You feel like you have access to the information firsthand." Serbian chat room participants said...before the bombing began, maybe 250 people would be logged on at once. Now as many as 1,500 people clog the chat rooms simultaneously. Each usually jumps right in with an urgent appeal for news from his or her hometown. Someone named Clo recently signed onto one of the chat rooms by asking "Is there anyone from Kraljevo? Have they hit the airport? Please tell me, my house is VERY close by." Mr. Milinovich was frantic when he logged on last week. He had tried calling his grandfather's house in the tiny Montenegran coastal village of Morinj unsuccessfully for days. A cousin in New York had heard...the town barracks was hit in the first NATO air strikes. When the law student posted a question in the chat room at Montecafe.com, he got an instant answer. Dragan, a 20-year-old college student, was tapping away in Risan, a town just four miles down the road from Mr. Milinovich's family. (Most of the people interviewed for this article insisted ..at most the first names of their correspondents be used, in case the Yugoslav Government cracks down on them.) Dragan told him...the nearest bombing was across the bay and no civilian targets had been struck. He talked to Mr. Milinovich's family and got back on line to assure him... they were fine and had shelter if the bombing got close. The Web often serves as a greater source of innuendo and political screed than hard facts. ...the attacks on President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia have almost entirely evaporated as Serbs feel obligated to back their Government during a war. But nothing spreads rumors faster than having thousands of people chattering around the globe. Despite the uneven quality of the information, those on line say the Web tends to have more detailed reports of what towns were hit and suffered civilian casualties. Predrag Tosic, a 29-year-old graduate student in computer science at the University of Illinois, left his computer behind during a weekend trip to Milwaukee. "I felt bad because in the hotel room I had to rely on CNN for several days," he said. Inside Yugoslavia, CNN and other international all-news television stations are available via satellite, but the Government has shut down B92, the main independent radio station broadcasting from Belgrade. Real Networks, a Seattle-based company that specializes in distributing broadcasts over the Web has since put it on line. Mark Hall, a general manager for the company, said the site gets about 30,000 to 40,000 hits daily. ..information coming from the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo has dropped precipitously. Illyria, an Albanian-American newspaper based in the Bronx, used to receive 250 E-mails a day from various residents of Kosovo or from the bulletin boards to which it subscribed. On Thursday, with widespread reports...the Serbians were carrying out reprisal attacks in Kosovo, the newspaper got just two E-mail messages. "It is very frustrating to not know if your family is alive or not," said Isuf Hajrizi, the editor. For those sitting under the NATO bombs in Serbia, the Internet is a welcome distraction. It is reassuring to be able to communicate with the outside world, wrote Deana Srajber, a 29-year-old Web designer, in response to an E-mail query from a newspaper reporter. "With the Internet we have the means of telling the world about how we feel about all this," she wrote. "The frustrating part is that the world seems not to care how we feel." ------------------------------------ [This article has been excerpted.] 'Subject: We Are All In Danger'; In E-mail From Kosovo, A Terrifying Message Jennifer Frey, Washington Post Staff Writer 29.3.99 (Washington Post): The doctor sat at his desk last Thursday evening expecting nothing more than the usual e-mail missives from friends and a few colleagues. He was in the study of his New York apartment when he saw an unfamiliar e-mail address, followed by a subject line that gave him an immediate chill. "Subject:" it read, "We are all in big danger." What followed was a message from a fellow physician in Gjakova, Kosovo -- a plea, really -- that left the New York doctor feeling both helpless and scared. "There are many executions going on," the e-mail began. "I didn't manage to make my family flee, so I am very concerned about their sefety [sic]. You remember the Doctor [name withheld], he was executed last night. All, old part of Gjakova burned down. Several families are executed. Same was done in Prishtina, Vushtri, etc. Bajram Kelmendi with his two sons is executed. Sent [sic] this information wherever you can." Fearful of Serbian reprisals against his colleague, whom he identified as an ethnic Albanian, and to protect others in Kosovo with whom he has done relief work, the New York doctor asked...he and the sender of the e-mail not be named. Other Americans who have been in touch with friends and colleagues in Kosovo provided The Post with copies of their e-mail and details of their telephone conversations, and made similar requests about identification. "It came out of the blue," said the doctor, who has spent significant time in Kosovo over the past nine years but had not been back in six months. "I wasn't sure I even knew the guy at first. His name didn't strike me as somebody I knew. But it was sent to me. "I was shocked when I read it. I wasn't sure what to do." What the man did was follow his colleague's directions, forwarding the message to every doctor and human rights worker for whom he had an address. "I sent it to an epidemiologist I know who knows Kosovo, I sent it to a friend in Israel who knows Kosovo. I went to my address book and anybody who is a doctor or concerned with medicine, I sent it to them," he said. "I wasn't sure what I thought they should do with it, other than be as shocked as I am. ...the man said inform everybody, and I did." Limited as they are, these communications provide another glimpse inside Kosovo at a time when firsthand information is scarce. With most Western journalists expelled from Kosovo and television pictures limited to those provided by Serbian state television, the rest of the world is dependent on information gleaned from refugees streaming into nearby countries, and on other means -- such as e-mail and phone calls -- to understand the current situation in Kosovo. Jennifer Leaning, a Harvard University doctor, understands the concern of her New York colleague. A member of Physicians for Human Rights, she participated in a four-month investigation of the abuses suffered by ethnic Albanian doctors and returned from her most recent visit to Kosovo...March 19. "He is at high risk," she said of the sender of the e-mail, which was forwarded to her, "because our reports from inside Kosovo indicate...the people being targeted are prominent lawyers, prominent doctors, prominent politicians, people who have worked with the human rights organizations." Another e-mail provided to The Post was written Thursday by an ethnic Albanian woman who has been involved in human rights work in Pristina. The message was addressed to a woman in Massachusetts, who also spoke to the sender by phone. The sender and several colleagues were turned away at the Macedonian border one day before the message was e-mailed. "They looked like flames and falling stars," the e-mail read, describing the bombs that had fallen on Pristina. " . . . [T]hose watching from the windows felt the rush of the wind blow on their nose and chest." The Pristina woman, who had been in contact with friends in Gjakova, also wrote of reports of violence in that town. "They heard the screams around some houses," the e-mail read. "Serb paramilitaries entered the home of [a doctor], famous, respected and . . . killed him. Then they entered the two homes of family [name withheld] and killed three people. As feared retaliation, it happened. Many arrests have happened. No one knows to what direction arrested people were sent." One ethnic Albanian man has been trapped since the start of the bombing at an apartment in Pristina. Huddled with nine other family members -- including his wife, three children and several in-laws -- the man does his best to keep track of what is happening by watching the British Broadcasting Corp. and SkyNews through his satellite dish. He has made only one trip outside, to secure medical attention for his 5-month-old son, who was suffering from a hernia...the family feared might require surgery. "He is not going outside," said one American friend, who has spoken to the man via telephone every morning since the bombing began. "He made that one trip at great risk, because he was scared for his son. He is afraid. I ask him every day, 'Can I call you tomorrow?' and he says yes. I think he and his family want us to call. It's a way to have some sort of contact." Another friend, who spoke to the man yesterday morning, reported..."he did not want to talk long. I asked him if they were thinking about sending the kids and the women to Macedonia, but I don't think they want to be separated. It's a very hard decision to make. "He is aware...the police are entering nearby buildings and selectively taking people out," she said, describing his situation as similar to that of "a hostage." In Maine, Alice Mead also makes a daily phone call to Pristina, in search of news from the family of the 17-year-old Albanian girl, Yllka, who is living in her home. For the first few days after the bombing began, Mead was able to get through -- and learn...her friends were safe so far, although the neighborhood bakery they had been depending on for bread was out of flour and cooking oil. As of Saturday, though, the phone only rings and rings and rings with no answer. "I do not know what it means -- if the phone is not working or what," Yllka said yesterday afternoon after she made several more unsuccessful attempts to reach her family. "I'm really afraid." As for the New York doctor who received the e-mail Thursday evening, he has not heard from his Albanian colleague since. He does not know if the man is alive, if he has managed to escape or if he is trapped somewhere inside Gjakova. He only knows...he cannot sit in New York and do nothing. He had a trip to Kosovo planned for the day before the NATO bombing began, and canceled it. Now, he is preparing to leave tonight and make his way to the Balkans, as close to the border of Kosovo as possible, to "set up a clinic to cater to the refugees. "I'm preparing right now to go back," he said. "I know it sounds crazy. But we left a lot of doctors there, and they are in trouble. They didn't want to leave, and now they know how bad it is, and they don't know how to leave. They're afraid to leave. The whole thing is overwhelming. I have to do what I can." ----- Internet Web sites pertaining to the Kosovo conflict: Kosovo Home Page: http://www.kosova.com Kosovo Information Center: http://www-hri.org/news/balkans/kosova Kosovo Liberation Peace Movement: http://www.klpm.org Serbian sites: Serbia Network: http://www.srpska-mreza.com Serbian Unity Congress: http://www.suc.org Serbia Ministry of Information: http://www.serbia-info.com U.S. Military: Department of Defense "Operation Allied Force" page: http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/kosovo Air Force "Operation Allied Force" page: http://www.af.mil/current/kosovo Other: Federation of American Scientists (has links to other pages): http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/cobalt- flash.htm Radio21 (www.radio21.net/english/headlines.htm), an Albanian operation, and Radio B92 Open Yugoslavia (b92eng.opennet.org), which broadcasts in Serbian, are literally reporting from the trenches. Both offer audio updates of breaking news. An excellent starting point for Kosovo coverage is Yahoo (headlines.yahoo.com/FullCoverage/World/Kosovo). The Internet portal has assembled an impressive list of news sources covering the Balkan intervention. Among the most useful sites: -- BBC News (news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/specialreport/1998/kosovo). In several languages, the venerable London news service offers the most comprehensive online coverage anywhere. Plenty of live video and audio clips; stunning photos; well-researched news stories and analysis; maps and interactive chat forums. -- CNN (cnn.com/SPECIALS/ 1998/10/kosovo). Closer to home, CNN is the front-runner among the major networks in its use of online content. Its site is jammed with video clips; an easy-to-understand time line of Serbian history dating back to 1389; detailed profiles of the major figures in the skirmish, including Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and message boards. On Wednesday, CNN's Web site was viewed 31 million times; only last fall's Starr Report, with 34 million "hits," was more popular. -- Central Europe Online (www.centraleurope.com/ceo/special/kosovow/intro.html). For a distinctly European take on war coverage, this site reprints the latest news from the Prague Post, the Warsaw Voice and the Slovak Spectator. -- Crisisweb (www.crisisweb.org). The International Crisis Group, a private, nonprofit organization devoted to educating the rest of the world on international crises, offers a sobering discussion of Yugoslavia. ---------------------------------- Send mail for the 'huridocs-tech' list to 'huridocs-tech@hrea.org'. Mail administrative requests to 'majordomo@hrea.org'. For additional assistance, send mail to: 'owner-huridocs-tech@hrea.org'. Archives of previous messages posted to the list can be found at: http://www.human-rights.net/huridocs-tech.
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