Albanians also guilty of atrocities
Correction
The April 6 letter "Albanians also guilty of atrocities" by Christos Economides included a passage disseminated by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. The letter-writer did not attribute this passage to the group.
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To the editor,
As one of many Greek students here at the University of Arizona, I would like to present another view regarding the conflict in Kosovo. Greece is only 70 miles away from Kosovo, and the history of that region is very well known to us.
There is always intense pressure in wartime for media outlets to serve as propagandists rather than journalists. While the role of the journalist is to present the world in all its complexity so that people can make up their own minds, the propagandist simplifies the world in order to mobilize the public behind a common goal. One basic simplification is to interpret a conflict in terms of villains and victims, with no qualification allowed for either role. Conflicts in the real world rarely fall into such simple categories: Particularly in ethnic conflicts, both sides usually have legitimate grievances that are often used to justify a new round of abuses against the other side.
In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news outlets usually begin with Serbia's revocation of the Kosovo Albanians' autonomy in 1989. This was a crucial decision, one of the major reasons for the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army. It also destabilized the Yugoslavian system and contributed to the country's breakup.
Yet media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted Kosovo's autonomy.
An article from the New York Times in 1987, gives important background to this decision. It details how separatist Albanians wished to establish an "ethnically pure" region of Albanians free of Serbs, machinations by Albanians toward taking property from the Serbs and violence committed against Serbs by Albanians.
Although the article is easily found in the Nexis database, little to none of this information has found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the Times or anywhere else.
If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one would likely dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was written 12 years ago, when Kosovo was an obscure corner of the world, and the New York Times would not seem to have any particular interest in defending Serbs or attacking Albanians.
It should be kept in mind that some of the charges in this article may be exaggerated or politically motivated. Of course, the same is true of atrocity reports that are being carried in the New York Times and other papers today.
Christos Economides
Civil engineering senior
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