Syndicate: Serbian Deserters

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

From: Kurt Bassuener <kbassuener@BALKANACTION.ORG>

This piece from today's London Times definitely deserves more
attention.  It might be smart if NATO were to WELCOME deserters and
draft dodgers.  At least don't turn them away.  How stupid can you get?

Kurt

----

April 30 1999
                        BALKANS WAR: BORDER
                                      PRESSURE




        Deserters refused refuge by
             struggling Italians

        FROM JOHN PHILLIPS IN GIOIA DEL COLLE
  SCORES of Yugoslav army deserters are entering Italy
  illegally but hundreds of others are evidently being sent
  back to Slovenia and Croatia by Italian authorities already
  struggling to cope with the influx of refugees from
  Kosovo, police reported yesterday.

  Most of the deserters and conscription dodgers cross the
  frontier in northern Italy, either with the help of
  professional smugglers or on their own, to seek refuge
  among the Serbian community of 6,000 people that has
  existed in the multi-ethnic port of Trieste for 200 years,
  official sources said.

  The Italian news agency Ansa estimated that 50 young
  men had managed to take shelter in Trieste, while the
  National Refugee Office said it was aware of 15 young
  people who have arrived from Serbia and Montenegro.

  A report in Il Messaggero put the number as high as 100,
  while Ansa reported that 200 others who tried to cross
  the frontier regularly at Gorizia and Trieste had been sent
  back.

  Other Yugoslav deserters have been arriving in the
  southern region of Puglia among the thousands of ethnic
  Albanians whom smugglers have been ferrying to the
  Italian coast over the past week from Montenegro,
  authorities in the port of Bari say.

  The lucky ones who make it are believed to be only a
  drop in the ocean of 50,000 Yugoslav people of military
  age trying to avoid the draft or desert, refugee agency
  sources in Trieste say. Not all those fleeing to Italy are
  young people. "I managed to escape from Belgrade with
  my wife and children a short time before the Nato bombs
  destroyed my home," Gradisa Jovanovic, 53, said from
  his bed in a hospital in the town of Scorrano, in Otranto
  province, where he was admitted with a cracked spine.
  He sustained the injury during a fall he had in the motor
  launch that left him at Frassanito, a sandy beach north of
  Otranto.

  "Please do not separate me from my family," he told La
  Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, speaking with difficulty. He
  made the journey with his wife Dergina, 41, and his five
  children ranging in age from 28-year-old Dragutin to
  one-year-old Rada.

  Also dropped off at the beach was Afdzib Giulanovic, 46,
  who was quoted as saying he escaped from the
  Montenegran capital of Podgorica to evade military
  call-up. He was among 67 people described as Yugoslavs
  who arrived on the beach.

  In the northern city of Gorizia official sources announced
  that a Serb army officer, Captain Petil, was being held
  under protective guard. "I am not a Kosovan," he said. "I
  am a deserter from the Yugoslav Army."

  Another refugee told state television: "I am 20. They sent
  me to fight. Milosevic wants to enrol young people to
  send to Kosovo to kill. I don't want to kill anyone. I am
  goodhearted."


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