Vicious attacks on peaceful demonstrators and the murder earlier this month of at least 80 Albanians, among them women and children, by heavily-armed police in Serbia's Kosova province have prompted the Contact Group of nations to invoke mild economic sanctions and an arms embargo against the regime of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. These actions must, however, be backed by additional measures - including the credible threat of the use of international peacekeeping forces to defend the civilian population - if the 'international community' is serious about guaranteeing the rights and the physical security of the people of Kosova. Porous sanctions and toothless security council resolutions failed to halt Serbian-sponsored mass terror against civilians in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. There is nothing to suggest that this time things will be different.

Kosova has returned to haunt the Dayton peace settlement precisely because that agreement, which ratified the horrific results of 'ethnic cleansing', deliberately failed to address the issue of democratic rights for the 90 percent Albanian majority population in the province. Kosova, however, has been a powder keg waiting to explode since Milosevic abolished the province's autonomous status in 1989, ushering in a reign of institutionalized discrimination and violence. Albanians are routinely subjected to arbitrary detention and torture and denied access to Serb-only schools and hospitals. The mass sacking of Albanians solely on the basis of their ethnic origin has left only 40,000 Albanians - out of a population of nearly two million - in formal employment.

The response of the overwhelming majority of Kosova Albanians has been a sus- tained, disciplined non-violent resistance through which they have constructed an extensive network of alternative civil and cultural institutions including independent schools, hospitals, and trade unions. The IUF is proud to include among its affiliates the BSPK - Agrokompleksi i Kosoves.

With helicopter gunships and tanks assaulting their villages, the Kosovars are now being offered a meaningless arms embargo against a well-armed oppressor. Ethnic Albanian refugees from Serbia in Western Europe are being deported back to a war zone.

The Western nations which failed so abysmally to prevent organized mass murder in Bosnia must draw the necessary conclusions. The Milosevic regime was born out of crisis and sustains itself only through ongoing crises nourished on repression, provocation and chauvinist manipulation. The only peace which stands a chance in the former Yugoslavia is a democratic peace built on institutional guarantees of respect for human rights and self-determination. Failure to prevent mass murder in Kosova would be a betrayal, not only of Kosova's majority Albanians, but of democracy in Serbia as a whole.

It is time to put an end to international acquiescence in the shameful rule of terror and racist apartheid in the heart of Europe. The trade-union movement, together with the whole of democratic civil society, must take the lead in demanding meaningful action to defend the people of Kosova.

The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) is an international trade union federation composed of 338 trade unions in 113 countries representing a combined membership of 2.6 million members. It is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

home | about us | publications | news | contact | bosnia | search | bosnia report