My personal view on Kosovo

Dimitrina Petrova
(Human Rights Activist)

Budapest, 12 April 1999

Dear friends,

I can no longer resist an impulse to write to you today and share my personal view on the Kosovo war and the role of European human rights defenders in the course of events. I do not speak on behalf of the organization I direct, the European Roma Rights Center. This letter is personal.

I am sure that, like myself, many of you are having difficult time deciding what position should human rights defenders take, and whether they should take any position at all, apart from launching periodic appeals to the different parties to the war to not violate fundamental human rights.

I believe that when an abusive government engages in gross and systematic human rights violations, the international community must intervene, if necessary, by military force. Therefore, I trusted that the NATO decision to bomb Yugoslavia, once the peace talks came to a dead end, was justified. I believed that military action would be an enforcement of that basic principle which most of us share, i.e. that human rights are of international concern. If we don't act to defend the victims, we accommodate with the slaughterers. It would not be moral, and it has not been moral in the past, to sit back and watch when thousands of people are killed, tortured, evicted from their homes, and abused in a number of ways.

But at this stage, I strongly oppose further military action of whatever kind. It seems to me that the continuation of the NATO air campaign - and even more so a follow-up by introduction of ground troops in Kosovo - is likely to cause bigger loss of life and more severe violations of human rights than if an immediate cease fire is opted for today.

Of course, it should be feared that if NATO stops its offensive now, the status quo imposed by Milosevic - the status quo of an ethnically cleansed Kosovo - will prevail. But, if the armed conflict rages on and on - and even if in the end NATO achieves the goal of completely reversing the ethnic cleansing - what will be the price for such a victory? I believe that it will be the unjustifiably high price of hundreds and probably thousands of further deaths and devastated lives - events definitely less reversible than the current status quo.

At this stage, the continuation of the air strikes and even more so the possible quagmire of a ground warfare, will likely bring about more violations of human rights (particularly of the Kosovo Albanians themselves) than it can possibly prevent or punish. Only in the case of a miraculously fast and enormously efficient blitz offensive this may be untrue, but the prospect of winning a blitz war against Milosevic is now slim. Even partial achievement of NATO's goals will take weeks and months. And time will work against the civilian population of Kosovo, as well as against the innocent civilians of Serbia. Retaliation against remaining Kosovars will intensify if strikes continue, and will become truly apocalyptic if ground troops invade Yugoslavia. How will NATO prevent the mass executions that may follow? The Serb population will also be heavily taxed - as if living under Milosevic has not been enough. Whole communities, including the Roma everywhere in Yugoslavia, will be decimated by the realities of war. Therefore, continuation of military action cannot be justified by human rights concerns.

And this is where I have lost my peace of mind. My human rights equation wouldn't solve. I calculate in terms of lives first, and in lives lived in dignity, second. Listening to NATO and the mainstream media supportive of its actions, I realize that they are trapped into calculating according to a different scale of success and failure. NATO experts- very predictably --build their strategy according to the quite different rationality of military victory. As the days passed, and as the pictures of refugees pouring out of Kosovo became more and more haunting, while the bombs were falling on Yugoslavia, I began to witness how, with a tragic inevitability, the game changed. From a campaign to defend the lives and rights of Kosovo Albanians, which I, like many others from the human rights community, understood and supported, it metamorphosed into something other: the monster of a prolonged and escalated war.

There have been moments in human history, when projects based on a good principle, once put into practice, have taken a course according to a logic of their own, not envisioned by the proponents of the good principle. The process of realization can start to fire back and ultimately defeat the good principle. This is an essential aspect of our human existence: our fallibility. It takes genuine courage, openness and humility to acknowledge the failure of a principle one believes in, and to surrender to reality. Because human life is part of reality before it is grasped in any kind of principle, even the most humane.

The human rights community in the region is confused. We read and circulate dozens of messages on Kosovo every day, but have been trying not to abandon our traditional political neutrality. Since March 24, we have limited our statements only to reporting on human rights violations. We are taking no clear stand on what the western alliance should do next. We have left this question to the military and political decision-makers. But we must not overlook that our silence on the issue of what should be done is interpreted as continued support for NATO military strikes.

Dear friends from Eastern Europe, we should want to be opinion makers on the destiny of our part of the world, should we not? Our region is probably heading toward a war. I think we should speak out as soon as we have a viewpoint, even if we are not asked. (And, judging by who dominates the discussions on the mainstream western media: we are not asked.) In addition to our political neutrality, at least three further factors overwhelm our judgement. First, the democratic forces of our societies have opted for NATO membership and we are afraid not to risk our chances of being admitted in the alliance, if strong voices from within our countries criticize NATO. Second, our very status and jobs as human rights defenders have been made sustainable by the generous support of western donors, and we see no future for our movement and even for civil society itself without continued support from them. Third, we are already caught in the politics of Cold War: we fear that whatever we say immediately places us in one of two camps: we are either for or against NATO, and if we are against some action of NATO now, we side with Russia and China, and therefore we are enemies to democracy, etc. The western political scholars and analysts can still afford a more nuanced view. While here, whatever we say, will be interpreted as taking sides and used manipulatively. Sophistication first, a little later freedom of judgement, and finally simple, everyday common sense, are all too often casualties of war.

Having taken into account all of the above, I nevertheless emerge from these crucifying dilemmas with a conviction that we should speak out as soon as possible, before it is too late. It is up to us to make human rights matter. We need a human rights discussion and a human rights argumentation, arriving at recommendations based on human rights concerns. I hope that many of us will prefer to voice their concerns too.

Several years ago I bought in the United States a wall plate saying, "War doesn't decide who is right but only who is left". I kept in on my wall during the Bosnian war. Now I will do three things. First, I will search among my possessions to find that plate, and will put it above my desk again. Second, I will act accordingly: will send a letter and encourage others to send letters to the parties to the Kosovo conflict, appealing to them to stop immediately any military action and return to the negotiating table. Third, I will keep my mind open to your thoughts and reactions in these tragic days.

Warmest regards,

Dimitrina Petrova

Human rights activist