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THE FORCED EXPULSION
It’s a ghostly neigbourhood we’re entering. There are no other humans around. There’s me. And the four children that miraculously survived. For the first time ever, they have agreed to show me around their village. Or, to be more specific, the small district open to them and inhabited by ethnic Ashkalies until a few years ago. How many people lived here? I estimate some 20-40 families.
Meanwhile as we are walking, side by side, and the kids are telling and pointing out places I finally realize what it was the family so eagerly tried to explain in Denmark. No one really understood it, but there has been commited so many violations, making it difficult for any outsiders to grasp it. Maybe it’s just incomprehensible for the human brain, maybe one will have to be confronted with the facts in a face-to-face manner. I always thought that it was the fence surrounding the family’s own house that was burned down and if that wasn’t bad enough… But, to show me, the children runs to the scrubs that goes all the way along the district of Ashkali, and, not until now, I understand the full horror in what they’re telling me: Albanian farmers had lit a ring of fire around the Ashkali-district. The intention was to burn everyone in the village to death. Eradicate them. Turn them into ashes and into somebody that never existed. And I will have to note that they, by and large, succeeded – only the four children and a few of their relatives are still alive.
The children points to the entrance of the enclave and the gate that is not there anymore. A bomb had been atttached to the gate and it blew up when some of the men in the district (the childrens uncles and cousins) opened it, trying to run for help to stop the roaring flames.
I can understand the tragedy of the children and, at the same time, I don’t understand anything. So much cruelty. The oldest girl gets the expression on my face wrong. She points towards the gable on a house shot to pieces. ”You see, Mona”, says both girls, ”they wanted to kill us and they were also shooting on our houses. Do you now fully understand it?”
A genocide no one cares about
I can see that I’m a witness to a genocide that has been committed in Europe in this decade. A genocide no one is wanted for. No one will be sentenced for. And a genocide no one cares about. Let it be Albanians from Kosovo or the international community.
On the contrary. A family with children had been accused of being fake refugees in Denmark. They were forced to leave the country and to go back to this place of mass executions. Send back to a Kosovo where most of the Albanians, the majority of the population, has the same attitude towards the ethnic Ashkalis as Hitler had to the Jews and the gypsies. The hatred against the Ashkalis lurks beneath the surface as a bomb about to go off, and for the time speaking, only restrained by the kosovo Albanians need for European support to the new state of Kosovo.
The staged Kosovo
Houses, recently build or restored, stands along Kosovo’s narrow and congested roads. Springgreen houses. Pink houses. Purple houses. They stand there, side by side, freshly painted and with strong colours, capturing the eyes of strangers. Deflecting (as well as the garbage that is scattered all over the place) the attention from another Kosovo that is hidden behind the posh houses.
My taxidriver points as we’re driving. ”There has not been a war in Kosovo. See for yourself: Only a few destroyed buildings”, he points into the string of houses, ”but that is because of a few extremists and is all in the past. Now it’s all about the future. We can all live together in Kosovo”.
If this had been my first visit to Kosovo and he had been my only tourguide, he would probably had convinced me without difficulties. But through out the years I’ve visited locations the taxidriver would not show nor mention. Villages and territories the asylum-seekers in Denmark were displaced from. I have stayed and lived together with surviving Romas that were saved by NATO from being burned in. A lot weren’t saved. Neither were the Ashkalis in the villagedistrict, the district the four children, that has been expelled by force, shows me around in.
Beneath the tolerant surface of a taxidriver
Through the three years that has passed since the family were expelled by force, the same taxidriver has driven me around quit a bit. (Taxi because of the missing infrastructure in Kosovo) He has not driven me on the day the children shows me around in their village. This year everything is different. I have been in Kosovo for a longer period of time than usual and therefor spend it on and for this family. The children has willingly, for the first time in the three years that has passed since they were expelled, agreed on leaving their home and we have been on an excursion. Out seeing and experiencing the beautiful nature that can be found in Kosovo as well as going to the eventful and pulsating city.
Quiet – the four children sat quiet as mice on the backseat of the taxi looking out. Taking it all in. Later on that day we went to clothing shops. Modest children that peeped anxiously on the prices. To get them to choose I had to tell them that there had been collected money just to buy clothes for them, and that I would get into trouble if the amount wasn’t spend. The boys are skinny. It was difficult finding pants they could fit. We ended the trip at a restaurant: Good and healthy food and there was plenty of it. The children’s plates were nevertheless as licked.
Many hours later and the taxidriver and I are quiet after returning the children in the village. It’s late evening.
I’m thinking that he, as well as myself, just want to go home and get some sleep. He breaks the silence: ”Aren’t they Ashkali?” I give him a nod, telling him that I’m glad the children came along on the trip and how I’m already considering another trip and in that case where to.
”They are bad children”, he answers. His voice is hard and in the heat of summer it gives me an icy shudder. ”They are not like the other children you have brought along. I could tell instantly that they are Ashkali. They just sit on the backseat and stare. They have no culture. Now let me tell you a thing, those children only want to go when they can drive in a taxi. I suppose that their dad doesn’t want to work. That’s why they don’t have any money and the children starves”. That was practically how the words came out.
He explains to me, that the next time I want to visit the place will have to go by bus and that I’ll have to walk from the busstop, the three kilometers on the road with the prison to get to the village.
The message is clear: He will not accept having Ashkali-children on the backseat of his car again.
The survival?
A few days later the four children gives me the tour around their villagedistrict. I came by bus, found the road with the prison and I walked the three kilometers. My time with the family has been limited today because I’ll have to go back the same way as I came before the buses stop driving for the day. And there is three hours of transportation each way.
The tour of the children is coming to an end. We are back on the busy road where we stratede from. By the gravel road that leads into the Ashkali-district. They point to the first house on the roadside. ”That was where we hid”, they tell me and point to the roofs dormer. ”The people living in that house saved our lives”. ( - And a few years later, when someone threw a bomb into the family’s house they were saved by being in Denmark as rejected asylum-seekers and had, following the rejection, refused to go back to Kosovo).
We take a walk to the grocery store to buy some icecreams. Or more exactly the nearest gasstation. The local grocer has asked them to stay away from his store. He doesn’t trade with ethnic Ashkali. (If we can’t burn them to ashes, hey, we’ll make it impossible for them to exist in Kosovo).
The civilized Denmark
After a month in Kosovo I started to miss Denmark and civilization. I suppose, that I, as the one’s expelled by force, tend to see Denmark in a somewhat idyllic light.
Back home again, I turn on the radio and the first thing I hear is:
”At a large action this night the police went into the Brorson-church and arrested 19 Iraqi men”.
On TV a police officer bends down and sprays pepperspray into the eyes of a sitting activist and sympathizer with the refugees from Iraq. A young woman and sympathizer is beaten with a baton by the police. She tries to get away, gets beaten one more time, stumbles and falls over.
The Minister of Justice appears on my TV screen to express great satisfaction with the work of the police and that the refugees can be put on the same footing as criminals. Fake refugees – as four children with scared eyes. A mothers. A fathers. Expelled by force to a nightmare of a life.
Mona Ljungberg
Chairwoman for the supportgroup to Refugees in Danger
Back in civilized Denmark
Transl.: Jacob Guldin