KOSOVO 1999

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M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell On television NATO has bombed the Serbian Television station in Belgrade, while Serbian television and foreign stations are broadcasting civilians in the centre of Belgrade walking across the bridges with target circles on their bodies. So we had discovered there are four channels of twenty-four hour sex, where silicone breasted women gyrate and slowly undress to techno Flash Daddy and His Cosmic Suck Sucks music... seconds would be incredibly boring. The other television stations had sitcoms and Greek soap operas. Greek Thessalonicans are friendly and enjoy life; nobody appears unhappy and there are few beggars. The small streets are congested with traffic and cars here double-park. There was a casual demonstration in the afternoon where two hundred serious and concerned people were carrying candles because a hospital had been closed and the workers were being retrenched. While last night south in Athens there was a hostile demonstration, with cars burning in the streets, and Molotov cocktails being hurled across empty pavements lined with riot police. The socialists and anarchists with their black-isbeautiful-fashion balaclavas are demonstrating against NATO and the bombings. On television NATO has bombed the Serbian Television station in Belgrade, while Serbian television and foreign stations are broadcasting civilians in the centre of Belgrade walking across the bridges with target circles on their bodies. As I turned the television on, the talking heads voice was dead pain and the eyes remote and his tone in neutral. The same voice was heard every other day - “The fourth week of Nato’s bombing campaign began with an admission from the Alliance that it had accidentally bombed a refugee convoy, leaving Kosovo refugees dead. The media fallout from the event, and attempts to determine exactly how it happened, dominated media coverage of the crisis for several days. Meanwhile, there was a fresh surge of refugees out of Kosovo, and air strikes across Yugoslavia continued.” Today is Francis De Marikis birthday. I would imagine a human being is born every second of every day of every week across this planet. The person who owns the copyright to Happy Birthday must be a very rich person. Who does own the publishing rights to ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in any case? A good question whose answer is that they were acquired by a New York accountant named John F. Sengstack when he bought the Clayton F. Summy Company in the 1930s and it earns 2 million a year. Every moment is a birth celebration across the Earth, but instead we are faced with the exodus of expelled ethnic Albanian refugees pouring over borders homeless and hungry. When people fail to understand their true brotherhood the shadow of the human soul exhibits an empty and evil blackness. Even though I believe the crisis must be resolved diplomatically and non-violently often the dilemma is in how to elicit that resolution. It can often be done through economic sanctions. But the act of actually forcing people through bombing with the NATO strikes I feel is non-productive. But expulsion and abuse is worse. Soon after our next three days I will be subject to a foreign and hostile environment, I question how I will survive. Even though my mind seeks to project into the future and neurotically plan, it seems clear that I will have to take each day as it comes. Our aim is to bring the billboards with a humanitarian message not only to the Albanian border with Kosovo, but also to erect the billboards
M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell in the refugee camps. Afterwards we anticipate crossing to Macedonia, and then hopefully to the bridges of Belgrade which are now being bombed by NATO. After the traditional Domenico-cappuccinoand-croissant we were prepared to submit to the treadmill of a Greek 9 to 5 and visit the Yugoslav Embassy for our hoped-for visas at 11.35 in the morning. I have made the first negotiations at the Embassy of Yugoslavia today. It has not been a relief to arrive here, but a frustrating anticipation of what may soon occur. As we approached the electric buzzer and video camera eyeing us dispassionately the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was sombre and silent. The shuttered windows had also been barred up with black painted iron grills. The venetian shutters were closed. An internal police circuit television monitored all personnel in the office. It was business as usual and we were here to do a little business. A The office staff were cautious and stared at us through the thick bullet-proof laminated glass peep holes with eyes that incredulously looked with a – ‘Who are you?’ Slavic icon hung from the pale grey walls reminding me of Russia. Because of a state of war they were neither friendly nor hostile. The ambience was different to anything that I would have experienced in the city but the concierge was friendlier once I started to speak my bastardised Russian. We completed our negotiations in the Yugoslav embassy this morning and returned to the bustle of Greek life outside on…xxxxx. The office staff were cautious and stared at us through the thick bullet-proof laminated glass peep holes with eyes that incredulously looked with a – ‘Who are you?’ I produced my documents which indicated that I wanted to enter their country (and at a later date I will read the letter that I wrote to them). Since the Australian Embassy of Yugoslavia had failed to provide us with a letter of support the Embassy here may either request such a letter or simply deny our application. In Australia the Embassy was so snowed under and over-worked that they were unable to give us any assistance. There was a war and wars can be inconvenient even at the best of times. I will attempt to remedy this in the next day—to see whether they can send us embassy support for visas either in Macedonia or Albania. We returned in the afternoon and presented them with more documents which we had to print up in a make-shift office, typed up by Interlingua, and they instructed us to return tomorrow. But I am not hopeful. As we patrolled the markets the watches that we bought were cheap Chinese imitations of the real thing—$15 or $25 US dollars each. Mine says water resistant and is a sports watch with a toy compass attached to it and we feel like it is Christmas in that respect. After our visit to the Embassy, Firouz and I dined at a small Greek dinner in the heart of the city where a six year old child with a stain of chocolate across her cheek was sticking her hand in the cash register and then racing out. It was a small family run tavern next door to a basement pastry shop that offer a delicious variety of famous Macedonian specialties—a small Greek tavern just off the main street of Egnatia Odos. We sat awkwardly at plastic tables with plastic floral cloths watching ...a pair of sixteenyear-old identical twins, one fat and the other thin, and a younger sister were rifling the till... strange aquarium images on an old bakerlite television. Children ran in and out; a pair of sixteenyear-old identical twins, one fat and the other thin, and a younger sister were rifling the till, and the father, probably my age, but totally white-haired stood there and reluctantly scolded them in an impotent fashion. He accepted their actions without punishment. Friday, 23rd April, <strong>1999</strong>, Tirana, Albania Last night I slept for ten hours and awoke refreshed at eight am on the 23rd of April. We went and bought bus tickets for Albania and are scheduled to leave at midnight tonight. We purchased two second-hand Greek army ponchos from a disposal store. I hear it is raining across the border and we might need them. There were badly painted signs draped outside the railway station, with anti-NATO slogans daubed on sheets which reminded me of the Janis Joplin DJ and the first evening of our arrival. We also waxed paranoiac again. Since the people in Albania are Muslim we may have to conceal the naked figures on the billboard. So we bought more black tape and big black Texta-colours. I waltzed everywhere searching for a shop to buy a telephone card. I went to the American Express office on Nikita Street which overlooks the sea and wandered up and down to eventually discover there was no Memphis Travel which housed the offices of American
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KOSOVO 1999

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