Refugees Tell Similar Sad Tales as Borders Reopen

In a wretched reprise, Yugoslav forces reopened their border Saturday and allowed the exit from Kosovo of thousands of refugees, their sad, broken-down wagons stuffed with exhausted, careworn people wondering where they would find shelter against the cruel winds. The refugees--from weeping children to old men--carried with them fresh tales of violence, theft and destruction.

The reopening of crossings into Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia caught refugee officials by surprise and left them wondering about the latest shift in tactics by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic .

“I am pleased that the border has been reopened,” said Jacques Franquin, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “But what does it mean, exactly? I don’t know.”

Most of the 1,400 people in the first batch of refugees that arrived in Morine were from the village of Vragolija, near Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, and the hallowed Serbian battlefield at Kosovo Polje. Kosovo is a southern province of Serbia, the main republic of Yugoslavia.

These refugees said they had managed to hang on in Kosovo for a week after their initial evacuation order by sneaking back into homes and lying low. But on Friday, the Serbs got serious.

Police and army troops roused the villagers from their beds at 7 in the morning, they said.

“The military forces surrounded the village and told us, ‘You have half an hour’s time to start walking to Albania,’ ” said schoolteacher Sadik Mjeku, 42, who arrived with his wife and their two sons, 11 and 3.

Later, the Serbs relented and permitted the evacuees to ride in wagons, but most people were not allowed to bring their cars. Along the way, the refugees said, they were forced to surrender all their money and jewelry to Serbian police.

The reopening of the border here was as unexpected as the decision early Wednesday to close it, which staunched a flow of approximately 25,000 refugees a day into Albania. Altogether, about 300,000 refugees--nearly all of them ethnic Albanians--have poured into Albania since the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia started March 24.

“There is nothing harder than to leave your house,” said Hajulla Prebreza, another Vragolija resident, who had worked as a food inspector. Prebreza escaped with his wife and three children. Along the way, he said, they saw houses destroyed, animals killed and no people on the streets aside from the ever-present Serbian police and soldiers.

At the border between Yugoslavia and Macedonia, many among the at least 381 refugees who arrived Saturday from Kosovo disputed claims by Serbian leaders that ethnic Albanians are again welcome in the province as part of a unilateral cease-fire declared by Milosevic in anticipation of Orthodox Easter, which is being celebrated today.

“It’s not true. They are still forcing people to leave their houses,” said Ardita Rama, 18, who had fled the village of Ferizaj by train early Saturday.

“We couldn’t stay there anymore,” she said just moments after arriving in the Brazda refugee camp. “Soldiers came to our house and forced us to leave. They threatened to shoot us.”

Unlike refugees who arrived a week earlier, Rama, who traveled with her mother and sister, cleared the border within a few hours rather than spending a week in mud and rain. She was bused to the refugee camp, about 10 miles from the border, within a few hours of arriving.

Rama, who reported seeing lots of troops and military equipment in Ferizaj on her way out, was part of a group of 81 people on a train that arrived at the Blace border crossing Saturday morning.

Earlier this month, trains were reaching Blace stuffed with a thousand people who had been forced into the cabins.

“This one came in with 81 people who bought their tickets,” said Paula Ghedini, a spokeswoman in Macedonia for the U.N. refugee agency.

The other 300 people who were known to have crossed into Macedonia on Saturday entered at Jazince, nearer to Albania, and were quickly placed with ethnic Albanian families, who make up the majority of the local population.

In the last three weeks, 125,000 refugees from Kosovo have crossed the border into Macedonia. About 20,000 of them have since moved to other countries, including Turkey, Albania, Germany and Norway.

“It sounds like [the border is] closed, but they’re randomly letting in groups of people,” Ghedini said.

Some of the refugees who arrived in Macedonia on Saturday said they had been on the run for weeks and finally could no longer take the fear of living that way.

Lumije Rama, who is not related to Adita, left her home in Ferizaj two weeks ago when Serbian forces were making their rounds. She hid in a village but was scared away toward the end of last week when Serbian forces were hurling grenades at the village. She returned to Ferizaj and caught a train to the border.

Rama’s eyes had deep black circles around them, and she looked much older than her 27 years.

“I’m so tired,” she said.

Meanwhile, a steady trickle of refugees seemed to be leaving to move in with relatives in Skopje, the Macedonian capital.

Arian Mahalla, 24, escaped over the fence of the Brazda transit center a few days ago and had come Saturday to collect his mother and brother from the camp. They were all going to stay with his mother’s brother, who lives in Skopje.

“We left our house 12 days ago, and I’m exhausted,” said Hava Mahalla, 40, his mother. “I had surgery on my stomach recently, and I just could not stand living in a tent and sleeping on the floor much longer.”

Hundreds of people were lining up to try to get on planes to Germany, which has a relatively large population of Kosovo Albanians and has pledged to take in 40,000 refugees.

“I want to go to Germany so I can get out of here,” said Besime Bajcinca, 29, from Pristina. “It’s so dirty. There’s nowhere to take a bath. And it’s very hard to sleep here.”

The process of registering refugees was continuing at a slow pace, as were efforts to reunite lost children with their families.

A list of 69 children who had been separated from their families was circulating around the camps in Macedonia, but there were few success stories Saturday. Mentor Hoti, 14, was among the children still hoping for someone to find their families.

“I’m just waiting,” Mentor said.

In Albania, an estimated 100,000 refugees were already near Morine, in Kukes, overrunning a town whose normal population is about 20,000. Refugee agencies are providing daily rations there, and humanitarian groups have been working on improving sanitation and medical services in the town.

The U.N. refugee agency and the Albanian government say they want the refugees to keep going south toward Albania’s coastal plain, where better roads and facilities make feeding and sheltering them less difficult.

Many refugees, however, are lingering in Kukes because, they say, they want to remain as close as possible to their homes in Kosovo.

After the refugees arrived at the Morine crossing point Saturday morning, Serbian soldiers could be seen digging with jackhammers and a hoe into the asphalt just inside Kosovo territory. Although it could not be determined with certainty what they were doing, it appeared that they were mining the crossing in case of a ground assault from Albania.

Mine-laying had taken place over the previous three days in the border zone, but this was the first time that the road itself was being dug up.

Daniszewski reported from Morine and Shogren from Brazda.

Many charities are accepting contributions to help refugees from Kosovo. The list may be found at https://www.latimes.com/kosovoaid.