Journalists From Kosovo Get Respite From Strife

Gjeraqina Tuhina’s eyes glistened when she walked into the Disney Store at Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade for the first time.

“I’m too big to cry now,” said the 23-year-old ethnic Albanian, who works for Radio Free Europe in Kosovo. But something about Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy--all those symbols of happy, innocent childhood--suddenly reminded her of her own, and how it was cut short when her homeland, part of the former Yugoslavia, disintegrated into war.

Tuhina and four other ethnic Albanian journalists from Kosovo have been in the Los Angeles area the last few days as part of a whirlwind coast-to-coast tour sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency’s International Visitor Program. Since their arrival in the United States two weeks ago, they have been meeting with academics, government officials and other journalists to discuss the war that has ravaged the Balkan region.

Along the way, the twentysomething group is also enjoying a respite from the horror of their daily lives.

“This is such a needed rest for me,” Tuhina said. “It’s not easy living with the smell of dynamite and the sound of bullets every day, and fearing who of your relatives is dead.”

As they strolled down the promenade one recent evening, the five--wearing casually chic clothing and stylish haircuts--might have been mistaken for local college students. But amid shopping and light banter lingered the specter of death that haunts them wherever they go.

At a department store, radio and newspaper journalist Fisnik Abrashi, 21, bent over a Swatch display. “I have to buy a present for my father,” he said.

“If he’s alive, not dead!” quipped Ylber Bajraktari, 20, a reporter for Koha Ditore, the largest Albanian daily in Kosovo.

Both men erupted in laughter.

“We enjoy saying stupid things, just joking around, saying nonsense while we’re here in the U.S.,” said Ardian Arifaj, 25, an editor at Koha Ditore. “In Kosovo, we don’t have time for that. Usually, there’s no occasion for laughing.”

Over the last year as many as 2,000 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have been killed by the Serbian regime. (Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of what use to be Yugoslavia.) Under pressure from NATO, the European Union and the United States, delegations from both sides began negotiations in France last Saturday in a bid for peace. But that same day, a bomb exploded outside a store in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, killing three people.

The bloodshed is part of a pattern of repression that ethnic Albanians have been suffering under for nearly a decade, they said.

In the early 1990s, the Serbian regime shut down all Albanian schools in Kosovo, even though ethnic Albanians made up 90% of the population. Students had to attend underground schools that met in private homes.

“You don’t carry a bag. You hide your notebooks, right here,” Bajraktari said, showing how he stashed them in his pants against his back and covered the bulge with a jacket.

When discovered, students and teachers were beaten, even imprisoned. Serbian police have been known to force students to eat their school IDs, said Ilir Dugolli, 23, who writes for the weekly Bota e Re.

The Serbian regime closed other ethnic Albanian institutions. “No sports. No theater. No cultural events,” Arifaj said. “If you go out, there’s nothing to do. You don’t have discos anymore.”

They’ve seen corpses of women and children who died in massacres, they said. At the Koha Ditore, obituary ads have become an important source of the paper’s revenue.

A few months ago, Tuhina said, she and a friend were ordered out of their car at a checkpoint. Discovering her ethnicity, an officer held a gun to her head.

“Admit you’re not Albanian,” he taunted.

Tuhina said she refused, betting on a hope that he wouldn’t kill her in front of her German friend. The officer let her go.

Joe Shea, editor in chief of the American Reporter, an online daily, hosted the journalists’ first meeting in Los Angeles. “They were very serious, and underneath that seriousness, you can see an awful lot of sorrow,” he said.

Over the last few days, the groups also attended meetings at UCLA, the Rand Corp. and The Times. They leave for Boston today and return to Kosovo on Sunday.

Arifaj drew a deep breath as he surveyed the placid scene of light-studded trees and colorful window displays before him and talked about the perspective the trip has given them.

“This reminds us that what we have back home is not normality, and we must do all we can to bring things back to normality,” he said.