Bureaucracy Hobbles Bid to Reunite Boy, Family

Mentor Hoti, a teenager from Kosovo living on his own in a refugee camp, thought he’d be in Germany with his parents by now.

Instead, almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The international organization that was supposed to be advocating for him lost his file. The German Embassy here refused to give him any special treatment, blaming his unfortunate circumstances on his parents. And his parents failed to even alert officials at the Munich refugee hostel where they are staying that they left their son behind when they were evacuated from Macedonia 2 1/2 weeks ago.

On Friday, a fieldworker from the International Committee of the Red Cross personally took Mentor to the German Embassy to try to prompt action on his case. But after three hours of waiting and very little to show for it, she gave up and headed back to the camp, a 20-minute drive away. As the camp came into view, Mentor’s eyes filled with tears, and then he broke down and cried.

“Don’t worry, we will manage somehow,” the fieldworker, Marion Droz, told Mentor, without much conviction.

Four weeks after being separated from his family during a forced exodus from Kosovo, Mentor, 15, is still trapped in a refugee camp with no idea when he will be reunited with his parents.

His saga shows how powerless refugees are in the face of the bureaucracies established ostensibly to serve their needs. It also illustrates how the evacuation of refugees from Macedonia to numerous third countries has complicated efforts to reunify families split by the Yugoslav campaign of terror that has chased hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.

While awaiting entry into Macedonia, Mentor was separated from his family by a callous Macedonian soldier. Nearly two weeks later, Red Cross representatives located the family at a refugee camp little more than a mile away, but when they drove Mentor there for a reunion, they learned that the family had already left for Germany.

Mentor was told that he would join his parents shortly, and he spoke to them by telephone. Two more weeks passed, and each time Mentor checked with the Red Cross staff at the camp, he was assured that his file had been forwarded to the German Embassy.

That was not true.

“I’m afraid it was lost. There was some mistake along the way,” Droz said Thursday evening. “I’m so upset. We’ve been absolutely useless.”

So, early Friday, Droz brought Mentor to the German Embassy to personally lobby for permission to reunite the family. Droz spoke with head consular officer Frank Bernhardt but was told that Mentor’s case was the same as any other.

Bernhardt “said it’s not his responsibility because it was not the German authorities’ fault that the parents left without the child,” Droz said after speaking with the officer.

She was stunned by the diplomat’s reaction. “A child alone is a vulnerable person,” Droz said. “Whatever the parents have done is not our business.”

Droz said she is accustomed to diplomats respecting the authority of the Red Cross to decide what cases should be given priority based on humanitarian principles.

“I was sure that after the conversation I had with Bernhardt he would invite us into his office and take care of everything,” Droz added. “I don’t want to sound pretentious, but the Red Cross should be able to help open doors. We have enough credibility.”

Back at the camp, after their frustrating morning, Droz and her assistant tried to cheer up Mentor. The assistant, a stout young man about Mentor’s height, gave the boy a hug and a pep talk. But that just made Mentor’s tears come faster. He spent the whole afternoon in the Red Cross tent.

Later in the day, Droz and her colleagues conferred and decided to instead pressure the German interior and foreign ministries through the German Red Cross.

“I’m not giving up,” Droz said.

The German Embassy’s cold shoulder to Mentor and the Red Cross did not seem to match the German government’s official policy toward refugees. Germany has welcomed far more refugees from Kosovo than any other Western European country and has done so much more quickly.

And a German immigration official in Munich worked quickly to confirm the whereabouts of Mentor’s family and sent a fax to the German Embassy stressing his willingness to host Mentor.

But bureaucracies extended Mentor’s agony: The Red Cross allowed his case to slip through the cracks for two weeks. The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees moved the boy’s relatives to Germany even though they had declared on an evacuation application that they had lost Mentor.

“How could they accept a transfer of a family that was missing a minor child?” Droz said.

And Mentor’s parents did decide to board a plane without him. Officials at the refugee hostel in Munich said this week that the Hotis had not told them about their missing son.

Over the phone from Munich, Ilijaz Hoti, Mentor’s father, explained in a voice heavy with emotion that he had bowed to the pressure of the other family members when they decided to travel to Germany without Mentor.

“I had to leave. All of them wanted to go,” Mentor’s father said. “I’m not sleeping. I’m so worried about Mentor. Please send Mentor here.”

Young and Alone

Mentor Hoti, 15, and his family were forced from their Kosovo home shortly after NATO launched its airstrikes March 24. After a week of waiting to cross the Macedonian border, he was separated from his family when he stopped to help a girl who had fainted. For previous reports on him, see The Times’ Web site at https: //www.latimes.com/mentor.