Similar argument to that of the racist white South Africans, who would visit Britain. When you protested the treatment of the black majority, they would say, have you ever been to South Africa?
Wojtek's question is similarly disingenuous. He knows that civil society has been crushed in Yugoslavia. He knows B92 independent radio station has gone off the air.
Serbian TV has not been reporting the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Kosovo, nor the ominous preponderance of women and children among them.
Where is the publicity in Serbia for the disappearance of the prominent civil rights laywer who was murdered in Pristina last week? Who has guaranteed the safety of the negotiators at the Rambouillet conference, at least one of whom is now dead?
Who has brought Arkan to justice for his crimes in Bosnia, denounced by NATO yesterday as being in Kosovo, and conveniently paraded today in front of one of the few western reporters staying in Belgrade, John Simpson, for the BBC, but censored, as having wandered with two of his children on his shoulder out into the crowds singing folk songs and dancing.
Who would disbelieve the NATO reports that the Serbian paramilitaries with the support of the Serbian troops have been hunting down Albanian trade unionists, lawyers and teachers?
Does history not teach that if you are to crush a people you massacre their leadership?
Does the Serbian media report how refugees leaving Kosovo systematically have all their documents removed? How even number plates are removed? Let us make a joke of it - perhaps they have been removed for their scrap metal value. But it is more systematic than that.
If Serbian police dispersed a line of Albanian women queuing for bread in Pristina 3 or 4 days ago, with the cynical taunt: ask NATO for bread - who is ensuring food supplies to the Albanian men who have been rounded up from village after village, and who have not crossed the borders with the women and children. Have they all become KLA "terrorists" overnight? What if their captors taunt them with begging to NATO for food? What if they riot from hunger? Who is to ensure that the ringleaders are not beaten to death, or the whole lot are not shot after diggin their own mass grave? Did the thousands who died at Srebrenica kill themselves? They were killed by the same people operating in Kosovo now.
And what of the Serbian soldiers who out of conscience will not want to carry out these activities? What is to ensure that they are not shot in summary courts martial?
Would Wojtek be surprised that the same vice president Vuk Drakgovic responsible for the remark above, that there is not a single village in Kosovo that has been cleared of Kosovans by Serbian troops, also said within the last couple of weeks that if NATO attacked Yugoslavia, there would not be a single Albanian left in Kosovo? Was he just a little more naive and exuberant than Milosevic in referring to a plan that has clearly long been in gestation? Was this the true reality we should have been listening to?
No of course I will not bother to answer Wojtek's question, just as he will not bother to answer mine.
The culture of Serbian nationalism is one of lies and racism.
It spreads to the liberals too.
It is the only form of Serb marxism, that the radical ultra-left liberals of marxism-space know.
Chris Burford
London