New York Times April 8, 1999 Page 01 (above the fold)
REFUGEE FLOW HALTS ABRUPTLY: THOUSANDS VANISH
By JOHN KIFNER
DATELINE: MORINI, Albania, April 7
BODY:
Tens of thousands of refugees from Kosovo waiting to cross the border here vanished in the middle of the night, ordered out of a column stretching 20 miles or more by Serbian forces and sent walking to an unknown fate.
This shabby little border crossing, swamped for more than a week with ragged, weeping ethnic Albanians driven from their homes, was eerily empty today.
At 3:30 this morning, Serbian forces walked up to a jumble of six chest-high concrete pyramids that marks the midpoint of the no man's land between the two customs posts, according to observers at the border from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Those on the Albanian side could keep on going; those still in the Serbian zone were ordered to turn around.
No one here knows what happened to them.
"We have no idea," said Jacques Franquin, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "We are very worried. There is reason to be worried."
From observation posts in the surrounding hills, the road into Kosovo appeared to be empty of any vehicles for two miles or so north, Mr. Franquin said, up to the next village, Szure, which the Serbs have been using as a drop-off place for refugees being transported in bus and truck convoys after being rounded up farther inside Kosovo.
Beyond that, he added, there were lines of abandoned farm tractors and cars. When the column was turned back on Tuesday night, the refugees were backed up to the city of Prizren, about 22 miles away, he said.
Stunned aid officials here could only speculate on the latest twist in the tactics of the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic.
"Whatever is happening, you can rest assured it is not to the benefit of these refugees," said Eugene O'Sullivan, the chief of the observer team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe based in nearby Kukes.
The speculation included the possibility of a new propaganda ploy by Mr. Milosevic in which he would maintain that the ethnic Albanians were not being systematically hounded out after all, but were being allowed to return to their homes voluntarily. It was also possible that the refugees were being herded back to some collection center, either as some form of hostages or even human shields against NATO bombing attacks or attacks by Apache helicopters, which, unlike the bombers, can fly close to the ground and take aim at concentrations of troops.
During the "ethnic cleansing" campaign in Bosnia, Serbs used captured United Nations soldiers as shields.
"This is a pretty sinister turn of events," said Doran Vienneau, an observer on the border. He predicted the border would be closed for an extended period.
Relief officials estimated that roughly 80,000 refugees were in the line when it was turned back, based at the rate at which refugees have been flowing through here and the length of time the last group this morning had been on the road. NATO has estimated there are some 300,000 people who have been uprooted from their homes but are still displaced inside Kosovo.
From midnight until the refugees were turned back at 3:30, some 2,850 people made it out of Kosovo, making a total of 238,415 who have crossed the border here since the Serbian campaign of depopulating the province began. In addition, 51,850 have crossed the even more remote and primitive mountains of the Hass District to the northwest of here, most of them on a track over the mountains that can only be traveled on foot because the Serbs have mined it. That border crossing was sealed on Tuesday; the day before some 14,000 people crossed over.
And, incredibly, one more man somehow wandered over the border at midday. The man, Ismet Hoxha, said he had encountered only one Serbian police patrol as he walked from his remote village, Gjonas. He said the police let him go after inspecting his hands, apparently to see if he looked tough enough to have been digging trenches for the Kosovo Liberation Army. He said he had passed a line of empty, abandoned tractors more than a mile long on his way. "He's the luckiest Albanian in the world," Mr. Vienneau said.
For a week and a half, this border post, with its peeling paint, chipped concrete and broken iron gate, has been a scene of chaos as the refugees have poured across at the rate of 20,000 to 50,000 a day with only what they can carry. Often it is a wooden cradle, decorated with folk patterns that is a particularly valued family heirloom among the Albanians strapped to the back of their farm carts. Some people have been walking for days, carrying only a blanket or a few clothes.
All have harrowing -- and strikingly similar -- accounts of being ordered out of their houses by Serbian policemen, soldiers and ultra-nationalist irregulars, many wearing masks or headbands. They are robbed at gunpoint, herded to collection centers in the larger towns, and robbed again along the way.
Many say they have witnessed the Serbs killing people, sometimes apparently at random, but often in what appears to be a systematic manner, targeting, for instance, people who housed, worked for or otherwise aided the Organization for Security and Cooperation observer teams.
And there have been accounts of mass killings. While the acounts cannot be independently verified because foreign journalists and relief workers, including the observers, have been expelled from Kosovo, they are being given credence here because of their striking similarity, the specific details provided by the refugees and the past behavior of Serbian forces during the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia.
But today the crossing was empty and silent, save for a few listless Albanian policemen and mystified aid workers. There were only a few refugees sprawled on the hillside.
Across the empty patch of no man's land the Serbian and Yugoslav flags flap from their poles. The Serbian forces were digging trenches with pickaxes and laying mines.
"The refugees have been in a state of complete shock and terror when they arrive here," Mr. Vienneau, the observer at the border post, said this morning. "They are in an absolutely deplorable state, with just the possessions they have on their backs. They have been witness to very horrific crimes. We've had multiple reports of people being rounded up and executed en masse. We've had reports of constant brutalization throughout the journey here."
"I feel almost sick to my stomach because I have no idea what happened to these people," he said, speaking of the missing tens of thousands of refugees, adding:
"Can you imagine being the guy on the first tractor when the Serbs said, 'Go back,' and they were so close to the border. I would say the state of terror of these people is probably absolutely indescribable, wondering what is going to happen to them."
GRAPHIC: Photo: A mother handing her baby down from a wagon in Kukes, Albania, after crossing from Kosovo. Other fleeing refugees yesterday were told by Serbian forces at the Albanian border town of Morini to turn back. (Edward Keating/The New York Times)(pg. A14)
Map of Kosovo highlighting Serbian military and paramilitary operating areas from March 31 through yesterday: Thousands of Kosovo refugees waiting to cross into Albania vanished during the night; why they left and where they went is not known. (pg. A14)
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LOAD-DATE: April 8, 1999