Link to the Homeland
By Thorne Anderson Posted Wed, Sep 1 1999
In a cramped second-floor office in Tetovo, Macedonia, a collection of volunteer energy and enthusiasm chain-smokes its way through daily production of the Albanian language Koha Ditore. With the financial support of the British and French foreign ministries and generous equipment advances from a local Albanian computer business, this youthful skeleton crew in exile from Kosovo has resurrected the flagship of Kosovar Albanian journalism.
Crammed into the tiny room are 12 computers, all furiously occupied, and a table littered with coffee cups, junk-food wrappings and nine empty cigarette packs. Iron Maiden blares through the speakers on one of the computers. The photography editor air-drums and lip-synchs the lyrics: “Run to the hills. Run for your life.” One of the editors takes a break from typing and leans in my direction. “When I was a teen-ager, I was a heavy-metal fan,” he says with a smile. “I never thought I’d run for the hills, but I ran to Macedonia.”
For the journalists at Koha Ditore, the “Daily Times” in Albanian, it had never been easy to publish their newspaper in Pristina, Kosovo. “We brought a lot of changes,” says Koha Ditore’s deputy editor in chief, Agron Bajrami. “People could see all the news — the good, the bad and the truth.” Koha Ditore’s Western-oriented editorial policy put it in strong contrast to the Serb-controlled state media that generally ignored any signs of opposition to the Milosevic regime. Throughout the last two years of Koha Ditore’s daily existence and the previous decade of its weekly existence, its Kosovar Albanian journalists had been harassed, arrested and beaten. Serb police had burned some of their houses. Koha Ditore photographer Alban Bujari routinely disguised his profession and sometimes walked for hours through the hills of Kosovo to get past police checkpoints and photograph civilian massacres and the destruction of Kosovar villages.
“In the Balkans, journalists are always targets when there is conflicting information,” Bajrami says, “and those who spread the truth are most at risk.” In spite of severe repression, Koha Ditore continued to circulate 35,000 daily copies within Kosovo and 20,000 to subscribers abroad. The staff also collaborated on the 15-minute daily Radio Koha program and the Kosovo Online Web site. Beginning in 1997, in addition to news briefs, Koha Ditore publications carried topical editorials from both Serb and Albanian perspectives, which were then translated into Serbian, Albanian and English on the Kosovo Online site. “It was a good, open dialogue that probably started too late,” Bajrami says.
Once NATO bombs began falling on Yugoslavia, Serb forces made it clear it would no longer be difficult to publish Koha Ditore in Pristina — it would be impossible. During the first night of the bombing campaign, Serb police attacked the Koha Ditore office, killed the security guard, ransacked the newsroom and burned the printing house.
Soon after, NATO reported — erroneously — that Baton Haxhiu, the highly respected founder and editor in chief of Koha Ditore, had been killed while attending a funeral for murdered Kosovar civil-rights lawyer Bajram Kelmendi. The premature report of Haxhiu’s death sent chilling waves of shock through the Albanian community both inside and outside of Kosovo. “When I heard of Baton’s ‘death,’” Bajrami says, “I had this feeling that now they are going to get us all.”
Following the destruction of Koha Ditore production facilities, all of its journalists went into hiding. Photographer Bujari, who remained stuck in Pristina for another month before he made it to Macedonia, remembers the panic he felt as he burned his Koha Ditore identification card in a bathroom sink at the beginning of the air war. “The damn thing was plastic, and it burned so slow,” he says.
When the Serb purge of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo reached a feverish level and it was believed that Serb security was no longer careful to target journalists and intellectuals, many of the Koha Ditore journalists slipped across the southern borders into Macedonia or Albania, eventually making their way to Tetovo. As the unofficial capital city for the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, Tetovo has served as a magnet for the intellectual elite deported from Kosovo.
Among those who made it to Tetovo was Baton Haxhiu, his beard shaved to avoid recognition at the border crossing. Haxhiu wasted no time gathering the staff and resources to bring Koha Ditore back to life from Tetovo. In less than a month, Koha Ditore was being distributed once again, in a 24-page edition to its international subscribers and a 16-page free edition to camps for Kosovar deportees. “Koha Ditore is the bridge between deportees and Kosovo,” Haxhiu says.
“It’s a form of survival,” Bajrami adds, “not only for Koha Ditore but for a whole nation. The people in the camps are at risk of hopelessness. Koha Ditore is a link to their homeland.”
For those Kosovars stranded in the camps, the simple appearance of the familiar Koha Ditore banner provided some relief. The free copies circulated vigorously among the deportees, who devoured the reports drawn largely from the Reuters and Agence France-Presse wires. Koha Ditore local reporters and international correspondents in Germany, Belgium, Austria and the United States also contributed. During the NATO bombing, information from within Kosovo was drawn from both Kosovo Liberation Army and Serb sources. “It’s a matter of professional behavior to use all the information available,” Bajrami says. “Of course it would be difficult for anyone to remain objective in this circumstance, but we still strive for objectivity.” Bajrami points to some differences in language that distinguish Koha Ditore from even the local Albanian press. Where the Albanian daily Facti uses the phrase “Serb terrorist forces,” for example, Koha Ditore simply refers to “Serb police.”
“But violations of objectivity can go far beyond just the use of language,” Bajrami says. “With the Serb state media there is far too much involvement in creating the circumstances for violence. They’ve crossed a line.” For this reason, both Bajrami and Haxhiu supported the NATO bombing of Radio Television Serbia.
“That’s not journalism,” Haxhiu says. “RTS helped start the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. They’re behind many crimes and killings. They just give stories and propaganda for war.”
Bajrami agrees RTS was a culpable arm of the Serb war machine. “It comes to the basic question,” Bajrami says. “Can the media be held responsible? According to my experience, I think they can.”
It’s a delicate argument that is dangerously similar to the one Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic makes for the repression of media outlets such as Koha Ditore. The day before the Koha Ditore offices were destroyed, Milosevic publicly blamed the newspaper for the outcome of the Rambouillet meetings that immediately preceded all-out war.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Koha Ditore has enjoyed unprecedented free access within Kosovo. Just three days after NATO forces moved across the border into Yugoslavia, Koha Ditore was distributing once again in Kosovo. Koha Ditore correspondents file stories in Kosovo on a daily basis, but production remains in Tetovo until Haxhiu can raise money for a new printing house. Due to technical problems with photo transmission, photographer Bujari must travel back and forth across the Macedonia/ Kosovo border to get photos from Kosovo into Koha Ditore.
Bajrami and Haxhiu feel Koha Ditore must play an active role in the construction of a truly civic society for all residents of Kosovo — not just the Albanians. “I do still believe in civic society as a possibility in Kosovo,” Bajrami says. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this. I would go live in America or somewhere.”
“For us, open society and democracy are the first values,” Haxhiu adds. “Of course it’s very hard to forgive, and we will never forget.”