Following is a concise account of an unpleasant adventure in Kosovo, a territory in the former Yugoslavia, prevalently populated by peoples of Albanian ethnic origin.

THE EVENT

On Saturday 1 August 1992 at Midday, after leaving Sofia with a Bulgarian taxi driver friend, I passed the Bulgarian-Serbian border on the Sofia-Nis road without any problems.

At 16:00, near the city of Podujevo, the first large centre populated by Albanians, 30 Km. North of Pristina, the car I was traveling on was stopped by the Serbian militia at a road-block organized with even stricter controls than at a State boundary. The militia found one hundred copies of the Albanian edition of the May issue of the newspaper "The new Party" in my baggage.

POLICE STATE. STATE OF SIEGE.

For such reason, I was taken to the police headquarters in the centre of the same city, where I awaited further controls and where I could not help noticing the presence of cannons and tanks. The Serbian militiamen summoned a number of Albanian collaborationists at the police station to have them orally translate the newspaper, a task which they fulfilled with the uttermost zeal. Both the Serbian militiamen and the Albanian collaborationists seemed to rejoice miserably at the idea of obtaining a promotion for the fact of "pinching" me.

ITALIAN KAPUTT

During the long hours of permanence amid the stench of latrine of this barrack, I suffered no physical violence, but "only" psychological violences: none of the over twenty militiamen spoke or accepted to speak any of the major European languages; at my requests for explanations - "problems?" - they answered with a threatening tone in Serbian: "big problem" or "terrible problem" in the best of cases, or insulted me with things such as "Italian mobster" "Italian kaputt" or "Italian bum-bum", accompanying the latter statement with the act of shooting.

DANCIO THE TAXI DRIVER

My friend taxi driver - though he was also detained like me - enjoyed a better position precisely because as a taxi driver he does his job regardless of the client. But he is no coward: we had made an agreement before leaving, that in case of "risks" he would have declared his extraneousness, saving himself but at the same time helping me: when the soldiers threaten to kill me, a shiver goes down my spine like a person sentenced to death, and I whisper to Dancio "ambasada-italia-sofia". Dancio assents with his eyes and this is enough to reassure me, but it it a terrible moment, and I confess I was really very frightened.

PRISTINA, KOSOVO

After 20:00, they transfer me to the regional headquarters of Pristina, 30 Km South, in a van with six militiamen in fighting trim, with bullet-proof vests, Kalashnikov machine guns with double charger; all this to escort 55 kilograms of unarmed radical militant!

At the regional headquarters I was questioned with the help of an interpreter - a militia official - who speaks English and plays the part of the "good guy" to make me "confess". Four or five different officials repeat the same questions over and over; in particular, they mention the Radical Party's demonstration in Yugoslavia in 1989, which appears on their files (think of this - I tell myself - I who am innocent must pay for the destabilization carried out by those animals of Ottoni, Lensi, Dupuis....).

Looking at the paper and speaking amongst themselves, the militiamen comment all they read in the papers they have taken from me. You can imagine what a good opinion they can form themselves by reading the "Bosnia motion" on page 3, or the account of the congress in the central page, or the considerable amount of Croatian members listed in the front-page box.

Then there is that "Marzo Panela" who is incredibly popular here among the democratic dissidents in Kosovo, whose prestige is no advantage for myself!

NARODNO SOBRANIE

Finally I find something that can get me out of this mess: a piece of paper that states that I am a journalist and a correspondent at the Bulgarian parliament ("Narodno Sobranie"); it expires today, the last working day of the Bulgarian national assembly. Those 20 square centimetres of paper, stamped by the parliament's protocol office, have changed my status, and perhaps caused my release; suddenly I have become a journalist. Hooray for Bulgaria and especially for the press office of its national Assembly!

GRAND HOTEL

At midnight the policeman, who in the mean while has become a "good guy", takes me to the Grand Hotel. My newly-recovered freedom - albeit severely controlled - tastes like a filter-tipped Partner (a brand of cigarettes). In the squalor of this big hotel, luxurious and sad in the obscurity of the embargo, I spend a night marked by gunshots in the proximity of the city centre. I'm the only "Westerner" in this hotel, until yesterday inhabited only by the courageous correspondent of the British Broadcasting Corp. And it is precisely the BBC's world-service that informs me of the ongoing extermination in the concentration camps in Bosnia, as we drive full speed on the Lada with my loyal taxi driver to reach our cherished Bulgaria in the shortest possible time.

IN CONCLUSION

The things that happen in Bosnia can no longer be called "police state", but rather "state of siege". If this turns into a war, it will certainly be a dreadful and bloody one. No Western head of government will be able to candidly say he could not foresee all this in time.

Considering what happened to me, a foreign journalist with a European passport, one can easily imagine what happens every day to the simple citizens of Kosovo repressed by dictatorship.

Another obvious conclusion is the need to enhance a transnational party with the support of all aware citizens, like Dancio, who joined the radical party after this experience.