The New York Times

Sunday, August 29, 1999

Editorial Observer

TINA ROSENBERG

One Serb's struggle to Awaken Her Country

The killings in Kosovo of Serbs who stayed after the war - many of them elderly - has made it even harder for their countrymen to confront the far more widespread killings and other crimes that Serbs committed against Kosovo's Albanians. Even the opposition to Slobodan

Milosevic has shown little interest in acknowledging these atrocities. Natasa Kandic is a lonely exception.

Ms. Kandic, 51, is the director of Belgrade's Humanitarian Law Center. She is now documenting abuses

against Serbs in Kosovo. But during the NATO bombing, she made several trips into Kosovo, driving to various towns and cities at great personal peril to take testimony

from victims and try to protect her Albanian associates there.

Last month, the independent Belgrade daily Danas published a long, detailed and horrifying interview with her about the bodies she saw and the gruesome stories of extortion and mass murder she heard. A few other small publications have also interviewed her. During the war she tried to interest Serbian journalists in her reports, but the censorship was too tight and the climate too

hysterical. She published them in Western Europe. That Serbs can read her information now, even in small-circulation publications, is positive.

But Ms. Kandic's account, and that of a Serbian Orthodox priest from a monastery in Kosovo that had shielded Albanians, make up the bulk of, if not the only, in-depth accounts of atrocities against Kosovar Albanians to appear in Serbian media This is in part because it is dangerous for Serb journalists to go there. The response, according to Ms. Kandic, has been disbelief and lack of interest, even among her fellow activists. Her struggle shows the distance Serbs must yet travel in coming to terms with their nation's crimes.

Ms. Kandic's outspokenness requires more than physical courage. Her criticism of Serb atrocities isolates her even from the democracy activists who are her closest friends and colleagues. "My son even accused me of protecting everyone except Serbs," she told me in a phone

call, although she said she later overheard him defending her concern for the weak. She does, in fact, fight for

Serb victims. In mid-July she made another dangerous trip to Kosovo, this time taking testimony from Serbs and arguing 'with local Kosovo Liberation Army commanders about the abuses.

In Serbia today, if you listen hard you can hear mention of what Serbs did in Kosovo. Significantly, the Orthodox Church, which has called for Mr. Milosevic's resignation, has criticized "crimes committed in our name." The opposition's political rallies center on the impoverishment Mr. Milosevic has brought to Serbia,

and the most popular opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic, has been just as nationalist as Mr. Milosevic. But

some speakers at the rallies of the Alliance for Change, an opposition group, do allude to what happened to

Albanians. The independent newspapers have printed some statements from international prosecutors and reprinted a few articles from European papers about the atrocities being uncovered.

But these mentions are brief and bloodless next to the in-depth reports in the press about the mistreatment that Serbs in Kosovo are suffering today. However, the stories of Serb victimization, while important, give an incomplete view of the war.

No one in public life, Ms. Kandic said, contacted her after her interviews for more information. Many of

her friends, she said, merely told her that they had not believed it, and left it at that. "These are normal, human feelings," she said. "They are all occupied by their own situation. They say, 'My house is here in Belgrade.'"

Ms. Kandic has studied how other societies - dealt with past crimes. "Germans faced it because they were forced to," she said. The Allied occupation of West Germany was

certainly a factor, but so was the Nuremberg tribunal, which revealed the horrors of Auschwitz - but allowed most Germans to lay blame exclusively on the Nazi leaders in the dock. While isolated voices in West Germany wrestled with war guilt in the 1940's and 50's, it was not until a new generation came of age in the rebellious 60's that West German society really examined, and expressed its revulsion for, what it had done.

The task in Serbia may be even harder. There, will be no Western occupation. More important, Serbians, unlike Germans, are oppressed by a strong victimization mentality.

Serbs have genuinely suffered throughout their history - most recently in World War II - and their fears are fanned by unscrupulous leaders to mobilize Serbs to lash out at others.

It would help, Ms Kandic said, if some of the army reservists who witnessed crimes in Kosovo would come forward. She would also like more contact between the outside world and Serbians. "We see our situation only from the local perspective," she said. "People think that

society will change with new elections. We've had elections before. No one understands that our problem is not a new election, but facing our realities."