Prishtina Resident Speaks With ABCNEWS

ABCNEWS.com April 8 — The streets of Kosovo’s capital are nearly deserted. Those who do go out may be beaten. Police are living in residential apartments. An ethnic Albanian who stayed in Pristina described the situation to ABCNEWS’ Mike Lee by telephone. Here is an edited transcript:

Give me a description of what is going on in Pristina? The situation is, as you know, very tense. People are not going out. The water is on. Electricity is on until 8 in the evening. You have all kinds of movements of VJ [military] and police around town. As I go on my balcony I see people getting beaten by the police. Two or three times I saw that because I live in the part of the city where you can see almost the whole city.

The military police HQ has been destroyed, is that correct? Yeah the the ministry of internal police … is destroyed. There are shootings every night around the city now where the VJ are located. …

Police in Apartments The police live in other people’s apartments? Apartments that were left by refugees that were abandoned and the police go in there because they have no other place to live. I mean it’s totally chaos.

Has the bombing had any substantial effect on the ability of the police to operate? The Serb police? I don’t think the bombing made any substantial effect on the ability to operate. Any policeman is able to kill people with a machine gun.

Has the bombing seriously affected the ability of Serb forces to fight the KLA [guerrillas] or to go after these Albanian villages and destroy them? It certainly did because now the forces of the Serb VJ are much more afraid of the bombing.

So they have been pushed back in some areas? Yeah, they are pushed back and they are much more kind of they hide all over the place.

The Serb forces are hiding? They have no chance to use their weapons because if they exposed their weapons to the airstrikes of NATO they will get destroyed immediately.

On The Streets What about the situation on the streets in Pristina. Are the Serb police still on the streets of Pristina, and if so to what degree are they in control? The Serb police is all over. They have the control total control of the city.

How are the police treating people? At night they have no movement because there are no civilians and they have nothing to move. But at daylight they are brutal, very, very brutal they beat all over everybody. They beat everybody they found in the street. They don’t care if it is a girl or a boy or who it is.

Tell me about Pristina, how much is destroyed, what has happened to that city? Pristina is destroyed. Pristina army and police are destroyed, 80 percent maybe 90. The buildings they are destroyed by NATO airstrikes. But the civilian stores and Albanian markets they are destroyed 100 percent by Serbian police and Yugoslav army.

How do you live? We have neighboring Serbs. We have no problem with the people here with whom we live — the Serbians. They are very good and they help us a lot. I am not able to go out and buy food, for example for my family, but Serbs can go they go and buy for us.

Your Serb neighbors help you out — they don’t tell police where to find you? No, no of course not. We get along real good with each other. It is the Serbian government that has problems with us.

Refugees Return Describe the scene of people returning to Pristina. I saw it day before yesterday. It was a big convoy… a non-stop convoy. Maybe 2,000 — 3,000 vehicles. They had no problem. They were moving very slowly. Nobody stopped them, but I heard from friends that turned back they had orders from the Yugoslav army and the police to go back in the city.

What has happened to all of these people turned back from the border? Some of them are returned to their homes. And some of them when they returned they see the police in their houses so they go to their neighbors or their family or relatives or something

Do a lot of people feel they are trying to alter the demographics so when they have elections it will change? I think that is obvious; everybody sees that. To everybody you ask will tell you the same thing. Ethnic cleansing is their main goal. They have nothing else. They just want Albanians out of here so they can have a bigger figure of Serbs.

What is the mood of Pristina? Mentally it is much better than in the beginning because people are getting used to this war state. You see bombs falling and you see people getting beat. We have no feeling now. You don’t care about nothing because you know that is going to happen to you very soon. We expect that to happen but we still have hope the European community will help save us from this situation.

Could NATO come through easily right now with ground troops? Can the Serbs defend Pristina easily? I think it would be very easy because Serbian soldiers are much more afraid now from NATO strikes. They are deserting and it would be very easy for them because they have also support from KLA.

Is the Serb military pulling its heavy weapons out of Kosovo or are they hidden? I saw them hiding tanks and different armored vehicles but I don’t want to mention the places where they are hidden.

What about refugees shipped to Albania? Any thoughts on them? We are very very afraid for the fate of those people because we heard that 10,000 are lost with no trace. And we are much more worried about members of families getting separated from each other. That’s the worst thing for members of a family getting separated in four different countries that is a disaster for the European Community to let that happen.

Why did you stay in Pristina? Did you have to? No, I don’t have to stay but I want to stay because I don’t want to go anywhere if nobody pushes me out and that hasn’t happened yet so I am waiting.

The people returned from the border are they safe? Yeah, I think they are going to be safe. Nobody getting killed in city of Pristina. People are getting brutally beaten by the police. Killings haven’t started yet. If they do start I think it is not going to finish until everybody gets dead.