Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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<strong>Psychosocial</strong> <strong>Notebook</strong>, Volume 2, October 2001<br />
social hierarchies, inconceivable that this could be the motive for crimes<br />
and massacres:<br />
…When first I heard of atrocities [referring here to the war in Croatia],<br />
because if you heard of some soldier dying in the war in a shoot-out, that<br />
is alas normal, the first time at Plitvice – do you know where that is? A<br />
really nice town by the way – on the television we saw civilians whose<br />
eyes had been put out by Serbs and we could not believe that it had really<br />
happened, we could hardly even believe the television news, there<br />
must have been a reason behind it we thought; and then it turned out that<br />
it had actually happened, but even worse… [Altin]<br />
Massacres, when I heard tell of massacres, I hoped that it wasn’t true.<br />
[Margherita]<br />
It is not a coincidence that until physical contact took place, until they<br />
were face to face with a tangible “enemy”, policeman, bureaucrat or paramilitary,<br />
many people perceived the enemy as hiding beyond the borders<br />
that had brought them close to their neighbours, whether these neighbours<br />
were Albanian, Serbs or Romany.<br />
“I didn’t want to believe it”, was the reaction that many expressed when<br />
they heard of atrocities committed against defenceless people, a mirror<br />
reaction to the dismay they felt before the perpetrator of violence: “You!?<br />
So why me?” This terrible consternation comes both from knowing the<br />
identity of the persecutor, a person who had not been thought capable of<br />
harm, and from realizing one’s own condition, as victim. At a certain point,<br />
personal history ceases: this was expressed by a Rom engineer who was<br />
dismissed in the early 1990s for not collaborating with the government,<br />
and later expelled after the NATO intervention, by the armed groups who<br />
followed on the heels of the Liberation Army.<br />
At a certain point Kosovo is occupied, and then everybody who worked<br />
for a State company had to sign one of their… forms, recognizing the<br />
State and Serbia. Anybody who did not sign this was out of a job… and<br />
that is what happened to me personally because I was the only Rom engineer<br />
in Kosovo working there… They had always tried to push me into<br />
signing this recognition for Serbia and then, how do you say, to be undervalued<br />
by them… that is what I refuse to do… in fact more than refusing,<br />
I did not want to be that way because I saw it was not right… [Tahir]<br />
This surprise before unexpected violence and the end of personal history<br />
also occurred when entire families received sudden orders to leave their<br />
homes. First, Albanian families were thrown out by Serbian soldiers or<br />
paramilitaries, then Roma families were forced to flee by armed<br />
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