Latest news with #KosovarAlbanians
The Herald Scotland
24-07-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
We took action in Kosovo. Why should Gaza be any different?
The UK is threatening more sanctions against [[Israel]] but in reality they have no effect at all. Why would [[Israel]] listen to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer or his Foreign Secretary David Lammy? They have no influence in what is an ongoing genocide. The UK continues to supply arms, materials and surveillance for Benjamin Netanyahu's regime and instructs the police to arrest anyone who supports Palestinian Action, an activist group calling for an end to the ethnic cleansing and massacres in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel is going even further with raids and attacks on Syria and Lebanon, not to mention Iran. Why doesn't the UK Government have the guts to call for military action against [[Israel]]? Roll back to 1999 when Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic attempted to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Kosovar Albanians. There were pictures of tens of thousands fleeing, some with all their belongings piled on the back of tractors. There was then a massacre at a village called Racak when 43 civilians were killed, prompting Nato to intervene and effectively end the war. I was there reporting for Reuters and Sky News and saw the victims and knew this was a defining moment. Why hasn't the same happened in response to Israel's refusal to accept international law in Gaza? Yes, the attack by Hamas in October 2023 was appalling but since then more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, their homes destroyed, settlers are taking over whole villages, Americans are eyeing up seaside lots, olive groves have been ripped out (by settlers) and fishermen refused access to the waters. There are dozens of innocent people being killed every day. Surely it couldn't be anything to do with race or religion could it? Andy Stenton, Glasgow. Read more letters Corruption in Ukraine I note that your front-page article on President Zelenskyy's latest olive branch to his Russian counterpart ("Zelenskyy repeats his offer to meet with Putin to negotiate peace deal", The Herald, July 23) makes no mention of the first public protests against him since the war began. These took place in a number of cities after the parliament backed a bill limiting the power of anti-corruption agencies. With Ukraine already in lowly 105th place on Transparency International's corruption-perceptions index, this bill should be a warning to investors. Unfortunately Keir Starmer has a bombastic 100-year deal with Ukraine. George Morton, Rosyth. Take tough action on migrants I have long argued through the courtesy of your Letters Pages that the only sure way to stop the small boats invasion is to kill off the demand (illegal migrants) which in turn will kill off the supply (the gangs). That could be achieved by legislating that anyone arriving illegally is automatically disqualified from staying, no ifs, no buts. With its huge Westminster majority, the Labour Government should have no problem in passing this legislation and thus fulfilling its stated 'duty" to stop this illegal invasion. The only question is why are Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper not doing that immediately rather than fiddling about with unrealistic schemes such as ' one in, one out" and grand-sounding but placebo-like 'international co-operation agreements" to 'smash the gangs" which will never stem the demand which fuels the flow across the Channel? For anyone who doubts the seriousness of the small boats invasion, I commend a report recently on Talk TV (why not our national broadcaster the BBC?) by an investigative journalist with a camera crew (filming apparently covertly) from around the migrant camps near Calais. The report revealed that thousands of mainly young men are camping out there waiting to cross, with these numbers increasing as more and more are brought in daily by large coaches. This illegal invasion of the UK is huge and growing. We don't know who they are and it is high time the Government took the gloves off to deal with it. Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop. Our leaders have no idea It is patently obvious the current Labour Government has no idea how to fix Britain. All it does is to make things worse. People always claim they go into politics to make things better. Surely these same people must realise when they are out of their depth? Admitting this is never a consideration but it really should be. This argument holds good in Scotland too, when after 18 years of trying, the SNP has achieved precious little. Politicians really must take responsibility for the powers they wield. It seems these days very few do. This should worry us all. Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow. We must focus on nuclear David Hay (Letters, July 23) tries to rubbish nuclear power as being unecological. His figures of Norway generating 85% of its electricity from hydro electric power stations ignores the fact that 90% of Norway's population lives in the near coastal regions, leaving the mountainous valleys available for such schemes. Doing so in Scotland would require Highland clearances on a biblical scale. The Netherlands might be targeting 2030 for generating 70% of its power by wind but that requires the wind to blow, otherwise the wind turbines are merely sculptures of steel and carbon. Wind turbine blades have a 'time-life' where they have to be replaced before the fatigue they experience breaks them catastrophically. Originally 25 years, this is now 15 to 20 years because the designers seemed ignorant of the fact that a leading edge doing 300 miles per hour into rain, dust, hailstones and birds causes damage which is escalated by frost. This requires expensive maintenance and downtime as steeplejacks apply sticking plasters for as long as they dare. In the 1920s Tommy Sopwith was putting steel deflectors on the leading edge of his wooden propellers but that information was either not in the designer's computers, was ignored or was treated as an irrelevance. University studies tell us that right now we are scrapping 200,000 tonnes of time-lifed blades per annum and as a result of the exponential growth in the industry this will be 30 million tonnes by 2030 and 50 million tonnes by 2050. These blades cannot be recycled or put to landfill, they will last millions of years so what part of 'eco' do they fit into? Where are they going to go? In the USA they are being buried in vast tracts of land but even that is a limited resource. Mr Hay might also be unaware that the replacement carbon fibres and resins require oil as a source for the raw material and concrete for the bases, whose creation is a major producer of CO2. The waste from a nuclear plant is limited and can be stored safely. Hitachi is currently working on a reactor that will produce waste with a half life of 1,000 years instead of 30,000 years, a big step forward. We are a clever species, we should be working on reducing that further. We are currently in a situation where overcapacity of wind generation requires generators to be paid to stop generating, sending our hard-earned cash to the overseas corporations that own the windfarms. This is utter madness. We should also be charging them for their inability to supply in times of low wind speeds and cloudy days because regardless of the eco-qualities we still need a generating capacity to cover the shortfall and that will require gas or nuclear generation. For the last 50 years nuclear power has supplied a steady 40% of our base generation. It should remain so. Peter Wright, West Kilbride. The Torness nuclear power station (Image: Getty) Nationwide alert I was delighted to read that the CEO of Nationwide Building Society is to earn just over £19,000 per day for her sterling work in helping to run a business ("Nationwide customers angry at 'controversial' decision", heraldscotland, July 21). Obviously she is much more important than nurses, midwives, doctors, and the general female population. Running a business, to the uneducated, seems a fairly straightforward task, but we all know that without paying these people extraordinary amounts of money the country would collapse. As she laughs her way to the bank, every day, she may well think "ordinary people are so thick that they believe all our nonsense that we must pay indecent amounts of money or life would never be the same again". B McKenna, Dumbarton.
Metro
20-06-2025
- Metro
‘I'd rather they killed us' How rape became a weapon in war
Drita* was a widow with two sons when Serbian forces entered her village in Kosovo. As they began separating the old men, women and children, she says her community 'knew what was going to happen'. 'They tore my clothes, they ripped them lengthwise. I started to scream and cry. After, the paramilitaries came. Long, greasy hair, unwashed, dressed in black clothes. I just cannot describe what we went through… the sexual violence was horrible.' Recalling her trauma in a book called I Want To Be Heard, which contains stories from torture survivors of the war, Drita added: 'I'd rather they killed us, slaughtered us to death, decapitated us, or mutilated us by cutting an arm or a leg, but not experience that. It was horrible.' Thousands of women became the target of Serbian soldiers during the 1988 Kosovo war, which saw forces commit genocide and displacement against Kosovar Albanians, in the belief that their land belonged to Serbia. But this isn't an isolated case. Referred to by foreign correspondent and author Christina Lamb as the 'cheapest weapon known to man', rape has been used as a weapon in every recorded human conflict, dating as far back as Roman times. Following the First World War, hundreds of soldiers recounted coming across women who had been sexually assaulted and had their breasts cut off with bayonets, while in the Second World War, in some countries, women were raped and had their heads shaved if soldiers thought they had 'collaborated' with the enemy. In the last 40 years an estimated 500,000 women and girls were raped during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, more than 60,000 were assaulted in the Sierra Leone civil war, and since 1996, at least 200,000 women and girls have been raped in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the statistics are staggering, it can never be forgotten that behind these figures is a person whose life has been torn apart, never to be the same again. 'These numbers represent individual women,' Vianney Dong, Country Director of Women for Women (WFW) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, tells Metro. 'Beyond the figures, we need to see the humanity – we need to see the women who came forward and have been brave.' Earlier this week, the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict was marked for the eleventh year to raise awareness of the need to put an end to conflict-related sexual violence and honour victims and survivors. Even with strides made in recent decades in terms of victim support and prosecution for rape, sexual violence still continues in conflicts today. On October 7, 2023, a cross-border attack by Hamas at the Nova music festival in Israel left 1,200 dead and saw women sexually assaulted and mutilated, while 250 people were taken hostage in Israel. Those kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip were believed to have been raped. Since then, sexual violence has been recorded on both sides of the conflict. 'There have been exacerbated attacks by soldiers on Palestinian people – including women and children – particularly at checkpoints, in the past year and a half,' Amani Mustafa, Country Director for WFW Palestine, tells Metro, adding, 'there are 900 checkpoints across the West Bank.' She adds that some female residents of Gaza who were detained by Israeli forces after October 7 have come back with 'obvious' signs of rape, unable to speak after their ordeal. Similar instances were recorded when some of the female Israeli hostages, taken by Hamas, were returned. One, Moran Yanai, said she wasn't sexually assaulted but claimed other women hostages were raped. Palestinian detainees have been subject to continued sexual assault and torture by Israeli authorities, Amani says. WFW Palestine was told the account of one man who was forced to watch his wife raped in front of their children – 'His wife is a victim, but so is his family,' Amani explains. But there are effects beyond breaking apart families and creating cracks in society in these circumstances, as the psychological damage can also be devastating. 'It is not OK for any human to live with this level of fear. And the perpetrators are enjoying impunity without accountability,' Amani explains. 'It is vital to raise awareness of sexual violence in conflict globally, but it is important that we do not turn a blind eye to a certain conflict because we have a political opinion on it. 'Women's rights issues and the humanitarian situation in Palestine have been highly politicised, because people are still busy identifying who to blame. 'They may have the liberty to identify and determine who's to blame, but there are victims who need support, which needs to address the root cause of the issue and conflict. But this is our reality.' Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been ongoing for over three decades. Generations of family have lived through war, and the high levels of rape in the conflict have persisted. When the fighting approached her village, teenager Françoise* decided to flee. Today, the 17-year-old lives in an Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp on the outskirts of Goma, but she's still not safe. In a testimonial for the Red Cross, she describes the horrific abuse she suffered recently. If you have been the victim of rape, either recently or historically, and are looking for help, support is out there. If you have recently been raped and you are still at risk, ring 999 and ask for the police. Otherwise, the first step is to go somewhere you are safe. If you want to report your rape to the police, ring 999 or the police non-emergency line on 101. An Independent Sexual Violence Advocate (ISVA) will often be on hand to help you through reporting and even after you have made a statement, you can still decide to withdraw from the criminal justice process at any time. If you plan on going to the police, if possible, do not wash your clothes or shower, bathe or brush your teeth. If you do get changed, keep the clothes you were wearing in a plastic bag. These steps will help to preserve any DNA evidence your attacker may have left on your body or clothes. If you don't want to contact the police, Rape Crisis suggest talking to someone you trust about what has happened; or you can ring one of the UK's many rape and sexual assault helplines. Anyone aged 16+ can contact Rape Crisis's 24/7 Support Line by calling 0808 500 2222 or starting an online chat. or If you have been injured, you're best advised to go to your nearest A&E to seek medical treatment. If you are uninjured, you can go to your nearest Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC). The NHS has information on where to find your nearest centre here. If your rape is historic, you can still access support, including from the police – there is no time limit on reporting and your account can still be used as evidence. Read more here. 'I started going to the forest to collect firewood for sale with a group of other women,' she explained. 'About two weeks ago, we came across a group of uniformed armed men. We ran and they chased us. Two of them caught me when I fell on the ground and couldn't run any more. They raped me one by one. They didn't say anything. I could see they were also scared. 'When I could stand up and walk, I was afraid I would get pregnant. I was afraid to tell anyone. I felt useless, scared and alone.' Henriette* was also sexually assaulted by a man carrying a machete after she was separated from friends as they went to collect firewood on a different occasion. 'I was terrified, thinking about my children,' the 30-year-old told the Red Cross. 'He pushed me into a hole in the ground and raped me. When he finished, he told me to leave and never come back. Said I was lucky he didn't kill me. 'After I returned to the camp, and didn't go out for several days. I wanted to throw myself into the lake – the only reason I didn't was because there was nobody to take care of the children.' Between February and March of this year alone, ActionAid recorded a 700% increase in sexual violence against women and girls in the DRC. Provisions to help tackle the issue, such as mobile clinics in IDP camps for rape victims and distribution of post-rape kits by midwives have been introduced by the government, Vianney Dong tells Metro. Still, there are gaps in implementing the changes and seeing progress. If a woman is sexually assaulted, it's known that they should go to the police station to report the crime. 'But before going to report it, women need to feel safe. The place where you are reporting a rape should be safe enough that you don't face retaliation. This is the gap: there is no safe space for a victim to come and say, 'This happened to me,'' Vianney explains. Many of the rape victims in the DRC live in rural areas and are uneducated, making outreach difficult for organisations like Women for Women. Even with education on what to do in case of a rape, the stigma remains. 'It's very difficult for women to open up. It has a lot of cultural implications,' she adds, explaining that in the DRC, many victims of sexual assault are accused of prostitution and exiled from their communities, which often places them in even more danger. 'We need to shift this mindset, speak to community leaders and have them understand – these women are victims of rape. We need to support them.' During the Kosovo War in the late 1990s, thousands of women and girls – like Drita – were raped at the hands of Serbian soldiers. The young country is still reckoning with the aftermath, 25 years later. Iliriana Gashi, Executive Director for WFW in Kosovo, tells Metro: 'When politicians began to be more supportive of survivors of sexual violence in the war, it changed things. But there is still so much shame. More Trending 'It's like when you throw a stone in the lake – the ripples reach far and wide. Shortly after the war ended, women were more open to speaking about their rapes. But it was male members of the family who didn't allow them to speak.' The public testimonies of many survivors of wartime sexual violence in Kosovo, along with time, have helped shift the blame from victims onto the perpetrators, Iliriana says. 'But this trauma is intergenerational,' she adds. 'I hope that people will understand that sexual abuse is a weapon of war. It is used for many purposes: to destroy the person, their family and their communities. 'As a world, we need to work on the prevention of using this weapon, which creates wounds that never heal.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Teen who murdered 12-year-old schoolgirl Ava White named for first time MORE: Three men repeatedly raped 12-year-old girl after luring her from Asda car park MORE: Pro-Palestine group that broke into RAF base 'will be banned in the UK'
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
On This Day, March 24: Germanwings crash kills 150 in France
March 24 (UPI) -- In 1603, Queen Elizabeth I of England died after 44 years of rule. She was succeeded by King James VI of Scotland, uniting England and Scotland under a single British monarch. In 1934, the United States granted independence to the Philippine Islands, effective July 4, 1946. In 1975, the beaver became the official symbol of Canada. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in the Gulf of Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil in the largest oil tanker spill in U.S. history. In 1998, four girls and a teacher at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark., were killed by bullets fired from a nearby wooded area. The shooters were two boys, ages 11 and 13, who were convicted as juveniles and served prison time. In 1999, NATO airstrikes hit military targets across the Yugoslav union of Serbia-Montenegro after ethnic cleansing launched by Serbian forces against Kosovar Albanians. In 2004, the European Commission fined software giant Microsoft $613 million for EU antitrust violations. In 2012, former U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney, 71, underwent heart transplant surgery at a hospital in Falls Church, Va. In 2015, a Germanwings plane carrying 150 people, including German high school students, crashed in the French Alps in southern France. Everyone on board died. In 2018, student activists pushed for an end to gun violence in the March for Our Lives protests across the country less than two months after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Fla., left 17 people dead. In 2023, a powerful EF4 tornado touched down in Rolling Fork, Miss., and continued on into Silver City, Miss. The tornado -- one of many in a four-day outbreak of twisters -- remained on the ground for more than an hour, killing 17 people and injuring dozens of others.
