[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1417]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CONGRESSIONAL TRIP TO KOSOVO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I joined the gentlewoman from New 
York (Mrs. Kelly) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) over the 
weekend. Our intent was to go to Kosovo because we were aware of the 
brutal violence that the Milosevic regime had imposed upon the Kosovo 
people. They went into villages and wiped out the village. The Interior 
Minister of Kosovo, who was acting under the orders of Mr. Milosevic, 
said that if there are even two terrorists opposed to our regime, we 
consider the entire village opposed and are justified in eliminating 
it.
  They killed 87 people, innocent men, women, children. They lined them 
up. Many of them they only killed after torturing them. These people 
were not a threat. Virtually all of them were unarmed. They wiped them 
out because they were afraid that they might at some point pose a 
threat to their regime. Why would it be a threat? Kosovo is a country 
of 2.2 million people. About 2 million of them are Albanian Muslims. A 
little less than 10 percent of the population is Serbian. Many of those 
Serbs have been sent there by Mr. Milosevic, who is the head of the 
Serbian government, that now calls itself the Federal Republic of 
Yugoslavia, sent to populate Kosovo. Most of the Serbs there did not 
want to be there. Some of them had been driven out by Croatians, out of 
the Krajina region in Croatia, but the reality is that the vast 
majority of the Kosovo people want to have their own representation. 
They had a vote in 1991, overwhelmingly elected Mr. Ibrahim Rugova as 
the President. That presidency was not allowed to take effect, that 
government was not allowed to take effect. Mr. Milosevic took over 
control of the country. The way he maintains control over 90 percent of 
the population is through the most brutal repression, the same kind of 
brutality we saw in Bosnia.

                              {time}  1900

  I can tell you one instance when I visited Kosovo earlier, there was 
a school that was fit for about a thousand students. Half of the school 
was reserved for a handful of Serbian children, the other half, a 
thousand Albanian Muslim children were consigned to. The government 
bricked over the bathrooms. One of the parents who had two daughters 
there complained about the conditions. That man had his body mutilated, 
was slit from head to toe and dumped on the doorstep of the family. 
That is the kind of brutality that enables a very small portion of the 
population, through a reign of terror, to control 90 percent of the 
population.
  That is why we went there, in defense of human rights, of democracy 
and, in fact, of free enterprise because the Serbian regime out of 
Belgrade seized control of the private businesses. The majority of the 
population are not allowed to own their businesses. They seize the 
assets of the banks, they deprive people of the means of livelihood. 
You have an 85 percent unemployment rate in Kosovo. What you have is a 
landmine that is going to explode.
  President Rugova believes in nonviolence. The six Americans who were 
imprisoned believe in nonviolence. In fact they were there to preach 
nonviolent conflict resolution, and yet they were arrested by the 
police under a phony charge that has never been used before, that they 
had not registered their exact location with the police. They had moved 
from one home to another, apparently, and so they had their heads 
shaved, they were sentenced to 10 days.
  This is an untenable situation. It cannot continue in the way it is. 
We are going to have a press conference tomorrow. We will have a rally 
tomorrow. I hope that free peoples around the world will join in unison 
against these repressive tactics, restore independence to Kosovo.

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