Belgian Doctors To Quit Kosovo Work

Tue., Aug. 8, 2000

Accusing the United Nations of allowing ethnic cleansing to persist in Kosovo, the Belgian branch of the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders announced Monday it was ceasing operations in Kosovo.

Doctors Without Borders “can no longer tolerate the serious and continuous deterioration of living conditions of the ethnic minorities in Kosovo,” the group said in a statement released in Pristina. French teams from Doctors Without Borders will remain in the province.

The group said the Belgian doctors had been “eyewitnesses to the daily harassment and terror against the Serb minority in (the towns of) Vucitrn and Srbica and the Albanian minority in (the northern part of Kosovska) Mitrovica.”

The group said life for ethnic minorities was marked by killings, drive-by shootings, hand grenade attacks, verbal abuse, threats, robbery and blackmail. Many had been forced to leave their homes, the group said.

More than a year after NATO and the United Nations marched into Kosovo, mistrust and violence still fester between ethnic Albanians, Serbs and other minority groups. International officials make almost daily appeals for tolerance, saying ethnic tensions are preventing the southern Serb province from achieving economic and social progress.

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Belgian Doctors To Quit Kosovo Work

Jesse Tinsley

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