David Irving’s Action Report On-line (13 May 1999)

Le Monde PARIS, MAY 13, 1999 VIEWPOINT A TRAVELLER’S LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE [FRENCH] REPUBLIC By Regis Debray UPON my return from Macedonia, Serbia, and Kosovo, I must let you know my impression: I am afraid, Mr. President, that the route we follow is erroneous. You are a practical man. You hardly treasure intellectuals, more or less pompous and peremptory, who dominate the [opinion] columns. This is a point that we have in common. I shall therefore restrict myself to the facts.

Each to his own facts, you will say. Those [facts] that I could garner while there, during a brief stay — one week in Serbia (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis, Vramje) from May 2 to May 9, four days of which were spent in Kosovo, between Pristina and Prej, Pritzen and Podujevo — in all good faith do not seem to me to come even close to matching the words that you have been using. Do not believe that I am being partial.

The week prior, I spent in Macedonia, witnessed the arrival of refugees, listened to their stories. Like many others, I was bowled over. I wanted at all costs to go and see “from the other side” how such a heinous crime was possible. Being distrustful of “Intourist-style” visits, or journalistic tours by guided bus, I asked the Serb authorities to agree to my having my own translator, my own vehicle and the freedom to go wherever I wanted and speak to anyone I wished.

This was agreed to, and respected. Important, the interpreter? Yes. Because I learned to my own detriment — and how else to learn otherwise? — that one could, in Macedonia and in Albania, imprudently put one’s trust in local go-betweens who, for the most part sympathisers or militants of UCK, offer their [partial] views and their network of contacts to the newly-arrived stranger. The accounts of [such] extortions are too plentiful for one to doubt the undeniable background of this reality.

Certain witness accounts that I collected, upon subsequent checking at the locations of their origin, turned out to be either out-and-out lies or inexact. This, of course, in no way changes the ignominious scandal that this exodus represents. What are you constantly telling us? “We are not making war on the Serb people but on a dictator, Milosevic , who, refusing all negotiation, is cold-bloodedly carrying out a programme of genocide against the Kosovars.

We limit ourselves to the destruction of his apparatus of repression, a destruction which is already well-advanced. And if we continue our attacks, despite the regrettable targeting errors and the involuntary collateral damage, [this is being done because] it remains that Serb forces continue their ethnic cleansing operation in Kosovo .” I have reason to fear, Mr. President, that each one of these words is fraudulent. 1. “We are not making war on the Serb people…”

Do you not know that in the heart of old Belgrade the “Dusan Radevic” theatre for children is next door to the TV facility and that the missile which destroyed the latter hit the former? Three hundred schools, everywhere, have been hit by bombs. Schoolchildren, left to themselves, no longer go to school. In the countryside, there are some who pick up the yellow explosive tubes in the form of toys (CBU 87). The Soviets sowed similar fragmentation bombs in Afghanistan.

Destruction of factories has put out of work three hundred thousand workers — with an income of 230 dinars, or 91 francs [USD$15.00] per month. About one-half of the population is unemployed. If you think this is the way to turn it agains its regime, you are mistaken. Despite the weariness and the shortages, I saw no fissures in the sacred union.

In Pristina, a young girl told me: “When four Chinese get killed, representatives of a Great Power, the world gets indignant; but four hundred Serbs, this doesn’t count. Strange, no?” I certainly did not witness the carnage performed by NATO bombers on the buses, the columns of refugees, the trains, the hospital in Nis, and elsewhere. Nor the raids on Serbian refugee campls (Majino, Maselje, April 21, four dead, twenty wounded).

I have in mind some four hundred thousand Serbs that the Croats deported from Krajina without this event being recorded by [journalistic] microphones and cameras. Limiting myself to the time and places of my stay in Kosovo, General Wertz , NATO spokesman, declared: “We have not attacked any convoys and we have never attacked civilians”. Lies.

I saw in the hamlet of Lipjan, on Thursday, May 6, a private home pulverized by a missile: three little girls and two grandparents massacred, without a military target within a radius of three miles of the place. The following day I saw, at Prizren, in the gypsy quarter, two other civil shanties turned to ashes two hours [before my arrival on the scene], with multiple victims buried. 2. “The dictator Milosevic…” My contacts in the opposition, the only ones with whom I have spoken, brought me