Koha Ditore started again
In the first days of the war, the offices of Pristina's leading
daily were destroyed and all of its journalists scattered. But the
team has reassembled and relaunched from exile, and Kosovo Albanians
once again have a voice.
By Iso Rusi in Skopje
Koha Ditore, the leading Kosovo Albanian daily, has been relaunched
in Macedonia, just over a month after its offices in Pristina were
burnt down by Serbian security forces and its editor Baton Haxhiu
wrongly reported executed.
The first issue since March 22 was published Friday by a skeleton
staff of 23 journalists working out of tiny offices in Tetevo and
Skopje. They have no phones, no faxes, no emails. But they produced
an issue to match the paper's usual professional style. "Unbearable
lightness of Crimes," ran the leader, an article about the atrocities
continuing in Kosovo. The team is again being led by Haxhiu who
arrived safely on the Macedonian border in the first days of April,
shortly after his death was announced to the world at a NATO press
conference in Brussels. Thirty-one other staff members of the paper
remain unaccounted for. Using the borrowed e-mail and Internet
facilities of local internet cafes, Haxhiu's journalists now produce
a 16-page daily paper which is distributed freely to Albanian readers
inside Macedonia's refugee camps. With financial support from both
the British and French governments and private donors, 10,000 copies
are printed in Skopje, with a further 25,000 published in Frankfurt
and distributed to the ever-growing Kosovo population in Western
Europe.
In the coming weeks, Koha Ditore ("Daily Times") is hoping to
relaunch its Web site and to start distributing a further 10,000
copies to Kosovo refugees currently languishing inside camps in
neighbouring Albania. The rebirth of Koha is a substantial boost for
the Kosovo Albanian community, once again giving a direct voice to a
people who for a month have only been known as nameless victims. But
Haxhiu takes the breakthrough in stride, saying that he is merely
trying to produce a paper. One of the paper's main functions, he
says, is to give a sense of reality to the Kosovo Albanians, making
sure that they understand that they will not be returning home in a
few weeks. But Haxhiu remains convinced the return will be relatively
soon: in two months, he says, "accompanied by NATO troops".
In Kosovo, Koha Ditore had emerged as the leading Kosovo daily,
managing a clean presentation and a broad readership throughout the
province. Inevitably affected by the conflict and related political
debates, it nevertheless sought to be an independent and professional
journalistic publication produced by a young and highly enthusiastic
staff. Shortly before the start of NATO's bombing campaign, Koha
Ditore fell foul of Serbia's draconian new Law on Public Information
and was fined a total of US $26,800 for publishing a statement by
Kosovo Liberation Army leader, Hashim Thaci--even though the
statement had been distributed by the Belgrade news agency Beta. Koha
chose to shut down rather than pay or contest the fine. Two days
later, on March 24, Serbian police shot and killed Koha Ditore's
guard and burnt down the office.
Iso Rusi is a journalist with Focus in Skopje.
Note: To help support the relaunch of Koha Ditore, contact IWPR
Programme Director Alan Davis .
© Institute of War &Peace Reporting
Back to Archive |
Back to Kosov@ Crisis 1999
