Index on Censorship 4/1999 [antikvár]

EDITORIALPoisoned landWe go to press in the second precarious week of peace in Kosovo, a place now haunted by the savageries of ethnic cleansing, where a superhuman effort of will and humanity will be needed for Albanians and Serbs to live together again. In Ivo Zanic's words, the modern history of the Balkans demonstrates all too painfully that 'the mentality that fostered the myth of Greater Serbia is by no means exclusive to the Serbs' (pl57).But ethnic cleansing, 'the special curse of the twentieth century', has a long history. Index, which for over a quarter of a century has monitored censorship and silencing in so many countries, reports for the first time on the originál ethnic cleansing: the wars against tribal peoples that have decimated whole populations and led to the loss of at least 5,000 languages in the last 100 years alone.But relocating populations, eradicating people and cultures has not been enough for colonialists. The assault on tribal languages reflects, as Hugh Brody says, 'a compulsion to achieve a flnal and decisive silence', to put an end even to the voices of the fragmented and marginalised survivors. Why was this necessary? The answer lies in the claim that tribal peoples make to the places that are theirs. So this issue of Index is about the battles, still going on, for land as well as language.Meanwhile, is the land in Kosovo contaminated with depleted uránium (DU)? The British government's draft legislation on Fieedom of Information (pl9) would ensure you'd never get an answer to this question. But as far back as 7 May, the US Defence Department admitted that A-10 aircraft were firing DU ammunition in Kosovo. DU is both toxic and radioactive, but NATO insists that it is no more dangerous than any other heavy metál. Published material suggests this may be misleading: there are extensive reports from southern Iraq of stillbirths, birth defects and leukaemia in children born since 1991, when DU was used in the Gulf War. According to the Coghill Research Laboratories, one partiele of DU material in the lungs is equivalent to a chest X-ray per hour for life. Already in Macedónia, ecologists report evidence of increased radioactivity, while the local média claim that the people of Skopje have begun to restrict their movements outdoors. ?