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E-mail from the front lines

Internet gives voice to Yugoslavs, amid bombs and oppression

	With no known Western journalist on the ground in Kosovo, many are using the Internet to receive information from the region
RELATED VIDEO CNN's Tony Clark talks with one man trying to maintain contact -- any way he can Windows Media 28K 80K

March 31, 1999
Web posted at: 11:15 a.m. EST (1615 GMT)

In this story: Rival Web sites Huge risks involved 'Up-to-the-minute information' 'Like talking to your neighbor' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Carol Clark
CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- The animosities in Yugoslavia may go back centuries, but the current crisis has a thoroughly modern twist. It is the first major conflict since the Internet came of age, and e-mails are the primary means of communication from the battlefronts.

"I have five refugees from Kosovo in my house that are staying with us. They have a little boy with them. I'm deeply moved with one of his reaction. Every time that we eat or drink something he has a plastic bag and he put stuff in there and he says that he is keeping that food for his father because he know that his father has nothing to eat. I hope that one day he will give that food to his father if he finds him ALIVE. Please report this situation and keep backing up these refugees. You are all they have." --Ilirjan Zulfiu* Kumanovo, Macedonia MESSAGE BOARD Tell us your thoughts Note: This message board takes a few minutes to load. Thank you for your patience.

"When darkness comes, I will have to leave my home again and find some place to hide," an ethnic Albanian correspondent in Kosovo wrote in a March 29 e-mail dispatch, posted on the Global Beat Syndicate Web site.

"I will take my blanket, stay awake the whole night and hope not to hear a knock on the door. I'll listen to the roar of the jets, the anti-aircraft guns, the machine guns, and the shouting. Every shot sounds to me as if it's coming from the direction of my home. It fills me with a killing fear."

"It seems clear that the Internet has really become the window into the region in the way that nothing else can be," said Paul Tooher, interim editor of the Global Beat Syndicate, which is part of the New York University school of journalism. "The professional commitment and the technological savvy of Yugoslav journalists seems almost impossible to stop."

Serb authorities have closed down the major Albanian-language newspaper in Kosovo, Koha Ditore, and allegedly executed its editor in chief, according to NATO and other sources. No known Western journalist remains on the scene. And yet, news continues to make it out of Kosovo via e-mail.

Still banned from normal transmission, Belgrade's independent Radio B92 maintains a presence on the Web and via email news dispatches

In Belgrade, the Serbs reportedly recently shut down the transmitter of Radio B92, Yugoslavia's most internationally respected independent news source. The station didn't miss a beat. It sent out its news via a server in Amsterdam, broadcasting via Webcasts, so that anyone with a computer and Internet capability could hear its daily reports.

Radio B92's editor in chief, Veran Matic, was detained briefly by Serb authorities. As soon as he was released, he sent messages via e-mail to thank the station's supporters around the globe.

"We have had more than 10 million hits on our Web page for the last week alone," Matic wrote in the March 28 message.

"As long as people have access to telephone lines, they can find a way to get their message out," said Max Cacas, senior online producer for the Freedom Forum, a media think tank based in Arlington, Virginia. "One aspect of the Internet is if you try to cut it off from one place, it's easy to go around it."

Rival Web sites

The flurry of Web sites and e-mails that have been generated by the Kosovo crisis are unprecedented, many experts say.

Global Beat is one of the many avenues on the Web for information on the Balkans conflict

"Even before the bombs started falling, this conflict was extremely well documented on the Internet, with rival Web sites expressing their views," said Alex Frangos, Web coordinator for the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "Now, e-mail has become critical to getting information out of the region and to decision makers in the West."

An international human rights organization based in New York, Human Rights Watch is compiling e-mail dispatches from its volunteers in Yugoslavia and the region and posting them on its Web site as news flashes.

Huge risks involved

Although it is almost impossible for the Yugoslav government to shut down access to the Internet, authorities may be able to trace individual users.

Human Rights Watch uses encryption as a shield for those who are sending it official dispatches, but there are still huge risks involved, Frangos said.

"These are very brave people. We don't know how closely the government is monitoring the Internet, but we do know that they have had an interventionist policy," he said.

"I am writing this letter from Belgrade, in a hope that my words will show what the people in Serbia really think and feel in this moment. This is not a voice of Slobodan Milosevic or another politician, it is a voice of a 20-year-old girl. ... I would like to ask the NATO, can they solve the problem with bombing? Do they know how many civilians will die? Do they know how are the kids feeling, can someone explain them why they cannot go out and play with other kids? How are the pregnant woman feeling in cold and dark shelter ... I would like to send this letter to Slobodan Milosevic, maybe I could wake up his conscience." --Jelena Sredojevic* Belgrade, Yugoslavia MESSAGE BOARD Tell us your thoughts Note: This message board takes a few minutes to load. Thank you for your patience.

It's not just journalists and human rights workers who are going online with minute-by-minute reports of the fighting in Yugoslavia. Many ordinary people with Internet access, including Serbs and ethnic Albanians from throughout Yugoslavia and the region, are filing firsthand accounts of NATO airstrikes and other violence.

No matter what their ethnicity of their position on the airstrikes, they are united in their fear for their safety.

Their messages are showing up on dozens of Web sites dedicated to the crisis, including message boards and chatrooms sponsored by most of the world's leading news organizations. Their e-mails are also going directly to their friends and relatives around the world.

'Up-to-the-minute information'

Nik Nikci, a native of Montenegro who grew up in New York City, was frustrated by the cryptic statements of NATO officials in the days leading up to the airstrikes, so he turned to the Internet for word from his homeland.

"To tell you the truth, I didn't think they would ever bomb," said Nikci, a 25-year-old law student. "But then I was started getting news from a message board. There were people all over the world giving up-to-the-minute information, like 'Six planes have just left from Italy.'"

Nikci said his relatives in Montenegro do not have access to the Internet. But after the airstrikes started, he began receiving e-mails from a friend of his in Skopje, Macedonia - - a high-school student whose family has taken in six ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo.

"He's worried about his relatives in Kosovo, and he's overwhelmed by the stories the refugees are telling him (about the violence there)," Nikci said.

'Like talking to your neighbor'

Paul Tooher of Global Beat Syndicate said he does not see the flood of "unofficial" dispatches in the form of personal e- mails as a bad thing.

"People get information in lots of different ways," he said. "When there's a car crash on your street, you talk to your neighbors about it first and then you go to a professional news source for validation," he said. "I think maybe Web sites and e-mails and chatrooms are like talking to your neighbor. People take that nugget and look for confirmation from other sources."

Even though Global Beat only posts the reports of professional journalists known by its editors, their dispatches have the same raw immediacy that might be expressed by a friend or relative telling a compelling story.

"In other recent conflicts, like the Gulf War, we became used to getting authoritative, sanitized, official impressions of what was going on," Tooher said. "The Web gives you the ability to hook up to the Internet and look out the window and write down what's going on. It's not about laser-guided missiles. It's vivid and powerful and personal. And it's changing the dynamics of reporting."

Related Links:

Global Beat Syndicate Web site
Human Rights Watch Web site
Freedom Forum Web site
Web site of Radio B92
More links