ALBANIA: PARALYSED SINCE BIRTH, AN INVALID GIRL, LIVES STRANDED ALONG WITH MORE KOSOVO REFUGEES
Record ID:
450960
ALBANIA: PARALYSED SINCE BIRTH, AN INVALID GIRL, LIVES STRANDED ALONG WITH MORE KOSOVO REFUGEES
- Title: ALBANIA: PARALYSED SINCE BIRTH, AN INVALID GIRL, LIVES STRANDED ALONG WITH MORE KOSOVO REFUGEES
- Date: 1st May 1999
- Summary: BAJRAM CURRI, ALBANIA APRIL 28, 1999)(REUTERS) 1. SLV/SV OF REFUGEE CENTRE, CHILDREN STANDING AT GATE (2 SHOTS) 0.11 2. SLV CHILDREN AND WOMEN WASHING (2 SHOTS) 0.21 3. MCU HAJRIJE TAHIRI, MOTHER OF HANDICAPPED GIRL HELHEME TAHIRI, (Albanian with English translation): "She says I couldn't allow my, couldn't let my girl there, so they brought her here. Sometimes we carried her, sometimes we pushed her in a wheelbarrow. She is 19 years old." 0.50 4. MCU/SV/CU HELHEME TAHIRI, 19 YEAR OLD INVALID IN A ROOM AT THE CAMP (3 SHOTS) 1.10 5. MCU/SV VARIOUS OF HANDICAPPED GIRL WITH MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER (3 SHOTS) 1.29 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 16th May 1999 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: BAJRAM CURRI, ALBANIA
- Country: Albania
- Reuters ID: LVA617EOYXWANT9NK29I4OTR2SA0
- Story Text: Curled in the corner of a primitive refugee centre in
northern Albania, 19-year old Helheme Tahiri has the face of
an old woman and the twisted, withered body of a quadriplegic.
Paralysed since birth, she had never been out of her house
until Serb forces entered her village of Vojnik in central
Kosovo on March 27 and ordered everyone to leave at gunpoint.
The girl survived a week's forced march to Albania,
pushed along in a wheelbarrow or carried in the arms of her family.
"We were pushing her in the wheelbarrow when Serb tanks
roared past making lots of noise and vibration and spilling
black exhaust smoke over us," said her mother, Hajrije.
"My daughter began howling, screaming with fear, She
usually makes no sound at all.I don't know how much of the
world she understands, but I know she was very frightened then."
Helheme is lying on a blanket, wrapped in plastic from the
waist down because she is incontinent.The girl's blue eyes
move constantly but never seem to focus.
"It was a terrible journey.The children were terrified
and my boys' feet were swollen from walking.Six nights we
slept outside.It rained a lot and we covered my daughter in a
plastic sheet to keep her dry in the wheelbarrow," Hajrije said.
"The Serb soldiers told us to go to Albania and eat
stones.They taunted us and called us bad names...We saw NATO
planes bombing near Djakova and were afraid that the Serbs
would retaliate against us."
"They spat on us and robbed us of our money and jewellery
and cursed us.At one point they made us lie down on the
ground and tanks fired above us...Children were fainting."
Hajrije, 39, made the long trek with her daughter and five
sons, mother, several sisters-in-law and their children.The
oldest male in the group was just 13 years old.
She has lost touch with her husband, who works in Croatia,
because all her personal documents -- including the paper on
which she had his address and telephone number written -- were
confiscated and burned by Serb authorities at the border.
Stranded along with more than 150 other refugees from
Kosovo in a former army barracks in this remote Albanian town,
the woman says she was not surprised the Serbs burned her
house down, only that she has ended up in Albania.
"The war? We expected it, we feared it and then on (March
27) we understood it was actually happening," she explained.
"Every day for months we thought the war would start But
we never thought we'd be driven out of Kosovo.We thought they
would burn our houses but that we would be able to come back."
Kosovo is a southern province of Serbia, one of
Yugoslavia's two remaining republics.Ninety per cent of
Kosovo's pre-war population of about two million people was
ethnic Albanian.
More than 600,000 ethnic Albanians have been driven out of
Kosovo into Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro since NAT0 began
bombing Yugoslavia on March 24 because Belgrade refused to
agree an internationally-sponsored peace plan for the province.
Having lost home, homeland and husband, at least for the
moment, penniless and dependent on humanitarian aid for
survival, Hajrije takes comfort in her children.
Burim, not quite five, plays in a sand pile in front of
the refugee centre, digging out a miniature bunker and
reinforcing its roof with bits of scrap wood.
"It's a place where we can hide ourselves so the Shkjau
(derogatory term for Serbs) can't find us," the boy explained.
"The children saw us build such places in Kosovo so now
they do it in imitation," said the mother.
What does she dream of for her family now that they are refugees
"I would like to go back to my birthplace (Kosovo) with
all my children, and I will if it is liberated," Hajrije said.
"I would gladly walk and carry my daughter or push her the
whole way...I couldn't have left her there and I couldn't
leave her here.I love her.God helped us to make it
here, God willing, we will get back home.
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