In case you haven't already heard, there is going to be a worldwide moment of silence for peace in Balkans on May 24, 1999.

Thousands of people from around the world will come together at _one moment_ in time -- exactly 4pm Greenwich Mean Time (that's 9am in Los Angeles, noon in New York, 6pm in Paris).

We will stop whatever we are doing and observe two minutes of silence for the people in Yugoslavia. It isn't a statement against the United States, or against the Kosovars, or against the Serbians. It is not about national borders and governments at all. It is about the value of individual human life and liberty. It is a gesture of peace and good will for all men, women, and children.

I hope you'll join us on May 24.

Stop by http://www.MomentofSilence.org/ to add your name to the growing list of people (from Australia to Argentina to Kansas to Kosovo) who will be observing the moment of silence together.

Every name on that list is like a candle in the darkness, spreading the light of peace. Every name makes a difference for the people in Yugoslavia. Please add yours.

And help us spread the word. Forward this message to your friends and family, even if you think they might have already heard about it. Part of what makes this an historic event is that it is being promoted without the help of any big media organization or advertising budget. Regular people are spreading this message around the world, by e-mail.

Thank you for joining in the Moment of Silence.


Emina and Zoja

THE NEW YORK TIMES

May 23, 1999

THE ADVOCATE

In Climate of Fear, a Belgrade Serb Documents the Horror of Kosovo

By CARLOTTA GALL

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Much of the time in Belgrade, it feels
as if nothing is happening in Kosovo. People complain
endlessly about the NATO bombing, and they talk politics all
day, but there is a large hole in the conversation. Barely anyone
mentions Kosovo, let alone the horrors that are occurring there.

Natasa Kandic is one rare exception. She is a slight woman, with
dark circles etched under her eyes behind glasses. A sociologist by
profession, she heads the Humanitarian Law Center, a
nongovernmental group that has been documenting human rights
violations in Yugoslavia since 1992, and supplies material to the
international war crimes tribunal in the Hague.

As the political climate and restrictions on news media here have
made it impossible to publish material about human rights
violations, Ms. Kandic has resorted to writing and E-mailing a
newsletter to friends and news and human rights organizations.

"Intellectual society has changed here," she said, sitting calmly in
her modern offices in Belgrade drinking a mug of coffee. "People
saw only the bombs here, without thinking what is happening in
Kosovo and who is the person organizing it."

She is one of the few Serbian intellectuals to have maintained close
collaboration with ethnic Albanians on human rights issues and last
year won a prize for her work on democracy and civil society,
awarded by the United States and the European Union.

She attributes the fact that she is practically alone in her research
on Kosovo to the climate of fear that has paralyzed the intellectual
community in Serbia, and the success of the state propaganda.

Human rights and civic groups have always been allowed to operate
in Serbia, tolerated by the Government while they have remained
small. "But for the first time people feel fear," Ms. Kandic said.

In recent weeks, she said, several hundred people in Serbia,
including a number of her own employees, have been invited by the
police for an "informal talk." They were questioned about their work
for the tribunal at the Hague, and about other organizations and
intellectuals.

Several people have received anonymous letters full of abuse and
threats. A swastika, along with graffiti calling staff members
"NATO's spies," was daubed on the walls of theFund for an Open
Society, which receives funding from the Soros Foundation.

In everyone's mind, Ms. Kandic said, is the fatal shooting of a
well-known publisher, Slavko Curuvija, after he received threats and
was denounced on state television. With representatives of the
international community largely gone from Belgrade, Curuvija's
death cowed everyone else.

"Two days was enough to establish silence," Ms. Kandic said.

Milosevic has also been skillful at turning the NATO bombing
campaign to his advantage, exploiting the genuine outrage people
feel to block out all memory of why the bombing started. "Official
propaganda succeeded in convincing people that it is aggression,
and that the national task is to defend the country," she said.

Sonja Licht, head of the Fund for an Open Society Yugoslavia, said
a great majority of people "refuse to talk about" Kosovo. She
gathered 27 democracy and human rights activists in Serbia to sign
a statement condemning both the NATO bombing and the "ethnic
cleansing" of Albanians from Kosovo, but even that was difficult.

One journalist who is close to some of those who signed said,
"They fought over every word." In the end at least two people
refused to sign the statement because they objected to the
inference that "ethnic cleansing" was perpetrated by "Yugoslav
forces" rather than only "paramilitaries."

Ms. Kandic refused to sign because it did not go far enough.

Many of those working for nongovernmental organizations accuse
the West of betraying them and destroying the civil society they
were trying to create. The few organizations that do function
concentrate on the humanitarian needs of Serbs.

Ms. Kandic, virtually alone, is pressing for international support for
the people left in Kosovo, and she has won respect among Serbs
and Albanians alike. Last week she sat reading a letter sent by an
Albanian friend in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren. It was
printed to disguise the writing and signed with just two initials.

The author described the hunger, fear and isolation of the people left
in the town and begged for international aid organizations to come.
"If they do not come we shall die," the letter said.

Ms. Kandic said then that she had already decided on her next trip,
but some in Belgrade say Ms. Kandic is too reckless for her own
good.

Soon after NATO began its bombing campaign, when foreign
journalists were expelled and Albanians were fleeing Kosovo, Ms.
Kandic got into a taxi and persuaded the driver to take her to
Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

"I had a human and professional obligation to go," she explained.
She had an office in Pristina, with six local staff members, as well
as many friends and colleagues in Kosovo.

Her first aim was to help them escape, but she was also
determined to document what had happened since March 24, not
least because a colleague and close friend, the human rights lawyer
Bajram Kelmendi, had been arrested by the police and was later
found dead along with his two sons.

In one recent newsletter, she described the fear that gripped
members of her staff as she helped them escape Kosovo. She
wrote how she found her office ransacked, the computers gone and
one of her lawyers "at his wit's end from terror."

"I had known he lived in fear that someone might come, knock on
his door and kill him," she said, "but the terror I saw in his eyes
made up my mind then and there to depart immediately."