Memories of the holocaust

But Israeli officials have conspicuously failed to put up a united front in favour of the NATO operations against Yugoslavia. Breaking with the Jewish state’s traditional support for the West, Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon told Israel radio that an independent Kosovo could unite with Albania, leading to a greater Islamic state that wouldendanger European stability.

Solzhenitsyn’s law of peace

Russian literary titan and Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn added his voice to the chorus of criticism resounding in Moscow over NATO’s air strikes over Yugoslavia, accusing the alliance of destroying “a fine European country”. In a short statement entitled “the law of the jungle”, Solzhenitsyn accused NATO of adopting a might-is-right stance in its 15-day air campaign designed to end Serb repression in Kosovo.

“Throwing aside the United Nations organisation, trampling under foot its charter, NATO has proclaimed to the entire world for the next century that old law — the law of the jungle,” he said. “Whoever is strong is right. In the eyes of humanity a fine European country is being destroyed — and civilised governments are applauding. A desperate people fleeing the bombing are leaving in a human chain to die to save the Danube bridges — is that not an antiquity?”

What of the refugees?

UN High Commissioner forRefugees Sadako Ogata arrived in Macedonia where nearly 130,000 people have taken refuge from Serbian violence in Kosovo. Ogata, who arrived from Tirana, was to have talks with representatives of her agency in Skopje and visit refugee camps, notably the NATO-installed Stenkovec camp, not far from the Blace border post. Earlier, during a visit to Kukes, Albania, Ogata said she was “very, very worried” about thousands of Kosovo refugees apparently prevented by force from fleeing their homeland into Albania. She could not rule out that they were being used as human shields by the Serbs against NATO strikes, although she said she had no evidence of this.

Dissidents now on the net

Chinese dissidents and human rights activists have formally launched a website to promote their campaign for democracy in China and to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.By using the Internet, their petition campaign will bypass the censorship of the Chinese CommunistParty, exiled Chinese dissident Wang Dan said in a statement in Hong Kong. Wang, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in Beijing, went to the United States in November after he was freed from a Chinese jail.

The campaign, launched in New York earlier this month, is to get about 500,000 signatures on a petition to be delivered to the Chinese government and the United Nations on June 4, the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests. The global petition campaign website has the support of international human rights groups.