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Article: A Gypsy awakening.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- September 11, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THREE dozen or so bloated corpses of Gypsies from Kosovo were recently fished out of the turquoise waters off the coast of Montenegro. Perhaps more than 100 had drowned when a boat smuggling them to Italy--for about $1,100 a head--sank in a summer storm. Though most were illiterate, they had hoped against the odds to make a new life.
There was certainly no going back. The Kosovo Liberation Army, once NATO's bombs had made it top dog, ensured that. Accusing Gypsies of collaborating with the Serbs (quite a lot did), it had at least winked at a campaign of murder, torture, beating and the burning of Gypsy neighbourhoods. Most of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians seem ...