Help Stop Suffering in Kosovo

To the editors:

We are very concerned about the situation in Kosovo, in the Yugoslav Serbian Republic. The province of Kosovo has about 2 million people, more than 90 percent of whom are ethnic Albanians. Using the excuse of fighting the Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Serbian Army (15,000 troops) and police (6,000 troops) have systematically attacked innocent Albanian civilians whose only crime has been their existence in their own homeland.

The shelling and bombing of hundreds of villages across Kosovo has forced close to 150,000 Kosovo Albanians to abandon what is left of their homes and run for their lives. Most of these displaced refugees are now living out in the open, in a very rugged mountainous territory. The bitter cold of the Balkan fall and winter will certainly add to their suffering. Most likely many of them will die, unless immediate action is taken.

In the meantime, Western Europe, the United States and NATO have not yet taken any effective action to halt the Serbians' grave violations of human rights or to help the hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanian refugees whose only shelter has been the open sky. We urge the Harvard community to take all possible effective action, as soon as possible, to help to avert disaster and to protect the Kosovo refugees, who are now exposed not only to the harshness of the Balkan winter, but also to Serbian attacks.

Each student can log onto the Internet and go to the Amnesty International Kosovo page at http://www.amnestyusa.org/crisis.html. Write letters to the president and to your congressional representatives. If enough of us take action, our lobbying may push the powers-that-be to take action to bring an end to the tragedy of the Kosovo Albanians. ALYSSA BERNSTEIN   ASTI PILIKA'99   Oct. 1, 1998

Bernstein is a resident tutor in Dunster House.