- The Observer,
- Sunday August 12 2001
Tafil was one of 26 people to die last week, Macedonia's most violent since fighting between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and the security forces first broke out in February this year.
The deaths came ahead of a deal due to be signed tomorrow that paves the way for Nato troops to deploy and disarm the National Liberation Army guerrillas.
But the spiral of violence and the growing number of civilian casualties has left the prospect of a peace deal almost without meaning.
'There's nothing to think,' said Sabir Vesili, Tafil's 38-year-old father. News that political parties had reached agreement came just hours before Tafil's death. 'I think we are going to move out of here and leave.' He spoke as his cousins and brother prepared to carry his son's coffin outside.
On Wednesday night Tafil had been sitting with his father outside his house - just one of three Albanian homes in Rastan, a village near the city of Veles in central Macedonia.
Sabir's four sons were sleeping outside on the balcony because of the heat. It was just after 11pm when the dogs began to bark.
'The dogs heard something, so we went to release them,' said Sabir. 'Then my father turned all the lights off, but then I think they must have seen our shadows in the moonlight, and they shot at me and my father out in the yard.'
'When the boys heard the shooting they got up to run away, and that's how the bullet hit him [Tafil] in the back. And then he couldn't move any more. He lay like that for an hour and a half. We called for an ambulance, but they never came.'
The shooting followed the killing of 10 Macedonian soldiers in an ambush on the highway between Tetovo and Skopje.
Reprisals against the civilian population in the wake of such incidents are not uncommon, but the killing of Tafil is more astounding in that Rastan lies more than 100 miles away from where the ambush took place and where fighting between security forces and the NLA has dominated.
A week before the shooting, Sabir said he was offered 500 deutschmarks to leave the area at the oil company where he works by a colleague named Pane. He refused. Now Pane has got his way.
Two tractors loaded with chairs, mattresses and carpets followed Tafil's coffin, down the dust track and away from their home. Three Macedonian policemen looked on as the Veselis left the house they had lived in for 30 years.
In the city of Kumano, three roadworkers are recovering from a separate ordeal. Although they are Macedonian, their testimony points to the increased willingness on both sides to target civilians.
The workers were abducted last Tuesday, then beaten, tortured and forced to perform sex acts by members of the NLA in an operation believed to be designed to clear the main Tetovo to Skopje highway for the attack that killed 10 Macedonian soldiers on Wednesday. The men were led at gunpoint to a wood where they were forced to lie down and be beaten. In interviews with the human rights group, Human Rights Watch, the men describe what happened to them.
'They hit us with a spade I can't rem ber how many times. They didn't hold us down while they did this,' one said. 'They also cut me on the lower legs,' said another.
When the beating ended they were then ordered to sit up.
'One of the NLA told us to sit and remove our shirts, then they asked our names, and they carved our initials into our backs.'
The NLA fighter then ordered the men to lie down again, and told one to sexually assault another with a stick. The men were also ordered to perform oral sex on each other. Human Rights Watch is convinced that they were seized in order to clear the highway for the subsequent ambush.
'Abductions and illegal detentions by the NLA are rapidly rising,' said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director with Humans Rights Watch.
'The NLA has failed to account for at least 14 Macedonians abducted from Tetovo during the fighting in late July.'
