September 28, 1999
Volume 1/ Number 19
Dear Friend and Colleague:
Last week, the US Congress convened to examine this year’s legislation on UN funding. The conference debate came to a impasse over the question of refunding the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). UNFPA funding was severed last year when it was discovered that the UN agency was complicit with China’s one-child policy. UNFPA officials have also stated on record that they were “requested by the Yugoslavian government” under Milosevic to enter Kosovo. Today, the US House of Representatives is expected to re-examine, then vote on, the entire UN spending bill.
Steven W. Mosher
President
UNFPA SPOKESMAN LIES ABOUT MILOSEVIC PARTNERSHIP TO PRESERVE US FUNDING UN
Officials Question Timing and Aim of UNFPA’s “Reproductive Health” Campaign in Kosovo
WASHINGTON, DC — The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has lied to the media and the US Congress in an attempt to cover-up the timing and scope of its “reproductive health” campaign in Kosovo in collaboration with the efforts of indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic to lower the birthrate of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
The Population Research Institute (PRI) suspected UNFPA collaboration with the Milosevic government after UNFPA announced its intention to extend operations in Yugoslavia to target Kosovars, after that population was forced into exile while suffering ethnic cleansing under the hand of Milosevic.
Last June UNFPA Spokesman, Stirling Scruggs, said that UNFPA “only provides assistance where it is invited to help,” (The Daily Oklahoman, 4 June 1999, 6). In a tape recorded statement left on the answering machine of PRI investigator Austin Ruse, Scruggs admitted that “[t]he government asked us to do what we could and we were able to find funds to help out, and we had just completed a needs assessment at the request of the Yugoslavian government in Kosovo, and the only thing we will be doing now there is going back to update the needs assessment. And there will in time be a regular program there. See ya, I am anxious to see what you are going to do with this….”
UNFPA officials also confirmed to the New York Post that “Milosevic invited the agency into Kosovo — and tellingly, nowhere else in Serbia,” (New York Post, “UN Opens Kosovo to Anti-Family Zealots, 22 August, 1999, 22).
The UNFPA then reversed itself and officially denied that Scruggs said that UNFPA’s “needs assessment” began “at the request of the Yugoslavian government” (communique from UNFPA to PRI, 15 September 1999).
UNFPA’s “needs assessment” of Kosovo reveals that communication between UNFPA and Serbian officials occurred before implementation of its “reproductive health” campaign began in Kosovo. The report also states that “ethnic Albanians do not trust the public sector [reproductive health] system…,” and that “[f]rom the Albanian point of view, family planning programs and condom distribution are an effort to reduce the population” (“UNFPA mission to Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,” 9 to 15 December 1998). The differential fertility rate between Kosovars and Serbs is approximately 5 to 1.
Milosevic’s Minister of Family Concerns, Rada Trajkovic, just prior to the refugee crisis, stated publicly that “the State must find a way to stimulate the birthrate of the populations in central and northern Serbia and to limit or forbid the enormous increase of the birthrate in Kosovo.”
UN officials familiar with the Milosevic/UNFPA agreement say that it was “inopportune” for UNFPA to target the Kosovar population before the refugee crisis, because of political turmoil and fear of state-run, Serbian-led “reproductive health” programs. UN officials also say that the UNFPA “capitalized” on the refugee crisis to launch their campaign against the Kosovars.
UNFPA’s funding was severed last year when Congress concluded that UNFPA was complicit with China’s one-child policy.
Three PRI investigations of UNFPA operations in the region uncovered a distribution ring of massive amounts of dangerous, outdated and unwanted “reproductive health” supplies.
PRI has raised concerns about medical malpractice and lack of informed consent associated with the supplies UNFPA has been distributing in the region. PRI has documented that UNFPA’s “reproductive health” campaign consists of outdated IUDs, “morning after” pills distributed as a “routine” method of “non-abortion inducing” birth control, and dangerous manual vacuum aspirators used for abortion.
While UNFPA admits in its Kosovo assessment report that Kosovar women fear state-run Family planning” programs, UNFPA workers in Pristina are following the prescriptions of a manual called “How to Change the Mentality of Kosovar Women” to generate demand.
“UNFPA continues to undercut true reproductive freedoms and to give the UN a bad name,” said Steven W. Mosher, president of PRI.
Scruggs has falsely accused PRI of giving mis-information to the press, to correspond with the current congressional debate on whether to restore UNFPA funding. It is in fact UNFPA which has, and continues, to dissemble.
