Milosevic and the ‘UN Butchers’: UNFPA’s ‘Reproductive Health’ Campaign Dubbed ‘White Plague’ by Kosovars

[Editor’s note: PRI’s reports of UNFPA’s operations in Kosovar refugee camps in Albania, to the last two issue of PRI Review, revealed UNFPA’s intentions to follow the refugees homeward with its dangerous “reproductive health” campaign. UNFPA officials have admitted that UNFPA was requested by the indicted war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic, to operate in Kosovo. PRI’S Associate Researcher Josipa Gasparic reports from Pristina, Kosovo.]

As rebel leaders in Montenegro prepare to defend themselves against another round of ethic cleansing, compliments of Milosevic’s implementation of a “Greater Serbia,”1 women in Kosovo have rallied against what they are calling the “White Plague” of the UN Population Fund’s “reproductive health” campaign designed to reduce their progeny at the behest of the indicted war criminal.

The epicenter of UNFPA’s “reproductive health” campaign is located in Kosovo’s capital of Pristina, where a “routine program” is underway, including a marketing strategy entitled “How to change the mentality of Kosovar women,” designed to undercut the pro-family traditions of the Kosovars. From its office in Pristina, UNFPA is also promoting the services of international abortion provider Marie Stopes.

UNFPA officials have confirmed that it was requested by the Milosevic government to campaign in Kosovo, first with an initial assessment which was followed by a routine program.2

UNFPA has also confirmed that the Milosevic invitation was given in December 1998,3 when Serbian forces were actively “cleansing” the same ethnic Albanian population with genocide.

UNFPA officials have also said that Milosevic invited UNFPA to operate only in Kosovo.4

Differential Fertility Rates

As I traveled throughout Kosovo, I saw and was told by the Kosovars that Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing, along with the refugee crisis, has cut populations in many regions to as little as 10 percent of their original size. From my conversations it remains clear that the strength of Kosovo still remains in her people. The latest available statistics reveals a robust Kosovar fertility rate of over 5, while the Serbs experience an anemic 1.4 (1998 UN Population Division, extrapolation).

Serbian hatred towards the Kosovar population is not hidden. A 1998 official Serbian demographics report reveals the intent to reduce Kosovar progeny, at any expense. Milosevic’s Minister for Family Concerns, Rada Trajkovic, described Kosovar women as “child-bearing machines” and declared that “The state must find a way… to limit or forbid the enormous birthrate in Kosovo.”5

The designs of the Milosevic regime to equalize the Kosovar population at any expense dovetailed neatly with UNFPA’s assessment of the Kosovar population drawn front the refugee crisis, which pointed to a disproportion in the number of young Kosovar women of child bearing age.6 UNFPA’s refugee assessment was drawn under the “authority” of the Albanian government. UNFPA consultant, Dr. Manuel Carballo, last April (in his assessment of UNFPA shipments to the region, submitted after-the-fact) recommended the distribution of a broad range of supplies, which included a dangerous “Pregnancy Termination Kit,” aimed at controlling the Kosovar population.

Communication between the Milosevic government and UNFPA had taken place prior to that. On 9 July 1999 UNFPA Spokesman Stirling Scruggs admitted that the Milosevic government “asked [UNFPA] to do what we could” to promote “reproductive health” services in Kosovo. Scruggs said that “we had just completed a needs assessment at the request of the Yugoslavian government in Kosovo.” PRI was later able to confirm that this “invitation” from the Milosevic regime would only include a program for the Kosovar population. Even so, UNFPA complied. On 2 September 1999, PRI asked UNFPA to provide a copy of their initial assessment on Kosovo, but to date, UNFPA has not responded to this request.

Health Risks

UNFPA’s dangerous “reproductive health” campaign continues in Kosovo, with the same outdated Health Risks UNFPA’s dangerous “reproductive health” campaign continues in Kosovo, with the same outdated copper IUDs, “morning after” pills peddled as a non-abortion inducing chemical, and manual vacuum aspirators which NGOs and local personnel use to perform abortions. Continuing are the concerns of serious health risks and issues of lack of informed consent, which were first associated with UNFPA operations in the refugee camps.7 This fact was confirmed by my conversations with UNFPA officials in Pristina.

UNFPA’s Pristine Office

UNFPA’s Pristina office consists of one main front office, and two smaller storage rooms in back. The main office was dark, dirty and disorganized. Two men and one woman, a representative in slinky apparel from UK abortion provider Marie Stopes, were present in the office when I entered on the afternoon of 26 August 1999.

I spoke with the “leader” in the UNFPA’s Pristina office, Olivier Brasseur. I pressed Brasseur on UNFPA’s marketing of abortion-inducing “morning after” pills as a routine form of birth control for refugees. Contrary to informed medical opinion, Brasseur contended that this chemical “only prevents women from ovulating.”

Brasseur showed complete ignorance with respect to the use of the manual vacuum aspirator (MVA) that UNFPA delivered to the region, which he claimed was intended “for safe delivery” procedures. The MVA cannot be used in a normal delivery at all, but only in the case of miscarriage, spontaneous or induced. PRI confirmed that local midwives in the region are being trained to perform abortions with MVAs.8

My interview with the second-in-command revealed UNFPA’s general denial of health risks associated with the MVA, plus a conspicuous lack of concern for the health of potential recipients. “Let me tell you what is in the ‘reproductive health’ kit!” exclaimed UNFPA’s marketer. “Things for helping safe childbirth, but if somebody is using it for abortion, we cannot do anything about it!”

Brasseur attempted to conceal the dangerous underside of UNFPA’s “reproductive health” campaign behind a false front of maternal health services. I pointed out that Serbian medical personnel have a dismal human rights record on the score of delivering maternal health and attending care to “minorities.” I pointed out that Serbian hospitals often refuse to attend Albanian births because of ethnic prejudice. In the past, Serbian medical personnel have engaged in the forced sterilization of non-Serbian minorities. This was also the case in Croatia, where many expectant mothers suffered and died in the delivery room, unattended because of ethnic hatred.

The Director of Gynecology at the Pristina Hospital, Dr. Sejdula Hoxha, debunked Brasseur’s claims of UNFPA’s focus on maternal health. UNFPA is less concerned with safe delivery than it is with reducing the number of births. UNFPA’s services “are administered in their way,” Hoxha said. “So you either take UNFPA’s whole package, with the contraceptives, or you leave it.”

Still No Demand

Over six dozen Kosovar refugee women interviewed in PRI’s two prior reports confirmed that there is no demand for UNFPA’s “reproductive health” services.9 The same is true now for women and families I interviewed on the streets and in their homes in Kosovo. In fact, headlines in the Kosovo Press such as “New Proof of Serb Plans to Use Reproductive Health as a Genocidal Tool”10 have Kosovar women and mothers running for cover.

UNFPA’s marketing campaign to generate demand where there is none also continues. UNFPA’s Kosovo campaign continues with dangerous supplies, crude and outdated IUDs, MVAS for abortion, and abortion inducing “morning after” pills, invariably leading to medical malpractice and lack of informed consent. I left the office with the dreadful awareness that this campaign owes its existence to a “policy” originating within the Milosevic government; carried out by the UNFPA, which has worked hand in hand with China’s one-child policy, and with the forced sterilization policy of the Fujimori government in Peru.

Milosevic has used both military force to reduce the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo, and “starvation as a tool of genocide.”11 Now there is “reproductive health.”

I also left Kosovo with a supercilious and misguided threat hurled at me from Brasseur, UNFPA’s “leader” in Pristina. He warned that I would be “personally responsible for the deaths of Kosovar women” who would refuse UNFPA’s “help” if my story made it to America.