Word: balkanizing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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More than eight years after U.S. planes bombed Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo, the small Balkan territory is still legally a part of Serbia. But the province--which has been under U.N. administration since clashes between Serbian forces and secessionist rebels sparked an international crisis in 1999--took another step toward independence this month when the U.N. failed to negotiate a settlement between the two sides before a Dec. 10 deadline. Differences between Kosovo's ethnic-Albanian majority and Belgrade, which opposes full independence for the province, proved too great to bridge. So too did the gulf between...
...Balkan wars may be over, put peace brought no relief for 16,000 mentally disabled children and adults in Serbia's orphanages and medical institutions, an international human rights group revealed on Wednesday. A study by the U.S.-based Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) found that Serbia's treatment of its disabled citizens includes segregation, inhumane practices, and life-long detention in deplorable conditions. The group deemed the plight of Serbia's institutionalized disabled as torture, rather than treatment...
...Andelman spends as much time exploring the personal histories of these individuals as he does analyzing their country’s demands. In the end, though, individuals cannot make history on their own. They cannot alter the will of the Allied nations or the ethnic hostilities of the Balkan states; for, as Andelman attests, “the currents of history move slowly.” Yet one man’s dream—President Wilson’s commitment to his vision for a League of Nations—can shape an entire Peace Conference and might, arguably...
...trial of Serbian ultranationalist leader Vojislav Seselj may be the last of the major Balkan war-crimes trials to be heard by the Hague Tribunal, but it is also unique for other reasons: Unlike the rest of the politicians and military commanders indicted by the Tribunal, Seselj is not accused of physically hurting anybody, or of being part of a chain of command that ordered mass murder and other abuses. Instead, the politician whose trial began Wednesday is accuse of inciting war crimes by churning out inflammatory speeches and disseminating "poisonous ideas...
...says their target is not all foreigners, but those who commit serious crimes like rape and murder; they point out that about 70% of those in Swiss prisons are foreign-born residents. Schlüer says that the waves of African and Balkan refugees during the past two decades are evidence enough of Switzerland's openness. "Integration is a success," he says. Yet it is largely because of its anti-immigrant stance that the party's ranks have soared; the SVP has nearly doubled its members of parliament since 1995, from 29 to 55 this year. That number could increase...