Still traumatized by ethnic Albanian guerrillas back in their home villages, displaced Macedonians have spent another night in front of the republic's parliament, grouped around an old tractor covered with the state flag.
About a hundred of them were camped out overnight Saturday around the communist-style state building, on a lawn parched by drought, with their clothes scattered over garbage bins.
Barefoot Dimitrov, from the northwestern village Lesok, was categoric: "I will stay here, I have no other place to go."
His anger was directed mostly at the West, which he has accused of "supporting" the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation army (NLA).
He is also angry at the government which he accuses of having "ignored" people like him.
"I saw my house being burnt down by the Albanian terrorists," he said, insisting that his "was the first house at the entrance to the village."
He says that yesterday he was a "rich farmer."
Today his life has been turned upside down. He has been camping for days on the lawns of the parliament, in central Skopje, with hundreds of other villagers who have fled their homes in fear of attacks by NLA rebels.
"The only thing we have left is our lives," villagers said with resignation in their voices.
Their mountainous villages, surrounded by fertile fields, are situated along the road linking Tetovo, the main Albanian-populated town in Macedonia with Jazince, on the way to the neighboring UN-administrated Yugoslav province of Kosovo -- SKOPJE (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
