RTV21 Production Aimed at Healing War Trauma and Revival of Local Communities of Kosovo/a Albanians

1. INTRODUCTION

The destruction of Kosovo/a in the recent war has been described as the worst atrocity in Europe since the end of the Second World War.

More than a million ethnic Albanians have fled or been deported from their homeland with only clothes on their backs. Dozens of thousands of people are missing, many possibly killed; numerous cases of rape have occurred. In all of Kosovo/a, hundreds of villages have been looted and burned.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees were forced out of Kosovo/a and exiled to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia. Although described in the media as a "humanitarian catastrophe" and "refugee crisis" these hundreds of thousands of refugees were mainly deportees forced out of their homeland by a ruthless "Ethnic Cleansing" campaign. Although most of them returned to their homeland, they are still the fragments of a national community that has been intentionally destroyed. Farmers, doctors, lawyers, secretaries, housewives, craftsmen and women have been transformed into brutalised traumatised individuals dependent upon donations and assistance on everything from food to clothing and housing. Entire communities, once self sufficient, are now surviving on the international community's handouts. Communities that were solidly organised are dispersed and broken. Many family and neighbourhood ties remain severely cut.

In order to workout these problems, humanitarian aid and reconstruction of destroyed houses, infrastructure and economy facilities are not sufficient. The people dispossessed by this war require a structure to facilitate the reparation of family and community ties that have been ruptured. They need to regain a sense of self worth. Serious and well-thought work on dealing with collective memory and healing traumas is needed as well. Independent media, those not dependant on any ideology and political structure, will play the key role in it.

2. BACKGROUND

Media Project was established in November 1995, as an non-governmental developmental and media project. The main developed initiatives and activities are the following:

• trainings of young girls in all fields of journalism and conflict resolution,
• monthly magazine for women "Eritrea",
• Radio and TV 21

During the year 1998 in war torn-up Kosovo/a, the Media Project –RTV 21 realised a special and very important TV production entitled "Kosov@ - A View from Inside". The project was realised with the support provided by Medienhilfe Ex-Jugoslawien. It consisted of 12 short stories on background issues on everyday life of Kosovo/a Albanians. Ordinary people were themselves speaking about their life; what they lived from; problems and difficulties they are faced with; their habits and culture; inter-family relations; what were they concerned about; what hopes and plans for the future they had; etc. The stories (subtitled into Serbian language) were broadcast on 17 independent TV stations throughout Serbia and Montenegro (1.5 million potential audience). The aim was to put Serb and Montenegrin audience in position to, through seeing similarities they had with Albanians telling their life stories, realise that Albanians are the human being, the same as they themselves are. The stories fulfilled this goal and quite some stations got calls from audience with request to see stories again.

Based on this experience gained through working on the TV production "Kosov@ - A View from Inside", the Media Project – RTV 21 prepares to start the production basically using the same approach, but this time mainly targeted at Kosovo/a Albanian audience and aimed at initiating and supporting a processes of psychological healing of war traumas and bringing together torn-up individuals, families, local communities, and Kosovo/a society. The Media Project – RTV 21 will work together with the best foreign experts of a rich experience in making a production of a kind in other post-war areas world-wide.

Reports of many humanitarian agencies (UNHCR, ICRC and others), as well as human rights organisations (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, etc.), based on testimonies of the victims and witnesses of war crimes perpetrated in Kosovo/a showed that a large part of Albanian population in Kosovo/a highly suffers from war traumas. Even people who neither did themselves experience traumatic events nor did they witness crimes done to other people have war trauma syndromes. This creates danger that a traumatised "collective memory" will be created among Kosovo/a Albanians. Such process can be prevented with work of NGOs assisting in psychological support for traumatised, but can also be complemented with this special TV production in order to reach broader population within comparatively shorter time.

The Media Project – RTV 21 is the first independent electronic media in Albanian language in Koaovo/a. Ist Radio 21 already broadcasts 24 hours programme (99.8 FM) from Pristina and coveres the entire Kosovo/a. The authorisation for using TV channel 39 has been already given. The productions elaborated in this project will be realised by the TV 21’s crew of 14 professionals: producers, editors, journalists, and technitians. Besides, managment staff will be engaged in placing the production abroad.

Still, it is a small team to carry out these two productions and new local producers and journalists have to be engaged. Therefore, a team of experienced international experts will be ivolved. While working together with local TV teams on the productions, they will train new members of the local staff. This capacity building work will result in creating enough big and competent team of TV staff, so that RTV 21 can perform activities on their own afterwards. The work of international experts is also needed, as the production to be done is rather sophisitcated and delicate and thus certain experince in doing things of a kind is required for carrying it out on a proper way. The team is composed of the following:

- Tamouz Media from New York, with one producer;
- First Person TV from Paris (a division of Tamouz Media), with one producer;
- Human Rights Organisation WITNESS, with one trainer;
- BBC Community Program Unit, with a team of trainers.

3. PROJECT OBJECTIVES

These programs will help individuals from the community to tell their own stories in their own words and images.

This type of programming, in which members of the audience are not only "subjects" of the program but also participants that help shape it, encourages, we have seen, the reinforcement of a sense of individuality and understanding of personal and cultural diversity. The more media literate a community can become the less manipulated it is by propaganda driven attitudes.

This programs will enable ordinary people taking part in it to verbalise cases of war crimes, violation of human rights, etc. and share them with other members of the community, which will initiate and support process of healing.

Finally, through achieving the previous, this programs will be a significant factor of initiating of reconciliation among people belonging to different – at present hostile – ethnic groups in Kosovo/a.

4. PROJECT ACTIVITES

This TV production will make two kind of programmings:

1. Video Letters:

Local producers trained by the BBC and Tamouz Media will facilitate the production and creative expression of "Video Letters" of ordinary Kosovar citizens. These shorts will be "personal reports" representing individuals' thoughts, dreams, fears, wishes, calls for help, etc. and the needs of self expression during times of conflict and "post-conflict". The video letters will be edited by a team of producers and editors, also trained by the BBC, into 2-3 minutes shorts. Assemblage of the shorts will be broadcast daily and weekly in Kosovo and throughout the region and screened in the camps. A similar ongoing project in Britain and in Israel have proven highly effective and popular with audiences. The obvious rough edges of the shorts tend to reinforce in the audience's mind their sincerity and authenticity.

A group of young local producers and video editors will be chosen. They will be people with previous professional or learning experience. They will be flown to London for a 2-3 days intensive workshop at the BBC Community Program Unit. There they will witness the entire process of production, from identifying and encouraging individuals interested in the project, training them, equipping them with cameras, to the editing and shaping of the material into television shorts.

The producers will travel to the various locations and spend a day or two with each individual, helping them record their story. While the individual records and films his/her story the professional producer will supervise the day of filming, ensuring basic visual and audio quality as well as all the elements needed for editing and filming.

The producer then returns to the central editing place where the material is edited into 2-3 minute shorts. Those shorts are then distributed among the participating television stations in the region.

2.Current Affairs Programming:

One particular brand of current affairs porgramming will be based on "testimonies".

The events of the past few months have been undoubtfully the most traumatic ones for hundreds of thousands of people and for the whole community. Tamouz Media/First Person & Kosova Radio TV 21 will organise a massive project of recording the refugees testimonies. Those recordings will prove therapeutic for many of the refugees who for the first time will be offered the opportunity to give expression to their ordeal and break through the silence surrounding the most brutal events they have witnessed and that might have no other recourse to be told. Beyond their contribution to the welfare of individuals through helping heal the wounds that have fractured Kosovar communities, testimonies will contribute to the preservation of a historical memory. Carefully researched, those testimonies will detail the destruction of a multitude of communities. They will provide a coherent narrative to the present day chaos most refugees seem to find themselves in. Like the "Video Letters", this programming strand stresses the role and the centrality of the individual in connection to collective suffering.

The "Testimonies" part of the project will be conducted in collaboration with WITNESS, a human rights organisation which has pioneered the use of video cameras and other communications technologies to protect and promote human rights. WITNESS-trained partners from around the world have used WITNESS cameras, technical training and strategic guidance to capture extraordinary first-hand video footage documenting serious human rights violations. Their video footage has been used in a variety of ways including international broadcast, to provide evidence in legal proceedings, to produce shadow reports for the UN, to provide counterweight to official versions of a country's human rights performance, corroborating allegations of abuse and to conduct grassroots education and mobilisation.

Both productions will be subtitled in Serbo-Croatian and English language.

Finances to be provided by Medienhilfe Ex-Jugoslawien: 160,000 CHF

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