Një femije për një televizor

[Diabolis]

Del robi në rrugë, dhe pa patur nevojë të hapë fare The New York Times, në faqe të parë të saj lexon titullin "For Albanians, It's Come to This: A Son for a TV" apo "Për shqiptarët ka shkuar deri këtu: Një Djalë për një TV" shkruar nga një Nicholas Wood. Ndjehesh aq keq, sa të duket se ata që të shohin hëm ty hëm artikullin mbetet vetëm të të pyesin "Ke gjë për të shitur?"
Artikullin online mund ta gjeni, po jap një lidhje,
dhe po ju lutem të dërgoni sa më shumë e-mail që të mundni tek adresa letter@nytimes.com, ti faksoni (212) 556-3622, apo dërgoni letra Editorit në adresën: The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036-3959.
Mjaftojnë dhe dy fjalë.

[Dita]

D D,

Artikulli mund te lexohet vetem nese je I abonuar ne NYTimes online.
Me poshte artikulli per t’u lexuar. Po ky gazetar ka shkruar para pak ditesh nje artikull mbi ekonomine shqiptare, te cilin e kam sjelle tek forumi i ekonomise.





For Albanians, It's Come to This: A Son for a TV
By NICHOLAS WOOD

Published: November 13, 2003


URRES, Albania, Nov. 11 — Fatmira Bonjaku's husband is in jail, accused by the police of selling their 3-year-old son to an Italian man in return for the television set that six other children watch in the family's dimly lighted room. The police also say her husband had plans to sell their newest born, whom she is breast feeding.
Mrs. Bonjaku, interviewed at her family's two-room shack on the outskirts of this port city, denied that she intended to sell her newborn but admitted trading her son, Orazio, thinking the Italian man "would provide a good life."
Over the past 12 years, since the collapse of Stalinism here, a substantial trade in children has established itself in Albania, Europe's most impoverished and long most isolated country.
No one has exact figures for the number of children involved, but the government estimates that 6,000 children have been sent abroad for use in begging and prostitution rackets, or in some cases sold to Western couples for adoption.
A vast majority come from the Jevgjit community, a group of some 300,000 Albanian-speaking Gypsies, or Roma, who have fared even more poorly than most.
Albania's anti-trafficking police estimate that more than 1,000 children are currently in Greece, working mainly as beggars. One or two Albanian minors are arrested every day on Albania's border with northern Greece and sent home, the Swiss charity, Terre des Hommes, reported this year, citing the head of the police's juvenile department in Salonika in northern Greece.
The trafficking is part of a larger trade in humans, including East European women shuffled through Albania for prostitution, and is an outgrowth of the misery and the organized crime that has blossomed in this clannish society.
In Albania most documented cases of child trafficking have involved older children who are sold or rented by their families to minders, or pimps, who take them to Greece and Italy, where they work as beggars or child prostitutes.
Many families apparently believe, like Mrs. Bonjaku, that their children will gain better lives abroad; for several, too, it can seem a relatively small step to send children from the streets of Albania to neighboring Greece.
"You also have to understand what immigration means to most Albanians," Pierre Ferry, a child protection officer with Unicef in Tirana, the Albanian capital, said. "To send your child abroad is also a kind of success and does not appear as primitive exploitation."
In Pogradec, a town of 20,000 on the shores of Ohrid Lake, which straddles the Albanian border with the Macedonian republic, half a dozen young children beg on the waterfront on most days.
Judy Mitstifer, 43, a missionary from Liberty, Pa., has set up a school for street children in Pogradec. Many of them, she said, are on the cusp of becoming child prostitutes and run a high risk of being trafficked.
"The kids here, we try to keep track of them," said Ms. Mitstifer, after approaching two girls, Bukuria, 11, and Bala, 12. "We know who buys and who sells. Our hope is that the school is attractive enough so they stay."
Ms. Mitstifer showed a visitor a school photograph of 12 children from 2000. Seven, she said, had already been sent abroad or their families were involved in the trade. The proportion, she said, was typical for her 110 pupils, three-quarters of them Roma.
Lila Shuli, who herself begs a living in Pogradec streets, sends four of her children to Ms. Mitstifer's school. Over the past decade, she said, her family has been split up by trafficking.
Lila's younger sister was married at 14 to a man from the next town who later took her to France and made her work as a prostitute. Nine years ago, Ms. Shuli said, her mother sent Lila's 6-year-old son, Armandor, to work in Greece. He has not been heard from since.
In an interview, Lila's mother, Kimete Sinani, denied that she sold the boy but admitted to "hiring" him out for $80.
Now, Ms. Shuli said, she is coming under pressure from a neighbor who said he could take her son Fadil, 11, to Greece.


Published: November 13, 2003


(Page 2 of 2)
The Albanian government has introduced public awareness campaigns to alert families to the potential dangers of such decisions. New laws penalizing child trafficking have been enacted, and policing has been stepped up.
Twelve anti-trafficking police units have now been set up nationwide, one of which uncovered the case of the Bonjakus, the family alleged to have traded their son for the television set.
Albanian investigators in the port of Durres arrested Mrs. Bonjaku's husband, Kjutim, 60, on June 26, along with two middlemen.
They were charged with arranging the deal with the Italian, Angelo Borelli, a 69-year-old pensioner, who was arrested by the Italian police in the port of Pescara in late September.
The Italian police say Mr. Borelli paid a total of $6,000 to the middlemen in 1999 to take charge of the Bonjakus's son Orazio, then 3.
Mrs. Bonjaku denied receiving anything beyond the television. She said she and her husband were working as street cleaners when they were first approached by a local man, Gjergj Shkembi, on Mr. Borelli's behalf.
She said she was promised that the whole family would go to Italy in exchange for Orazio. But that trip never took place.
Instead, she said, Mr. Borelli himself came several times to the family's shack, bringing small amounts of money and clothing, a gesture that Mrs. Bonjaku said convinced her that Orazio was being treated well in his new home. Family photos show Mr. Borelli standing with Mrs. Bonjaku and her other children.
Flamur Gjuzi, the head of the anti-trafficking unit in Durres, said wiretaps on Mr. Borelli's telephone showed that he also intended to buy the family's newborn, arranging to pay the Bonjakus 5,000 euros (about $5,750) before the baby was due, and another 5,000 euros upon delivery of the child.
Mrs. Bonjaku admitted to receiving what she called limited payments from Mr. Borelli each month of her pregnancy, but she insisted that it was merely to help her out and that she had no intention of selling the child. Since her husband's arrest she has heard nothing more from Mr. Borelli, nor anything about Orazio, now 7. The Italian police say he is being cared for in a state-run home for children

[Veshtrusja]

wow! Kjo eshte kulmi. Kaq poshte paskan arritur njerezit?

[Dita]

Ka madje dhe slideshow tek opsioni multimedia

Fotot te NY TIMES

[krize04]

Fjalor banal. Anetari u paralajmerua.

[Zëri]

Kjo vertet eshte e tmerrshme. E kam degjuar edhe me pare kete pisllek. Keto gjera i bejne vetem idiotet, te pashpirtet qe s'kane tru njeriu, por tru kafshe. Kjo eshte ajo qe quhet "pika me e larte e tmerrit". Po ç'baba eshte ai he i heqsha koken me shpaten e Skenderbeut?!!!!!!!

Aman mor Zot se ç'majmun ke bere njeri?!

[liliella]

To all concerned,

Today, as a result of yesterday's insulting article on the front page of the
New York Times about Albania and child trafficking, I had a long telephone
conversation with a senior editor from the Times.

In essence, I questioned the figure of 300,000 gypsies and asked him to
provide me with a fact check and the source of this information, and he agreed to
confirm this for me. I also expressed my opinion that the article was the
most recent in a long series of articles published by the NYT that had an
anti-Albanian bias. I cited another recent NYT article, Ian Fisher's August 6,
2003 piece that questioned Mother Teresa's ethnic identity.

With respect to the Mother Teresa issue, I asserted that for the article to
have been more balanced, Ian Fisher should have mentioned the fact that the
Vatican website declares Mother Teresa an Albanian and that Agi Bojaxhiu, Mother
Teresa's niece and only living relative, maintains that her father, Lazar, and
her aunt, Mother Teresa, as well as their father, were Albanian. I also
suggested that the NYT consider doing an interview with her.

During my conversation with the editor, I inquired about why, to my
knowledge, there were never any articles in the NYT praising Albanians for their heroic
efforts at saving 100% of the Jews who sought refuge in Albania during the
Nazi occupation. He said that he was not sure if this topic was ever covered by
the NYT because he was not intimately familiar with Albanian issues, which is
understandable due to the fact that it's not his area of responsibility.


The editor claimed there is no "institutional bias" at the NYT against
Albania, and I told him that although I appreciate his position on this matter,
there may have been individual NYT journalists who had an axe to grind toward
Albania, and I mentioned both Nick Gage and David Binder as examples

What does this all mean?

Well, first, it is not going to change the past vis a vis any negative
articles the NYT has published about Albania - in this regard, "the horses have
left the barn." That being said, I encourage Albanians to write to the NYT to
protest yesterday's article. Although letters from Albanian organizations
should be encouraged, it is also important that as many individuals as possible
send letters so that the point is well made. Will your letters be published?
Unlikely. But that's not the point. The NYT should know how we feel in
hope that its editors will maintain objectivity over what is said about
Albanians in the future. This is one method by which public opinions can be influenced.

But at the end of the day, most of the problems within Albania, and human
trafficking in particular (and make no mistake, the Albanians are no innocents in
this regard), can be traced to the moral bankruptcy of its leaders. I am
afraid we may have to wait until we have credible, responsible leadership in
Albania before we see a series of positive NYT articles on Albanians.

The email address to send your letters is:

letters at nyt.com

Address you message to the Editor, limit your letters to 150 words or less
and include your name, address and home and daytime telephone numbers.

Talking points could include:

1) The figure of 300,000 gypsies has no basis in fact and request a
retraction;

2) The article did not merit front page NET coverage;

3) Request the that the NYT do a story on Albania's Rigthteous during WWII;

4) Stressing Mother Teresa's Albanian ethnic identity.

You may be thinking, "what is my letter going to do?" Alone, who knows? But
if they get enough letters it will get their attention. You can sit there
and stew about this and complain to other Albanians, or you can do something
about it. The choice is yours and its just one click away!

Please feel free to pass this along.

Gary Kokalari

[Toro]

NYT e ka tepruar muhabetin me shqiptaret. NUk mjaftoi skandali i madh me genjeshtrat e reporterit te tyre ne Irak dhe genjeshtrat e tjera, kesaj rradhe e kane vene me shqiptaret.
Ftoj te gjithe bashkepatriotet te bojkotojne blerjen e kesaj gazete majtiste, mbrojtese te interesave serbo-greke, antishqiptare te terbuar.

[Wordless]

ç'ne cifutet e NYT antishqiptar?

[shoku_sar]

Kjo e shte nje kopje e letres se Gary Kokalarit .....
Ju lutem shprehni mendimet dhe reagimet tuaja mbi artikulline NY TIMES.


To all concerned,

Today, as a result of yesterday's insulting article on the front page of the New York Times about Albania and child trafficking, I had a long telephone conversation with a senior editor from the Times.

In essence, I questioned the figure of 300,000 gypsies and asked him to provide me with a fact check and the source of this information, and he agreed to confirm this for me. I also expressed my opinion that the article was the most recent in a long series of articles published by the
NYT that had an anti-Albanian bias. I cited another recent NYT article, Ian Fisher's August 6, 2003 piece that questioned Mother Teresa's ethnic identity.

With respect to the Mother Teresa issue, I asserted that for the article to have been more balanced, Ian Fisher should have mentioned the fact that the Vatican website declares Mother Teresa an Albanian and that Agi Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa's niece and only living relative, maintains that her father, Lazar, and her aunt, Mother Teresa, as well as their father,
were Albanian. I also suggested that the NYT consider doing an
interview with her.

During my conversation with the editor, I inquired about why, to my knowledge, there were never any articles in the NYT praising Albanians for their heroic efforts at saving 100% of the Jews who sought refuge in Albania during the Nazi occupation. He said that he was not sure if this topic was ever covered by the NYT because he was not intimately familiar with Albanian issues, which is understandable due to the fact that it's not his area of responsibility.

The editor claimed there is no "institutional bias" at the NYT against Albania, and I told him that although I appreciate his position on this matter, there may have been individual NYT journalists who had an axe to grind toward Albania, and I mentioned both Nick Gage and David Binder as examples

What does this all mean?

Well, first, it is not going to change the past vis a vis any negative articles the NYT has published about Albania - in this regard, "the horses have left the barn." That being said, I encourage Albanians to write to the NYT to protest yesterday's article. Although letters from Albanian organizations should be encouraged, it is also important that as many individuals as possible send letters so that the point is well made.
Will your letters be published? Unlikely. But that's not the point.
The NYT should know how we feel in hope that its editors will maintain objectivity over what is said about Albanians in the future. This is one method by which public opinions can be influenced.

But at the end of the day, most of the problems within Albania, and human trafficking in particular (and make no mistake, the Albanians are no innocents in this regard), can be traced to the moral bankruptcy of its leaders. I am afraid we may have to wait until we have credible, responsible leadership in Albania before we see a series of positive NYT articles on Albanians.

The email address to send your letters is:

letters@nyt.com

Address you message to the Editor, limit your letters to 150 words or less and include your name, address and home and daytime telephone numbers.

Talking points could include:

1) The figure of 300,000 gypsies has no basis in fact and request a retraction;

2) The article did not merit front page NET coverage;

3) Request the that the NYT do a story on Albania's Rigthteous during WWII;

4) Stressing Mother Teresa's Albanian ethnic identity.

You may be thinking, "what is my letter going to do?" Alone, who knows?
But if they get enough letters it will get their attention. You can sit there and stew about this and complain to other Albanians, or you can do something about it. The choice is yours and its just one click away!

Please feel free to pass this along.

Gary Kokalari