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Refugees escape 'absolute hell'

The first flight arrived from Macedonia on Sunday afternoon and the second touched down at Prestwick airport later in the evening.

Scottish Refugee Council worker Sheena MacDonald said they had been through "absolute hell".

Ms Macdonald, who travelled with the refugees, said they had been in tears as they said farewell to their families before boarding buses to take them to the plane.

But they had been relieved to escape the squalor and deprivation of the camp, and had clapped when the plane touched down at Prestwick.

"In particular there was one family who were making a decision to leave behind some of their extended family to come to Scotland today, and it was very distressing," she said.

'Goodbye for the last time'

"When the buses left, people were throwing their coats off to relatives and friends they were leaving behind and lifting up small children so people could touch them and say goodbye for what some thought would be the last time.

"The people are very, very tired and exhausted but also very, very happy to be getting out of the camps.

"Anybody who has come on the flight today has lost somebody."

More staff and aid are desperately needed for the camps in Macedonia, where people have no possessions, and some are sleeping on bare earth inside the tents and having to wash in a river.

'Meagre rations'

"These people are human beings who have been through absolute hell. Some people haven't eaten properly for over a month because food rations are very sparse," said Ms MacDonald.

"We spoke to one woman who was literally having ro rip up T-shirts to make a nappy for a child who was born in the camp," she said.

Refugees were glad to be out of the camps, but they saw their time in Scotland as a short term situation, Ms MacDonald said.

Among the refugees who arrived on Sunday were a 10-week-old baby and a 99-year-old woman.

Medical teams tended to them during the three-and-a-half hour flight, but none needed to go to hospital after the plane landed.

About nine of them were reported to be expecting to be reunited with members of their families in the UK.

High-rise flats in the Springburn area of Glasgow, which were formerly inhabited by students, have been made available to accommodate them. Others will be put up in nearby Renfrew.

One of the refugees on the flight, Teuta Dumani, 21, from Pristina, described how she was given just five minutes to leave her home.

'Marked with a cross'

Miss Dumani, who had been studying English at a private language school before she was forced to flee, said: "We had to leave because the Serb people arrived at our homes and told us we had to leave.

"They said that we had wanted Nato to come so they wanted us to leave, they put us on a train and we were very afraid.

"They put the mark of a cross on our backs to mark the Albanians from the Serbs. The Serbians walked in the streets with guns and it was very bad, I don't know how to describe how terrible it was.

"When we travelled in the car they stopped and robbed us of all our money and they said if we had any more we would be killed.

"They said 'don't come back to your home because we will kill you'."

Miss Dumani said she and her family were taken to the border town of Blace where they stayed for three days without food or water before being moved on to Stenkovec, near Skopje.

"There were small children dying every day in Blace but it was much better in Stenkovec," she said.

"We stayed there five weeks and the Nato soldiers were very good to us.

Relevant Stories

Scots offer sanctuary to refugees (09 May 99 | UK)
How warm is the UK welcome? (06 May 99 | Kosovo)
Nato strikes continue (09 May 99 | Europe)
UK to take 'thousand refugees a week' (04 May 99 | UK Politics)
UK Kosovo refugees 'glad to be safe' (26 Apr 99 | UK)

Internet Links

UNHCR Kosovo News
Serbian Ministry of the Interior
Glasgow City Council
Kosovo Crisis Centre

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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