Monitors' Reports Provide Chronicle of Kosovo Terror
Text
In Diverse Town, Both Sides Take Turns at
Atrocity
By STEVEN ERLANGER
RAGUE -- Two extraordinarily detailed reports on human rights
abuses in Kosovo, drawn from official Western sources, present a
depressing picture of an ugly war, full of individual and collective cruelty
and crime by the Serbs, followed by an ugly peace displaying many of
the same depredations, if on a smaller scale, by the province's Albanians.
The reports, obtained by The New York Times from the compilers, are
prepared by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
from its own interviews. They do not fundamentally alter the current view
of the war and its aftermath so much as provide overwhelming evidence
of a Serbian campaign, organized by a powerful, authoritarian state and
its security forces, to drive nearly one million Albanians from the
province.
Given the numbers of the interviews,
the accretion of fact and the character
of the European agency itself, these
reports will have an important impact.
The 55-nation organization comprises
the United States, Canada and all of
Europe, including Russia and all the
states of the former Soviet bloc;
Yugoslavia is the only country under
suspension.
But the organization is still seen in
Belgrade as more neutral than the
International Tribunal in the Hague,
which has already indicted President
Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia
and four of his top associates for the
actions of Serbian forces in Kosovo.
And the reports, while supporting
allegations of Serbian war crimes, are
also highly critical of the actions of the
former Kosovo Liberation Army and
its supporters in committing similar
crimes.
The first report provides coherent
detail and moving personal testimony
about how the Serbs exercised their
power, the pattern of the expulsions
and the vast increase in lootings,
killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage
once the NATO air war began on
March 24. In general, it is an effort to
find a pattern in the war and serves to
rebut suggestions that Serbian
paramilitaries, who did much killing
and looting, were outside the control
of regular Serbian army and police
officers.
The report also suggests a kind of military rationale for the expulsions,
which were concentrated in areas controlled by the insurgents and along
likely invasion routes. The idea appears to have been to cut back on
Albanian wealth, power and numbers in Kosovo, while disrupting
bordering countries.
The second report describes continuing horrors carried out by Kosovo
Albanians after the war. Those are often organized by the former
Kosovo Liberation Army, the report says, and are generally aimed at
non-Albanians with the intention of driving them out of the province.
Those actions, the report makes clear, have taken place under the nose
and often under the eyes of NATO-led peacekeeping troops, who took
control of Kosovo on June 12.
"The desire for revenge" on the part of Kosovo's Albanians, the report
says, "has created a climate in which the vast majority of human rights
violations have taken place" and led to "the assumption of collective
guilt," so that "the entire remaining Kosovo Serb population was seen as
a target."
The report also attributes the violence to "the intolerance that has
emerged within the Kosovo Albanian community." It notes that
"opposition to the new order, particularly the (former) K.L.A.'s
dominance of the self-styled municipal administrations, or simply a
perceived lack of commitment to the K.L.A. cause has led to intimidation
and harassment."
There is strong evidence of "a more systematic pattern" and organization
by the former rebel army, the report says, with "a careful targeting of
victims and an underlying intention to expel."
The O.S.C.E. calls for investigation of these allegations, given denials of
involvement by leaders of the former rebel army. But the group's
summary of its own reporting says it is "littered with witness statements
testifying to K.L.A. involvement."
"It is clear that the K.L.A. stepped in to fill a law-and-order void, but this
'policing' role is unrestrained by law and without legitimacy," the summary
says.
Both reports are to be released on Monday in Pristina, Kosovo's capital.
The first report covers the period from October 1998, when the
European group and diplomats from the member countries were invited
into Kosovo to monitor a cease-fire between the ruling Serbs and the
Kosovo Liberation Army, through the withdrawal of the monitors on
March 20, 1999, just four days before NATO began bombing
Yugoslavia.
The report also tries to describe what happened in each of the 29
districts of Kosovo during the 78 days of bombing. Its account --
well-organized and careful about what is hearsay -- is drawn from
refugee statements and interviews.
The first report was written by the the European group's Office for
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, based in Warsaw, using
hundreds of individual case reports, daily and weekly reports from the
staff of the Kosovo Verification Mission through March 20, and more
than 2,760 interviews with refugees who had fled to Albania and
Macedonia.
While the report concentrates on Serb abuses of the Albanians, it also
details the prewar atmosphere, when Serbian forces were facing off
against the rebels, who were kidnapping Serbian civilians and ambushing
police officers and soldiers.
The report also raises questions about some allegations reported in the
West. It says that allegations of a torture chamber in the basement of the
main police station in Pristina and another in a police station in Pec, have
so far not been corroborated.
Typically in an expulsion, the report says, the army would hold the
ground and roads, and militarized police and paramilitaries would go into
a village or town, sometimes after shelling, announcing on loudspeakers
that Albanians had to leave and gather in a main area, usually within a
short time.
Sometimes paramilitaries would mistreat or shoot laggards, and then the
population would be pushed along set routes toward Macedonia or
Albania, the report says. Often those expelled were mistreated,
threatened with death, rape or beatings unless they handed over money.
Sometimes they were beaten anyway, or women were raped.
Some were killed, especially those who had ties to the Kosovo
Liberation Army or who were rich, and houses were burned to try to
ensure that the residents would not return.
Abuses and killings were worse in the villages, especially in areas
controlled by the insurgents, than in the cities, where the insurgents were
fewer or less visible, the report says.
The report says that in Pristina, the situation changed considerably once
foreign monitors left. Serbian police officers were ambushed, "provoking
a strong reaction." The police patrolled vigorously and took up sniper
positions, while Albanians remained at home out of fear and then the
Yugoslav army shelled parts of the town. Serbian police officers and
soldiers killed some civilians. "Dead bodies remained for days on the
street because no one dared to remove them, the report says.
"The most visible change in the events was after NATO launched its first
airstrikes" on March 24, the report continues. "On one hand, the situation
seemed to have slipped out of the control of any authorities, as
lawlessness reigned in the form of killings and the looting of houses. On
the other, the massive expulsion of thousands of residents from the city,
which mostly took place in the last week of March and in early April,
followed a certain pattern and was conceivably organized well in
advance. The most persistent human rights violations were the systematic
expulsions, which were accompanied by numerous killings, looting and
the extortion of money."
The perpetrators "included police, army and various groups of
paramilitaries, as well as local Serbs and, to a lesser extent, Gypsies,"
who were described as looting and removing dead bodies from the
streets.
The second report, which runs from mid-June of this year through the
end of October, was produced by the Human Rights Division of the
European group's mission in Kosovo, which has some of the same staff
members as the prewar monitors. It provides details of human rights
abuses against all groups in Kosovo for each of the five regions
designated by peacekeepers, and provides daily summaries of reported
abuses.
The report blames the lack of law enforcement for creating a "cycle of
impunity."
United Nations officials in Kosovo say they need governments to follow
through on pledges of manpower and money to bring the United Nations
police force up from its current level of 1,700 to the 6,000 requested.
But Dennis McNamara, the director of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees operation in Kosovo, said the report also
pointed to the need for more Albanian cooperation with investigations.
"We need a functioning police and legal system," he said. "But we also
need support from the local community, for them to be willing to come
forward and help." |
