Garvik har etterlyst opplysninger om UCKs menneskerettsbrudd. De kommer her
fra Human Right Watch - i overveldende omfang. De omfatter gjentatte
tilfeller av bombeangrep mot serbiske barn, vilkårlig nedskyting av gamle
serbiske menn og kvinner og hyppig neskyting, brenning av og terror mot ikke
minst albanere i tillegg til etniske minoriteter og andre med et politisk
syn som ikke passer UCK. "Mye av volden mot albanere utgår fra albanere"
sies det. Videre påpekes NATO/KFORs passivitet overfor overgrepene.
Et par sitater fra rapporten:
"The NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) and its member governments were reluctant
to take decisive action against elements of the former Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) linked to attacks on minorities and political opponents."
"For the most part confined to mono-ethnic enclaves and unable to travel
without KFOR escorts, the situation of minorities in Kosovo remained
extremely precarious. Few of the more than 150,000 non-Albanians who fled
from Kosovo since June 1999 attempted to return. Roma and especially Serbs
continued to bear the brunt of much of the violence. Ethnic Croats, Muslim
Slavs (including Torbesh), Gorani, and Turks also faced attacks, harassment,
and pressure to leave their homes."
"The weeks surrounding the first anniversary of NATO's entry into Kosovo on
June 12 saw an upsurge in violence against minorities in the province. A
series of grenade and landmine attacks and drive-by shootings targeting
Serbs left eleven dead and more than a dozen wounded. Valentina Cukic, an
editor of a Serbian-language program of the multi-ethnic Radio Kontakt, was
shot and badly wounded in Pristina June 20, together with her companion,
while wearing her KFOR press identification. On July 12, a Serbian Orthodox
priest and two seminary students were wounded in a drive-by shooting near
the village of Klokot. In a sinister development in August, minority
children were targeted: on August 18, a grenade was thrown from a moving car
into a group of children at a basketball court in the Serb village of
Crkvena Vodica leaving ten wounded. On August 27, an Albanian man drove his
car into a group of children in the same village before fleeing the scene,
killing one child and wounding three. An eighty-year-old Serb farmer from
the same village was shot dead later the same day. On September 14, a
forty-five-year-old Serb woman was shot dead at her home in Kamenica. A
sixty-year-old Serb shepherd reported missing was discovered dead near
Strpce on October 4, with gunshot wounds to the body."
"Much of the violence against Albanians, however, occurred at the hands of
other Albanians. The murder of a politician from the Democratic League of
Kosovo, the party headed by Ibrahim Rugova and known by its Albanian
acronym, LDK, and the kidnaping and interrogation of another in the Drenica
region in November 1999 was followed by a spate of execution-style killings
of prominent KLA fighters. Although the killings were frequently attributed
to rivalries among organized crime figures, some of the murders, including
the killing in May of a politically moderate former KLA commander, Ekrem
Rexha (known as Commander "Drini"), had a political dimension."
Les selv resten.
Karsten Johansen
http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/europe/yugoslavia-kosovo.html
Kosovo
Human Rights Developments
Despite the efforts of the United Nations civilian administration and a
massive North Atlantic Treay Organization (NATO) presence, human rights in
Kosovo frequently remained an abstraction during 2000. Ethnic minorities
were hardest hit, with continuing violence against the province's Serb,
Roma, Muslim Slav, Gorani, and Turkish populations, and the Albanian
minority living in northern Mitrovica town. At the time of this writing,
municipal elections were scheduled for October 28, despite the absence of
conditions for their free and fair conduct and against a backdrop of rising
political violence among Albanian Kosovar parties and a Serb boycott.
Efforts to establish rule of law and to end impunity were hampered by
shortcomings in the nascent justice system, and inadequate and incompetent
policing. The NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) and its member governments were
reluctant to take decisive action against elements of the former Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) linked to attacks on minorities and political
opponents. Despite progress in identifying the fate of missing persons, more
than 3,000 remained unaccounted for from last year's armed conflict, most of
them ethnic Albanians.
For the most part confined to mono-ethnic enclaves and unable to travel
without KFOR escorts, the situation of minorities in Kosovo remained
extremely precarious. Few of the more than 150,000 non-Albanians who fled
from Kosovo since June 1999 attempted to return. Roma and especially Serbs
continued to bear the brunt of much of the violence. Ethnic Croats, Muslim
Slavs (including Torbesh), Gorani, and Turks also faced attacks, harassment,
and pressure to leave their homes. Although far fewer murders and kidnapings
took place in 2000 than in 1999, minorities continued to be
disproportionately affected. On February 2, Josip Vasic, a prominent doctor
and moderate member of the Serb National Council, was shot dead in a
Gnjilane street by unknown assailants. On April 3, Metodije Halauska, an
eighty-six-year-old ethnic Czech man, was kidnaped from his home in
Pristina, beaten, and shot in the back of the head. A seventy-year-old
Bosniak woman in Pec was hospitalized the same month after being beaten in
the street by fifteen Albanian men. On May 15, the body of
twenty-five-year-old Serb translator Petar Topoljski was found in the
village of Rimaniste, near Pristina. Topoljski had gone missing a week
earlier from his job with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK),
after his name and movements were published in the Kosovo daily newspaper
Dita, together with allegations that he was a Serb paramilitary who had
participated in the mass expulsions of Albanians from the province.
The weeks surrounding the first anniversary of NATO's entry into Kosovo on
June 12 saw an upsurge in violence against minorities in the province. A
series of grenade and landmine attacks and drive-by shootings targeting
Serbs left eleven dead and more than a dozen wounded. Valentina Cukic, an
editor of a Serbian-language program of the multi-ethnic Radio Kontakt, was
shot and badly wounded in Pristina June 20, together with her companion,
while wearing her KFOR press identification. On July 12, a Serbian Orthodox
priest and two seminary students were wounded in a drive-by shooting near
the village of Klokot. In a sinister development in August, minority
children were targeted: on August 18, a grenade was thrown from a moving car
into a group of children at a basketball court in the Serb village of
Crkvena Vodica leaving ten wounded. On August 27, an Albanian man drove his
car into a group of children in the same village before fleeing the scene,
killing one child and wounding three. An eighty-year-old Serb farmer from
the same village was shot dead later the same day. On September 14, a
forty-five-year-old Serb woman was shot dead at her home in Kamenica. A
sixty-year-old Serb shepherd reported missing was discovered dead near
Strpce on October 4, with gunshot wounds to the body.
The international community struggled to balance free expression against
curbs on speech inciting hatred and violence. The practice of publishing the
names of alleged Serb war criminals in Kosovo newspapers, redolent of the
notorious lists published in the Croatian region of Eastern Slavonia, drew
condemnation from UNMIK and the OSCE, but international efforts against hate
speech, including the appointment of a temporary media commissioner with
wide powers and the temporary closure of Dita after it repeatedly published
inflammatory allegations against Serbs, were criticized by Kosovo Albanian
journalists and international press freedom groups as an attack on free
speech.
The divided town of Mitrovica remained a flash-point for inter-ethnic
conflict. Some of the worst violence in the town followed a February 2
rocket attack on a UNHCR bus under KFOR escort traveling to Mitrovica from
the Serb village of Banja in which two elderly Serbs were killed and three
wounded. The attack sparked a wave of tit-for-tat inter-ethnic violence in
northern Mitrovica that left eight non-Serbs dead and led 1,700 Albanians,
Turks, and Muslim Slavs to flee their homes. The prospects for a lasting
solution to the town's status remained dim. Violence against Albanians was
not confined to Mitrovica. The murder of two Albanians in the village of
Cubrelj by a group of Serbs on June 12, the first anniversary of the end of
war, echoed the persecution of Albanians a year earlier.
Much of the violence against Albanians, however, occurred at the hands of
other Albanians. The murder of a politician from the Democratic League of
Kosovo, the party headed by Ibrahim Rugova and known by its Albanian
acronym, LDK, and the kidnaping and interrogation of another in the Drenica
region in November 1999 was followed by a spate of execution-style killings
of prominent KLA fighters. Although the killings were frequently attributed
to rivalries among organized crime figures, some of the murders, including
the killing in May of a politically moderate former KLA commander, Ekrem
Rexha (known as Commander "Drini"), had a political dimension.
Political violence increased over the summer. On June 15 Alil Dresaj, a
senior LDK politician, was shot dead by persons wearing insignia of the
former KLA. On July 7, Ramush Haradinaj, a politician and former senior KLA
commander, was wounded in the village of Streoce during what appears to have
been a shootout. On July 12, a close aide to Haradinaj was murdered. The
burned corpse of Shaban Manaj, a senior LDK official, was discovered on
August 6 in a remote village. He had been kidnaped on July 27. Attacks
directed against the LDK continued in August. On August 1, an LDK activist
was shot and wounded in Podujevo. The head of the LDK in Srbica was wounded
in a shooting the following day. The wife of an LDK official died in an
explosion at their home in Dragash on August 9. Several LDK offices were
attacked during the same month. Political motives were also suspected in the
September murders of Shefki Popova and Rexhep Luci, two prominent Albanians
with close ties to the LDK. Popova, a veteran journalist with
Albanian-language daily Rilindija and Luci, head of Kosovo's housing and
reconstruction department, were gunned down on consecutive days.
Despite the absence of "an atmosphere free of violence and intimidation" (an
OSCE condition for free and fair elections), the international community
pressed ahead with its plans to hold municipal elections, at the time of
writing, scheduled for October 28. While most eligible Albanians registered
to vote, Serbs, Muslim Slavs, and other minorities boycotted registration,
citing lack of security, thus rendering them ineligible to vote. As if to
confirm their reservations, a bomb exploded on August 18 in a Pristina
building housing the offices of smaller Albanian, Turkish, and Bosniak
political parties, as well as the Yugoslav representation in Pristina.
Despite the violence and concerns that conditions were inadequate for free
and fair elections, the body set up by the OSCE to enforce standards during
the election was weak and lacked effective sanctions.
The International Organization for Migration in Kosovo reported that
traffickers had lured dozens of women to Kosovo with offers of lucrative
jobs; the women found themselves trapped in forced prostitution in brothels
around the province.
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