Kosovo: Failure of NATO, U.N. to Protect Minorities
Reform of Security Structures Needed as New U.N.
Administrator Takes Office
(Brussels, July 26, 2004)—The NATO-led Kosovo Force and U.N.
international police failed catastrophically to protect minorities during the
widespread rioting in Kosovo in March, Human Rights Watch said today in the
first detailed report on the attacks. Protection of minority communities will be
a key challenge for the new U.N. administrator for Kosovo, Soren
Jessen-Petersen, who is scheduled to take office on August 3.
The 66-page
report, “Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004,”
documents the widespread attacks against Serbs, Roma, Ashkali (Albanian-speaking
Roma) and other minorities that took place in Kosovo on March 17-18. Human
Rights Watch details the near-complete collapse during the crisis of Kosovo’s
security institutions—the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), international civilian
police from the U.N. Interim Administration Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK), and the
locally-recruited Kosovo Police Service (KPS). Based on numerous interviews with
minority victims and security officials, the report provides a detailed—and
previously unavailable—account of what happened in dozens of communities during
the riots.
“This was the biggest security test for NATO and
the United Nations in Kosovo since 1999, when minorities were forced from their
homes as the international community looked on,” said Rachel Denber, acting
executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division.
“But they failed the test. In too many cases, NATO peacekeepers locked the gates
to their bases, and watched as Serb homes burned.”
On March
17, at least 33 riots broke out in Kosovo over a 48-hour period, involving an
estimated 51,000 protesters. Nineteen people died during the violence. At least
550 homes and 27 Orthodox churches and monasteries were burned, and
approximately 4,100 persons from minority communities were displaced from their
homes.
Human Rights Watch research found that ethnic
Albanian crowds acted with ferocious efficiency to rid many areas in Kosovo of
all remaining vestiges of a Serb presence, and also targeted other minority
communities, including Roma and Ashkali. In many of the villages affected by the
violence, in attacks both spontaneous and organized, every single Serb, Roma or
Ashkali home was destroyed.
In the village of Svinjare, all
137 Serb homes were burned, but neighboring ethnic Albanian homes were left
untouched. In nearby Vucitrn, all 69 Ashkali homes were destroyed, while in
Kosovo Polje, more than 100 Serb and Roma homes were burned, as was the post
office, the Serbian school and the Serbian hospital. Even the tiniest Serb
presences became targets: in Djakovica ethnic Albanians besieged the Serbian
Orthodox Church that housed the town’s remaining Serbs, five elderly women. The
women had to be evacuated.
Although NATO-led KFOR troops and
UNMIK international civilian police are specifically mandated to provide
security for minorities in Kosovo, they both failed to protect minorities during
the rioting, often leaving besieged Serbs and others at the mercy of large
ethnic Albanian crowds for hours before responding. In Svinjare, a large ethnic
Albanian crowd walked right past the main French KFOR base on its way to the
village, before burning every minority home. KFOR failed to come to the
assistance of the Serbs, even though Svinjare is located just a few hundred
meters from the base. French KFOR similarly failed to respond to the
anti-Ashkali rioting in Vucitrn, even though the village is located near two
French KFOR bases.
German-led KFOR troops in Prizren failed
to deploy to protect the Serb population and its historic Serbian Orthodox
churches and monasteries, despite repeated calls for assistance from German
UNMIK police officers based in the town. The village of Belo Polje, adjacent to
the main Italian KFOR base, was burned to the ground. In the capital Pristina,
Serbs were forced to barricade themselves into their apartments, while ethnic
Albanian rioters shot at them and looted and burned the apartments below. It
took six hours before KFOR and UNMIK came to their assistance.
The violence was sparked by a series of events, notably
sensational and ultimately inaccurate reports that Serbs were responsible for
the drowning of three ethnic Albanian boys. Other catalysts included anger among
ethnic Albanians over the blocking of the main Pristina-Skopje road by Serb
villagers to protest the shooting of a Serb teenager by unknown assailants, and
a March 16 demonstration organized by groups of veterans and others linked to
the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army who protested the arrest of former KLA
leaders on war crimes charges.
“The violence should be a
wake-up call to NATO and the United Nations,” said Denber. “Rhetoric alone can’t
protect minority communities or help create a multiethnic Kosovo. What’s needed
here is genuine reform of the international security structures.”
Human Rights Watch called for a full, independent review of the
response of KFOR, UNMIK police and KPS to the violence. The report also
recommends riot-control training and equipment for KFOR and UNMIK police, and a
more centralized command structure for KFOR.