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Date sent: Wed, 07 Apr 1999 15:59:44 -0700
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From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: REPORT FINDS SHARED GUILT INSIDE KOSOVO - NYT
The New York Times April 2, 1999
CRISIS IN THE BALKANS: ATROCITIES
REPORT FINDS SHARED GUILT INSIDE KOSOVO
By Elizabeth Olson
GENEVA -- A report to the U.N. Human Rights Commission on
Thursday accused both Yugoslav and Albanian forces of
committing numerous killings and other atrocities in Kosovo before
NATO began its airstrikes.
Jiri Dienstbier, a former foreign minister of Czechoslovakia,
gave the U.N. group, which is holding its annual meeting here, a
report on Kosovo that strongly criticized Yugoslav forces, noting
that he was alarmed at "consistent disregard by Serbian state
security forces of both domestic and international standards
pertaining to police conduct and treatment of detainees." Kosovo is
a province of Serbia, which with neighboring Montenegro forms
Yugoslavia.
Dienstbier said, however, that human rights violations by both
the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians were common. "It happened in
Kosovo many times for both sides," Dienstbier said, citing
abductions, murders and arbitrary arrests. He has been investigating
human rights in Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina since
March 1998.
Last fall, he said, "concentrations of corpses and evidence of
massacres, including massacres of civilians," were discovered. The
badly mutilated bodies of 14 Kosovo Albanians, including six
women, six children and two elderly men, were found in a forest in
the Drenica region, he said.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, on the other hand, which is
fighting for independence for the ethnic Albanian majority in the
province, conducted paramilitary tribunals and was believed to be
responsible for the abduction and execution of civilians and police
officers, he said. In two locations, Klecka and Glodjane, there were
more than 40 bodies that Yugoslav authorities said were Serb
civilians who had been kidnapped and killed by the KLA soldiers.
And all over Serbia, he said, "persons are arbitrarily detained by
the police for questioning or held in pretrial detention longer than
the period mandated by law." Such detainees are routinely denied
access to lawyers, Dienstbier said, and also to personal doctors, a
practice that he said is significant because state-employed
physicians do not report injuries sustained during police questioning
and also do not provide sufficient medical treatment.
In response, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia gave the
commission what it called "information on terrorist activities and
provocations by the Albanian separatists in Kosovo."
Branko Brankovic, a representative of the Yugoslav
government, said that between Oct. 13, 1998, and Feb. 21, 1999,
there had been 827 attacks and provocations in Kosovo, including
290 against civilians and 537 against officials. These attacks, he
said, killed 99 people, including 80 civilians.
Since the Rambouillet peace talks, he said, people have been
killed and wounded daily except for the period from Feb. 11 to Feb.
17, 1999.
In light of the fighting and brutality in Kosovo in the past
weeks, Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees,
said Thursday that a special investigation would begin next week to
assess the reports of ethnic cleansing.
Ms. Robinson said she would send Dienstbier to investigate
"reports of a vicious and systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing
conducted by Serbian military and paramilitary forces in Kosovo."
"The gravity of these reports underlines the need for impartial
verification of the allegations," Ms. Robinson said.
Human rights monitors are also being reassigned and sent
immediately to interview refugees to evaluate the human rights
situation in the battered province, she added.
[PEN-L:4965] (Fwd) REPORT FINDS SHARED GUILT INSIDE KOSOVO - NYT
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Wed, 7 Apr 1999 23:23:40 -0500
