December 5, 1999
Monitors' Reports Provide Chronicle of Kosovo Terror
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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."
