GOOD NIGHT, KOSOVO

The Belgrade Fund for Humanitarian Law

AIM, Beograd, February 16,1995

A wall has been erected in the middle of the corridor of the elementary school in Pristina. The school was divided back in 1991 - Serbian children (650) are on the ground floor, Albanian ones (2,330) upstairs. They have stopped entering by the same door. When they continued, spontaneously, to play together in the yard, the directors explained to their "children" that they should stick to different territories within the same yard. In the summer of 1993, power switches, ceiling lights, window panes and doors were taken down in the Albanian part of the school. Only the school kitchen remained in the Albanian part, but according to the Albanian director "our children do not use it, we have no money for food, so that Serbian children use it". The former assistant director, a Serb by nationality, objected to the "new methods" - she was fired because disagreeing with official Serbian policy.

In past years, a similar state of affairs can be seen in all schools, because the parents, Serbs, insisted that their children do not mix with Albanian children. The Serbian regime explains that this was done after the teachers and parents of Albanian children refused to accept Serbia's curriculum. In practice, this means that searches, especially of grammar schools, are a routine police job. Last year, in December, the police forced a teacher to burn the book of the Croatian sociologist, Rudi Supek, in the furnace, while another teacher had to hold his hands on the red-hot burner of a stove.

Intensified repression

Education in Kosovo - is just the first chapter of an extensive study carried out by the Fund for Humanitarian Law in Belgrade, from May to December 1994. A team of researchers talked to 165 people who were arrested, searched or detained for political reasons or for being Albanians. It examined court files, talked to 12 lawyers, interrogated victims of police torture. The report was presented at a recent press conference organized by the Fund, attended by two guests from Pristina, Pajazit Nushi, vice-chairman of the Human Rights Committee in Pristina and Bajram Keljmendi, a lawyer from Pristina. It is interesting to note that on that occasion Pajazit Nushi confirmed that the Fund's report coincided with the data available to his Committee, although the two organizations had not had any contacts.

• Repression in Kosovo is intensifying- says the director of the Fund, Natasa Kandic. - We have learned that the Serbian police, for no reason and unlawfully, detains Albanians, not only members and activists of the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, but also numerous participants in cultural and sports events, as well as ordinary people. Although Yugoslav laws broadly protect human rights, we have learned that an Albanian may be arrested, detained, maltreated and intimidated if someone "identifies" him as a possible enemy.

The total number of those subjected to different forms of torture in 1994 was 2,157 (22 women and 28 children), stresses lawyer Keljmendi. The number of wounded was 226, the number of maltreated rose by 400 cases as compared to 1993. Pajazit Nushi supplemented the report- 2,963 prisoners are serving sentences of one year or longer.

According to the law, a citizen need not respond to a summons for an "informative talk". Nevertheless, over 15,000 lawyers, professors, ordinary people were brought in by the police, tortured, sometimes kept over 30 hours in police stations. In practice, according to the Fund, the police calls people dogs which are multiplying, animals. It interrogates children, or beats and humiliates parents in front of their children. In almost all the investigated cases it is the police which violates the provisions of the law with impunity, adds Natasa Kandic.

For example, in April 1994, over 30 Albanians from the village of Zaskok were brought to the police station in Urosevac, their faces were slapped and they were humiliated because 72 plum seedlings were stolen from the orchard of a Serb, Dusan Bulatovic. In that investigation, a 10 year old boy too was brought in and had to watch the chief inspector hitting his father with his fists, because he did not know anything about Dusan's plums. A villager was beaten with nightclubs on his bare feet because of the same plums.

In 1994 17 Albanians, including a seven year old child, were killed. Six people succumbed to torture in police premises, one man committed suicide because he could not bear the torture, ten were shot from firearms, and their stories are "special". Let us recall: when the police fired 28 bullets on a child in a car, the official statement said that it had been done by mistake(!?), that the police had been waiting in ambush for a criminal in a white "Golf". As if it were legal to shoot from ambush, even at a criminal. No one has so far answered for the above murders, although the damaged parties know the murderers and have submitted citizen's charges to the prosecutor.

With a stick on bare feet

The trend of killing Albanians in Kosovo has not been arrested. In 1981 one man was killed, in 1990 39 people, in 1992 20, last year 17, in January this year two people were wounded from firearms, five were sent to prison on infraction charges and several days ago, in Gnjilane, a Serb policeman raped a 19 year old Albanian girl.

When criminal proceedings are initiated, the judge, as a rule, illegally leaves the job to tough police guys.

Frequently, when Albanians and their children are harassed in the streets (by a group of civilians, Serbs), the beaten up Albanians often claim not to have recognized the attackers, that they live in peace with the local Serbs, and conclude that the attacks were organized for intimidation purposes.

The eviction of Albanians from flats and repeated searches of houses " to find concealed weapons" are commonplace in Kosovo. According to the Fund's information, in the village of Jablanica alone, which is inhabited solely by Albanians, from March to July last year, over 100 houses were searched, 80 people were physically tortured because they would not admit to possessing arms.

On March 18, 1994, at 9.30 a.m. a man, 82 years old, from the village of Zegra, was brought to the police station and testified before the Fund's researchers: " One of them took my walking stick and ordered me to hold out my hands. He hit me on the palms of my hands with the stick. He hit me for two hours... Afterwards I had to take off my shoes. They hit me on the soles of my feet. They let me go at 8.00 in the evening. A woman saw me on the stairs, started pulling her hair and shouting: Woe is me, what have they done to you. Since then I have been walking with difficulty".

The guests from Pristina stated in Belgrade that the houses of 1242 families were searched last year in Kosovo.

It is interesting, at the end, to see what the Fund for Humanitarian Law has learned by "interrogating" 220 inhabitants of Belgrade about Kosovo.

Over four fifths think that Kosovo is in Serbia, 28% that it is in Yugoslavia, 2.5% do not know exactly where it is. Younger people place Kosovo in Serbia, older ones in Yugoslavia. The President of the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, Rugova, is known to the inhabitants of Belgrade; two thirds know his exact position in Kosovo. The rest are not sure whether he is an Albanian diplomat, or a member of the provincial government of Kosovo.

What do the inhabitants of Belgrade think is best for the Albanians at the moment?

Three fourths of the interviewees think that it is best that they accept Serbia as their state, 20% suggest they keep quiet and wait for the denouement of the conflict between the Serbs, Croats and Moslems, 3% think that they should internationalize their problem, and 12% that they should restore the autonomy they previously had. A sad figure for the end: 24.5% Belgraders would solve the problem of Kosovo by expelling the Albanians, or moving them out, 14.5% would intensify repression, 1.4.% is in favour of the return of the Serbs there, 10% are for dialouge and compromise, 10% are for granting a higher degree of autonomy.

In a few days the Fund will send its report to the following regime addresses: the Assembly, Government, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Justice, the Public Prosecutor's Office and personally to the President of FR Yugoslavia, Zoran Lilic. In Kosovo, an answer is not expected.

Gordana Igric