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As seen as told, part one, october 1998-june 1999
OSCE 6 december 1999
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
About the OSCE-KVM Human Rights Division In 1998, after more than six months of escalating armed conflict between Yugoslav and Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), the UN Security Council, in Resolution 1199, called for an immediate cease-fire in Kosovo, an international presence to monitor it, the withdrawal of "security units used for civilian repression", and dialogue on the future of the province. On 16 October 1998 the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (OSCE-KVM) was established to monitor compliance with Resolution 1199 and with the cease-fire. The Human Rights Division within the OSCE-KVM became operational in December 1998, and was deployed extensively across Kosovo by the end of January 1999. A core activity of the OSCE-KVM Human Rights Division was to monitor, investigate, document and report allegations of human rights abuses committed by all parties to the conflict in Kosovo.
With the collapse of the Rambouillet peace process, the OSCE-KVM was withdrawn from Kosovo on 20 March 1999, in the face of an untenable situation of deteriorating security, including additional large-scale deployments of Yugoslav and Serbian military and security forces, and armed irregulars, into Kosovo, as well as the imminent internationalization of the conflict. The Human Rights Division was redeployed in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and continued its collection of victim and witness evidence of human rights abuses by conducting interviews among refugees from Kosovo over the next two-and-a-half months, until it was stood down by decision of the OSCE Permanent Council, on 9 June 1999.
A mass of data about the prevailing human rights situation in Kosovo was collected by the OSCE-KVM in the two phases of its deployment, including hundreds of individual case reports, daily and weekly reports compiled by human rights officers at its Regional Centres and field offices during the period to 20 March, and 2,764 interviews with refugees in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This report is the product of an analysis of that data carried out at the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) in Warsaw. Analysing the OSCE-KVM's human rights findings : the OSCE/ODIHR's approach The analytical methodology and reporting strategy applied by the OSCE/ODIHR, as described in more detail in the Introduction, is driven entirely by the data collection of the OSCE-KVM. Consistent with this methodology, the report does not therefore address itself to human rights violations that were beyond the reach of the OSCE-KVM's investigation and reporting efforts. Similarly, the report does not address itself to events that have occurred after the end of the mandate of the OSCE-KVM, except to the extent of incorporating specific information about investigative follow-up to the primary data of the OSCE-KVM. There are clearly other human rights reports to be written on Kosovo, and on Yugoslavia, covering the same period as is covered here, and beyond. Violations, their impact on Kosovo society, and the human rights map of Kosovo The OSCE-KVM's findings are presented by the OSCE/ODIHR from three perspectives. Approaching this data from any of these perspectives, the analysis reveals clear patterns and strategies of human rights violations. The first perspective is an analysis of the nature of the human rights and humanitarian law violations that were committed in Kosovo.
This reveals that : * Summary and arbitrary killing of civilian non-combatants occurred at the hands of both parties to the conflict in the period up to 20 March. On the part of the Yugoslav and Serbian forces, their intent to apply mass killing as an instrument of terror, coercion or punishment against Kosovo Albanians was already in evidence in 1998, and was shockingly demonstrated by incidents in January 1999 (including the Racak mass killing) and beyond. Arbitrary killing of civilians was both a tactic in the campaign to expel Kosovo Albanians, and an objective in itself. * Arbitrary arrest and detention, and the violation of the right to a fair trial, became increasingly the tools of the law enforcement agencies in the suppression of Kosovo Albanian civil and political rights, and - accompanied by torture and ill-treatment - were applied as a means to intimidate the entire Kosovo Albanian society. * Rape and other forms of sexual violence were applied sometimes as a weapon of war. * Forced expulsion carried out by Yugoslav and Serbian forces took place on a massive scale, with evident strategic planning and in clear violation of the laws and customs of war. It was often accompanied by deliberate destruction of property, and looting. Opportunities for extortion of money were a prime motivator for Yugoslav and Serbian perpetrators of human rights and humanitarian law violations. The second perspective is to look at the specific and different ways in which communities and groups in Kosovo society experienced human rights violations during the conflict. Findings include : * There was a specific focus - for killings, arbitrary detention and torture - on young Kosovo Albanian men of fighting age, every one of them apparently perceived as a potential "terrorist". * Women were placed in positions of great vulnerability, and were specific objects of violence targeting their gender. * There is chilling evidence of the murderous targeting of children, with the aim of terrorizing and punishing adults and communities. * The Kosovo Serb community were victims of humanitarian law violations committed by the UCK, especially in the matter of the many Serbs missing following abduction. However, many Serb civilians were active participants in human rights violations, alongside the military and security forces, against the Kosovo Albanians. Other national communities and minorities also had specific experiences of the conflict. *
Prominent, educated, wealthy or politically or socially active Kosovo Albanians were a prime target to be killed. Local staff of the OSCE-KVM, and other people associated with the mission were harassed or forcibly expelled, and some were killed, after 20 March. The third perspective is a geographical human rights "map" of Kosovo. Proceeding municipality by municipality, the report presents descriptions of events in hundreds of communities across Kosovo. In some cases the descriptions are of events on a single day or within a short time period, and reveal how the most characteristic human rights violations of the entire reporting period - forced expulsion, inevitably accompanied by deliberate property destruction, and often by killings or other violence, or extortion - could be visited on a community with little or no advance indication, with great speed, and with great thoroughness. Such experiences were replicated in rural areas all across Kosovo, and would be repeated if villagers attempted to return to their homes. In other locations, particularly the towns, communities of Kosovo Albanian civilians experienced an onslaught over many days or weeks combining arbitrary violence and abuse with an overall approach that appeared highly organized and systematic. Everywhere, the attacks on communities appear to have been dictated by strategy, not by breakdown in command and control. Indicators of a strategy well rehearsed, and brutally implemented Most tellingly, the analysis of some of the most prevalent human rights and humanitarian law violations, as well as the analysis of their geographical organization and their impact on communities, demonstrate how the violations inflicted on the Kosovo Albanian population after 20 March were a continuation of actions by Yugoslav and Serbian military and security forces that were well rehearsed, insofar as they were already taking place in many locations in Kosovo well before 20 March.
The mass killing at Racak on 15 January 1999 most graphically illustrates the descent into violence amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was to become a precedent for numerous other atrocities recounted to the OSCE-KVM in the period after 20 March. Other key events in this regard in the period before 20 March were the killings of Kosovo Albanians by police at Rogovo and Rakovina later in January, the launch of Yugoslav army "winter exercises" involving the shelling of villages and the forced expulsion of villagers in Vucitrn/Vushtrri municipality in February and March, a military and police offensive in Kacanik in February, in which a tactic of burning and destroying civilian homes to clear the area of the UCK was employed, and a violent police crack-down in an Albanian quarter of Pristina/Prishtina in early March after the killing of two police officers. Alongside the killings in Racak, these events reveal patterns of grave abuses by Yugoslav and Serbian forces against the civilian population. Such patterns of abuse recur after 20 March in the descriptions given by refugees. The scale on which human rights violations recur is staggering. It has been estimated that over 90 per cent of the Kosovo Albanian population - over 1.45 million people - were displaced by the conflict by 9 June 1999. The death toll as yet can only be guessed at, but the prevalence of confirmed reports and witness statements about individual and group killings in this report is indicative. The violence meted out to people, as recounted vividly, particularly in the statements of refugees, was extreme and appalling. The accounts of refugees also give compelling examples of the organized and systematic nature of what was being perpetrated by Yugoslav and Serbian forces, and their tolerance for and collusion in acts of extreme lawlessness by paramilitaries and armed civilians.
The commission of human rights and humanitarian law violations during the internal armed conflict in Kosovo during the time it was being monitored by the OSCE-KVM was not one-sided. All parts of this report look at violations committed by both parties to the internal conflict. It must be stressed, however, that an obvious conclusion of the analysis is that there was certainly nothing resembling balance or equivalence in the nature or the scale of the human rights violations committed by each side. Suffering in Kosovo in the period monitored by the OSCE-KVM was overwhelmingly Kosovo Albanian suffering, at the hands of the Yugoslav and Serbian state military and security apparatus. A catastrophe rooted in the long-term disregard for human rights and fundamental freedoms A guiding principle of the OSCE is that respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, democracy and the rule of law is an essential component of security. A consistent pattern of human rights violations in Kosovo led eventually to a breakdown in security. The deterioration into a security crisis, armed conflict and a human rights and humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo might have been avoided if the Yugoslav and Serbian authorities, rather than engaging in the persistent violation of the human rights of the Kosovo Albanian population in the past decade, had sought to construct in Kosovo an open and inclusive society founded on the principles of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
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