KOSOVO: MASS EXPULSION OF ROMA IN "LIBERATED KOSOVO" IS BIGGEST CRIME AGAINST EUROPEAN ROMA PEOPLE SINCE NAZI HOLOCAUST
Press ReleaseKOSOVO: MASS EXPULSION OF ROMA IN "LIBERATED KOSOVO" IS BIGGEST CRIME AGAINST EUROPEAN ROMA PEOPLE SINCE NAZI HOLOCAUST
The Society for Threatened Peoples Publishes a 100 Page Documentation on the Mass Expulsion of Roma and Ashkali from Kosovo
Germany´s Famous Writer Guenter Grass supports the Society's Demands
Until the Very Last "Gypsy" Has Fled the Country:
The Mass Expulsion of Roma and Ashkali from Kosovo
The entire report (ca. 60 pages / Din A 4) is available both in German and in English. It can be ordered for 10 German Marks (plus porto and package) at the office ofSociety for Threatened Peoples - Germany
E-Mail: versand@gfbv.de
P.O. Box 2024
D - 37010 Goettingen
Tel. 0049 551 49906-12
Fax 0049 551 580 28
Website: http://www.gfbv.deGoettingen, 9. September 1999
Statement of Guenter Grass:
I put aside all my grave doubts and spoke out for NATO intervention in Kosovo so that the crimes against the Albanians could be ended, and the expellees could return.
Now we must experience new expulsions, become witness to how the hate has developed against Roma today. Therefore I appeal to Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping, who have also had to overcome these grave doubts about intervention and are now confronted with the new persecution of Roma as well as the Serbs, to renew their efforts.
In addition, on behalf of the association I created supporting Roma and Sinti, I support the recommendations made by the Society for Threatened Peoples.
Guenter Grass, 3 September 1999
Until the Very Last "Gypsy" Has Fled the Country:
The Mass Expulsion of Roma and Ashkali from Kosovo
Human Rights Report by Tilman Zülch
Chairman of the Society for Threatened PeoplesExcerpts from Report of Fact Finding Mission, 4 - 18 August 1999
People with dark skins, members of the Roma and Ashkali minorities, are unable to walk through the streets and public open spaces of Kosovo's towns without fearing for life and limb. A large part of the Kosovo Albanian population, who for ten years were themselves the victims of a Serbian policy of 'apartheid', are now supporting, advocating or excusing a rigorous policy of "racial" separation.
Within the space of a mere three months the majority of members of minority groups of Indian descent, who have lived in Kosovo for centuries, have been forced to leave their homes and been driven out of their own country . Most of their houses and the villages and urban areas where they formerly lived have been destroyed. Roughly three quarters of the Roma and Ashkali have been forced to seek shelter in refugee camps or are living in slum conditions in the neighbouring countries of Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Albania. Thousands of them have risked the dangerous sea crossing to Italy in frail and overloaded ships and boats. A considerable number have drowned in the Adriatic. Many of the Roma and Ashkali still left in Kosovo are living in UNHCR camps for "displaced persons". They are refugees in their own country.
THE ALBANIAN POPULATION WERE VICTIMS THEMSELVES
Previously, since March 1998, the Albanian population were the victims of the most appalling crimes. Taking into account the number of those still missing, a realistic assessment must start from the assumption that as many as 20,000 Albanians were killed by Serbian troops. Another 20,000 - the elderly, the sick, the injured, the handicapped, small children and infants failed to survive expulsion to neighbouring countries and their flight through the forests and across the mountains of Kosovo. As far as anyone can tell the fate of these people was not recorded in any statistics compiled within Kosovo, but they too are the victims of genocide. The Milosevic regime is responsible for their deaths as well. In early June 1999, before the K-FOR troops entered Kosovo, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) published an extensively detailed report entitled "Genozid im Kosovo" (published in English under the title "Genocide in Kosovo") which showed that the Serbian army, special police and paramilitaries had committed genocide against the Albanian population, contravening the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The oppression of Kosovo over the decades since the province was incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbia after the Balkan War of 1912/1913 has fostered a strong community spirit among the Albanians of Yugoslavia and this perhaps explains the aggressive nationalistic attitude displayed by broad sections of the Albanian population since the liberation of Kosovo by the NATO forces.
Following the entry of the K-FOR into Kosovo the Serbian administration collapsed within a few days. Since 1989 all the official institutions of Albanian autonomy have gradually been dismantled by the Milosevic government. As a result, widespread anarchy has prevailed throughout the country during the weeks and months since the war ended in June 1999, only partially restrained by the intervention of K-FOR troops. Acts of vandalism of all kinds, acts of revenge by Albanian civilians, targeted attacks by armed UCK units and the activities of a newly-developed Mafia, partly local in origin and partly directed from Albania, have demonstrated the inadequacies of the police, the courts and the administrative authorities.
Nevertheless there can be no justification for such a large section of the Albanian population engaging in acts of barbarism directed against an unpopular minority. The local Serbian population was unfairly held collectively responsible for the genocide and mass expulsion. The crimes against Roma and Ashkali cannot be excused on the basis of alleged looting and war crimes committed by individual members of this minority.
ROMA AND ASHKALI TARGETS OF "ETHNIC CLEANSING"
Within three months a merciless policy of "ethnic cleansing" targeting the Roma and Ashkali ethnic groups was in force throughout most of Kosovo. This "ethnic cleansing" did not involve any campaign of genocide along the lines of the Serbian model but demonstrated instead that a mass exodus of population can be achieved simply through threats and intimidation and individual acts of brutality, rape, abduction and murder. The possibility that expulsion has resulted in deaths on a large scale in refugee camps in neighbouring countries cannot be ignored. Under the terms of Article II (c) of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes of Genocide of 9.12.1948 such mass deaths may form the basis for a charge of genocide against those Albanians responsible for the mass expulsion of the Roma and Ashkali.
The Albanian population of Kosovo and its political movement, which under Rugova's leadership spent a decade engaged in non-violent resistance, are at risk of forfeiting their good name. A large part of the population condone the mistreatment and expulsion of the Kosovar "Gypsies". Hundreds of thousands of Albanians must have witnessed the expulsions and the day-by-day annihilation of the Roma communities by their fellow-countrymen which took place before their eyes. Up until now there has been little sign of opposition on the part of Albanian journalists, intellectuals, political parties and the UCK, the armed resistance movement which has frequently been complicit in the pogrom. Two-thirds of the communities where the Roma and Ashkali lived have been burned down. Destructions and expulsions continue daily.
Each and every European should find it intolerable that a minority whose extermination Hitler set in motion - a people who dwelt on our continent for a thousand years - should be experiencing collective persecution in a region of Europe which has been given its freedom through the efforts of European governments and whose expelled population are now able to return to their own homes. It should be particularly intolerable for people living in Germany and Austria, the countries where the persecution of Sinti and Roma began, to accept that fellow Europeans should be persecuted and expelled from their own country, simply because most of them have a darker skin than the other inhabitants of Kosovo.
We would also urge K-FOR troops to be mindful of their particular responsibility, so often inadequately discharged, to give their protection to anyone who may now be expelled. It is incomprehensible how K-FOR can still be unwilling to provide any of the remaining communities of Roma and Ashkali, which exist under constant threat, with round-the-clock protection.
ROMA AND ASHKALI IN KOSOVO
While international interest following the liberation of Kosovo by NATO forces was, understandably enough, focused on the return home of some 1.5 million Albanians along with the members of various minority groups, including Roma and Ashkali, and while every day new mass graves were being discovered, Albanians were embarking on a new mass expulsion of ethnic minorities - the Serbs, Roma and Ashkali. Before the expulsions began there were approximately 150,000 Roma and Ashkali resident in Kosovo, although some 30,000 had emigrated to Western Europe as political refugees during the years before war broke out. Some 20,000 of these were granted permission to live in Germany.
Following the NATO intervention Albanian extremists and returning Albanian refugees, frequently accompanied by Albanian neighbours of the Roma and Ashkali and often also by armed and uniformed members of the UCK, turned their attention to attacking minority groups throughout Kosovo. They frequently threatened men, women and children with death, intimidated them and presented them an ultimatum - often at gunpoint - forcing them to leave their homes and the areas where they lived. On numerous occasions they set a deadline of only a few minutes or hours.
Many Roma and Ashkali were only able to escape with the clothes they were wearing. As a rule homes were looted and items of furniture, television sets and stereo equipment, cars and, in a few exceptional cases, even tractors stolen. Ashkali families who had been the only ones not to leave the area remarked ironically to us that the Albanians' approach to looting was a more thorough one than the Serbians', as even the bricks and the roof-tiles were taken. Carts belonging to members of the minority groups were frequently stopped and confiscated.
In the majority of cases the houses were then set on fire or destroyed using other methods, although it was not unusual for neighbours or Albanian returnees whose own homes had been destroyed by Serbian troops to take possession of them. By our rough estimate two-thirds of the houses belonging to the two minority groups were destroyed.
We have received information concerning the complete or partial destruction of areas where Roma and Ashkali lived in the following towns, urban districts and villages:
Berrnice (Albanian)/Velika Brnica (Serbian)
Breko (A/S)
Brest/Bresje
Brestovc/Brestovica
Dobratin/ Mala/ Velika Dobraja
Doran/Doranja
Doshevac/Dosevac
Fushe Kosova/Kosovo Polje
Golesh/Goles
Han i Elezit/Ðeneral Jankovic
Kolubar/Kulobarska
Landovic/Landovica near Prizren
Lipljan/Ljipljane
Magure/Magura
Malisheva/Malisevo
Medvegje/Medvec
Mitrovica/Kosovska Mitrovica
Obiliq/Obilic
Plementin/Plementina
Podujeva/ Podujevo
Pomazatin/ Pomazatina
Pristina
Qungur/Cungur near Peja/Pec
Rahovec/Orahovac
Rasadnik bei Mitrovice/Kosovska Mitrovica
Skenderaj/Srbica
Subotic (Variante: Sobotic)/Subotica
Uji Kuq/Crvene Vodica
Vitomira near Peja/Pec
Vranidolle/Vranidol
Vushtrri/VuciternMISTREATEMENTS AND KILLINGS
During their expulsion the members of the minorities were not merely threatened. There were frequent examples of mistreatment and abduction, associated with torture, individual cases of rape, and killings. Often people disappeared or were reported as missing. In at least one instance a handicapped Roma man was burned to death in his home. The number of those who were murdered or died as a result of their expulsion is as yet hard to determine. This is due in particular to the fact that at present the great majority of Albanian witnesses are unwilling to provide information about such crimes to K-FOR, the representatives of the International Tribunal in the Hague or Western journalists. The majority of the Roma and Ashkali eye-witnesses are currently living outside Kosovo. For the time being we must assume that the number of deaths among of the members of these minorities is still less than 50 although there are probably several hundred Roma and Ashkali 'disappeared'. There are also thousands of others who have had no contact with relatives since the expulsions began.
On various occasions Albanian neighbours attempted - with some degree of success - to intervene on behalf of Roma and Ashkali who were threatened with expulsion. More usually, though, Albanian extremists, hostile neighbours or members of the UCK carried on doing what they intended to. In some places, such as Podujeva/ Podujevo for example, the local people prevented the expulsion of the local minorities. As a result over 1,500 Ashkali were able to continue living in Podujeva/ Podujevo. In a number of places UCK members also tried to prevent expulsions. Nearly everywhere individual members of the minorities and minority communities gave in to threats and left their homes in terror. It seems that when Roma or Ashkali groups refused to submit to pressure, threats of extreme violence were not always carried out.
Where Roma or Ashkali communities have been able to continue living in villages or parts of towns, they must nevertheless be prepared to experience discrimination and human rights violations should they venture outside their village or local area. For instance in Podujeva/ Podujevo members of the Ashkali community complain that they are unable to pursue their occupation outside the town and have been very seriously threatened. By way of a further example, an Ashkali family of 16 members who saved the lives of an Albanian family in Pristina during the war months are now unable to leave their own tiny courtyard. At every attempt they make, even only to go shopping, they are overwhelmingly intimidated and sometimes even attacked. Anyone with a dark skin who ventures out onto the streets and open squares of Kosovo must expect to be abused, insulted, jostled and even attacked.
JUSTIFICATIONS BY MEMBERS OF THE ALBANIAN POPULATION IN KOSOVO
A large section of the Albanian population, even if they have not taken part in attacks, have nevertheless excused, explained away or justified the persecution of this minority group on the basis of alleged Roma or Ashkali participation in looting and the burial or disposal of the bodies of murdered Albanians or of their involvement in the perpetration of war crimes. Only twice however have Albanians who made this type of generalised accusation been able to confirm to Society for Threatened Peoples that they had actually witnessed activities of this nature.
It is the predominantly hostile attitude of the Albanian population towards the minorities that has made collective mass expulsion possible. Further encouragement was provided by the lack of any local policing, courts or other form of official authority over a period lasting months. In many cases K-FOR had provided inadequate protection for the members of minority groups, failed to maintain any obvious continued military presence in their communities, often did not intervene when individual Roma and Ashkali were being harassed or simply stopped "the argumentation" without defending the right of the people threatened to housing or health, and by escorting them to neighbouring countries they frequently assisted in the expulsion.
The extremist element in the Albanian population has been blatantly applying and to a large extent carrying through a policy of "ethnic cleansing" directed at the two long-established minorities of the Roma and Ashkali with the support or connivance of a large part of the UCK.
"Ethnic cleansing" as we understand the term here is the mass expulsion of an ethnic group but without the genocidal character which the policy of "ethnic cleansing" assumed in Eastern Slavonia (1991-1992), Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995), the Croatian Krajina (1995) and Kosovo (1998-1999). We are forced to assume that these mass expulsions of the Roma and Ashkali were systematically carried out and controlled or at least tolerated by the UCK leadership.
UCK LEADERSHIP MUST ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY
The mass flight and expulsion of the Roma and Ashkali during the months since the entry of K-FOR troops into Kosovo in mid-June 1999 was accompanied by individual crimes including torture, abduction, rape and killing. So we are not talking here about systematic genocide. On the other hand the authors of those crimes, including a large part of the UCK and probably even their leadership, by their actions or omissions must assume responsibility not just for the mass expulsions but also for the deaths of individuals - infants, young children, the elderly, the sick and the handicapped and injured who have died or will die as a result of the effects of their flight and expulsion. That includes all those who have drowned in the Adriatic while fleeing to Italy. Lliving conditions in the refugee camps, in particular those located in Serbia and Montenegro, give cause to fear that this autumn and winter there may be mass mortalities. The first cases of hepatitis have already occurred.
The collective attribution of guilt to Roma and Ashkali for the perpetratation of human rights abuses against the Albanian population must be reconsidered. Those persons responsible are always individuals. Eye-witness accounts exist who testify to the involvement of individual Roma or Ashkali in the looting of Albanian property, mistreatment or killings carried out by Serbian troops. On the other hand there are other eye-witness accounts which confirm that more than a few members of the Albanian majority have looted and destroyed property belonging to Roma and Ashkali. Moreover those same Roma and Ashkali who were harrassed by the Serbian soldiers lost relatives killed by Serbian units, were forced by Serbian troops to flee to neighbouring countries or other parts of Kosovo and then returned following the NATO intervention have not been spared.
STP STARTS CAMPAIGN
STP has once previously succeeded in influencing the fate of one group of Roma, the German Sinti and Roma. Then we managed to secure worldwide publicity for the cause of this minority and succeeded in bringing about a change in German policy concerning the Sinti and Roma. We must now renew our efforts today. This report, which appears in German, English, and Albanian versions, aims to set in motion an operation to save the Roma and Ashkali of the Kosovo. At the same time STP is embarking on a campaign focusing on the human rights of the Roma and Ashkali.RECOMMENDATIONS
1. The representatives of NATO, UN, USA and the European governments can and must bring an end to the policy of "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo. They must publicly condemn the mass expulsion of the Roma and Ashkali ethnic communities and the alarming racist behaviour of a large section of the Kosovo Albanian population. Continued economic assistance for Kosovo must be made conditional on the Albanian population's correct treatment of the minorities.
2. The leading political parties and institutions of the Kosovo Albanians are urged to issue an immediate condemnation of the crimes committed against the Roma and Ashkali ethnic groups, to commit themselves publicly to the protection of those minorities and to mobilise their supporters with a view to preventing all discrimination against or attacks on the minorities in towns and villages. They must strive to achieve reconciliation between Albanians and the Roma and Ashkali population.
3. The UCK must identify those responsible for crimes, both inside and outside their ranks, and notify their names to the relevant international bodies. The UCK must also be required to assist in the repatriation of the Roma and Ashkali refugees and displaced persons with concrete proposals.
4. K-FOR, together with the international police agencies, must identify effective measures to guarantee protection for the Roma and Ashkali communities and act publicly within Kosovo to ensure that Roma and Ashkali are able to move about unhindered in the towns and villages of Kosovo. K-FOR and the police must maintain a day and night presence in all Roma and Ashkali communities in order to protect the population under threat.
5. Roma and Ashkali must be recruited, proportionately to their percentage representation in the general population, into the Kosovo police force currently in the process of formation. In Roma and Ashkali communities mixed police forces must be deployed in which the representation of members of the two minorities is always at least 50 per cent.
6. Roma and Ashkali must be considered for employment in the work force of official and private undertakings proportionately to their percentage representation in the general population. Until such time as public order is re-established the UN Administration must take care to ensure adequate representation of the non-Albanian ethnic minorities in Kosovo in the allocation of employment.
7. The UN Administration in Kosovo must issue immediately a public statement declaring that the property of Roma and Ashkali refugees and displaced persons is inviolable and that any occupation or appropriate of housing or land, business property or other property belonging to the minorities will be deemed to be a criminal act.
8. The UN Administration in Kosovo must make an immediate start on the reconstruction of destroyed Roma and Ashkali communities. The cost of reconstruction must be financed in its entirety from the Reconstruction Fund for Kosovo. The Albanian extremists must be made aware that the resources for reconstruction available to the Albanian majority have been diminished as a result of the destruction of the property of the minorities.
9. The UN and NATO are urged to make a start, in parallel with the commencement of the work of reconstruction, on the repatriation of the Roma and Ashkali refugees who have fled since March 1998 and later since the middle of June 1999 to the neighbouring countries of Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina or to Italy and other Western European countries.
10. UNHCR is urged to ensure decent and acceptable living conditions in the refugee camps for "displaced persons" in Kosovo, e.g. at Obiliq/Obilic, Zvecan near Mitrovica and Gjakove/Djakovica.
11. UNHCR is urged to recognise the Roma and Ashkali refugees in Serbia and Montenegro as "displaced persons", register them and care for them. Likewise those who have fled to Macedonia, Italy and other countries of Western Europe must be registered and cared for as refugees with UNHCR status.
12. UNHCR and ICRC must establish a search service for displaced Roma and help them to make contact with relatives in Europe.
13. The governments of the European states are urged to accept expelled or displaced persons from Kosovo and to care for them until such time as their repatriation is possible and justifiable.
14. European governments are urged not to forcibly return those Kosovar refugees belonging to the Roma and Ashkali minority groups who had already been granted full or provisional status in their countries prior to the start of the war in Kosovo, and likewise all those persons admitted during the war period, until such time as the nationality issue is resolved. They are at risk of damage to life and limb there.
15. As many of the refugees and displaced persons reject all suggestion of their repatriation after the persecution they have experienced, we appeal to the governments of Europe, North America and Australia to accept a part of the displaced persons within their refugee quotas.
16. The international community must carefully document all war crimes committed in Kosovo between March 1998 and the present date, irrespective of the ethnic affiliation of the victims or authors. Only in this way, a collective attribution of guilt can be refuted.
17. In particular we call on the governments of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal Republic of Austria, mindful of the persecution of the Sinti and Roma under the Third Reich, to work on behalf of Roma und Ashkali in the European and international institutions.Germany must make use of its influence in Kosovo to promote the welfare of these threatened minorities.
18. In the course of discussions in Pristina, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has asked the Kosovar Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms (CDHRF), founded by Adem Demaci, to make vigorous and urgent efforts to promote the rights of the Serb, Roma and Ashkali minorities. The Council was asked in particular to make use of its extensive network of cooperation in order to ensure the safety of the Roma and Ashkali, to commit themselves publicly to the protection of those minorities, to visit their communities on a regular basis, to document human rights abuses against them and actively to support their return home. STP has also called on the Council to invite members of the minorities to become actively involved in collaborative work with them.
IMPRESSUM:
Copyright by Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker - Society for Threatened Peoples
General concept, text and photos: Tilman Zülch
Translation: Owen Beith
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