KOSOVO’S WARTIME VICTIMS: THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION April 30, 2019 Serial No. 116–28 Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs ( Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://docs.house.gov, or http://www.govinfo.gov U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 36–132PDF WASHINGTON : 2019 COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York, Chairman BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas, Ranking GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York Member ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia STEVE CHABOT, Ohio THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida JOE WILSON, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts TED S. YOHO, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois AMI BERA, California LEE ZELDIN, New York JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas JIM SENSENBRENNER, Wisconsin DINA TITUS, Nevada ANN WAGNER, Missouri ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York BRIAN MAST, Florida TED LIEU, California FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota JOHN CURTIS, Utah ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota KEN BUCK, Colorado COLIN ALLRED, Texas RON WRIGHT, Texas ANDY LEVIN, Michigan GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania GREG PENCE, Indiana TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey STEVE WATKINS, Kansas DAVID TRONE, Maryland MIKE GUEST, Mississippi JIM COSTA, California JUAN VARGAS, California VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas JASON STEINBAUM, Staff Director BRENDAN SHIELDS, Republican Staff Director (II) C O N T E N T S Page WITNESSES Jahjaga, Atifete, Former President, Republic of Kosovo ...................................... 8 Williams, Dr. Paul, Professor, Washington College of Law, American Univer- sity ......................................................................................................................... 27 Bytyqi, Ilir ................................................................................................................ 53 Krasniqi-Goodman, Vasfije ..................................................................................... 60 APPENDIX Hearing Notice ......................................................................................................... 86 Hearing Minutes ...................................................................................................... 87 Hearing Attendance ................................................................................................. 88 ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY CHAIRMAN ENGEL Written testimony of Mr. E. B. ............................................................................... 89 Written testimony of Mr. Liri Loshi ....................................................................... 91 Written testimony of Mr. Liridon Markaj .............................................................. 93 Written testimony of Ms. Ferdonije Qerkezi ......................................................... 95 Written testimony of Ms. H. U. .............................................................................. 98 Written testimony of Ms. N. N. .............................................................................. 100 Written testimony of Ms. Shyhrete Berisha .......................................................... 102 (III) KOSOVO’S WARTIME VICTIMS: THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE Tuesday, April 30, 2019 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Washington, DC The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in Room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Eliot Engel (chairman of the committee) presiding. Chairman ENGEL [presiding]. Good morning, everyone. The com- mittee will come to order. Without objection, all members will have 5 days to submit state- ments, extraneous material, and questions for the record, subject to the length limitation in the rules. Let me, first of all, welcome our witnesses. This morning we will take a look back at the wars that ravaged the Balkans two decades ago and shine a light on how the victims in Kosovo are still seeking justice so many years down the road. In this committee, I find it often helpful to look back and consider what was happening on the global stage at different times in his- tory, and there was a lot going on 20 years ago. In 1999, as we geared up for the new millennium, the euro was established; three former Soviet Bloc countries, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, became NATO allies; Boris Yeltsin re- signed as President of Russia, turning over the reins of power to Vladimir Putin. And there was perhaps no more precarious situa- tion than in the Balkans. The Bosnian War had recently ended, and the Dayton Agreement, concluded only a few months earlier, was only then entering its earliest implementation phase. But in Kosovo, things were much, much worse. After 10 years of crackdowns, violations of human rights, and severe ethnic discrimi- nation, Slobodan Milosevic, the butcher of the Balkans, began a campaign to forcefully expel the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. In doing so, he displaced nearly 1 million people to coun- tries around Kosovo, killed more than 11,000 ethnic Albanians, and initiated a policy leading to the rape of thousands of Kosovar women. Some 2,000 ethnic Serbs also lost their lives in the war. I would like to specifically call attention to a 2017 report from the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Center, HLC, titled, ‘‘The Cover-up of Evidence of Crimes During the War in Kosovo: The Concealment of Bodies Operation.’’ Now, according to HLC—this is what it said—‘‘Since 2001, mass graves containing the bodies of 941 Kosovo Albanians, mainly civilians, killed outside combat situ- ations in Kosovo during 1999, have been found in four locations in Serbia. The bodies found in mass graves belong not only to males, (1) 2 but also to females and children as well. The cause of their deaths in most cases was a gunshot wound, mainly to the head, suggesting that the victims did not die in combat, but as a result of execution- style killings. The decision to conceal evidence of crimes committed was planned as early as March 1999 at the highest level of the gov- ernment. No one has ever been held accountable before courts in Serbia for the large-scale operation of concealment of bodies of Kosovo Albanian victims in mass graves.’’ I want to repeat that be- cause it is really shocking. To this day, ‘‘No one’’—20 years—‘‘no one has ever been held accountable before courts in Serbia for the large-scale operation of concealment of bodies of Kosovo Albanian victims in mass graves.’’ I also want to highlight the work of Human Rights Watch in call- ing attention to the victims of Belgrade’s policy of forcible rape of up to 20,000 Kosovar women—20,000. In their report, ‘‘Kosovo: Rape as a Weapon of ‘Ethnic Cleansing,’ ’’ the Human Rights Watch laid out the case starkly. ‘‘The research found that rape and other forms of sexual violence were used in Kosovo in 1999 as weapons of war and instruments of systematic ‘ethnic cleansing’. Rapes were not rare and isolated acts committed by individual Serbian or Yugoslav forces, but rather were used deliberately as an instru- ment to terrorize the civilian population, extort money from their families, and push people to flee their homes. Rape furthered the goal of forcing ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.’’ But, to this day, 20 years later, there has been little to no justice for the victims. Those who lost loved ones or who were sexually as- saulted themselves have been offered virtually no avenues to con- front the perpetrators. Yes, the U.S. mission in Kosovo examined the crimes, but they did nothing to secure justice for the victims. EULEX considered several cases, but the effort was largely fruit- less, leading to only a small number of convictions. The Inter- national Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the ICTY, indicted Milosevic, who later died in prison, but it has not achieved much else for the other Kosovars who suffered from his army’s war crimes. Regardless of the fact that the vast majority of war crimes during the Kosovo War were committed by forces under Belgrade’s command, the same number of Kosovar Albanians were indicted by the ICTY as Serbs, seven from each country. No one thinks people who committed war crimes should get away with their actions, but nothing underscores the unbalanced inter- national justice arising from the Kosovo War more than this false equivalency. The United States and our European allies could have pressed for justice for the victims of Milosevic’s brutality, but, for the most part, we failed to take any substantive action. Even worse, in my opinion, the United States forced Kosovo to create a so-called ‘‘Special Court’’ to address allegations of violations by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA. So, let’s see what this means. The Special Court addressed allegations of violations of the Alba- nian minority by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, but did not do anything to the Serbs who committed such heinous acts of violence. Very, very unbalanced. No one is saying the KLA was somehow perfect and did not commit bad acts of its own, but let’s be crystal clear. The vast majority of crimes—the vast majority— 3 war crimes and crimes against humanity, were committed by the Yugoslav and Serbian security forces. That is a fact. There is no other way to look at what happened.