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Federal Republic of Yugoslavia October 1998 Vol. 10, No. 9 (D) [ADVANCE COPY] FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA HUMANITARIAN LAW VIOLATIONS IN KOSOVO MAP A.........................................................................................................................................................................................3 MAP B.........................................................................................................................................................................................4 SUMMARY.................................................................................................................................................................................5 RECOMMENDATIONS.............................................................................................................................................................8 VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF WAR BY GOVERNMENT FORCES ...........................................................................13 Violations in the Drenica Region.................................................................................................................................13 Attack on Novi Poklek ................................................................................................................................................22 VIOLATIONS IN THE YUGOSLAV-ALBANIA BORDER REGION...................................................................................24 Use of Indiscriminate Force and Attacks on Civilians.................................................................................................25 Summary Executions in LjubeniÉ ................................................................................................................................27 The Use of Landmines.................................................................................................................................................28 FORCIBLE DISAPPEARANCES.............................................................................................................................................30 DETENTIONS AND ARRESTS ..............................................................................................................................................32 Deaths in Detention .....................................................................................................................................................35 ATTACKS AND RESTRICTIONS ON MEDICAL AND RELIEF PERSONNEL.................................................................36 GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS ON THE MEDIA.............................................................................................................39 Restrictions on the Albanian-language Media .............................................................................................................39 The Broadcast Media in Kosovo .................................................................................................................................39 Restriction on the Serbian-language Media .................................................................................................................40 Restrictions on the Foreign Media...............................................................................................................................41 VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF WAR BY INSURGENT FORCES.................................................................................43 Abuses by the KLA .....................................................................................................................................................43 Abductions of Ethnic Serbs by the KLA .....................................................................................................................45 Abductions of Roma by the KLA ................................................................................................................................48 Abductions of Ethnic Albanians by the KLA ..............................................................................................................48 Restrictions on the Media by the KLA ........................................................................................................................49 Restrictions on Humanitarian Aid Workers.................................................................................................................50 LEGAL STANDARDS AND THE KOSOVO CONFLICT .....................................................................................................50 International Law.........................................................................................................................................................50 Kosovo as an Internal Armed Conflict ........................................................................................................................51 Protection of the Civilian Population...........................................................................................................................56 Designation of Military Objectives..............................................................................................................................57 Domestic Law..............................................................................................................................................................61 THE INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA..............................................61 ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY...............................................................................................................63 Disunity within the International Community..............................................................................................................63 Empty Threats of International Action ........................................................................................................................64 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .........................................................................................................................................................67 APPENDIX A............................................................................................................................................................................68 APPENDIX B............................................................................................................................................................................71 APPENDIX C............................................................................................................................................................................73 MAP A MAP B Human Rights Watch 4 October 1998, Vol. 10, No. 9 (D) SUMMARY This report documents serious breaches of international humanitarian law, the rules of war, committed in Kosovo from February to early September 1998. Future Human Rights Watch reports will provide evidence about atrocities in villages such as Donja Obrinja, Golubovac, and Vranic, the details of which were just emerging as this report went to press. (See appendices A,B and C). The vast majority of these abuses were committed by Yugoslav government forces of the Serbian special police (MUP) and the Yugoslav Army (VJ). Under the command of Yugoslav President Slobodan MiloeviÉ, government troops have committed extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, systematically destroyed civilian property, and attacked humanitarian aid workers, all of which are violations of the rules of war. The Albanian insurgency, known as the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA, or UÇK in Albanian), has also violated the laws of war by such actions as the taking of civilian hostages and by summary executions. Although on a lesser scale than the government abuses, these too are violations of international standards, and should be condemned. The primary responsibility for gross government abuses lies with Slobodan MiloeviÉ, who rode to power in the late eighties by inciting Serbian nationalist chauvinism around the Kosovo issue. Now, after wars in Bosnia and Croatia, he has returned to the place where his post-communist career began. The first atrocities took place in late February and early March in the Drenica region of central Kosovo, a stronghold of the KLA. Special police forces attacked three villages with artillery, helicopters, and armored vehicles, killing at least eighty-three people, twenty-four of them women and children. Although it is unclear to what extent the KLA was offering resistance, the evidence strongly suggests that at least seventeen people were executed after they had been detained or surrendered. The police attack in Drenica was a watershed in the Kosovo conflict; thousands of outraged Albanians who had been committed to the nonviolent politics of Ibrahim Rugova decided to join the KLA. In the ensuing months, the KLA, called a Aliberation movement@ by most ethnic Albanians and a Aterrorist organization@ by the Yugoslav government, took control of an estimated 40 percent of Kosovo=s territory. The first major government offensive began in mid-May, a few days after MiloeviÉ agreed to U.S. demands that he meet with Rugova. The special police together with the Yugoslav Army attacked a string of towns and villages along the border with Albania in the west, with the specific intent of depopulating the region. Until then, the KLA had been receiving arms and fresh recruits from across the border. Many villages from PeÉ in the north to Dakovica in the south
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