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FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA
"ETHNIC CLEANSING" IN THE GLOGOVAC MUNICIPALITY On the way to the bus station...a police
officer said to me: THE VILLAGE OF STARO ,,IKATOVO (ĒIKATOVĖ E VJETĖR) Killed in
Staro Cikatovo: The village of Staro Cikatovo (Ēikatovė e Vjetėr in Albanian) lies a few kilometers north-east of Glogovac. The village had a 1991 population of 1,300, all of them ethnic Albanians. Staro Cikatovo is located close to the Feronikl plant, which at times since early 1998 has served as a base of operations by Serbian security forces against KLA insurgents active in the area. Serbian forces had inflicted a fair amount of damage on Staro Cikatovo long before the March 1999 offensive. A U.N. damage assessment conducted on November 2, 1998, determined that 60 percent of the village had been damaged, 20 percent of it severely.41 At the time, only ninety Albanians were living in the village, mostly due to the proximity of the dangerous Feronikl plant and the ongoing clashes in the area between Serbian forces and the KLA. Human Rights Watch visited Staro Cikatovo on June 25, 1999. Residents said that there are 114 houses in the village. Between 40 and 50 percent of the village was badly destroyed. Most houses had been burned from the inside, which indicates that they were purposefully burned rather than damaged in combat. Several structures had also been demolished by bulldozers. According to witnesses from the village and Glogovac, government attacks on Staro Cikatovo began on Saturday, March 20, five days before the start of NATO bombing, when military operations were launched from the Feronikl plant against KLA positions around the village. One witness from the village told Human Rights Watch, "We were between the KLA and Feronikl. [Serbian forces] started grenading from Feronikl to attack KLA soldiers." Another witness described "incessant gunfire" that day. Villagers told Human Rights Watch that they had been advised by OSCE personnel prior to the OSCE's departure that "if anything happened" the villagers should relocate to Glogovac. As the attacks continued on March 20, most villagers followed this advice. Most were able to reach Glogovac safely, but one group, consisting of members of the extended Morina family, were detained by police near the school as they tried to exit the village. One of the women from the family, B.B.,42 told Human Rights Watch: In front of the school, we were stopped by the police in tanks. They took our men and put them to one side, asking them if they were soldiers. They put us in the school - women and children in one classroom and men in the other. They kept us from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. They told us, "If a bullet is fired by the KLA, we're going to kill all of you." [Then the] police and military left us in the classroom and went towards the mountains, where the KLA was. They were shooting from Feronikl with cannons and rockets.43 By mid-afternoon, all of them were released and told to return to their homes. The following day, March 21, the Serbian Red Cross arrived around 1:00 p.m. and evacuated some of the remaining women and children from the village. Many refused to leave because, they said, the Serbian Red Cross would only take women and children, and they did not want to leave their menfolk behind. Those who were evacuated to Glogovac stayed there for periods ranging between ten and twenty days before returning to Staro Cikatovo. In the words of one of the women evacuatedby the Red Cross, B.B., who later returned to Staro Cikatovo, "We came back ten days later because half of our family had stayed."44 Over the ensuing three weeks, the remaining inhabitants of Staro Cikatovo watched as unoccupied houses were looted by the police and paramilitaries. According to several witnesses, Serbian security forces also commandeered civilian cars and tractors, which they used to move around the village. For the most part, however, the remaining residents were left undisturbed during this period, although they were frightened by the threats made during their detention in the school. A.A., a twenty-nine-year-old woman from Staro Cikatovo, described to Human Rights Watch how on or around April 14, three police officers entered the house of her uncle during the afternoon for what appeared to be a routine check. At 8:00 p.m. that same evening, the three men returned wearing masks made from sheets they had taken from the clothesline outside. Women and children were inside the house as well as an eighty-two-year-old man. According to A.A., who was present, "They harassed the old man, saying, `Give us money or gold or we will kill you all.'" The three men demanded 500DM. B.B., who was also present, tried to collect the money: "We said, `Can we go and ask others, because we don't have any money?' So my sister went to look for money and gave them 300DM. They also took our gold." Before leaving, one of the police pointed at a one-year-old child and, according to B.B., said, "It is thanks to this small baby that you are still alive, otherwise we were going to kill all of you." The April 14 robbery was a precursor of the horror that was to follow. In the early hours of Saturday, April 17, the village was again attacked by Serbian forces. By the end of the day, twenty-three men from the Morina family had been killed and, as of June 25, another four were missing and presumed dead by their families (see list). A seventeen-year-old boy and an elderly man were forced to endure life-or-death negotiations with paramilitaries and police about whether they should be put with the men, i.e. killed, or allowed to leave with the women and children. They were eventually allowed to go. The survivors from Staro Cikatovo insist that none of the dead men were involved in the KLA, although several members of the family are admittedly KLA soldiers, including two who were wounded in the assault. Prior to the April 17 attack, the Morina family had gathered in a few houses in one part of the village for safety. According to statements from six witnesses, the houses were attacked in the early morning from four sides: "from the direction of Feronikl, the school, the KLA-held area and the electricity generating stations." A.A. described what she saw: At 6:00 a.m. a lot of shooting started...We didn't go outside. We were afraid because of the shooting, and we had no idea what was happening to the neighbors...At around 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. they came to my uncle's house...When they told us to get out we saw that the yard was full of heavily armed police. We came out -- men, women and children; we women came out behind the men.45 Witness D.D., a mother of five children, was in another house nearby. She said: They took a very strong action against the village at 5:30 a.m. Our children were still sleeping. There was a lot of shooting from automatic rifles and grenades. Glass from the windows and tiles from the roof were falling on us. We lay down on the floor inside our house with our children...They entered the house, breaking the door and came into therooms. They took us by our arms and forced us outside. They didn't even let us get dressed....46 Villagers describe a mixture of police, paramilitary and military forces in either dark blue or green camouflage uniforms and iron helmets. Some had either a red, blue, black or yellow bandana tied onto their arms, which may have been used to cover the insignia on their uniforms. D.D. claimed that she saw a tiger emblem sewn onto some uniforms and that the troops were wearing black fingerless gloves. If true, the tiger emblem might indicate the presence of Arkan's Tigers, the notorious paramilitary group. Witnesses also emphasized that the forces were heavily armed, with flak jackets, automatic rifles (in some cases with bayonets), and grenades. C.C. described how the occupants of the houses were taken outside. The men were separated from the women, he said, and lined up against the walls of the nearby houses. Since the houses were close to one another but not adjacent, the families were gathered in several groups in the village, and the evidence points to a time lapse between the operations against each of the groups. C.C. told Human Rights Watch: They came to our house and shouted, "Come out one by one." We came out and walked into the street. There was already another group there. The forces were all drunk and wearing iron helmets. They were all red in the face and had bandanas on their arms: red, blue and black. We were afraid. Then that group separated us -- men from women. They didn't let us talk or do anything. They were angry, out of their minds. Our mothers were grabbing us, but they were hitting them. Fathers who had children in their arms had the children taken away. My sister held my father's hand. One of them said to her, "Let go of his hand, and go to your mother." She wouldn't, so they hit her in the head with a rifle butt. My father's eyes were full of tears.47 It was during this operation to empty the houses and separate men from their families that the first killing occurred. According to several relatives, the security forces caught Avdil Morina as he was trying to sneak his family away to safety. Avdil was stabbed in the throat and then shot dead in front of his family. B.B., who witnessed the killing, told Human Rights Watch, "He had a big wound in his throat - they stabbed him in the neck, pushed his wife and child away, and shot him." Meanwhile, the women were being ordered to leave the village. Another witness, E.E., explained: They brought us to the house of a neighbor. From that house they took four men. From our house they took three men - my father-in-law, his uncle, and my husband. All the men were separated on one side. My mother-in-law tried to intervene...but they forced us out and told us to go to Glogovac. Then they took the men to a lower place. When we left on the road, they just started shooting. I didn't see whether they shot in the air or on the ground, but I heard a lot of shooting. We knew at that point that they had killed them. My mother-in-law fainted.48 Despite the efforts to kill the men out of sight, one woman, Witness A.A., saw eleven of the men being shot around 8:00 a.m. She told Human Rights Watch: They lined up all the men against a wall, and they directed all of us away, but I didn't go with the rest [because] my husband has only one son. Women were screaming and children were crying, but it was useless. They put the men in the yard of a neighbor, [shots were fired], and I saw them fall down. The children didn't want to go away-they were crying. After I saw them fall down I started to scream [to the others]: "Hey women, they killed them all." There was a lot of shooting....49 Several of the male Morina family members, including an elderly invalid man and a young boy, did manage to escape with their lives, but only after negotiating police checkpoints and the threat of execution. The younger of the two survivors, C.C, explained what happened: They took me too. My grandmother wouldn't let me go, but they kept screaming, "Go away from here, because we are not releasing them." One police officer told me, "Go" and the other put his rifle against my chest and said, "Where are you going?" It happened three times. Then they talked among themselves and decided to let me go. They released my grandfather too. After this they didn't release anyone else...Then they screamed at us, "Go to Glogovac." But we didn't want to leave, so they started acting crazy. Then we went a little further away. They told the men to line up behind a wall. After they had lined them there-they had rifles. I didn't see them directly, but I was five meters away. I think I saw their blood splash.50 After being sent down side streets and walking through ploughed fields, the group with C.C. and his grandfather were stopped by police outside the school, where many of them had been detained almost one month earlier. Again the fate of the two male family members was the subject of discussion. According to C.C.: They called my grandfather, and they asked him about me. They separated me from the line so I had to go to them. They asked me, "Why did they let you go? They shouldn't have let you go." My grandfather said, "The others down there released him." They searched him and said over and over again, "Why did they release you?" Women were crying for me, my mother, grandmother, and others. They said, "Let him go, he's the only one left, and he's young." Fifteen minutes later, one of them told me to go. So then we started towards Glogovac. The group was stopped again on the road to Glogovac by military personnel at the Feronikl plant, and faced similar questions but was eventually allowed to proceed to the town. Despite at least three subsequent attempts by some of the older women to return to Staro Cikatovo, in order to locate and bury the bodies of their dead men, they were not permitted to return to the village. According to A.A., the women "never made it further than the school...The third time they went, they were told, `We can let you in but there are police in the houses, and they might kill you.'" According to witness accounts and Morina family members interviewed on June 25 in Staro Cikatovo, the following men from the village were killed: Killed in Staro Cikatovo:
Missing and believed dead:
Missing in Vrbovac:
*********** 41 UN Assessment, GIS Unit Pristina, January 28, 1999. 42 A number of villagers from Staro Cikatovo requested anonymity in return for their testimony. The letters A.A., B.B., C.C., etc. are therefore used in this section to protect their identities. 43 Human Rights Watch interview with B.B., Cegrane refugee camp, Macedonia, May 8, 1999. 44 Human Rights Watch interview with B.B., Cegrane refugee camp, Macedonia, May 8, 1999. 45 Human Rights Watch interview with A.A., Stenkovac II refugee camp, Macedonia, May 9, 1999. 46 Human Rights Watch interview with D.D., Stenkovac II refugee camp, Macedonia, May 9, 1999. 47 Human Rights Watch interview with C.C., Cegrane refugee camp, Macedonia, May 12, 1999. 48 Human Rights Watch interview with E.E., Stenkovac II refugee camp, Macedonia, May 9, 1999. 49 Human Rights Watch interview with A.A., Stenkovac II refugee camp, Macedonia, May 9, 1999. |
Document compiled by Dr S D Stein