 Source: http://www.hrw.org/hrw/reports/1999/kosovo/Obrinje6-03.htm#P675_102454 MASSACRE OF THIRTEEN MEN AT GOLUBOVAC [An extract from the Human Rights Watch Report- A Week of Terror in Drenica: Humanitarian Law Violations in Kosovo] On Saturday, September 26, 1998, the same day as the forest massacre in Gornje Obrinje, Yugoslav forces summarily killed thirteen men who were detained at a compound in the village of Golubovac.66 Human Rights Watch visited the scene of the execution on September 29, shortly after the bodies of the thirteen men had been claimed by their family for burial, and conducted interviews at that time, as well as on two additional visits to the village on October 1 and November 9, 1998. The following is an account of the events surrounding the Golubovac killings, based on the testimonies of the witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch and the physical evidence found at the scene. According to Adem Hoxhaj, the entire village of Golubovac decided to evacuate to the forest when shelling began in the early morning of September 25 from Cerovik and Plocica. At about 9 a.m., several thousand civilians, mostly women and children and the elderly from Golubovac and neighboring villages, as well as internally displaced persons staying with relatives in the area, fled to a place in the forest about three kilometers away from Golubovac called Livadhe e Shalës (in Albanian). The villagers took their tractors and some possessions with them and built plastic shelters in the forest. In the early afternoon, Adem Hoxhaj and some other villagers returned to the village to open the doors of their homes, in the belief that the Yugoslav forces would then not burn the homes. At about 3 p.m., Adem saw tanks and APCs entering the village and fled back into the forest.67 Adem’s brother, fifty-five-year-old Musli Hoxhaj, told Human Rights Watch how the villagers spent Friday night: All night Friday, we stayed in the forest. It was raining, and there was shelling from Plocica and Mlecane. We were in the valley, and the police were shooting from one side of the valley to the other ridge, right over our heads.68 On Saturday morning, the villagers started some cooking fires in the forest, and quickly found themselves surrounded by Serb police. Adem Hoxhaj had gone out early in the morning and had encountered a police commander, but managed to escape back to the camp to tell the civilians that they were surrounded by police. He described the police commander to Human Rights Watch: The commander had a black bandana covering his hair, which made it difficult to recognize him. He was wearing a normal blue camouflage uniform. He was tall, about two meters, and was fat and muscular. He had a pale white face painted with black and green camouflage paint.69 When Adem returned to the camp and informed his fellow villagers that they were surrounded, many began to cry. It was decided that Adem and some other elders would go back out of the forest to meet the police. When they met the same police commander, he instructed the elders to return to the forest and to order everyone into a field in the nearby valley. According to Selman Morina, the sole survivor of the extrajudicial execution that followed, the police told the civilians that they would be safe. He said: At about 8 or 9 a.m. on Saturday, the Serbs came into the forest. They told us that everyone in the forest must come out into a field where they could see us, and that we would be safe. They sent some old men to convey this message.70 Adem Hoxhaj, who speaks limited Serbian, was chosen by the police commander as an informal interpreter. He described what happened next: I asked the people to get out of the tents and into the valley, and this is what everybody did. The police told us to stand in a group and line up. The police commander then told me to tell all men older than eighteen to come out and separate from the group. He then changed his mind, and asked for all the men older than sixteen to come out. ... After about twenty minutes, I was asked to tell the group that all women, children, and older people could go home.71 While the civilians were heading home, the police thoroughly searched the tractors and tents in the forest. According to witnesses, the police took any valuable possessions they found, including gold. Adem Hoxhaj told Human Rights Watch that he lost the gold jewelry of six women (a traditional form of family wealth) from his family and was almost killed when he protested. Musli Hoxhaj also reported losing 3,000 DM to the police when he was in the valley. After searching the displaced persons’ camp, the police proceeded to burn the tractors by igniting the mattresses and straw they carried. Only a single clip of bullets was recovered from the large camp, according to those present, suggesting that there was no large KLA presence in the forest. Selman Morina, one of the group of men who remained behind, told Human Rights Watch how the police began to process the men left in the forest: After they sent the women and children away, the police began to check the men for weapons and other signs that they belonged to the KLA. They then sent us to follow the women and children, but we were still kept separate. One policeman came and divided us, men from men. He pointed out the men he wanted to come out of the crowd, and chose about twenty or twenty-five of us. He took us to a separate place. The police further divided our group by age. My brother and I were in the group, and the older ones were separated and allowed to leave. They then began to question us, asking where our weapons were. They were beating us. Ten or fifteen police questioned us, and they repeatedly changed the policemen asking questions. We were still in the field at this time. We had to put our hands behind our head, and were questioned in the group, not individually. They were kicking us with their boots and hitting us with weapons. I was hit on the head, on my legs, and on my back.72 When they returned to Golubovac, the villagers found a large police and military presence, with armored personnel carriers and tanks parked throughout the village. Most of the villagers were allowed to return home, but police had set up a temporary command center at the compound of Adem Hoxhaj and did not allow anyone to enter the area. Several hundred civilians, including Adem’s family, instead sought shelter at the adjacent compound of his brother, Musli Hoxhaj, where they remained until after the police had left the village. Miraculously, one of the group of fourteen men whom the police tried to execute managed to survive. Human Rights Watch located and interviewed Selman Morina on October 1, and then passed the information along to the relevant international agencies who could help guarantee the safety of this crucial witness. A few days later, Morina and his family were escorted out of the country to safety. Morina’s detailed testimony to Human Rights Watch of the events surrounding the execution is consistent with the evidence of other witnesses, and with the physical evidence found by Human Rights Watch at the scene of the execution. Selman Morina told Human Rights Watch: They brought us to the garden where the execution took place. Until the execution, our hands had to remain behind our heads. We reached the garden about two hours after we were first gathered in the field. We were then kept about two hours with our hands behind our heads on the road in front of the garden. The last time I saw the women and children was in the field, so I do not know where they were taken. We were made to kneel with our hands behind our heads and faces touching the ground. We were not beaten when we were in the road next to the garden. We were then lined up against the fence, laying flat on our belly, face down, with our hands behind our heads. They beat us with sticks and stones, and with everything they could find. Those who didn't move were just beaten on the back, but when someone moved they were beaten all over their bodies. We were about 30 centimeters away from each other. I was the third from the entrance. I didn't count the people, but believe there were about fourteen of us. I was beaten on my back from my buttocks to my neck. I turned once to ask if there was an interrogation inspector whom I could talk to, and a policeman replied, “I am the inspector,” and hit me hard in my face. After this I remained quiet. They kept telling us that if we told them who among us belonged to the KLA, they would release all the others. There was no KLA among us, so we didn't know what to do. I was beaten with sticks and kicked, and once I think they hit me with stones. The stick they used to beat us was a shovel handle. We lay there for two or three hours while they beat us and interrogated us. The others were beaten much more than me, because they kept turning their heads to see what was happening. I believe one policeman executed all of us. A policeman, a new one, came into the garden. I believe one person executed all of us. One man shot us, but the others were around in the garden. We were executed one by one. Each person was fired on twice with a burst from a machine gun. We had nowhere to escape. Some of us were begging to be released. No one tried to get up and escape. They first shot the second person from the door to the garden, and then they executed the fifth and the sixth one. I cannot remember the order after this. I was the third from the fence, so I know that the person to my right was shot first. They then shot persons close to my left, but not the person immediately next to me, the fourth from the fence, so it must have been the fifth and the sixth. Then, he went down the line, left to right, and then again from right to left. Each person was shot twice. One person was shot a third time. I heard the police say “One is still alive,” and they kicked him once and shot him again. They kicked me too, but I didn't move and then they didn't touch me again. I survived because I remained totally dead. From the time of the bullets, none of us made a noise. Then, I heard them go out in the garden and leave. I heard some more machine gun fire outside the compound, and understood they left. I then attempted to walk home. I first saw my mother and then my wife. I left the garden about ten or fifteen minutes after the police. When I got up, I saw the other men with their faces to the ground and they didn't move.73 Human Rights Watch inspected and photographed the wounds on Selman Morina’s body after interviewing him on October 1, four days after he had allegedly been shot by the Serbian police. His wounds were consistent with his account. He suffered from a gunshot wound to his upper left thigh, with the entry wound located below the exit wound. The trajectory of this bullet would be consistent with the position of Selman at the time of the summary execution, as he was lying down with his head farthest from the policeman who shot at him. He also had two smaller gun shot wounds on his upper right arm. His back was extensively bruised, consistent with his account of having been beaten on the back prior to the failed execution. Human Rights Watch researchers visited the site of the executions in the family compound of Adem Hoxhaj in the afternoon of September 29, 1998, after documenting the forest massacre of the Delijaj family in Gornje Obrinje. Adjacent to the bramble fence, Human Rights Watch found sixteen large and small pools of still drying blood and some body tissue. The blood spots ran along the fence, and were consistent with the account of the survivor and witnesses that the execution victims were lying parallel to the fence prior to being shot. Among the blood pools were torn pieces of an identity document. Approximately eighty shell casings were at the execution site, the vast majority of them scattered on a small one-meter high mound about two meters away from where the execution victims had lain. These casings were identified by the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch as 7.52mm caliber, normally used by the M84 general purpose machine gun. The few smaller casings found amid the blood spots near the fence were identified as 7.62mm caliber, which can be used with a M70B1/B2 (AK-type) or a M72/72AB1 light machine gun. The location of these casings of two different calibers coincides with the first heavy rounds that were fired from the mound by the M84 machine gun, and the later lighter rounds that were fired as the police moved among the bodies, kicking them and firing again at those who moved. Musli and Muje Hoxhaj, who were at Musli Hoxhaj’s house during the incident, also described hearing two different bursts of automatic fire, lasting about two minutes or so, before the police quickly left the compound between 4 and 5 p.m. During the day, the police also burned most of the homes in the village and at least one vehicle belonging to Musli Hoxhaj. After the police left, most of the persons staying at Musli Hoxhaj’s compound remained there, too afraid to return home. The gravely wounded Selman Morina initially went to Musli’s compound to seek assistance, and was given some apples, milk, and a walking stick before he left again to go to his own home and find his mother and wife (others were too afraid to join him). When he arrived at Musli’s compound, Selman told Musli that “they were all killed,” and that he was in the line with the others but managed to escape death by feigning death when kicked. After another half hour passed, Musli, Adem, and a third man named Sokol decided to go to Adem’s compound. Musli described what they found: About one and a half hours after the police left, Adem, Sokol, and myself went on the path through the field to Adem’s home. When we got in, there were no police there and we found thirteen dead bodies. Adem turned the bodies around. The bodies were shot in the back. We didn’t see if theywere beaten, but I know they were shot. They were wearing normal civilian clothes. I saw the thirteen bodies and went crazy.74 On Sunday beginning around 12:00 p.m. until approximately 3:00 or 4:00 p.m., the families of the execution victims came to the Golubovac compound to claim the bodies and prepare them for burial in their home villages. According to Musli Hoxhaj and Muje Hoxhaj, six of the men were buried in a suburb of Plocica. The names of those six were: · Ajet or Rrustem Maloku (name unclear), forty-two, from
Plocica; Four men were buried in two different graveyards in Golubovac: · Fazli Hoxhaj, forty-two, from Golubovac; One was buried in Gjurgjevik: · Zeqir Berisha, forty, from Gjurgjevik. Two men whose names were unknown to Musli and Muje Hoxhaj were taken for burial to the villages of Gjurgjevik and Banjica. The Murder and Burning of Ramadan Hoxha The severely burned body of Ramadan Hoxha, a resident of Golubovac, was found on Tuesday, September 29, in the woods above Golubovac. Ramadan had attempted to return to Golubovac from Vucak during the Serb offensive, reportedly to check on his family. When the Golubovac villagers realized he was missing, they began to search the neighboring woods. At about 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Muje Hoxha found Ramadan’s body. He described what he found to Human Rights Watch: First we found one shoe. Fifteen meters away, we found the body of Ramadan totally burned. He was in a crouching position against a tree, and only part of his jacket remained unburned.75 Muje told Human Rights Watch that he believed Ramadan’s body had been burned with gasoline. Human Rights Watch visited the place where Ramadan’s body was found, and noticed a small burned place with the remains of partially burned clothes. Human Rights Watch found two shells immediately adjacent to the body which were later determined to be 7.62mm caliber for the M70B1/B2 (AK-type) assault rifle or the M72/72AB1 light machine gun, suggesting that Ramadan might have been executed prior to the burning of his body. A photograph of Ramadan’s body has been obtained by Human Rights Watch that shows a corpse blackened by fire, consistent with the accountsof the villagers who helped bury Ramadan. The burns are relatively superficial, consistent with the use of a rapidly burning accelerant. Human Rights Watch found significant evidence that some type of military or police force had encamped in the area. Mounds of spent bullet casings and the remains of consumed food tins, as well as a used first aid package to dress abdominal injuries with instructions in Serbian, were scattered within one hundred meters of the place where Ramadan’s body was found. SYSTEMATIC DESTRUCTION OF CIVILIAN PROPERTY Plocica: A Snapshot of Destruction Human Rights Watch’s first access to Drenica during the offensive was to the village of Plocica on September 26.76 Shelling continued in the distance and some of the surrounding villages were burning, such as Gornje Obrinje, site of the massacre (see above). Plocica itself was almost entirely destroyed by the police. One of the buildings in the village was still on fire, a food storage facility holding melons and pumpkins, and many other buildings were still smoldering. Everything at the scene pointed to systematic, premeditated destruction, carried out without any form of resistance by local ethnic Albanians. Most of the homes, some of them century-old stone structures, had been torched and were completely destroyed. Free-standing hay stacks and fences had been burned. Most of the food storage units had also been burned, and valuable possessions such as appliances, satellite dishes, vehicles, and televisions had either been stolen, destroyed, or were severely vandalized. With the exception of a few houses which were not entirely destroyed, personal possessions were strewn everywhere and in most cases burned. The pattern of destruction of Plocica, duplicated in most of the Drenica villages visited by Human Rights Watch, clearly shows the systematic and premeditated nature of the actions of the Serbian police and Yugoslav Army. It would be impossible to set an entire village on fire without the use of an accelerant. Someone clearly moved through the compound and set individual structures on fire, as it would be impossible due to the distances between homes for the fire, however fierce, to jump from one structure to the next.77 The villagers of Plocica were just returning from their hiding places in the nearby forest as Human Rights Watch researchers arrived, and they spoke openly about their plight. They said the previous day, September 25, they had heard shelling and shooting near their compound around 9:00 a.m. and fled to the nearby woods without their possessions. Without warning, they said, tanks approached and shelled the village, and they saw policemen following the tanks. According to the villagers, Plocica was intact when they fled and there was no KLA presence in the village. Human Rights Watch saw no evidence that the KLA had been in the village, such as the remains of trenches or other defensive positions. Villagers told Human Rights Watch that they watched from a nearby vantage point and saw the police enter their village around 11 a.m. on September 25. Qamil Kryeziu, a villager from nearby Mlecane who had fled to Plocica one month before when his home was attacked, told Human Rights Watch that the villagers had spent the night in the forest at a place called Vucak, and that the police had surrounded the place around 11:30 a.m. on September 26.78 According to Kryeziu, the police told the villagers to raise their hands and come out of the forest. The police detained the villagers for about an hour, and then told them to gather their belongings and return to their homes. Human Rights Watch walked through Plocica for several hours, interviewing villagers as they returned to their ruined homes. During the entire period of time, the two researchers did not find a single bullet casing or any other evidence that active combat had taken place at the compound. The burned homes did not have any bullet or shell damage, and thus did not ignite during combat. There was no evidence in or around the village of any KLA presence, and no part of the village appeared to have been prepared for combat through the digging of trenches or sandbagging of homes (a practice observed by Human Rights Watch in other villages with a KLA presence). While the KLA did control the Drenica area prior to the offensive, and it is possible that KLA soldiers may have moved through the village, the evidence found by Human Rights Watch strongly indicates that the village had offered no resistance, and had been burned after being abandoned by the local population. The only military equipment found by Human Rights Watch around the compound were two dozen spent 82 mm mortar casings used by the M6, M69, or M31 mortar launchers in a nearby field. The mortar launchers had left deep imprints in the soil, and it was possible to determine that the mortars had been fired away from Plocica in the direction of the forest, perhaps toward nearby Golubovac. The information on the mortar shells indicates that they are of Yugoslav manufacture. The Larger Picture: Destruction of Civilian Objects in Kosovo Throughout Kosovo, Yugoslav forces have repeatedly and deliberately destroyed civilian property and objects essential to the survival of the civilian population. Clear and substantiated evidence exists that the vast majority of the destroyed properties were systematically burned by Serb police after the towns were abandoned by local villagers. The experiences related by people from various villages that have been destroyed in Kosovo present a strikingly similar pattern. First, a village was surrounded by Yugoslav forces, sometimes after fighting with the KLA, and soon thereafter shelling of the village began, usually by the army. Villagers would flee into the forest to escape the shelling, leaving the village abandoned except for those unable to flee. Time and time again, villagers would tell Human Rights Watch how they watched from a nearby vantage point as their village was systematically looted and burned by Serbian police. The testimonies of these witnesses is corroborated by Human Rights Watch’s own observations: police forces were repeatedly seen entering areas as military forces were withdrawing. Although the main forces of the army have generally been less involved in the most egregious atrocities committed in Kosovo—maybe because they have focused on destructive long-range bombardment rather than close combat—the pattern of operation described confirms close coordination between the Yugoslav Army and the various police units involved in the Kosovo conflict. The destruction was not limited to civilian homes. In Mališevo, Decan and other larger towns, Yugoslav authorities looted and destroyed entire commercial districts, painting “OBK” and “UQK” (Serbian spellings (and misspellings) for UÇK, the Albanian acronym for the Kosovo Liberation Army), “Srbija” (the Serbian spelling for Serbia), the nationalist cyrillic cross, or nationalist slogans such as “Srbija do Tokija” (“Serbia to Tokyo”) on destroyed buildings. A journalist told Human Rights Watch he saw Serbian police filling two-liter plastic containers with gasoline from a tanker truck to burn down a shopping mall in Mališevo. When he returned to the area a short while later, the shopping mall was up in flames: Toward the end of August, we were about five kilometers outside Mališevo when we saw a gas tanker. We could smell the gasoline from the tanker. There were uniformed policemen filling two-liter plastic bottles from the tanker. When we got into Mališevo, there were raging flames and fresh fires. It was a strip of stores which was burning. Mališevo had been abandoned at this stage for about a week, and there was no fighting at all.79 In many areas, Serbian police targeted food supplies and other essentials. Human Rights Watch researchers saw cattle that had been killed and left dead in the fields in many areas of Kosovo, many had been shot, especially in Drenica following the government offensive, which suggests that they were killed on purpose to deprive local civilians of their use. Many villagers complained that their food supplies and cattle fodder had been looted by police, and Human Rights Watch found significant evidence that food supplies had been specifically targeted for destruction. Free-standing hay stacks, granaries, and other storage facilities were often burned down. In Likovac, Human Rights Watch researchers were shown the remains of a storage shed that had held a significant amount of flour for human consumption, and observed that almost all the bags had been torn and their contents strewn about. In Dobro Voda, a recently returned family complained to Human Rights Watch that all their food supplies had been stolen, and that their sheep had been killed and consumed by Serb police headquartered at the local school building, which was destroyed by police as they departed. Looting was also common in most destroyed villages, and many villagers told Human Rights Watch that the police had stolen valuable goods from their homes. On September 26, Human Rights Watch directly observed two blue uniformed policemen in Mlecane carrying boxes of goods out of private homes. UNHCR found that water wells in Dobrosevac had been intentionally polluted with dead animals and garbage,80 a practice confirmed in other areas by humanitarian organizations. R. Jeffrey Smith wrote about widespread poisoning of civilian wells in Kosovo in the Washington Post: Most of the poisonings appear to have occurred shortly before Yugoslavia withdrew many of its forces under threat of NATO air strikes in October, allowing thousands of refugees to return home. Since then, refugees in at least 58 villages throughout Kosovo have informed foreign aid organizations that their wells contain dead dogs, chickens, horses, garbage, fuel oil, flour, detergent, paint and other contaminants. Although many of these reports have not been confirmed, a few aid groups that have begun testing and cleaning residential wells in villages say that they have found evidence to confirm the allegations.81 R. Jeffrey Smith described visiting a village and being shown a well in which the remains of a dog had been found. He concluded that the poisonings could not have been accidental: This dog could not have wandered into the well. It had a concrete cover on it .... These things don’t wander into the wells accidentally. These wells are usually, you know, placed in very obvious locations. A lot of them are covered. Anything that you find at the bottom of the well other than water has been put there by somebody.82 Because of the systemic destruction carried out throughout Kosovo by the Yugoslav forces, many civilians in Kosovo face a harsh winter inside homes that had been largely destroyed, their provisions for the winter looted and burned. Paddy Ashdown, leader of the Liberal Party in the United Kingdom, during a visit to the Drenica region on September 26, personally observed the methods of destruction used by the Yugoslav forces and wrote about his observations in the Guardian: First comes the ultimatum, delivered by the Serb police. “Give up your weapons or we will destroy your village.” After the deadline comes the shelling. Heavy artillery and 120-millimeter mortars and heavy caliber machine guns and T55 tanks. The weapons of total war, against defenseless civilians. One after the other, I watched them. Next come the soldier looters with heavy articulated lorries, into which are loaded the meager valuables of a peasant population. And finally the soldiers who systematically burn the houses one after the other up the valley. I watched them; three days after the Security Council had passed a resolution saying this must stop and at the same time as the Yugoslav government had assured the world that it had stopped. I counted 17 villages in flames and countless individual farmhouses. I spoke to the terrified human flotsam of this medieval barbarism.83 A number of the humanitarian aid organizations currently operating in Kosovo are cooperating on a survey to assess the damage caused during the fighting in Kosovo.84 Their preliminary results provide compelling testimony to the widespread nature of destruction. The survey assessed 285 villages, of which 210 had been affected by the conflict. In the 210 affected villages with an estimated pre-conflict population of 350,000 persons, twenty-eight percent of the homes—9,809 out of a total of 35,185 homes—had been completely destroyed. Another fifteen percent of the homes (5,112 homes) had severe damage, while an additional 6,017 homes sustained moderate to minor damage, leaving only forty percent of the homes in the affected regions undamaged.85 The scale of the destruction of civilian property and of objects essential to the survival of the civilian population, clearly visible throughout the area of the Yugoslav offensive, provides indisputable proof that the destruction was carried out as a matter of state policy, and cannot be viewed as the actions of rogue soldiers or policemen. As such, responsibility for these systematic violations of the laws of war and crimes against humanity lies with the top of the command structure of the Yugoslav military and security forces. The wanton destruction of civilian property is a violation of international humanitarian law, and is specifically defined as a violation of the law of war in the statute establishing the ICTY.86 66 Like many villages in the area, the village of Golubovac is divided into several distinct parts and compounds. The events described in this section took place in the “old” part of Golubovac. 67 Human Rights Watch interview with Adem Hoxhaj, Golubovac, November 9, 1998. 68 Human Rights Watch interview with Musli Hoxhaj, Golubovac, November 9, 1998. 69 Human Rights Watch interview with Adem Hoxhaj, Golubovac, November 9, 1998. 70 Human Rights Watch interview with Selman Morina, Golubovac, October 1, 1998. 71 Human Rights Watch interview with Adem Hoxhaj, Golubovac, November 9, 1998. 72 Human Rights Watch interview with Selman Morina, Golubovac, October 1, 1998. 73 Human Rights Watch interview with Selman Morina, Golubovac, October 1, 1998. 74 Human Rights Watch interview with Musli Hoxhaj, Golubovac, November 9, 1998. 75 Human Rights Watch interview with Muje Hoxha, Golubovac, November 9, 1998. 76 Prior to reaching Plocica, Human Rights Watch researchers had been refused entry to parts of Drenica on two occasions, first by a contingent of Yugoslav Army tanks apparently leaving the area, and second by a police roadblock near the village of Dobro Voda. 77 One of the notable features of the destruction is that a few homes in the compound were virtually untouched and that others often had a single room which was not burned. Local villagers and Priština-based activists speculated that the goal of the Yugoslav forces was not to completely destroy the villages, but rather to create a humanitarian crisis in which civilians would be focused on survival and rebuilding their ruined lives rather than providing support to the KLA. Leaving some homes untouched also helps breed mistrust and jealousy within the community. 78 Human Rights Watch interview with Qamil Kryeziu, Plocica, September 26, 1998. 79 Human Rights Watch interview with Justin Brown, Christian Science Monitor reporter, Priština, September 23, 1998. 80 UNHCR briefing notes, October 23, 1998. 81 R. Jeffrey Smith, “Poisoned Wells Plague Towns All Over Kosovo,” Washington Post, December 9, 1998. 82 National Public Radio, All Things Considered, December 9, 1998, 8:22 p.m. ET. 83 Paddy Ashdown, “Milosevic tells me no one is left living in the open in Kosovo. I tell him his officials are lying,” Guardian (London), September 30, 1998. 84 Humanitarian organizations working on the survey include: Save the Children Fund (SCF); Danish Refugee Council (DRC); Catholic Relief Services (CRS); Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF); Swiss Disaster Relief (SDR); International Rescue Committee (IRC); Mercy Corps International (MCI); InterSOS; OXFAM; WFP; Children’s Aid Direct (CAD); UNICEF; World Vision (WVI); UNHCR; CARE International; and Doctors of the World (DOW). 85 IDP/Shelter Survey Kosovo: Joint Assessment in 20 Municipalities, released by UNHCR Priština, dated November 12, 1998. 86 Article 3 of the ICTY statute includes under its definition of “violations of the customes of war” “the wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity,” and “attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings.” |
Document compiled by Dr S D Stein