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Prizen / KOSOVO ( RNN Correspondent ) August the 4th, 1999
German KFOR soldiers in Kosovo found a possible cellar in which ...
Prizen / KOSOVO ( RNN Correspondent ) August the 4th, 1999
German KFOR soldiers in Kosovo found a possible cellar in which the Albanian UCK forces have been torturing people. General Fritz von Korfi, the commanding officer of the German forces, confirmed that three Roma who claimed to have been tortured led the German troop to the cellar in which 130 UCK fighters were quartered. The German also found torture instruments.
RNN / KLA Decry Attacks on Serbs (AP)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Kosovo's former rebels are denying any role in attacks against Serbs and Gypsies and have asked NATO-led peacekeepers for help in putting a stop to atrocities against non-Albanian ethnic groups.
Lirak Celaj, a spokesman for the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, said that rebel forces had nothing to do with recent atrocities committed against minorities in Kosovo, including the massacre of 14 Serb farmers.
Celaj was responding to a report released Tuesday by New York-based Human Rights Watch, which charged that Serbs and Gypsies are being harassed, beaten and murdered in what looks like a systematic effort to force them out of Kosovo.
"It is not true that KLA is doing it," Celaj said Tuesday. "That is why we are asking for more close cooperation with KFOR," referring to the NATO-led peacekeepers by their official name. "We would like to find out who are those people who are shaming the KLA."
Celaj noted that KLA uniforms are easily obtained at shops across the border in Albania.
Nonetheless, the allegations raised by Human Rights Watch are echoed in excerpts of testimony from Gypsies, or Roma, made available to The Associated Press by the European Roma Rights Center.
One person quoted by the Roma center, headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, told of being taken into a room in the village of Drenovce, near the Albanian border, to see a fellow Gypsy who had been severely beaten.
"He lifted up his shirt and showed me his ribs," said the man, identified only by his initials. "His chest was all black."
Others related similar tales of beatings, threats and intimidation by people in KLA uniforms who accused them of spying or helping Serbs persecute ethnic Albanians.
Although Human Rights Watch stopped short of accusing the KLA of specific atrocities, the organization said the "frequency and severity of such abuses make it incumbent upon the KLA leadership to take swift and decisive action to prevent them."
The reports have troubling implications for Western leaders, who justified their 11-week NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia by asserting that the goal was a peaceful, multiethnic Kosovo.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright are among those pleading with ethnic Albanians to end the violence.
Human Rights Watch cited the gunning down of 14 Serb farmers in a wheat field July 23 as an example of Serbs being targeted for no other apparent reason than their decision to stay in Kosovo.
"The intent behind many of the killings and abductions that have occurred in the province since early June appears to be the expulsion of Kosovo's Serb and Roma population rather than a desire for revenge alone," the report said.
It also said concerns by the KFOR peacekeeping force for the safety of its troops, their inexperience in police functions and personnel shortages "result in an uneven response to attacks and threats against minorities."
The report said more than 164,000 Serbs and many Gypsies, often accused by Albanians of siding with Serbian forces, have fled the province since the Serb-led Yugoslav army left and NATO moved in last month.
NATO acknowledged difficulties, but defended its work.
"We have filled the security void. The entire society is getting a jump start," said KFOR spokesman Roland Lavoie, noting that more than 700,000 refugees had returned under NATO protection.
Underscoring the problem were reports of more killings, including Monday's death of a 90-year-old woman in Pristina. Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency said she was found strangled to death in the bathtub of her apartment.
KFOR said two ethnic Albanians were detained in the case.
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