Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed six Kosovar Albanians from the Vucitrn region in refugee camps in Kukes last week. The witnesses, interviewed separately, provided consistent accounts of how Serbian police and paramilitaries pulled ethnic Albanian men from a convoy of internally displaced persons, demanded money, and then shot some of the men in their custody.

Albanians from Vucitrn and the surrounding villages were forced by Serbian forces to leave their homes at the end of March and the beginning of April, all of the interviewees said. While some Albanians were able to stay in one spot until May 2, others had to move several times because of ongoing attacks by Serbian forces, either with small arms or by shelling. Ultimately, many displaced persons ended up in villages to the northeast of Vucitrn, such as Bajgore, Vesekovce, Kurillove and Sllakovce (all place names in Albanian), which became overcrowded with displaced Albanians. Several witnesses reported that they had to live with as many as one hundred persons in one house, and that others were forced to sleep in the open air.

The area where the refugees had gathered was largely under the control of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In the beginning of May, however, Yugoslav and Serbian forces launched an offensive, and shelled several villages in the region around Bajgore. On May 2, government forces reportedly broke through the KLA's front line near Bajgore, forcing those sheltering in the area to flee. A convoy of refugees set out towards the villages of Sllakovce and Ceceli, where they were joined by other ethnic Albanians who had sought refuge in those places. At that point, the convoy consisted of several hundred vehicles and three to five thousand refugees, witnesses estimated, and stretched all the way to the village of Upper Studime (Studime e Eperme in Albanian). The Yugoslav forces reportedly followed the refugees as they traveled, burning many houses in Sllakovce and Ceceli.

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that they stopped to rest and discuss their plans in Upper Studime. Yugoslav Army forces were based in a warehouse in Lower Studime (Studime e Poshtme in Albanian), they said, a village the refugees would have to pass through to get to Vucitrn. S.A., a thirty-year-old woman from Novosella e Begut (in Albanian), who was on the first tractor of the convoy, told Human Rights Watch what happened around 8:00 p.m. on May 2:

"[We] decided to tie a white cloth to our tractor, to show that we wanted to surrender. But before we got to StudimÎ e Poshtme, they started shooting and shelling us in an awful way. I used a mattress to cover my children, and we drove on to Studime e Poshtme. When we got to the warehouse, we saw a line of soldiers on the left hand side of the road. They stopped us, and told us to get out of our tractors, and put our hands behind out heads, and then to sit down on the road. The soldiers started cursing us, and walked among us, kicking and beating some of us. One woman was beaten just because her child was crying."

The soldiers, who were joined by policemen and paramilitaries between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m., went from tractor to tractor in the convoy, cursing and threatening the refugees. At the same time, the soldiers coming from Sllakovce and Ceceli had reached the convoy as well. K.B., a thirty-four-year-old Albanian man from Vucitrn, told Human Rights Watch:

"When [the police and paramilitaries] arrived at my part of the convoy, they asked my brother where his KLA uniform was, and his gun. But he said he didn't have any because he wasn't a member of the KLA. Then they hit him with the butt of a gun, after which they came to me, and told me to get off the trailer. When I got off, he hit me with his gun on my cheekbone, forehead and mouth, breaking one of my teeth. Then they stabbed me with a bayonet, and almost cut off part of my ear. They took me by my elbow, pointed a gun at my back, and dragged me some twenty meters away. They pushed me towards a little stream, and I jumped over it, and fell down. When I got up, they hit me four times in the back of my head with a gun, and once in my ribs. Later, a doctor told me that they had broken one of my ribs. I fell again, and lay for about two minutes, after which I got up, and went back to the tractor."

Human Rights Watch inspected and photographed K.B.'s wounds during the interview in Kukes, Albania. The top of his left ear was torn, but had been repaired by a doctor in one of the refugee camps, and his right front tooth was broken. Others fared worse. Zeqir Aliu, a forty-four-year-old man from Novosella, related what happened to his family:

"At about 9 p.m., the paramilitary and army stopped us. I couldn't see them very well, it was already dark. They took away our money and jewelry. Then, two paramilitaries with masks and bandanas took my uncle, Remzi Aliu (54), and my nephew, Ramadan Aliu (38). They asked them for money. Then they took them away some thirty meters, and shot them with a burst of gunfire from their automatic weapons. Then they took Hajrula Aliu and his wife, but they gave them [the police and paramilitaries] 500 German Marks, so they didn't kill them."

B.A., a nineteen-year-old man from Lower Studime, told a similar story:

"When [the soldiers coming from Ceceli] came to us, a Serbian soldier grabbed my brother, who was twenty-seven years old, by his elbow and took him some three meters away from the tractor. There, he asked for money, and soon after that he shot my brother with a pistol in the back. At the same time, they took my uncle, shot at him and kicked him, and he fell on the ground. We saw two bodies lying on the ground, and we thought they were both dead. After that, they took my father as well, and while they pointed a pistol at his throat, they demanded money. My father gave them one hundred German Marks, but they asked for one thousand. I told my father to give it to him, so my father came back to the tractor and gave him another nine hundred Marks. They then released my father, but right away they caught my cousin, and asked him for money as well. So my father gave them again five hundred Marks, after which they released my cousin. After the army left, we heard my uncle asking for me to come and help him. A few minutes later, my father and grandfather went to him and carried him to the tractor, because he had been hit in his lower leg, so he couldn't walk. When they turned my brother over, they saw he was dead."

Other witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported how men unknown to them were executed in front of their eyes. The soldiers and paramilitaries reportedly walked up and down the tractor convoy, harassing, robbing and sometimes executing the refugees. The witnesses all reported hearing repeated shooting during the period between approximately 9:00 and 10:30 p.m., when the troops left the convoy. About an hour later, around 11:30 p.m., policemen from Vucitrn came. They forced the refugee convoy to move on towards Vucitrn, where they arrived around 12:00 a.m., midnight, May 3.

Several witnesses reported that they saw many dead bodies along the road. The exact number of executed refugees from the convoy is unknown. Four separate witnesses claimed to have seen twenty-five, thirty, seventy and "over a hundred" dead bodies, respectively.

The varying numbers may result from the fact that the witnesses were located in different parts of the convoy, so that those towards the front of the line saw less than those at the back. None of the witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch was in the last part of the column, so the number of executed men may be higher than the witnesses have reported.

In Vucitrn, the refugees were directed towards an agricultural cooperative near Motel Vicianum, where they spent the night sitting in a fenced off area, guarded by the police and some soldiers. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that there were several thousand refugees there, and that the area was so crowded it was impossible to stretch their legs, let alone sleep. According to the witnesses, the guards roamed among the refugees all night, checking their papers, and in several cases beating people.

In the morning, somewhere between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m., May 3, around thirty policemen entered the compound. Two different witnesses separately identified Dragan Petrovic, the police commander of Vucitrn, as the officer in charge, and a third witness identified the Vucitrn police chief without knowing his proper name.

The police ordered the men between the ages of eighteen and sixty to separate themselves from the women, children and elderly men. The police checked the identity papers of the 500 to 600 men who had been separated out. From this group, all of the tractor drivers were allowed to rejoin their families, all together about 200 men.

A large truck then came, witnesses said, loaded fifty to sixty of the remaining men, and took them away in the direction of Kosovska Mitrovica. Approximately ten to twenty minutes later, the truck returned empty and transported another group of men in the same direction. Witnesses reported that the truck returned to reload with men at least eight times.

While the men were being transported, the tractor drivers were told to load their families onto their vehicles and drive towards Kosovska Mitrovica. Those who were among the first to leave the compound told Human Rights Watch that, as they drove by, they saw the truck used to transport the men parked outside the prison of Smrekonica. The witnesses claimed that they saw there several of the men who had been taken away at the agricultural cooperative in Vucitrn, including some of the witnesses' own family members.

Another witness ó not one of the six interviewed from the Vucitrn convoy ó also claimed to have seen ethnic Albanian men in and around the Smrekonica prison on May 3. This thirty-eight-year-old man from Bajgore, S.B., also interviewed in Kukes, said he had arrived in Smrekonica on the morning of May 2 on foot with another group of approximately 3,000 villagers from the Bajgore area. Around 5:00 p.m. that day, the police came to his uncle's house, where he was hiding, and ordered him to join the rest of the group in the Smrekonica school yard, which is next to the prison. S.B. told Human Rights Watch that he saw several thousand men being held in the prison, although it is not clear how he arrived at this number or whether he saw these people in the prison or around it. He also claimed that approximately 300 men staying with him in the school yard were taken to the prison. A few men were released from the prison every hour, he said, and all of them appeared to have been beaten.

The convoy from Vucitrn traveled under police escort through Smrekonica to Kosovska Mitrovica and then alone through Srbica, Pec and Klina, where they spent a night. From Klina, a smaller road south was taken through Kramavile and Gegje (in Albanian) to the main road which leads to Prizren and then the Morina border crossing with Albania, which they crossed on May 4.

According to the witnesses interviewed in Albania who had male relatives taken in Vucitrn, none of their family members had arrived in Albania in the past two weeks. The witnesses expressed fear that they may never see their relatives again.

KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS FLASH #39
WITNESS TO IZBICE KILLINGS SPEAKS
Possibly Largest Massacre of Kosovo War

(New York, May 19, 1999) — This past weekend, video footage emerged of what may be the largest massacre in Kosovo since NATO bombing began: the killing of more than 120 ethnic Albanians in the village of Izbice in the Drenica region on March 28, 1999. Today Human Rights Watch released the direct testimony of an important witness to the crime.

©Human Rights Watch The witness, above, has been obscured to protect her identity. Human Rights Watch Photo Gallery from Albania

The twenty-year-old woman was interviewed by Human Rights Watch on April 25 in a refugee camp in northern Albania. While she, her mother, and her severely disabled brother were allowed to leave the scene of the massacre, she describes how her father, uncle and cousin were executed. She has agreed to give her testimony to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

On May 16 and 17, CNN aired video footage that a Kosovar Albanian doctor claims to have taken at the scene of the Izbice massacre. It shows a large number of bloody corpses in civilian clothes — ethnic Albanians who the doctor explains were killed in the massacre — and includes interviews with alleged survivors. The footage was smuggled out of Kosovo, the doctor said, with the help of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Apparently corroborating this footage are satellite photos released by NATO on April 17 that show three rows of freshly dug graves in the Izbice area.

Although the authenticity of the video footage cannot be guaranteed, it matches the witness testimony provided below. The apparent massacre in Izbice is also consistent with a pattern of mass killings throughout Kosovo, in villages such as Meja, Velika Krusa and Bela Crkva, documented by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations. In addition, the region around Izbice was known as an area of KLA activity, especially the village of Lausa. As in other areas of Kosovo, the rebels' presence may have served as a reason for retaliation.

The following is a transcript of the woman's testimony to Human Rights Watch (her name is being withheld to protect her identity). In addition to describing the circumstances of the massacre, it includes a harrowing account of her family's escape from Kosovo:

"The Serbs arrived late in the evening during the Muslim celebration of Bajram, on March 26 or 27. There were about fifty of them. Some of the Serbs were giving loud orders. Their voices were so loud that they scared the children. By this point, Izbice had become like a base for Albanians from all the villages in the area. These refugees began arriving after the NATO bombing began, because the Serbs started shelling neighboring villages when the bombing started.

Late in the evening, when the Serbs arrived, almost all of the young men left the village. They went into the mountains to hide or to fight.

When we saw the Serbs coming we didn't dare stay in our houses. We went by tractor to a nearby field — me, my mother and father, my brother, my sister, her family, and her mother-in-law — a total of ten people. We joined the rest of the people from the village in the field, all of the other families. Families had started leaving their houses at about 4 a.m. By 10 a.m. everyone was in the field. There were thousands of people, almost all women, children, and old people. Only about 150 men were among us.

An accident happened on the way to the field in which a child was killed. It was raining and a tractor tumbled; a woman tried to jump off to save her six-year-old daughter. The woman survived, the daughter was killed.

At the field, everyone got off their tractors and huddled together. We had chosen the field because we wanted to be together. We were too scared to stay alone in our houses; it would be too easy for the Serbs to kill us there. From the field, we could see the Serbs setting our houses on fire. They were shooting in the air and yelling loudly: insulting us and scaring the children.

They told us: "Give us money if you want to survive." They said it cost 1,000 German Marks (DM) to save your family and 100 DM to save your tractor. Everyone paid, each man paying for his own family. My father paid 1,100 DM.

After the Serbs got the money, they shot out the tires of everyone's tractors, and then burned all our belongings, which were bundled up on the tractors. They also set fire to the school.

At about 11 a.m. they separated the women from the men. We asked them why they were doing this and they told us, in a very scary voice: "Shut up, don't ask, otherwise we'll kill you." The children were terrified. The Serbs yelled: "We'll kill you and where is the United States to save you?" All the women had covered their heads with handkerchiefs out of fear of the Serbs, hiding their hair and foreheads. The Serbs called us obscene things, saying "Fuck all Albanian mothers," and "All Albanian women are bitches."

They took the men away and lined them up about twenty meters away from us. Then they ordered us to go to Albania. They said: "You've been looking for a greater Albania, now you can go there." They were shooting in the air above our heads. We followed their orders and moved in the direction we were told, walking away from the men.

About 100 meters from the place we started walking, the Serbs decided to separate out the younger boys from our group. Boys of fourteen and up had already been placed with the men; now they separated out boys of about ten and up. Only very small boys were left with us, one old man who had lost his legs, and my handicapped brother, who can't walk because of spinal meningitis.

So they took the ten to fourteen-year-olds to join the men. The boys' mothers were crying. Some even tried to speak to the Serbs, but the Serbs pushed them. We were walking away very slowly because we were so worried about what would happen to our men.

We stopped moving when we heard automatic weapon fire. We turned our heads to see what was happening but it was impossible to see the men. We saw the ten to fourteen-year-Olds running in our direction; when they got to us we asked them what was happening. They were very upset; no one could talk. One of them finally told us: "They released us but the others are finished."

We stayed in the same place for some twenty minutes. Everyone was crying. The automatic weapon fire went on non-stop for a few minutes; after that we heard short, irregular bursts of fire for some ten minutes or so. My father, my uncle and my cousin were among the men killed. Kajtaz Rexha and Qazim Rexhepi were also killed, as were many other members of the Bajraj, Bajrami, Rexhepi, and Aliu families.

Then ten Serbs caught up with us. They said lots of obscenities and again told us: "Now you must leave for Albania -- don't stop, just go." We had to leave.

Many hours later, when we had gone about forty kilometers and it was dark out, another group of Serb soldiers forced us into a huge hole that was along the side of the road. It seems that these soldiers had communicated with the others by walkie-talkie. The hole was giant, higher than our heads; we could only see the soldiers' heads and guns. The soldiers made us sit down in the hole and said: "Now the tanks will run you over." Looking out one of the ramps that led into the hole, we could see tanks coming; the noise was deafening. When the tanks arrived near the edge of the hole, about five meters away, we all started to scream: we saw death in front of us. You could see women trying to hide their children with their bodies. I was with my mother and crippled brother. My brother was in a wheelbarrow. Everyone was terrified, crying and screaming. When the tanks got close, we stopped hoping.

Suddenly the tanks jolted to a halt. A Serb told us, "you'll survive only if you give us 5,000 DM." A woman teacher from the village went through the women collecting money; I gave her 100 DM. When she had 5,000 DM a Serb entered the hole and she gave it to him. He said, "you can go now."

My father had given me his jacket because I had been wearing another jacket that said "American Sport" on it and he was afraid; he wanted to cover that up. Because I was pushing the wheelbarrow and wearing a man's jacket, they thought I was a man. They told me to stop and then to come over to them, but I was too afraid. It was the scariest moment of my life. Then they shined a flashlight in my face and saw that I was a woman. One of them said, "let her go."

We were tired and hungry but they took the bread from our hands, telling us, Ayou don't need the bread of Kosovo." We walked three days and nights without food and without rest. Finally when we reached Gjakove (Djakovica) the Serbs forced us to enter a destroyed house full of broken windows. They let us drink some water from a nearby stream. We stayed there a few hours, sitting down and napping.

Then we continued walking to the border. The children were very hungry. We stopped in a village near Prizren. There was a line of tractors and someone pulled my crippled brother into one of the tractors. My mother and I kept walking. We walked all the way to Dushanove where, because of the traffic, we stopped for a day and a night. It rained a lot at night and someone made a fire. My brother slept but I couldn't.

The next morning the Serbs told us to go back to our home villages. I don't know what day this was. All I know is that I can never forget the day they killed my father.

The women said: "How can we go back? We have no food; we're exhausted." The Serbs said: "You're going back."

The people who had carried my brother took him out of the tractor. Everyone turned back except me, my mother and my brother. We stayed in the middle of the road. A police car drove up and I signaled for it to stop because I thought to myself I have nothing to lose; I must handle this situation.

The policeman yelled "how do you dare stop me?" and I responded "I have no way out; I have this brother and he can't walk." The policeman told me he'd find us a place on a tractor. He found one and told the people in it: "Why aren't you people helping each other out; you're all Albanians; you should help each other." So we got on the tractor even though it was very crowded.

When we arrived back in Xerxe (Zrze) the people helped us a lot, giving us food and a place to rest. We stayed there a week. We saw the army and police robbing people. We were scared because we were from Drenica, known as a UCK (KLA) stronghold, and we felt we were putting the other people in a difficult position.

When we left we saw a line of tractors at the main road but nobody gave us a lift. Then a bus stopped; it was full of gypsies and we were scared of them. A few Albanians were also on the bus and we spoke to them. When we arrived in Gjakove (Djakovica) the gypsies got out. Then we arrived in Prizren and the driver, who was a Serb, told us, "may God help you; I can't help you any longer."

We spent two hours in the bus station. Some old men who couldn't walk were also waiting there. Finally we begged the driver to give us a lift to the border. We said we'd pay him whatever he wanted. The driver said "I'll think about it," and then he said okay. We paid him 50 dinars per person.

Serb soldiers stopped the bus to ask for money. They wanted every last cent from us; they didn't want to allow anything out to Albania. But the Serb driver was very kind to us. When the Serbs asked him why he was transporting us, he told them, "they are good people."

When we arrived at the border the driver wished us good luck, telling us that we were lucky to have made it. Then the bus left. The border guards took all of our documents and threw them in the trash. They asked for money and jewelry.

I entered Albania on April 17 at about 1 p.m. Some people at the border helped my brother and gave us food and water."

KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS FLASH #38
ARRESTS IN KOSOVO

(New York, May 14, 1999) — Two prominent ethnic Albanians were arrested last month in Kosovo, Human Rights Watch has learned. Their current locations and conditions are unknown.

Albin Kurti was co-president of the Independent Student Union of Kosovo, the largest student organization in the province. After organizing non-violent student demonstrations in support of education rights, in mid-1998 Kurti began work in the Pristina office of Adem Demaci, then-political representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Mr. Kurti was reportedly arrested on April 21, 1999, together with his father, Zaim, his two brothers, Arianit and Taulant, and the owner of the house in Pristina where the family was sheltering. Taulant and the owner of the house were reportedly beaten and released.

Also arrested in Pristina around April 21 was Dr. Flora Brovina, a pediatrician and head of the League of Albanian Women. According to relatives, the police were waiting at Dr. Brovina's home, and arrested her when she arrived.

Human Rights Watch expressed concern today for all those in Kosovo's prisons. There is no news about the condition of prisoners in any of the province's six detention facilities: Lipjan, Pristina, Gnjilane, Kosovska Mitrovica, Pec, and Prizren.

KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS FLASH #37
GROWING CONCERN ABOUT NATO VIOLATING THE LAWS OF WAR

(New York, May 12, 1999) -- Human Rights Watch today sent a letter to Secretary General Javier Solana expressing concern at the mounting civilian casualties in NATO's air war against Yugoslavia. [Click here for text of the letter]

In particular, Human Rights Watch raised serious concerns about whether NATO is targeting civilian objects or objects that, if attacked, would cause disproportionate harm to civilians. It also questioned whether, even in attacking legitimate military targets, NATO is taking all feasible precautions to avoid harm to civilians.

"NATO says it is fighting a war on behalf of human rights," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "If so, then it's absolutely essential for NATO to scrupulously respect human rights in its conduct of this war. NATO must do everything feasible to avoid hitting civilians."

Among recent incidents giving rise to these concerns are: the destruction of factories and other property belonging to political supporters of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic; attacks on Yugoslavia's electrical transformers; the destruction of several of Yugoslavia's television and radio stations; several bombings of civilian objects such as the May 7 bombing of the civilian hospital in Nis and the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, and the bombing of civilian vehicles because they were mistaken for military vehicles or were crossing bridges or near other installations at the time they were attacked.

Human Rights Watch called on NATO to investigate each incident in which a civilian target was attacked or civilian loss of life occurred to determine the exact circumstances of the attack and urged that the findings of such investigations be made public and corrective steps taken immediately to ensure NATO's strict compliance with humanitarian law.

KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS FLASH #36
NATO USE OF CLUSTER BOMBS MUST STOP

(New York, May 11, 1999) — Human Rights Watch today condemned NATO's use of cluster bombs in the air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The submunitions inside cluster bombs have a high failure rate and can leave unexploded ordnance across wide areas, ready to detonate on contact.

"The duds that are left inside cluster bombs effectively turn into landmines," said Joost Hiltermann, director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch. "And like antipersonnel landmines, they kill civilians even years after the conflict has ended. NATO should stop using them immediately."

Because of the submunitions' appearanceóthe CBU-87 and RBL755 bomblets are bright orange/yellow soda-can sized objects, while the ATACMS bomblets are bright baseball-sized spheresóchildren are particularly drawn to the volatile live remnants.

A recent NATO airstrike on the airfield in Nis went off target, hitting a hospital complex and adjoining civilian areas. On April 24, five children playing with colorful unexploded submunitions were reported killed, and two injured, near Doganovic in southern Kosovo.

In the short term, live submunitions pose a danger to civilians and refugees, and impede their movement. In the long term, they inhibit agriculture and economic recovery. The widespread use of cluster bombs can also pose a severe hazard to friendly ground force operations, including peacekeeping forces, as happened to international forces in the 1991 Gulf War.

Cluster bombs have an estimated 5 percent mechanical and fuse failure rate. For Operation Allied Force in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the historical record and testing experience would tend to indicate that for every single CBU-87 used, there will be an average of some ten unexploded bomblets, and for every RBL755, there will be an average of five unexploded bomblets.

It is possible that, if the bombing campaign continues, the U.S. Air Force may start using the CBU-89 Gator "scatterable" mine system, which holds a mix of antitank and antipersonnel landmines. The use of antipersonnel landmines, an inherently indiscriminate weapon, is banned under the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which came into force in March 1999. The United States has not signed the treaty, but all other NATO members, except Turkey, have.

Human Rights Watch called on NATO to stop using cluster bombs and refrain from using the CBU-89 Gator mine system.

"The U.S. may not have signed the landmines treaty, but it's still obliged to carry out warfare according to international humanitarian law," said Hiltermann.

For more information on cluster bombs, consult Human Rights Watch's briefing paper on the subject, written by Human Rights Watch consultant William Arkin.

For more information, please contact:
Joost Hiltermann (316) 2293-6742 (in the Netherlands)
Bill Arkin (201) 583-5151 (in New Jersey)
or (802) 457-3426 (home)
Carroll Bogert 212-216-1244 (in New York)