Macedonian government forces arbitrarily shelled and burned the ethnic Albanian village of Runica and beat some of its civilian inhabitants last week. Six members of one family were wounded by mortar fire and one man was killed. Seven others civilians were severely beaten.
"Our investigations show that Macedonian forces burned civilians' homes and beat some villagers last week in the village of Runica," said Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "These crimes must be impartially investigated, and those responsible brought to account."
Human Rights Watch located and interviewed witnesses from Runica, a mountain hamlet with approximately 100 inhabitants near Kumanovo, who had been displaced inside Macedonia or fled to Kosovo. Interviewed separately, they provided highly consistent accounts of the attack on the village.
The government's attack began without warning around 4:00 a.m. on May 21 with mortars, tank shells, and helicopter fire, all of the villagers said. Most of the approximately ten families that lived in the hamlet fled immediately into the mountains to escape the shelling.
About 150 meters from their home, the Hyseni family was struck by what is believed to have been a mortar. Six members of the family were wounded, as well as another villager, Mexhit Hamide, aged thirty-one and father of three. He died four days later from his injuries.
Villagers carried three of the wounded through the mountains for ten hours to the border with Kosovo. Three men then returned to retrieve the other three wounded they had left behind. When they arrived back at Runica, they testified, virtually the entire village of approximately fifty houses had been burned to the ground, including the mosque and the school, which had been constructed with help from the humanitarian organization Caritas.
One family with four daughters did not flee the village during the May 21 attack because they could not evacuate their elderly and infirm father. When Macedonian government ground forces entered the village, the family was caught and badly beaten. Macedonian forces beat all members of the family, and twice doused the thirty-one year old son with gasoline and threatened to set him on fire. The family was walked down the only street of the village and continuously beaten and kicked while the Macedonian forces burned most of the houses in the village with gasoline. The men and women of the family showed Human Rights Watch researchers the deep bruises they had obtained from the beatings, and the bloody clothes they had worn that day.
Fifty-six year old Advie Hamidi, the mother of the family, testified to Human Rights Watch:
[The Macedonian forces] broke down the door and right away started beating us, kicking us with their feet and with the butts of their guns.?I don't know how many times I was hit, with fists, with guns, they dragged us by the hair and dragged us.?Then they put gasoline on the house and lit it on fire.?Then they took us out in the street.?They burned all the houses, the mosque and the school.?When we reached the bottom of the village, they put the barrel of an automatic rifle in my husband's mouth. He was lying down and they stepped on his chest, almost killing him. Then they took my eldest son. They twisted his arms [behind his back] almost breaking them?Then they hit him in the head with a rifle and a lot of blood started flowing. Then they took the can of gasoline [and poured it on him]. Me and all my daughters rushed to him to try and protect him.?From the morning hours until 11:30 a.m., they never stopped beating us.
All of the villagers, interviewed separately, vehemently claimed that the Albanian insurgency-the National Liberation Army (NLA)-had never been present in the village, although this could not be confirmed by Human Rights Watch. Other villages in the region, such as Slupcane and Vaksince, had an NLA presence.
Human Rights Watch called on the Macedonian government to open an official and impartial investigation into the incident. The European Union, U.S. government, and OSCE, should encourage and participate in this inquiry.
"The government's actions are at odds with its legal obligations and stated intent to minimize civilian casualties," added Ms. Cartner. "The U.S. and European governments should condemn the ill-treatment of the villagers of Runica by Macedonian forces and push for and participate in a full inquiry into these serious abuses."
