(New York) - The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should demonstrate greater respect for human rights as it seeks integration into European structures, Human Rights Watch said today.
In a new briefing paper released today, Human Rights Watch stressed that European institutions must press Yugoslavia to address serious shortcomings in its human rights record as part of the integration process. Yugoslavia is currently seeking to join the Council of Europe, the European Union Stabilization and Association Process, and the NATO Partnership for Peace, all of which require participating states to respect international human rights standards.
"There have been obvious improvements since the Milosevic era," said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division. "But the authorities in Serbia and Montenegro need to address serious concerns before we can say they have a true commitment to human rights."
International organizations should maximize their leverage in the integration process to press for improvements in Yugoslavia, Human Rights Watch said.
The briefing paper details Yugoslavia's poor record on the prosecution of war crimes, police abuse, and protecting the Romani minority from discriminatory treatment.
Since October 2000, when former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was removed from power, the major abuses of his regime-including harassment of the political opposition and civic activists, restrictions on free speech, politically motivated trials, absolute impunity for war crimes, and persecution of ethnic minorities-have become less frequent or disappeared altogether.
Progress in cooperation with International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) remains slow, however. Yugoslavia continues to shield at least fifteen persons whom the tribunal indicted for war crimes and hinders the tribunal's access to archives and witnesses.
On May 23, the federal minister of the interior suggested only five or six indictees were still in Yugoslavia, yet the same day the head of the investigative office of the Belgrade District Court stated that there was no proof that any indictee had escaped from Yugoslavia.
"The Minister's statement raises concern that the government is creating an excuse for future inaction with regard to arrests of indicted war criminals," said Andersen.
In spite of the government's rhetorical commitment to domestic war crimes trials, only two are currently under way.
A year after the exhumation of five mass graves in Serbia, containing more than three hundred bodies of Kosovo Albanians killed in 1999, no criminal proceedings have begun and the authorities have not made available information on the identities of the victims or the circumstances in which they lost their lives.
Police abuses against ordinary citizens are still commonplace in Serbia. Serbian human rights groups have registered dozens of cases of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment in 2001 and 2002. The Serbian Ministry of Interior has either ignored the allegations or claimed that it had no knowledge of the alleged incidents. In the four known court decisions since October 2000 dealing with excessive use of force, the convicted law enforcement officials received sentences of less than six months in prison.
Police brutality against Roma is common, and discrimination in various fields of public life remains widespread. Thousands of Romani families live in makeshift settlements, left to survive without electricity, running water, or sewers. Roma displaced from Kosovo are particularly vulnerable to arbitrary evictions from such settlements.
The Human Rights Watch briefing paper recommends specific measures the Belgrade authorities should take to improve Yugoslavia's human rights record. These include, among others, the following:
The government should take immediate steps to apprehend and transfer to the ICTY all remaining indictees at large on Yugoslav territory;
The authorities in Belgrade should take immediate steps to grant the ICTY full and unfettered access to requested documents in the possession of government ministries, and to facilitate ICTY access to potential witnesses;
The prosecutorial offices in Yugoslavia should initiate war crimes proceedings where available facts suggest that war crimes have been committed;
The authorities should end the practice of denying outright the occurrence of police violence and launch criminal investigations when allegations are made, including by human rights groups;
The Serbian Ministry of Interior should undertake a vetting procedure and dismiss law enforcement officials who committed human rights abuses and humanitarian law violations under the government of Slobodan Milosevic;
The government should ensure that reports of police violence against Roma are investigated promptly and impartially, and that those found responsible for the abuses are brought to justice;
The government should adopt effective measures to prevent and punish manifestations of racial bias in the judicial system, including by arranging for training of police, prosecutors, and judges, to educate them in binding international law prohibiting racial and other forms of discrimination, and its applicability in domestic fora.
