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Impact on the Return of Displaced Persons

The riots and attacks on minorities in March 2004 left some 4,100 minority community members displaced in Kosovo. More than one-and-a-half years later approximately 1,300 of these persons are still officially displaced.²⁰⁹ Human Rights Watch research in the field suggests that very few of those displaced by March events have actually returned to reconstructed houses in their original communities, choosing instead to live in temporary collective shelters on the outskirts of their old communities, in mono-ethnic enclaves elsewhere in the province, or outside of Kosovo altogether.²¹⁰

There is a widespread belief on the part of the Serb community in particular that the failure to achieve accountability for March crimes is the result of a “lack of will” on the part of the international presence in Kosovo. The views expressed below—by people displaced by March riots, often by neighbors whom they recognized—reflect widely-shared sentiments among minority communities:

The intelligence that was working in Kosovo, they have photos but they will never give them to you.²¹¹

The police and others know who did this, but they keep those photos of who was burning the houses for themselves.²¹²

No police even are looking for them. So many murders took place around Kosovo and no one was convicted.²¹³

Nobody came to apologize. Nothing happened. They were showing us some pictures and telling us like they were involved in March events (and they knew they were involved), but they did nothing. If the Serbians did something like this, they would have caught them a long time ago. There is no justice from KFOR, UNMIK, or others, and I cannot ask for anything of the Albanians.²¹⁴

The promise after March 2004 was that it would be “fixed”: perpetrators would be brought to justice and the houses would be rebuilt. Return of the displaced is contingent on both of these elements; there must be safety enabling return as well as a viable place to return to.²¹⁵

Whatever progress has been made in reconstructing houses, the fact that there has been little or no visible accountability for March crimes—for ordinary perpetrators and law enforcement personnel alike—reinforces the fear within minority communities that events like in March 2004 are likely to happen again. This view is echoed in the conclusion of the recent OSCE analysis of the criminal justice response to March, which states that the “relatively weak response of the courts… may also be considered inadequate to prevent similar acts of public disorder in the future.”²¹⁶ 

Many of the people Human Rights Watch interviewed told of their deep attachment to their land and their wish to return, but asked how they could return given the lack of security. In the words of one man, who was crying as he spoke:  “I would return, but how can I by myself. Who doesn’t want to live in his own house?  I live in a container and my house is near.”²¹⁷

One woman summed up her situation as follows:

The people who committed those crimes are walking freely. . . . Nobody has said anything. No one from [city name] has come here to talk to us, not the President or the Serbian community representative or the municipality. They had one meeting in [city name] about six months ago and said if you want you can come back, but we cannot guarantee your safety.²¹⁸

Human Rights Watch found that a number of displaced persons, particularly the elderly or those with children, preferred to live in collective temporary shelters—often in poor conditions or in metal containers only six by two meters in size—rather than risking return. No one we interviewed still living in displacement had plans to return to their rebuilt homes.²¹⁹

The lack of visible prosecutions and accountability for offenders also appears to have sent a message that harassment and intimidation of minorities is permissible. In one municipality visited by Human Rights Watch, several elderly displaced persons said that their neighbors had threatened them with “worse next time” if they seriously contemplated return.²²⁰ Other minorities described how children cursed them, spit at them, and even threw stones, when they returned to their former villages or towns to visit their rebuilt houses.²²¹

For minorities, especially the displaced, the end result is confirmation for them that accountability in the broadest sense has not been achieved. The international community and the local administration have failed in their promise to bring to justice those responsible for the violence and devastation wreaked on their communities. They proved themselves yet again incapable of delivering on their promise to rebuild an important part of what they had lost—trust and a sense of security or protection. Local leaders and municipal representatives also did not rise to the occasion, failing to actively promote and support returns of those displaced from their communities in March 2004.

Against this backdrop it will be difficult for any future leadership in Kosovo to achieve real progress in the area of increased (and sustainable) returns of minorities and multi-ethnicity, unless the perception of impunity can be dramatically altered.