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Erasing History: Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo Report released by the U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, May 1999

INTRODUCTION

With this report, the United States offers a documentary record of the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and human rights violations that underpin the current tragedy of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. At this writing, the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic continue to burn, loot, rape, shell, and de-populate Kosovo, and thousands of refugees continue to flee into neighboring Albania and Macedonia. Although we do not yet know all the details, the fact that this crisis has happened so quickly, methodically, and so savagely, strongly suggests that Serb forces acted based on plans drawn up long before NATO intervened.

The refugees coming out of Kosovo are only now beginning to tell their stories. Yet even these fragmented accounts portray a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing:

• Serbian forces have made Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, a ghost town. Serbian military, police, and paramilitary forces reportedly expelled between 100,000 to 120,000 persons from Pristina in only four days. Kosovars now in Macedonia have claimed that only 100 ethnic Albanians remain in Pristina. Serbian forces reportedly had been taking furniture from abandoned homes.
   
  
• In Pec, Serbian forces allegedly herded young Albanian women to the Hotel Karagac, and raped them repeatedly. The commander of the local base reportedly used a roster of soldiers' names to allow his troops to visit the hotel on a rotating basis. The Hotel Karagac is only one example of the gender violence that plays such a large role in Serbian actions in Kosovo.
   
  
• Reports indicate that the violence in western Kosovo is stronger than in any other region of the province. Serbian forces emptied Pec of ethnic Albanians in 24 hours. In Djakovica's old city, Serbian forces allegedly burned 200 to 600 homes the day after NATO airstrikes began. By the next day, the rest of the old city had been torched.
   
  
• Serbian forces have forced thousands of Kosovars onto trains and sent them to border crossings in Macedonia. Some refugees reported arriving at train stations in buses arranged by the Serb Army. Others reported a mass of humanity -- thousands -- waiting for trains at gunpoint.
   
  
• Based on consistent refugee accounts, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that the Djakovica region "undoubtedly has been one of the most violent and cruel in the whole of Kosovo, turning it at times into a virtual killing field."

The United States had hoped to resolve the crisis in Kosovo through the use of diplomacy backed by the threat of force. Only after Belgrade repeatedly rejected the diplomatic solution offered and re-offered at Rambouillet -- and only after it became clear that the Milosevic regime launched attacks on the civilian population in Kosovo and demonstrated its determination to have its way in Kosovo no matter what the consequences -- did NATO pursue a policy of force backed by diplomacy, justified by law and humanitarian necessity.

We have made it clear to the government of Serbia what it will take to end NATO intervention: an immediate halt to all violence and repression in Kosovo; the withdrawal of Serbian military, paramilitary, and police forces; the unconditional safe return of all refugees and internally displaced; the stationing of an international security force; and the establishment of a political framework for Kosovo based on the Rambouillet accords.

In the meantime, we will continue to seek justice for the hundreds of thousands of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians who have suffered at the hands of Serbian forces. We are working closely with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the appropriate United Nations human rights and refugee mechanisms to address, document, and ultimately reverse the damage created by these crimes. As part of this effort, non-governmental organizations working in Macedonia and Albania have joined international organizations in an unprecedented alliance to document abuses, supply evidence to the ICTY, and get the story of ethnic cleansing out to the public at large. We wish to thank the American Bar Association's Central and East European Law Initiative, Physicians for Human Rights, and the Coalition for International Justice for their contributions to this effort.

We also have secured general agreement among the ICTY, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the major UN human rights institutions, and many of the leading NGOs in-theater to use a standard form for refugee accounts (see figure 1) that will allow for the coherent collection and packaging of refugee accounts. Refugees are participating in this effort on a voluntary basis. In response to requests from the ICTY, the U.S. Government is ensuring that refugees who have been selected for residence in the United States are properly interviewed for ICTY purposes. By standardizing the refugee interview process, not only will we ensure that the ICTY has information in a usable form for future investigations and prosecutions, but the resulting data can be aggregated and used as the basis for future reports and updates on war crimes, crimes against humanity and human right violations in Kosovo.

This report chronicles some of the history of the recent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, beginning with the withdrawal of the OSCE's Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) on March 19, 1999. The KVM had been issuing reports on human rights conditions until its departure. With the crisis still taking place, it is not yet possible to provide a complete appraisal. Furthermore, the Serbian government's refusal to cooperate with the ICTY or to allow any independent monitors or media into Kosovo since the withdrawal of the KVM has limited efforts to document the scope and extent of ethnic cleansing. Due to limited access to Serbia, the report also does not address the situation of Serb refugees from Kosovo. Thus the report should be regarded only as a snapshot of the tragic events and incidents that have unfolded in recent weeks. A more comprehensive accounting, built in part on refugee interviews and in part on on-site investigations, still must take place, hopefully in the near future.

Staff in the Bureaus of Intelligence and Research and Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the Department of State, working in conjunction with staff from the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, the Bureau of European Affairs, and the Office of War Crimes Issues, undertook the research and writing of this report. It is based on multiple sources, including foreign governments, international organizations, non-governmental human rights and humanitarian relief organizations, refugees, combatants, and the press.

This report begins the process of telling the world a story it has heard thus far only in bits and pieces. Although incomplete, it already has taught us much. We have watched families, uprooted and torn asunder, stagger across Kosovo's borders. We have seen the locked trains on one-way missions of despair. We have consoled children weeping for parents they cannot find. We have listened to the stories of people whose fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands were led away. We have reached out to rape victims struck mute by savagery. We have seen ominous overhead photos of freshly-upturned earth and burned-out towns. Already we can testify to the horror. Already we are witnesses.

We -- as a people, as a nation, as a world -- cannot let such outrageous violations of human rights stand. That is why NATO continues to fight for the victims of Belgrade's ethnic cleansing.

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