Albanian households raided, family members abused and arrested

PRISHTINA, Jan 5 (KIC) - Heavy Serbian police forces have been stationed today in the town of Mitrovica, and have reportedly been engaged in a campaign of violence and intimidation of Albanian motorists and passers-bye.

LDK and CDHRF sources said the police have set up random road blocks near the bus station and at the exit road from Mitrovica leading to Skenderaj.

Serbian police backed up by mechanized units have been deployed in the Shipol suburbs of Mitrovica, in the outskirts leading to Zubin Potok, and in the villages of Zhabar i Poshtëm and Zhabar i Epërm, source said.

Many Albanian houses in the Ura e Gjakut and Shipol neighborhoods have been raided by huge Serb police forces today, allegedly in connection with arms searches. Albanians have been threatened with liquidation "this coming summer", the LDK and CDHRF said, offering details on the raids and names of Albanian families targeted.

Some Albanians were taken for questioning, others arrested.

The police ill-treated Lam Kurti's (60) children, Resmije (f, 14), Sebahate (f, 16) and Muharrem (18) during the raid. They were eventually arrested.

Some 20 Serb policemen manning a checkpoint near the town waterworks in Mitrovica stopped a Lada car coming from Skenderaj at 14:00 hrs today. Two young persons were taken out and arrested, LDK sources said.

Meanwhile, four Serb police stopped today morning Shefik Kurteshi (26) in Vushtrri and beat him up with truncheons for an hour on obscure charges of being an UÇK member.

Serbian Forces Maintain Heavy, Intimidating Presence in Podujeva Area

PRISHTINA, Jan 5 (KIC) - A column of Serbian army tanks left the Dumosh airfield, southeast of the town of Podujeva, passed along the villages of Sveçël and Ballofc and reached Podujeva today morning, LDK sources said.

The Serb tanks turned near the "Besiana" motel and travelled the Podujeva-Prishtina road before proceeding to 'Tabet e Llapashticës' in south-west Podujeva, the area of fierce clashes between Serb military and the UÇK (Kosova Liberation Army) around Christmas.

After spending some time there, the Serb tanks left the outskirts of Llapashticë and returned back to Dumosh via Lluzhan village, a dozen km south of Podujeva on the Prishtina-Podujeva highway.

It was the return of Serbian military and police troops, withdrawn partially and temporarily in the aftermath of the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreements last October, that preceded the actual Serbian attack of 24 December, lasting for four days, which left at least 17 Albanians killed, a dozen of whom civilians.

The LDK chapter in Podujeva said seven Serb police armoured troop carriers and an armoured vehicle left Podujeva for Kërpimeh, 10 km north of the town, where there is a Serb police station, and then returned to Podujeva, patrolling the town streets.

An eye-witness said 2 lorryloads and 2 busloads of Serbian soldiers backed up by an armoured vehicle were seen at Besi - Milloshevë crossroads heading for the Podujeva region today.

Meanwhile, sources from Podujeva said Rexhep Idriz Demiri (36), resident of Obrançë village of Podujeva, has been missing since 24 December 1998, the day of the Serbian offensive in the area.

Thousands of Albanian villagers fled their homes around Christmas, many of whom have not yet returned out of fear from renewed Serb offensive operations in the heavily militarized area.

Over 30 Young Albanians Arrested by Serb Police in Gjakova Monday

PRISHTINA, Jan 5 (KIC) - The Serbian police Monday evening cracked down on young Albanians in the town of Gjakova, south-west of Kosova, arresting more than 30 young Albanians during a sweep on the town pubs, the LDK chapter in Gjakova said.

The Albanians were taken to the police station and held for hours in custody, during which time they were reported ill-treated. Some of them have not been released yet, the LDK sources said.

The Serb police alleged it was tracking down 'terrorists', the usual term for Albanians the Serb regime picks up to terrorize itself.

Meanwhile, the Serb regime has set up a paramilitary force - a self-styled local 'police' composed of ethnic Albanian collaborators - to crack down on Albanians in the Gjakova area.

Muharrem Jakupi, resident of Osek-Hylë village, a notorious collaborator and member of the Serb militia, has abused physically even his brother, Haziz Jakupi.

The LDK sources said 15 Serb policemen were led by another militiamen, Marjan Abazi, raided the home of Ramë Reka, Haziz's family friend, with whom Haziz and his family have been staying for months.

After the raid, the Serb police and their Albanian collaborators arrested Ramë's son, Lulzim Reka, and Haziz Jakupi. Lulzim is still in Serb custody.

Muharrem Jakupi ill-treated his brother Haziz for refusing to collaborate with the Serbian occupier, the LDK chapter in Gjakova said.

Lez and Jeshkovë Villages Held under Siege

PRISHTINA, Jan 5 (KIC) - Amidst a heavy presence of Serbian military and police forces, the situation in the border villages in Prizren municipality has continued to be grave, LDK sources in Prizren said. The municipality borders on Albania.

The Albanian population in the villages of Lez and Jeshkovë is being held under a complete siege by Serbian forces, LDK sources claimed.

Meanwhile, the LDK chapter said Xhemail Sallauka (32) was reported arrested on 31 December. A resident of Budakova village of Suhareka, the Albanian was taken by police while returning from the Prizren hospital together with his sick mother.

Mr. Sallauka, who has been sheltered for months in the town of Prizren, is still reported in custody. The motive for his arrest and continued custody has not been made known.

Serb Police Continues Firing on Obiliq Villages

PRISHTINA, Jan 5 (KIC) - There was a stepped up movement of Serbian police forces in the small town of Obiliq today. Serb police backed up by two armoured vehicles passed today morning through Plemetin and reached Hamidi, the local chapter of the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms (CDHRF) in Obiliq said.

At the Bakshi-Raskovë-Besi crossroads, Serb police checked Albanian motorists and passengers and robbed them of their money, the CDHRF added.

Serbian police forces, which have been dug in "Kërshat e Grabovcit", have been firing on outlying Albanian villages on a daily basis, local sources said.

The so-called 'industrial police' (a privately-hired Serb militia) of the Kosova Electric Power company has been ill-treating Albanians at the village of Dardhishtë ('Krusevac'), sources said, denying reports that this Serb self-styled police and local Albanians are getting along well.

Osce Monitors Visit Alleged Kosova Mass Grave Site

Reuters 05-JAN-99

Ferizaj, Yugoslavia, Jan 5 (Reuters) - International monitors opened an investigation on Tuesday into allegations that a mass grave had been found in Serbia's troubled province of Kosova.

A team from the Kosova Verification Mission (KVM), set up by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, went to the site of the alleged grave near Urosevac, about 30 km (20 miles) south of the regional capital Pristina.

OSCE spokesman Sandy Blyth said the information had initially been received by the U.S. Kosova Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM) from the ethnic Albanian Kosova Liberation Army, which is fighting for independence from Serbia.

"The information is on an apparent, alleged mass grave of, they believe, 11 women and children who were apparently killed in the summer in the local region and thereafter buried at the location the verifiers will go and see," Blyth said.

"Today's action is very much the initial assessment phase of what is in effect a scene of crime," he told reporters.

"They will see if there are indications at all of anything which is not right on that site."

Findings would be passed to the OSCE in Vienna which is to decide the next step, Blyth said.

Allegations of mass graves are a hugely sensitive issue in Kosova, where Serbian security forces conducted a fierce offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists last year, burning villages and driving about 250,000 Albanians from their homes. Around 2,000 people have been killed in the strife.

NATO threatened air strikes against Serbia in October, forcing it to withdraw some combat forces from Kosova, after the discovery of the mangled bodies of two groups of ethnic Albanians who local villagers said were killed by Serb police.

Belgrade said the massacres had been staged by ethnic Albanians to provoke the air strike threat.

Serbian politicians also condemned the latest investigation, saying it was evidence the international community was biased against the Serbs.

The Serbian Radical Party led by nationalist Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Sesel issued a statement on Tuesday condemning the monitors for investigating "the existence of non-existent Albanian mass graves around Urosevac."

The statement, carried by the independent news agency Beta, said: "Western powers, NATO and Albanian "terrorist" bands are conducting a joint action in Kosova."

A fragile truce established in October was broken at the end of December by four days of clashes in northern Kosova. The monitors managed to restore it but isolated violence continues.

The ethnic Albanian Kosova Information Centre in Pristina said two ethnic Albanians working at a petrol station had been shot dead by unidentified gunmen on Monday night. No further details were available.

Beta said Serbian police were investigating the killings.

The centre said seven other ethnic Albanians had been killed in various parts of Kosova under unclear circumstances in the last six days.

Back to top

Two Ethnic Albanians Killed, Osce to Inspect Alleged Mass Grave

AP 05-JAN-99

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Two ethnic Albanians were reported killed today, and international monitors inspected an alleged mass grave in southern Kosova. Rebels launched their own radio station and news agency.

The two slain men, who worked at a gasoline station in Vitina, 25 miles southeast of Pristina, capital of Kosova, were gunned down late Monday according to the Kosova Information Center. The center is close to the separatist Albanian leadership in the Serb province.

The center said there were no suspects and the motive for the killings was unknown. The bodies of more than a dozen ethnic Albanians and Serbs have recently been found in Kosova in what appeared to be a series of gangland-style killings.

The latest shootings came as a team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe visited Urosevac in southern Kosova to check out ethnic Albanian rebel claims that 11 women and children were buried in a mass grave there after Serb troops killed them in an offensive against Kosova separatists last year.

Lynn Holland, a human rights verifier for the OSCE, said it was too early to say if the site was a mass grave or if a formal investigation by forensic experts would be conducted.

Residents identified the victims as members of the Aslani family and said they were killed in a Serb shelling attack Aug. 27. The resident said they were unable to report the deaths until last month.

Ruzhdi Jashar, a resident, said he was among those who buried the victims while Serbs watched. He said one of the victims was 6 months old.

Meanwhile, the rebel Kosova Liberation Army said it launched its own radio and news agency based on Kosova territory under its control. The radio, Free Kosova, reportedly had a one-hour broadcast Monday and the news agency, Kosova Press, published its first item in the Kosova Sot daily today.

Kosova Sot quoted Jakup Krasniqi, a member of the KLA's chief of staff, as saying the two new media outlets would "inform the domestic and international public about the just liberation fight of (Kosova's) people and their army."

More than 1,000 people have been killed and about 300,000 uprooted from their homes since Serbian authorities launched a crackdown last February against Kosova Albanian rebels fighting for independence from Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia's two republics. Most of the victims have been ethnic Albanians.

A U.S.-brokered truce in October ended most of the fighting, but the two sides are nowhere near a negotiated settlement on Kosova's future status.

In the latest sign of continuing tension and military preparations by both sides, the Kosova Information Center reported today that the Yugoslav army had encircled two villages along the Albanian border in the Prizren region. Further details were not immediately available.

The army last month killed more than 40 guerrillas in two separate clashes along the border after intercepting them as they brought in arms from neighboring Albania.

Copyright 1999& The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Back to top

Msf Charity Denies Charges of Bias in Kosova

Reuters 05-JAN-99

BELGRADE, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Medecins sans Frontieres denied charges on Tuesday that it was biased towards ethnic Albanians in the flashpoint Yugoslav province of Kosova.

The head of the charity's mission in Yugoslavia, Tim Boucher, said the accusation by a Serb official was "very clearly untrue."

He was responding to a statement made on Monday by Vukasin Andric, a top health official in the Serbian administration in Kosova, and carried by the offical Tanjug news agency.

"Medecins sans Frontieres have abused their mission as they have been caught trying to smuggle in and conceal arms for ethnic Albanian "terrorist"s," Andric was quoted as saying.

MSF and other international humanitarian organisations moved into Kosova after Serbian security forces conducted a fierce offensive against ethnic Albanian separatists last year.

Andric was also quoted as saying an MSF team had been using radio frequencies set aside for Serbian police.

Baucher told Reuters none of those charges was true.

"I hardly need to say we do not carry weapons and we have never been involoved in any criminal procedures," he said. "We do not have radios. We are not allowed by the government to have radios."

Baucher said he was scheduled to talk to Yugoslav officials in Belgrade later on Tuesday. "We will try to establish why these kind of accusations have been made against us when they are very clearly untrue," he said.

Back to top

Albanian PM Meets with KLA Political Representative

Xinhua 04-JAN-99

TIRANA (Jan. 4) XINHUA - Albanian Prime Minister Pandeli Majko on Monday urged the ethnic Albanian political leaders in the Yugoslav province of Kosova to resolve their differences and "speak with a single voice."

In a closed-door meeting with Adem Demaci, political representative of Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), Majko asked him to spare no effort to ensure that the Albanian political community in Kosova "finally speaks with a single voice."

This was a necessary step towards establishing a cohesive political force in Kosova, the prime minister said.

Demaci said the KLA would agree to a proposed meeting of rival political leaders in order to work out a joint strategy.

He also said he would welcome similar initiatives by the Albanian government.

Albania's new government has been trying to play a more active role in helping to solve the crisis in the Albanian-dominated Kosova. Unifying the rival Albanian factions in Kosova was one of the main issues of a resolution passed by Albanian parliament last month.

Since the conflict between Kosova Albanians and Serbian forces broke out in February last year, the KLA has distanced itself from the moderate leader, Ibrahim Rugova, who is also seeking independence for Kosova.

Back to top

KLA's Demaci Said Set to Meet Other Kosova Leaders

Reuters 05-JAN-99

TIRANA, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Kosova Liberation Army political representative Adem Demaci has agreed to meet Kosova's ethnic Albanian leaders to seek a strategy for peace in the Serbian province, the Albanian government said on Tuesday.

The spokesman for the separatist guerrillas was due to see Albanian President Rexhep Meidani and Foreign Minister Paskal Milo on Tuesday after having met Albania's Socialist prime minister, Pandeli Majko, late on Monday.

"Demaci has accepted the idea of holding a possible meeting among the most distinguished political representatives in Kosova to prepare a joint strategy to resolve the Kosova crisis and the national problem," the Albanian government said in a statement issued on Tuesday morning.

The international community is trying to rally divided ethnic Albanian leaders behind efforts to secure an autonomy deal for Kosova, where the dominant ethnic Albanian majority is seeking independence from Serbia.

Majko told Demaci on Monday Kosova's political leadership "should speak in unison for the solution of the Kosova crisis."

"That is the first necessary step to unite Kosova's political potential. Time is running out for Kosova to show one face to the international community and to eliminate unnecessary competition among political factions," the government said.

The Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) is at odds with moderate political leader Ibrahim Rugova of the Democratic League of Kosova, the dominant ethnic Albanian political party in Kosova, where the population is 90 percent ethnic Albanian.

The Serb side has ruled out the KLA's inclusion in any talks on the future status of the province.

Just over a week ago, international monitors managed to restore a fragile truce agreed in October. The KLA, which Belgrade describes as "terrorist"s, has said it would observe the truce but would continue to fight for Kosova's independence.

A crackdown by Yugoslav and Serbian security forces in Kosova last year resulted in the deaths of almost 2,000 people and drove 250,000 from their homes before the October truce.

Back to top

Monday, January 4, 1999 Published at 20:50 GMT

Kosova rebels go on air

BBC

By Jackie Rowland in Belgrade

The Kosova Liberation Army has announced the establishment of its own radio station and news agency, saying they would be the authentic voice of ethnic Albanians.

The two media will enter a crowded scene in Kosova. There is already one ethnic Albanian news agency run by the Kosova Information Centre, which is close to the largest political party, the LDK.

Then there are several newspapers in the Albanian language which carry statements from ethnic Albanian politicians and from the KLA.

On the Serbian side there is the Pristina media centre, which publishes information from the police and other official sources.

The KLA said the radio and the agency would aim to provide accurate, objective and timely information about the situation in the territory.

Independent ethnic Albanian journalists in Kosova say the new radio station and news agency will be propaganda tools.

Media offensive

The KLA announcement comes at a time when both sides in the Kosova conflict are stepping up their media offensive.

The rebels wish to counter a campaign by the Yugoslav authorities to have the KLA placed on an international list of "terrorist" organisations.

At the same time, the Yugoslav Information Ministry says it is preparing a media campaign for the New Year and has called on Yusoslav news organisations to show national responsibility.

Back to top

Monday, January 4, 1999 Published at 15:12 GMT

Yugoslav agency sees Kosova '"terrorism"' spreading to media

The Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug has condemned plans by the ethnic-Albanian Kosova Liberation Army to launch a news agency and radio station.

The agency said the KLA's venture into broadcasting was an attempt to spread ""terrorism"" into the world media. Tanjug raised questions as to who was funding the operation.

The text of the report, as published on Monday 4th January, follows:

"Albanian state television is probably the only media house in the world that has become an official organ of "terrorist"s, carrying statements by the so-called Kosova Liberation Army promoting their separatist goals, such as the independence of Serbia's Kosova and Metohija province - which are strongly condemned by the international community.

The Albanian TV late on Sunday broadcast a statement by the alleged headquarters of ethnic Albanian "terrorist"s that the so-called KLA was founding a news agency and radio station.

It is evidently not enough to the "terrorist"s that Albanian state television is their official media.

They have already given bombastic names to their agency and radio station which clearly demonstrate their intention - to spread the fallacy about some allegedly already existent Albanian state in the territory of this southern Serbian province.

The news agency has been named `Kosova Press' and the radio station `Kosova e Lire', or `Free Kosova'.

News of the setting up of the agency and radio station has attracted the attention of world media, and the US news agency Associated Press concluded that Kosova Albanian "terrorist"s did this `in a move to reinforce their independent image' and to distance `the rebels further from moderate Albanian leaders'.

Some media wonder how the "terrorist"s plan to inaugurate a radio station when they still have no frequency, and others ask where they got the finance.

Ethnic Albanian separatists have been long present on the world media stage.

Their representative offices in western Europe regularly distribute information bulletins and send them out to numerous addresses, from media to individuals.

In this, they do not hesitate to use impermissible means, such as is the case at the Geneva UN Headquarters, where they occasionally smuggle in their bulletins and distribute them to countless correspondents and diplomats.

Ethnic Albanian "terrorist"s are now evidently intent on expanding their "terrorist" activities from the field to the media.

They have practically already realised part of grossly ignoring international norms and the United Nations Charter.

It is really hard to find a similar example of such activities by any other country in the world in more recent history" .