[A-PAL] A-PAL Special Report - 28 Aug 2000

[kosova at jps.net]

August 28, 2000


Dear A-PAL Friends,

	Throughout the last year, we have seeked your support and efforts for the
release of the unjustly detained Albanian prisoners.  Now once again, we
need your help.  We ask for you to support the rights and efforts of Ms.
Natasa Kandic of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade.

	"Ethnicity is irrelevant."

	This quote is from her August 21, 2000 letter to the Yugoslav Army General,
in response to comments that she made false statements about the war in
Kosova in the Belgrade newspaper, Danas.  The letter below typifies Ms.
Kandic's strong moral stance. Ms. Kandic has, more than ANY OTHER former
Yugoslav citizen, spoken out at every turn for equal rights before the law.
She is extraordinarily dedicated and fearless in her determination to do
whatever she can to promote a lawful society in the former Yugoslavia - for
everyone. We are including below, her letter in which she passionately
defends her right to criticize certain actions of the Yugoslav Army during
the war in Kosova. Ms. Kandic has bravely devoted her life to help others in
need: journalists in prison, Roma children excluded from school, 154 Gjakova
residents on trial for terrorism, OTPOR students, parents of soldiers,
families who have missing relatives on both sides of the Serb/Kosova border.
She boldly states: "I will not be silent about the suffering I saw in
Kosovo."  She directly challenges the Yugoslav military to do something good
now - to actively participate in helping families of the detained and
missing, to reunite those still separated by the war.

	Natasa Kandic may be put on trial for the supposed "false accusations" that
the Yugoslav Army claims she made. But Ms. Kandic is a moral hero with the
bravery and dedication of a Nelson Mandela. In her letter she says to the
Army generals, "If you can find no one else to hold accountable for these
events, you may count on me. I stand here and plead guilty because I did
nothing to prevent these crimes [In Kosova] from being committed."  She uses
every opportunity to further the cause of justice in a society steeped in
criminality, in a Europe that lacks her principled dedication and who would
prefer to look the other way.

PLEASE, AFTER READING HER LETTER, CONTACT YOUR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OFFICIALS AND
ASK THEM TO SPEAK OUT ON BEHALF OF THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH THAT
BELONGS NOT ONLY TO MS. KANDIC, BUT TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAV
SOCIETY.

Sincerely,
A-PAL Team

==========================================
REQUESTED ACTION:
==========================================
	Email the members of the UN Security Council countries. Members of the UN
Security Council through December, 2000 are:

* United States of America: usaun at undp.org
* Canada: canada at un.int
* United Kingdom: uk at un.int
* Ukraine: ukrun at undp.org
* Tunisia:  tunun at undp.org
* Russian Federation: rusun at un.int
* Malaysia: mysun at undp.org
* Netherlands: netherlands at un.int
* Jamaica: jamaica at un.int
* France: france at un.int
* China: chinun at undp.org
* Canada: canada at un.int
* Bangladesh: bangladesh at un.int
* Argentina: argentina at un.int
--
* The European Court of Human Rights, Council of Europe in Strasbourg,
France: e-mail  webmaster at courtl.coe.fr  or  telephone + 33-3-88-412018
* Javier Solana: public.info at consilium.eu.int
* Representative Engel's office (Chairman of the Albanian Caucus):
jason.steinbaum at mail.house.gov
* National Albanian American Council: naacdc at aol.com
* Doris Pack: Chairperson-Southeast Europe Delegation:
dpack at europarl.eul.int
* Emma Bonino: ebonino at agora.stm.it
* Elmar Brock: Chairman Human Rights ebrok at europarl.eu.int
* Bart Staes: bstaes at europarl.eu.int
* Patricia McKenna: mckennap at iol.ie
* Heidi Hautala: hautala at vihrealiitto.fi
* Ole Krarup: ole.kraup at jur.ku.dk
* Daniel Cohn-Bendit: dcohn-bendit at europarl.eu.int
* Cecelia Malmstrom: cecelia at liberal.se
* Hans_gert Poettering: hpoettering at europarl.eu.int
* Per Gahrton: pgahrton at europarl.eu.int
* Jose Pomes Ruis: pomes at abc.ibernet.com
* Christina Prets: eu-buero.prets at members.at
* Heidi Ruhle: hruhle at europarl.eu.int
* Elisabeth Schroedter: eschroedter at europarl.eu.int
* Staffan B. Linder: sbl at moderat.se
* Gunilla Carlsson: gcarlsson at europarl.eu.int
* Den Dover: ddover at demon.uk
* Olivier Duhamel: oduhamel at europarl.eu.int
* Olivier Dupuis: o.dupuis at agora.stm.it
* Marialiese Flemming: mflemming at europarl.eu.int
* Karl Heinz Florenz: kflorenz at europarl.eu.int
* Michael Gahler: mgahler at europarl.eu.int
* Vasco Graca Moura: vgm at mail.telepac.pt
* Marco Pannaella: m.pannella at agora.it
* Mihail Papayannakis: papagiannakis at syn.gr
* Slobodan Milosevic--President of FRY- fax: 011-381-11-636-775
* Vlajko Stoijiljkovic--Minister of Int. Affairs --  011-381-11-3617-508
* Zoran Sokolovic-- Federal Minister of Internal Affairs--
011-381-11-361-7730
* Zivadin Jovanovic--Fed. Minister of Foreign Affairs--  011-381-11-367-2954
==========================================

HLC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S LETTER TO YUGOSLAV ARMY GENERAL STAFF

Yugoslav Army General Staff
Belgrade

Belgrade, 21 August 2000

Sirs,

On 17 August last, the Belgrade daily Danas in its Letters to the Editor
section carries a letter from your Information Office under the heading “Ms
Kandic Prejudges with Serious and Unproven Accusations”. The letter is in
response to my interview by Bojan Toncic carried by the same paper and
purports to set out what I said, what I left unsaid, and what I actually
meant in that interview. I consider it fitting to address my letter directly
to you, both as the institutional and presumable authors of the letter
published by Danas.

You state in your letter that I put forth “falsehoods with regard to events
in Kosovo and Metohija” during the NATO intervention and that in so doing
committed a crime for which both I and those who prevented my so doing
should be held accountable.

There is no doubt in my mind about whom you consider to be criminals,
terrorists and spies.  In Serbia today, everyone, including  children, are
under suspicion by the authorities of being terrorists.  When anyone dares
to raise the question of the responsibility of the Yugoslav Army, you
respond with secret trials.  I am one of those people who refuse to remain
silent, even at the cost of being brought to trial by you.  I will not
remain silent about the horrors your generals sent young recruits to witness
in Kosovo. I can still see the anguish on the faces of 20-year-olds who gave
their rations of milk, bread and cheese to Kosovo Albanian mothers and
children driven from their homes by the Army and police.  The road from
Kosovoska Mitrovica to Pec and Djakovica on 14 and 15 April is engraved on
my memory: a column of Albanian civilians, young soldiers going up to them
with tears in their eyes, pleading with them to accept their food, to
forgive them, saying it was not their fault, that their officers ordered
them to Kosovo, that they did not know where they were being taken. Young
soldiers were the bright light of humanity and life in other localities of
Kosovo too. I will not be silent about the suffering of civilians I saw in
Kosovo. I saw Albanian villages surrounded by tanks and heard the shelling.
I saw thousands of people leaving their homes with a bundle or two of
belongings, ordered out by the police or Army who told them Kosovo was no
longer their home.  I saw columns of civilians on the roads.  A few dared to
stop for a moment to tell me how the Army shelled their village and ordered
them out to Albania.  As they were leaving, they saw police enter the
village, plunder their property and torch their homes.  I spoke with people
who were in Izbica on 26 March.  They recounted how they were surrounded by
soldiers in green uniforms, reservists, who separated the men to be shot.  A
woman described to me how soldiers went through a mass of villagers,
pointing to who would remain and who had to leave, for Albania.  They took
her husband and father-in-law, an old man of 70, in a round up of 20 men.
She saw them shot.  When they came around a second time, her son was taken.
She offered the soldiers money for her son’s life but they said they could
not let him go.  She did not see her son shot, but later heard on the radio
that he had been shot on that 26th of March.  About 10,000 civilians were
forced by shelling to leave a field near Izbica and set out for Albania. In
these columns were mothers who were not allowed to see their dead children
for a last time.

These, gentlemen, are facts about what happened in Kosovo during the state
of war.  Regrettably, this is the cruel truth about Izbica, Bela Crkva,
Cuska, Vucitrn and many other places and not, as you maintain, “falsehoods.”
If you can find no one else to hold accountable for these events, you may
count on me.  I stand here and plead guilty because I did nothing to prevent
these crimes from being committed. You rebuke me for not praising the
Yugoslav Army, the astuteness of its commanding generals, its high morale,
good tactics and ingenious camouflaging.  Do you really think the people of
Serbia and Montenegro believe you fought against a flesh and blood enemy,
those you label “NATO criminals”, and that you won?  Every casualty of the
NATO bombing is your casualty too. You wholeheartedly endorsed the war
against “foreign occupation” only to sign the Military-Technical Agreement
in Kumanovo on 9 June on the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army,
police,paramilitary and parapolice units from Kosovo.  And then you
proclaimed victory. Yet you avoid meeting face to face with the parents of
soldiers who were killed or went missing.  You took their sons to Kosovo but
not your own sons; you award medals to the sons of parents who only want to
know where their sons are buried.

The issue of the legality and legitimacy of the NATO intervention in
FRYugoslavia has been raised at the international level.  Legal experts are
seriously analyzing possible violations of international humanitarian law by
NATO.  Very soon after the bombing of the Serbian Radio-Television building
and the civilian deaths caused, the respected human rights organization
Amnesty International came out with an expert opinion saying a civilian
target had been attacked in contravention of the Geneva Conventions. You say
that I fail to mention the victims of the NATO bombing and the destruction
it caused.  May I remind you that I applied to you on 3 April for permission
to research and investigate attacks on civilians and civilian targets.  May
I recall the bus tours organized by you of bombed locations, with passes
issued only to selected reporters.  You had an information monopoly; it was
as if tourist attractions were involved, not human life.  Although the
Humanitarian Law Center is the only human rights organization to have
applied for such permission, your Press and Information Office, when we
applied, made us wait for days before we were finally and bluntly told, “No!
We know what kind of organization you are.”

You accuse me of passing over the crimes of “Shiptar terrorists” from 1
January 1998 to the present.  What do you call those on “our side” who have
committed crimes?  Do you consider them terrorists also or the nation’s
defenders?  What have you done to establish the fate of Serbs, Roma,
Bosniacs and Montenegrins who disappeared when you had control over the
territory of Kosovo?  You treat these victims of before and after the
arrival of the international force in Kosovo as numbers, as though the more
dead and abducted, the better for the Serb cause. You say that you
successfully opposed the world’s strongest military force, that you beat
NATO.   If you are so powerful why not do a simple thing for the good, this
time, of the people of Serbia and Kosovo: ask those with whom you signed the
Kumanovo Agreement to help with the clarification of the fate of the missing
and the prisoners: 2,500 Albanians who went missing during the state of war,
1,150 Serbs, Roma, Montenegrins and Bosniacs who disappeared since the
employment of the international force in Kosovo and about 900 Albanian who
are being held prisoners in Serbia.

I stand where I have always stood, defending the right to life, the right to
freely use one’s native language, the right to freedom of movement, the
right to publicly criticize authorities.  I stand in support of every court
that punishes the perpetrators of war crimes and those who ordered crimes
against humanity. Ethnicity is irrelevant; a crime is a crime.

Natasa Kandic

==========================================

VIP, Belgrade, August 25, 2000

Yugoslav Army Says it will Sue Natasa Kandic

The Yugoslav Army (VJ) said on Thursday it would be bringing charges against
Natasa Kandic for her text “I shall not keep quiet about horrors” published
in the Danas newspaper on Thursday, the Glas Javnosti newspaper writes on
Friday.

Quoting the newspaper’s obligations “under the Law on information”, the VJ
Command’s Information Service says in a letter submitted to Danas it hopes
that “Danas, as a serious newspaper, carefully weighed the claims made by
Natasa Kandic” and that “she will be able to prove her claims in court”.

It is not clear from the letter who will be prosecuted and under what law.
However, the text of the VJ statement carried by Danas on Friday says “the
VJ hopes that Natasa Kandic will prove her contention in court”.

Danas Deputy Editor-in-Chief Boza Andrejic has said he does not expect Danas
to be charged.  He said the editorial board had, from the VJ letter, come to
the conclusion that the Army would not be taking steps against Danas under
the most serious articles of the Law on information, and might not even
bring charges against Danas at all.

Andrejic said the hope was based on the fact that the newspaper had
immediately acted on the VJ’s request and published the VJ’s reaction to
Kandic’s text.

“The essence of the letter is that the VJ announces it will sue Natasa
Kandic for texts published in our newspaper.”

Asked what in her text could have prompted the VJ Command to take the step,
Humanitarian Law Fund Director Natasa Kandic said on Thursday she did not
know how the VJ meant to prove its case.  “If the trial is closed to the
public, then it will not be possible to present evidence”.  Kandic said she
had made her claims in the text as “an eyewitness to many things”.  If
evidence could be presented publicly, “I think that would be an ideal chance
for the public to learn what evidence there is that things have been done in
contravention of international humanitarian law”, Kandic said.

==========================================

BETA news agency report
Yugoslav Army News Conference Belgrade, 29 August 2000 (BETA)

YA Spokesman: Natasa Kandic Should Be Sentenced

Yugoslav Army (YA) spokesman Colonel Svetozar Radisic confirmed today that
the Yugoslav Army would file charges against Natasa Kandic, director of the
Humanitarian Law Center, because of her accusations against the YA, adding
that Kandic “should be sentenced for what she is doing.”

Radisic told a news conference that legal action would be taken against
Kandic because of her unfounded accusations in which she “publicly attacked
the Yugoslav Army as an institution.” Legal action against Kandic was
announced by the YA General Staff on 25 August in a letter to the editor of
Danas in response to the allegations she made against the YA in a text
published in the newspaper the previous day and an earlier interview with
the paper.

In its letter, the General Staff said that unless Kandic substantiated her
allegations with proof, “something else will be involved which also entails
accountability and consequences clearly defined by law.”

In the text published by Danas  on 24 August and headlined “I Will Not
Remain Silent About the Atrocities,” Kandic told the YA General Staff she
would not pass over the suffering of  Albanian civilians as well as YA
soldiers she saw in Kosovo during the NATO bombing. She said she would not
remain silent about the crimes in Kosovo of which she knew regardless of
which side committed them.  Among other things, Kandic said in the interview
that the case of Kraljevo journalist Miroslav Filipovic, who was sentenced
by the Military Court in Nis to seven years in prison for espionage and
spreading of false reports, was really about his being the first person to
“raise the issue of the reponsibility of the Army, the Serbian forces” in
Kosovo.

The YA General Staff, however, assessed that Kandic used the Filipovic case
to accuse “the Army and state, denigrate the Yugoslav judicial system and
cover up the crimes of the Shiptar terrorists and NATO criminals.” Colonel
Radisic said today it was “only natural” for Kandic to be taken to court.
“These allegations are so unfounded that no comment is necessary,” he said,
adding that there would be no debate with Natasa Kandic and her case would
go through the procedure envisaged by law. “We consider that she has no
arguments and that she should be sentenced for what she is doing,” the YA
spokesman said.  He added that it would not befit an institution such as the
YA to enter into a polemic “with a person who puts forth such allegations”
since, he said, “this person might be a psychiatric case.”

Natasa Kandic told BETA three days ago that she had proof of her allegations
based on what she saw herself and the research and investigations carried
out by the HLC.

==========================================

Related articles on Ms. Natasa Kandic:
      http://www.bndlg.de/~wplarre/Natasa-Kandic.htm

Association of Political Prisoners:
	http://www.khao.org/appkosova.htm