[A-PAL] NEWSLETTER, FEB. 8, 2001

Thu Feb 8 17:42:49 EST 2001

              A-PAL NEWSLETTER        FEBRUARY 8, 2001________
PLEASE SIGN OUR ONLINE PETITION AT     WWW.KHAO.ORG/APPKOSOVA.HTM
WE ARE PREPARING  THE INTERNATIONAL LIST OF SIGNATURES FOR DELIVERY 
TO THE FRY GOVERNMENT AS WELL AS THE EU PRESIDENCY.

       In October, 2000, President Kostunica promised international 
leaders that the Albanian prisoners  would be released. In January, 
2001,  Mr. Goran Svilanovic promised U.S. officials in Washington 
that the prisoners would be released "very soon." Approximately 670 
Albanian prisoners remain deprived of liberty and human rights. Today 
the FRY Parliament delayed a vote on the amnesty law which  has been 
prepared since last November. Yet even when this law finally passes, 
only a fraction of the Albanians will be released.
     We have delayed our public pressure campaign since early January 
out of courtesy and respect for the new FRY Parliament.  But further 
delays in freeing the Albanian prisoners means that we once again 
must redouble our efforts.

     WE URGE EVERYONE TO TAKE UP THE CAUSE OF FRY REFORM   AGAIN ! 
SUPPORT THE HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH REQUEST TO TIE FINANCIAL AID TO 
YUGOSLAVIA TO COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS OF JUSTICE, 
BEGINNING WITH THE RELEASE OF PRISONERS ---- THE U.S. DEADLINE FOR 
THIS REGARDING THE ARREST OF MILOSEVIC IS APRIL 1, 2001. 
UNFORTUNATELY, ONCE AGAIN, THE PRISONERS' FATE HAS BEEN OMITTED FROM 
THESE ULTIMATUMS. THEIR 670 LIVES MEAN MORE THAN THAT.        THEY 
CANNOT BE FORGOTTEN.
PRESSURE YOUR LOCAL REPS. TO SUPP0RT RESTRICTED FUNDING, 
REINSTATEMENT OF SANCTIONS, IF THE PRISONERS ARE NOT RELEASED AS 
PROMISED REPEATEDLY.
*********************************************************
    from  European A-PAL:   YOU CAN HELP US----JOIN  OUR  ACTION  CAMPAIGN!!
    ODMAH OSLOBODITE ALBANSKE ZATVORENIKE!
                             RELEASE THE ALBANIAN PRISONERS NOW!
         TË LIROHEN MENJËHERË TË BURGOSURIT!
                               LASST JETZT DIE GEFANGENEN FREI!!
        VISIT US AT      http://www.kosova-info-line.de/APP/
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
____________________________________________________________
http://www.b92.net/archive/e/index.phtml?Y=2001&M=02&D=07

FreeB92  Last update: Feb 8, 2001 00:36 CET
Serbian parliament demands Amnesty bill revision

20:30 BELGRADE, Wednesday - The Serbian parliament's judicial committee
has returned the draft Amnesty bill to the government after members
raised objections to several points within it.
     However, the committee approved the broad outline of the bill, which
proposes sentence reductions of either 15 or 25 per cent depending on
the gravity of the offence committed.
     Most objections were raised by Democratic Opposition of Serbia MPs,
who said the bill was being pushed through parliament under pressure
from the prison rioters. The fiercest debate revolved around the
proposal from DOS MP Leila Ruzdic that those convicted of rape or
intercourse with children or defenceless people be exempted from the
amnesty.
______________

----Original Message-----
From: Human Rights Watch [mailto:HRWpress at hrw.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 6:26 AM
To: hrwpress at hrw.org
Subject: Yugoslavia: International Justice Required

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

YUGOSLAVIA: INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE REQUIRED
Link E.U. Aid to Cooperation with International Tribunal

(Brussels, 7 February 2001)—As European Union officials prepared to
travel to Belgrade, Human Rights Watch today urged that the E.U. insist
on Yugoslav cooperation with the international war crimes tribunal.

“The end of the abusive Milosevic regime is a welcome development,” said
Holly Cartner, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and
Central Asia Division.  “But there can be little hope of a clean break
with the past unless the indicted architects of ethnic cleansing are
brought to justice.”

In a letter sent to all E.U. foreign ministers, the human rights
monitoring group urged them to tell their counterparts in Belgrade that
future E.U. funding to the Yugoslav government will require cooperation
with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,
including the arrest and transfer of indicted war criminals living in
Serbia.

“In the early weeks after the October revolution, President Kostunica
could plausibly argue that he needed time,” said Cartner.  “But the
honeymoon is now over and the international community should make clear
to Yugoslav officials that it demands cooperation with the Tribunal.”

Human Rights Watch also urged the E.U. to adopt a common position on aid
to Yugoslavia that would make E.U. assistance conditioned on cooperation
with the Tribunal and other reform measures.  Although Prime Minister
Goran Persson of Sweden, which currently holds the rotating E.U.
Presidency, is reported to have told Yugoslav President Vojislav
Kostunica last week that continued E.U. funds require cooperation with
the Tribunal, the E.U. has not formally adopted this position as binding
policy.  The United States government has set 1 April as the deadline by
which Yugoslav authorities must be cooperating with the Tribunal,
including the arrest and transfer of indictees, or else face a funding
cut-off.

Human Rights Watch made the appeal after the Tribunal prosecutor, Carla
Del Ponte, recently received a chilly welcome in Belgrade from President
Kostunica.  Questioning the legality and procedures of the Tribunal,
Kostunica reportedly told Del Ponte that his government would not
cooperate in the apprehension of indicted war crimes suspects for trial
by the Tribunal in the Hague.

Yugoslav government officials have said that they intend to try former
President Slobodan Milosevic in a local court.  Rights groups and
Tribunal officials insist that any trials for war crimes must take place
before the international tribunal.

“According to United Nations resolutions, which are binding on
Yugoslavia, the Tribunal must have the first opportunity to try war
criminals,” explained Cartner.  “In this case, it’s hard to imagine that
a Serbian court could do justice for Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovar
victims of Serb war-time abuses.  Only an international forum can
guarantee accountability in an even-handed way.”

A copy of the Human Rights Watch letter to E.U. foreign ministers can be
found at http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/02/icty0207.htm.

For further information, please contact:
In Brussels, Jean-Paul Marthoz: +32-2-732-2009
In New York, Holly Cartner: +1-212-216-1277
_________________________________________

February 6, 2001           (From Kosova e Lire - February 3, 2001)
To: Wolfgang Plarre
From: Raif Emini

This is a letter written by one of 670 Albanian
prisoners addressed to their families... that they are
still hoping that their loved ones will be released
from serbian prisons.Its writer achieved to send it
from a jail in order to inform , as you may know  that
THE  RED  CROSS does not inform everyone about true
situation of Albanians in Serbian jails.

-I am a political  prisoner sentenced to 14 years. I
address this letter to all Albanians wherever they
are, writing it from the cold  floor of a Serbian
prison.
Last week, through the media and through visits of
concerned lawyers, we were informed that Federal
Government here ( of Yugoslavia) accepted a draft of a
law proposal for amnesty, which will be suggested for
the approval at the Federal Assembly of this country
within a  short time. Unfortunately this law  is
foreseen to release only a part of imprisoned
Albanians for which we have some joyful
emotions,whereas another number of them will remain in
intolerable prisons of Serbia including my self. We
have to encouter the nightmare of insecurity for the
future. With  good will from  International Community.
Serbian regime, Albanian political factor and up to a
point because of the lack of people's insistence, we
hostages will remain further mice for testing. I,
personally, unfortunately, see that that the will of a
afore-mentioned   parties about our destiny is an
agreement, which it seems only you being members of
our families you do not understand it, and it seems
that those cruel and vicious persons of international
offices convince you that we are going to be released
from prisons regardless of articles and indictments.
This fact cannot be understood by most peopleŠ..
However we wait. By this I'm not saying that our
hearts are broken, but the truth is that now we use
only our will to overcome our bad situation and let's
not talk about our physical injuries
Š..

_*************************************************
From: "Olivier Dupuis" <odupuis at visto.com>
Subject: KOSOVARIAN HOSTAGES HELD IN SERBIA: OPEN LETTER TO THE 
EUROPEAN UNION TROIKA
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 03:04:05 -0800
To: odupuis at visto.com

KOSOVARIAN HOSTAGES HELD IN SERBIA: OPEN LETTER TO THE EUROPEAN UNION TROIKA

Brussels, February 7, 2001. The following newspapers, Le Matin 
(Brussels), Koha Ditore (Pristina) and LíOpinione (Rome), have 
published the open letter of Olivier Dupuis on the issues of the 
Kosovarian hostages and of international justice to Mrs Anna Lindh, 
Serving President of the Council, Mr Chris Patten, Commissioner for 
External Relations, Mr Javier Solana, High Representative for Foreign 
Policy and Common Security and for information to Mrs Nicole 
Fontaine, President of the European Parliament
and Mrs Doris Pack, President of the EP/South East Europe Delegation.

Rt. Hon. Serving President, Rt. Hon. Commissioner, Rt. Hon. High 
Representative for Foreign Policy and Common Security,

Unlike us, President Kostunica has evidently not watched the TV news 
over the past months and years, and has thus not witnessed the 
favourite pastime of Mladicís military and paramilitary forces: 
shooting at children, old people, and unarmed civilians, from the 
hills around Sarajevo, for example. He evidently has no memory of 
those dignified, harmless civilians who every day would defy the 
Serbian heroes safe in their lookout posts. Just as he has no memory 
of Vukovar, of the prisoners killed and the sick murdered in their 
hospital beds. He probably knows nothing of the experience of the 
besieged, bombarded cities of Osijek, Sarajevo, GorazdeÖ he has no 
memory of the 7,000 defenders of Srebrenica who were killed 
ruthlessly. He knows nothing about the Serbs, like Momcilo 
Vukasinovic, a member of the Transnational Radical Party, who died 
during those dark days in the attempt to defend democracy and Croatia 
from the regime that was then in power, and would remain in power for 
a long time to come, in Belgrade.
President Kostunica also has no memory - how could he? - of the death 
of my friend Izet Muhamedagic, the Vice-Minister of Justice in the 
Sarajevo government, he too a Radical and a supporter of the campaign 
for the International Court. Rescued from certain death in a field or 
a police station somewhere in the Republika Sprska thanks to the 
efforts of several Radical activists in the summer of 1994, he died a 
few weeks later in the helicopter that was trying to get him and his 
colleagues in the Sarajevo government out of Bihac, where they had 
gone to give moral support to their besieged fellow countrymen. Just 
as he cannot remember the concentration camps in Omarska, PrijedorÖ 
the starving faces of the Bosnians, pictures so similar to those that 
the world, the German people and the leaders of the Nazi regime 
discovered, sometimes with disbelief, in 1945. And how could he? He 
has never seen these pictures. Just as he has doubtless never seen 
the isolated building in Belgrade, its walls covered with slogans 
painted in black, which was the home of the great Serbian architect 
and democrat Bogdan Bogdanovic, the exiled ìOustachaî.

>From what he says, it seems that even the 1,000,000 Kosovans forced 
>at gunpoint to abandon everything and flee to exile in the atrocious 
>conditions that we all remember, even the hands that set fire to 
>their houses and stole their property, are not part of his countryís 
>history. And that the 200,000 victims in Bosnia, the civilians 
>driven into minefields, the thousands of summary executions, the 
>premeditated rapes, and the thousands of victims in Croatia and 
>Kosovo are nothing but NATO propaganda.

President Kostunica, it seems, has only one memory. The one Milosevic 
left to him. The memory of authoritarian regimes. A selective memory. 
The memory of the leaderís speeches and deeds, the memory of the 
ìresistanceî against the international conspiracy.

President Kostunicaís speeches are nothing but a gigantic inversion 
of the truth. Given a regal welcome by the European Parliament last 
autumn, he did not say a single word about the last ten years, about 
the hundreds of thousands of victims, about the unnameable horrors 
committed for the ìdefenceî of his people. Just as he did not say a 
word about the 700 Kosovans still detained in Serbia. Only the 
Serbian victims of NATO bombing deserved his compassion.

Some of us found President Kostunicaís selective memory and one-way 
compassion, and the amnesia of the enthusiastic Euro-MPs, to be 
distasteful: ìNever mind,î we were told. The monster is still alive. 
The Serbian opposition still has to go through the torture of 
legislative elections. Since 23 December this has no longer been 
true: the Serbian opposition has won hands down. Yet President 
Kostunica has still not changed his tune. Never mind, we are told. He 
is a stickler for legal procedures. Every decision must comply with 
the law and the constitution.

Justice, the lawÖ. Letís talk about it. Resolution 827 of the United 
Nations could not be clearer: ìYugoslavia must co-operate fully with 
the International Tribunal and comply with any order issued in line 
with Art. 29 of the Statuteî. What we see, however, is President 
Kostunica giving a lesson in justice to the Chief Prosecutor of the 
Tribunal. The Croatian and Bosnian authorities, who complied with the 
resolution in much more difficult circumstances, will be deeply 
impressedÖ As for the victims, the families of the deadÖ.

Justice, the lawÖ. For the 700 Albanian Kosovarians detained for over 
20 months in Serbian prisons. There is talk of an amnesty in the near 
future for 200 of themÖ An amnesty that would be as illegal as the 
rounding-up and imprisonment they have suffered for the past 20 
months. In terms of international law and Resolution 1244 of the 
United Nations, there can be no doubt that the 700 Kosovarians are 
hostages to all effects. Some of them have been sentenced by the 
Pristina courts, but these sentences, where they exist, are null and 
void. As the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the 
United Nations and Natasha Kandic have recalled, if it is confirmed 
that some of them have been indicted for war crimes, crimes against 
humanity or genocide, only the UNMIK and the Tribunal in The Hague 
have the power to pronounce judgement on them.

There can be no future without memory. And there can be no memory 
without knowledge. This knowledge, which we owe to the Serbian 
people, must be at the centre of any overture to Belgrade. And only 
the International Tribunal for crimes committed in the former 
Yugoslavia can now bring about such knowledge, as well as some 
justice.

As for the torment of the 700 Kosovarians, it has gone on far too 
long. The Belgrade authorities must hand them back immediately to the 
Special Representative Haekkerup. Otherwise the Tribunal in The Hague 
will have no alternative but to indict the Belgrade authorities - 
those in power now - for the illegal detention of civilians and for 
abetment in the taking of hostages.

The European Union must convey this message, as clearly and firmly as 
possible, to the Belgrade authorities, first of all to President 
Kostunica and the Prime Minister Djindjic. The Council, the 
Commission and the Parliament can no longer allow Belgrade to respond 
to the injunctions of the United Nations with silence or arrogance. 
The dignity of the Union is at stake.
  Thank you for your attention. I trust that you will pursue the issue 
with determination,
Yours sincerely,
Olivier Dupuis
Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party, Member of the European 
Parliament_________________________________________________
----Original Message-----
From: Human Rights Watch [mailto:HRWpress at hrw.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 6:26 AM
To: hrwpress at hrw.org
Subject: Yugoslavia: International Justice Required

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE