[From nobody Fri Sep 28 16:27:27 2007 Return-Path: <a-pal-admin@alb-net.com> Received: from rly-zb03.mx.aol.com (rly-zb03.mail.aol.com [172.31.41.3]) by air-zb05.mail.aol.com (v77_r1.21) with ESMTP; Thu, 08 Feb 2001 19:47:57 -0500 Received: from alb-net.com (alb-net.com [199.173.50.4]) by rly-zb03.mx.aol.com (v77.27) with ESMTP; Thu, 08 Feb 2001 19:47:17 -0500 Received: from alb-net.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by alb-net.com (8.11.2/8.11.2) with ESMTP id f190jHS03149; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 19:45:17 -0500 (EST) Received: from smtp-server.maine.rr.com (smtp-server.maine.rr.com [204.210.65.66]) by alb-net.com (8.11.2/8.11.2) with ESMTP id f18MlsS01096 for <a-pal@alb-net.com>; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 17:47:54 -0500 (EST) Received: from [66.30.16.95] (ptldme-cmt3-c3-66-30-16-95.maine.rr.com [66.30.16.95]) by smtp-server.maine.rr.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0BDB03CA74 for <a-pal@alb-net.com>; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 17:52:08 -0500 (EST) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <v04220800b6a8d1404d8c@[66.30.16.95]> To: a-pal@alb-net.com From: Alice Mead <amead@mail.maine.rr.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="============_-1230450325==_ma============" Subject: [A-PAL] NEWSLETTER, FEB. 8, 2001 Sender: a-pal-admin@alb-net.com Errors-To: a-pal-admin@alb-net.com X-BeenThere: a-pal@alb-net.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.1 Precedence: bulk List-Help: <mailto:a-pal-request@alb-net.com?subject=help> List-Post: <mailto:a-pal@alb-net.com> List-Subscribe: <http://www.alb-net.com/mailman/listinfo/a-pal>, <mailto:a-pal-request@alb-net.com?subject=subscribe> List-Id: Albanian Prisoner Advocacy List -- Prisoner Pals <a-pal.alb-net.com> List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.alb-net.com/mailman/listinfo/a-pal>, <mailto:a-pal-request@alb-net.com?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://www.alb-net.com/pipermail//a-pal/> Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 17:42:49 -0500 X-Mailer: Unknown (No Version) --============_-1230450325==_ma============ Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <bold><underline><fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><bigger> =20 A-PAL NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 8, 2001________ </bigger></fontfamily></underline><fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><bigger>P= LEASE SIGN OUR ONLINE PETITION AT =20 </bigger></fontfamily></bold><fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><bigger><under= line><color><param>0000,0000,00FF</param><bigger>WWW.KHAO.ORG/APPKOSOVA.HTM </bigger></color></underline><bold>WE ARE PREPARING THE INTERNATIONAL LIST OF SIGNATURES FOR DELIVERY TO THE FRY GOVERNMENT AS WELL AS THE EU PRESIDENCY. </bold> 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 ! <underline>SUPPORT THE HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH REQUEST TO TIE FINANCIAL AID TO YUGOSLAVIA TO COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS </underline>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=20 CAMPAIGN!! ODMAH OSLOBODITE ALBANSKE ZATVORENIKE! <underline>RELEASE THE ALBANIAN PRISONERS NOW! </underline> T=CB LIROHEN MENJ=CBHER=CB T=CB BURGOSURIT! LASST JETZT DIE GEFANGENEN FREI!! VISIT US AT <bold>http://www.kosova-info-line.de/APP/ </bold>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____________________________________________________________ http://www.b92.net/archive/e/index.phtml?Y=3D2001&M=3D02&D=3D07 FreeB92 Last update: Feb 8, 2001 00:36 CET <bold><underline>Serbian parliament demands Amnesty bill revision=20 </underline></bold>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.=20 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.=20 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.=20 ______________ ----Original Message----- From: Human Rights Watch [mailto:HRWpress@hrw.org] Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 6:26 AM To: hrwpress@hrw.org Subject: Yugoslavia: International Justice Required FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE <bold>YUGOSLAVIA: INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE REQUIRED Link E.U. Aid to Cooperation with International Tribunal </bold>(Brussels, 7 February 2001)=97As 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. =93The end of the abusive Milosevic regime is a welcome development,=94 said Holly Cartner, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch=92s Europe and Central Asia Division. =93But there can be little hope of a clean break with the past unless the indicted architects of ethnic cleansing are brought to justice.=94 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. =93In the early weeks after the October revolution, President Kostunica could plausibly argue that he needed time,=94 said Cartner. =93But the honeymoon is now over and the international community should make clear to Yugoslav officials that it demands cooperation with the Tribunal.=94 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. =93According to United Nations resolutions, which are binding on Yugoslavia, the Tribunal must have the first opportunity to try war criminals,=94 explained Cartner. =93In this case, it=92s 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.=94 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 <bold>This is a letter written by one of 670 Albanian prisoners a</bold>ddressed 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 people=8A.. 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=85=8A.. _************************************************* From: "Olivier Dupuis" <<odupuis@visto.com> Subject<bold>: KOSOVARIAN HOSTAGES HELD IN SERBIA: OPEN LETTER TO THE EUROPEAN UNION TROIKA Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 03:04:05 -0800 </bold>To: odupuis@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 L=EDOpinione (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 Mladic=EDs 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, Gorazde=D6 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.=20 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, Prijedor=D6 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 =ECOustacha=EE. >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 country=EDs 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.=20 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 leader=EDs speeches and deeds, the memory of the =ECresistance=EE against the international conspiracy. President Kostunica=EDs 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 =ECdefence=EE 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.=20 Some of us found President Kostunica=EDs selective memory and one-way compassion, and the amnesia of the enthusiastic Euro-MPs, to be distasteful: =ECNever mind,=EE 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 law=D6. Let=EDs talk about it. Resolution 827 of the United Nations could not be clearer: =ECYugoslavia must co-operate fully with the International Tribunal and comply with any order issued in line with Art. 29 of the Statute=EE. 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 impressed=D6 As for the victims, the families of the dead=D6. Justice, the law=D6. 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 them=D6 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.=20 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 --============_-1230450325==_ma============-- ]