[kcc-news] Kosovo Flash #28: Killings and Scorched Earth in Southern Kosovo

[Mentor Cana]

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE APRIL 20, 1999
     Human Rights Watch
     KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS FLASH #28

 Killings and Scorched Earth in Southern Kosovo

        Over the past ten days, Human Rights Watch researchers in Macedonia
     independently interviewed more than twenty refugees from villages in
     the area between Urosevac (Ferizaj in Albanian) and the Macedonian
     border. The refugees, many of whom were on the move inside Kosovo for
     more than two weeks, described military style operations against their
     home villages, including heavy shelling and the use of tanks, followed
     by the wholesale burning of villages and crops and the deliberate
     slaughter of livestock.  Refugees from several villages also provided
     consistent accounts of the killing of civilians by Serbian police and
     paramilitary units, as well as reports that some of the corpses had
     been mutilated.

        In the village of Bajnica (close to Doganovic), eyewitnesses
     described how tanks entered the village without warning on the morning
     of April 3, followed by Serbian police and paramilitaries who set fire
     to houses, shot farm animals and beat residents in the street.  Qamil
     Rhexepi, a sixty-year-old resident of Bajnica, and  Demir Sulemani, a
     forty-eight-year-old man from Brod, were shot by Serbian forces during
     the operation, witnesses said. One witness saw Rhexepi being shot by
     masked men in green camouflage uniforms as he tried to flee the
     village. When the witness and three other men, all interviewed
     separately by Human Rights Watch, returned to the scene of the
     shooting later that day, they found the mutilated bodies of Rhexepi
     and Sulemani. Sulemani's eyes had been removed, and his throat had
     been cut, they all said. Describing the scene, one of the witnesses
     said: "the village was destroyed -- it was horrible to see.  They just
     did it so we can't go back."

        A refugee from the village of Rakaj told Human Rights Watch that
     Serbian police had entered the village on April 3, forcing the
     residents to flee to neighboring Cakaj. The village was subsequently
     looted and burned, he said. On Tuesday, April 13, Cakaj's inhabitants
     and those being sheltered there (including persons from nearby Lamaj
     and Duraj) also fled after Duraj was shelled at around 11:00 a.m. The
     women, children and elderly, who took refuge in a canyon, were
     subsequently caught by armed police in masks who told them that  they
     "couldn't leave until they [the police] had burned all the houses."

        Three witnesses hiding in the area heard shots after three men
     (forty-year-old Shiqiri Halili, forty-year-old Jakup Caka, and
     forty-six-year-old Mahmut Caka) tried to escape from the area around
     the canyon. After the police left around 3:00 p.m., one witnesses
     found Halili shot eight times, but still alive.  Nearby, the witness
     said, were the mutilated corpses of Jakup and Mahmut Caka. Halili died
     later that same day.

        Four witnesses interviewed by a Human Rights Watch researcher
     indicated that an additional eight bodies were discovered when the
     villagers returned to Cakaj, bringing the number of dead to eleven.
     Those killed included: Rahman Lama, 50; Ibrahim Lama, 20; Habib Lami,
     18; Ilir Caka 19; and Qemal and Sabri Saliu, as well as their brother.
     The village was completely burned, witnesses said, including the
     bodies of farm animals.

        Human Rights Watch representatives also spoke with multiple
     witnesses from the area who claimed that the police had destroyed the
     following villages: Slatin, Gabrica, Elezaj, Gatchka, Duraj and Lamaj.
      Three witnesses from the village of Firaj (on the road between Strpce
     and Brod) interviewed independently by Human Rights Watch also
     reported forcible evictions and scorched earth tactics in their area.
     They described the widespread looting and burning of villages,
     including Firaj, Brod, Vica, Upper and Lower Bitinja.

        These interviews indicate a consistent pattern of killings and
     literal scorched earth tactics by Serbian and Yugoslav forces in the
     southern region of Kosovo.  Most villages along the Macedonian border
     have been ethnically cleansed and destroyed.

     For further information contact:
     Fred Abrahams (New York): 1-212-216-1270
     Holly Cartner (New York): 1-212-216-1277
     Jean-Paul Marthoz (Brussels): 322-736-7838


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