[Kcc-News] Massive detentions of ethnic Albanians in Serbia

[Mentor Cana]

http://www.clari.net/hot/wed/bt/Qyugo-kosovo.RM62_AlG.html

Massive detentions of ethnic Albanians in Serbia: party

Sunday, 16-Jul-2000  11:20AM

VRANJE, Yugoslavia, July 16 (AFP) - Serbian police are continuing to
detain ethnic Albanians in the southern Serbian communities of Presevo,
Bujanovac and Medvedja near the Kosovo border, a local ethnic Albanian
party charged Sunday.
     "In recent days, after a series of explosions" in the area,
"numerous Albanians were detained while their homes were searched, thus
raising political tensions," said a statement from the Party for
Democratic Action (PPD), which represents ethnic Albanians in the
region.
     Some 70,000 Albanians live in the three communities, after
thousands of them fled the area during and after the 1999 NATO bombing
campaign on Yugoslavia.
     The police and the army have multiplied their checkpoints in the
region, the party said, describing the moves as a "progressive
imposition of the state of emergency."
     The PDD accused the Serbian authorities of trying to create a
"feeling of insecurity" among the Albanians, "in a bid to speed up their
exodus" from the area.
     The Albanians have been "deprived of basic rights," while the
economic development of the region "is endangered" by Belgrade's moves,
the statement said.
     Local Serbian authorities said Thursday that mortar shells had been
fired at a police checkpoint in Konculj, a village in the so-called
security zone, established after NATO-led peacekeepers entered Kosovo in
June 1999.
     Only Serb police can patrol the area, often called the
"demilitarized zone".
     Konculj is situated near the village Dobrosin, a stronghold of an
ethnic Albanian armed separatist group named "The Liberation Army of
Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac" (UCPMB).
     Violence between Albanian separatists and police has already left
several people dead and dozens wounded.