[LiriaKombtare-Info] [AMCC-News] HRW: Police Abuse Against Albanians Continues in Macedonia (Human Rights Watch - 8/22/2001)

[Mentor Cana]

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                Human Rights Violations in Macedonia
  
            http://www.alb-net.com/amcc/humanrights.htm
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    "Persistent police abuse in Macedonia is simply shocking. Macedonia
     must urgently address the violence in its police stations. Ethnic
     Albanians are being severely abused, and in some cases beaten to
     death, without the slightest prospect of accountability."

                                        Elizabeth Andersen
                                        Executive Director, HRW
                                        Europe and Central Asia division

http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/08/macedonia0822.htm

Police Abuse Against Albanians Continues in Macedonia
Peace Agreement Doesn't End Violence

(Skopje, August 22, 2001) Police abuse against ethnic Albanians remains a
serious concern in Macedonia despite the recent signing of a political
agreement aimed to end the six-month old conflict, Human Rights Watch said
today.

On August 13, 2001-the same day the Macedonian government and ethnic
Albanian leaders signed a framework peace agreement-police officers in
Skopje beat to death an Albanian man suspected of being a rebel.

"Persistent police abuse in Macedonia is simply shocking," said Elizabeth
Andersen, Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of
Human Rights Watch. "Macedonia must urgently address the violence in its
police stations. Ethnic Albanians are being severely abused, and in some
cases beaten to death, without the slightest prospect of accountability."

Human Rights Watch also urged that international organizations operating in
Macedonia dramatically increase their human rights monitoring presence in
the country.

On Monday, August 13, 2001, police officers guarding Skopje's main hospital
arrested four ethnic Albanians who had come to the hospital to pick up an
elderly Albanian relative undergoing kidney dialysis treatment. The police
searched their car and claimed to find a bullet in the trunk. The police
then proceeded to beat the four men in the street.

The men were then taken onto the hospital grounds and beaten continuously
for several hours with heavy metal cables, baseball bats, police
truncheons, and gun butts, amidst jeering from the civilian crowd that had
gathered. Following this, the four men were taken to the "Beko One" police
station, where they were subjected to more beatings, had urine and burning
cigarettes thrown at them, and were threatened with execution. Following
interventions from their ethnic Macedonian lawyer and a police officer who
knew the men, they were released the next morning. One of the men,
twenty-nine year old Nazmi Aliu, father of a six-year-old and a
two-year-old, died that day at the hospital from the injuries he received
from the police beatings.

Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed two of the surviving men, who
gave consistent and credible accounts of their ordeal, and inspected their
severe bruises from the beatings. One of the men, who was a week later
still unable to stand because of the injuries he received during the
beatings, told Human Rights Watch:

  [After claiming to find the bullet], they started beating us right there.
  One police officer hit me with a thick wire cable and slammed my head
  into the wall. My front teeth were in great pain. They were beating us
  for about one hour in the street, all of them, with cables, rubber
  truncheons, baseball bats, gun handles. There were lots of civilians
  there looking, they were swearing at us.

  We couldn't walk, so they dragged us inside the main gate [of the
  hospital] to some stores near a fountain. While they were dragging us,
  they were beating us very badly. I lost my consciousness there from the
  beating, and they took water from the fountain to revive us. . . .

  Then they dragged us out and put us in a police van and took us to the
  police station. They dragged us out of the van, and the commander said,
  "Who wishes to beat the UCK [rebels]?" They formed a column of police
  officers, some on our left and some on our right, and one of the officers
  would drag us through the column and they would beat us . . . .

  [In the cell,] the commander came and opened the door and everyone came
  inside. They beat us very badly, I couldn't move to protect myself, we
  were just lying like dead bodies there. Then the commander said, "OK,
  it's enough now, we will do it again after five minutes." He locked the
  door... One police officer grabbed a long metal stick and started beating us
  through the bars. We couldn't move, we just lay there and couldn't
  protect ourselves. They took a basket of water and urinated in it, and
  threw it on us. They kept pouring water on us, just to keep us conscious.
  They would swear at us, saying, "You UCK motherfuckers, we are going to
  kill you slowly."

Police abuse is an endemic problem in Macedonia, and was one of the main
grievances raised by the ethnic Albanian rebel National Liberation Army
(NLA; UCK in Albanian)) to justify its resort to arms. The framework peace
agreement signed last week provides for the gradual integration of ethnic
Albanians into the predominantly ethnic Macedonian police force.

"The peace agreement lays out a long-term plan for addressing the problem,"
Andersen stated. "What is also needed are immediate measures to curb abuse,
including international human rights monitors regularly visiting police
stations and insisting on accountability in cases like these."

Human Rights Watch has issued two reports on police abuse in Macedonia, in
1996 and in 1998. (See A Threat to Stability, June 1996; and Police
Violence in Macedonia, April 1998) The rights group has documented
widespread abuse at police stations since the beginning of the conflict.
(See Human Rights Watch release, Macedonian Police Abuses Documented, May
31, 2001).

Human Rights Watch also expressed concern about the safety of at least
twenty-seven ethnic Albanian men who were detained on Sunday, August 12,
2001 by the Macedonian police during an operation in the village of
Ljuboten. In addition to the detentions, the Ljuboten operation resulted in
the deaths of at least ten ethnic Albanian civilians. The Macedonian police
have claimed that the operation targeted an NLA stronghold, but they have
produced no proof to counteract mounting evidence that the victims of the
police action were civilians, not fighters.

On Saturday, August 18, relatives found the body of one man missing from
Ljuboten, thirty-five-year-old Atulah Qaini, at the morgue in Skopje. The
body of Qaini, who had last been seen in police custody in the village,
bore clear signs of severe beatings and had a cracked skull when inspected
by Human Rights Watch researchers. Most of the other men have been located
alive in police detention, but bear clear signs of severe beatings
according to relatives. A mother interviewed by Human Rights Watch who had
a thirteen- year-old son detained in the village said that his entire face
was bruised and swollen when she went to visit him in prison.

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