Violation of Human Rights of Serbs in the Province of Kosovo and Metohija
After June 1999, International Red Cross noted some 250,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians who had been expelled by terror, intimidation and ethnic cleansing leave their birth places and homes in Kosovo and Metohija. Current UNHCR data show return of some 18,000 Serbs, but in reality this number is some 6,000, or 2.1% [...]
The struggle for peace and the struggle for full respect of universal human rights, as defined by UN Declaration on protection of human rights, are interdependent and non-separable. Violations of sovereignty and territorial integrity, military interventions, aggressions and occupations go hand in hand with massive violations of the basic human rights.
It is clear that there are no humanitarian military interventions.
NATO military aggression against Yugoslavia ( Serbia ) which started March 24rth, 1999 was launched to allegedly protect human rights of Kosovo Albanians. It was carried out in blatant violation of the basic principals of International Law and without approval of UN Security Council. The precedent was used later in various other parts of the world whenever it suited the interests of USA and NATO: Afghanistan , Iraq , and Libya . There are threats that it may be used against other countries like Syria, Iran, North Korea or any other country.
NATO aggression against Serbia (FR of Yugoslavia) in 1999 left close to 4000 dead and more tan 10.000 wounded, two thirds of whom where civilians including close to 1 hundred children. NATO forces were using missiles with depleted uranium, causing massive cancer disease, deformation of newly-born babies unknown before. NATO polluted soil, water and food production for unbelievable period of four billion years. Direct economic damage caused by aggression was estimated to an amount of over one hundred billion dollars.
Immediately after the end of the aggression, USA constructed on Serbian soil in Kosovo and Metohija the biggest American base in the world known as Bondsteel. This was the beginning of mushrooming of USA and NATO military basis all over the Balkans and Eastern Europe .
Today there are more USA and NATO military basis in Europe than any time during the Cold War Era.
Why?
Warsaw Pact has been disbanded. There are no confronting socio-political systems; all European countries apparently enjoy free market economies and multi-party parliamentary democracy. What and who to defend and where from by so many military bases and long range ballistic rockets carrying nuclear warheads? From international terrorism? Cyber attackers? International organized crime groups? Rogue states?
The overall economic, financial, political and moral crises of the leading countries of the West will probably lead to further spreading of interventionism, militarization and total disregard of the basic principles of international relations. Cover up justifications will not be a problem. So far there has been abundance of “positive” experiences of “humanitarian interventions”, “protection of civilians” from dictatorial regimes etc. The richest and militarily the strongest are not ready to carry alone the burden of the crises that they have caused themselves. Their might is serving them to transfer the burden of the crises to the weaker, especially, if the weaker happen to have oil, gas, or strategic minerals.
The crises have already caused the most massive violation of human rights such as the right to employment, education, health, information, privacy.
Shortly after NATO “humanitarian” aggression on Yugoslavia (Serbia), it became clear that intervention actually resulted in an unprecedented scale of violation of human rights of Serbs and non-Albanians of Kosovo and Metohija Province. Alliance between NATO and the Albanian terrorists and separatists during the military aggression (KLA), continued ever since and reached its peak in February 2008 by unilateral proclamation of illegal secession of the province from Serbia . This act would never be possible without NATO aggression, occupation and support. It, again, violated the basic principles of the national and international laws, UN Charter and UN Security Council’s resolution 1244 (1999) which guaranties sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia.
The consequences are that Kosovo and Metohija after 12 years of being under UN mandate continues to be the source of instability in the Balkans, organized international crime and spring board of extremism and terrorism toward the rest of Europe.
The Province of Kosovo and Metohija is the birth place of Serbian nation, culture, religion and state. Thousands of Serbian medieval monuments witness to this. There are two large communities living in the Province – Kosovo Serbs, who are Orthodox Christians, and Kosovo Albanians, the great majority of whom are Moslems. Before the beginning of the Second World War Serbian population in the Province were majority. Today, Serbs make less than 10 percent of the total population of the Province. The drastic change in national structure was due to the policy of ethnic cleansing of Serbs occupation for about 500 years, then by fascist-Nazi occupation forces (1941 – 1945) of over decades if not centuries – first by Turkish Empire which kept the Province under Mussolini and Hitler and finally by NATO aggression and occupation which continues up to these days.
UN Security Council Resolution 1244, of June 10, 1999 put the end of the NATO aggression but introduced military occupation of the Province, formally by international UN mandated forces (KFOR), in reality by NATO forces. Ever since June 1999, we have been witnessing large scale of individual and even institutionally-sponsored violation of basic human rights and freedoms of Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians.
Here are some examples of major human rights violations.
No free and safe return for 250,000 displaced Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija
After June 1999, International Red Cross noted some 250,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians who had been expelled by terror, intimidation and ethnic cleansing leave their birth places and homes in Kosovo and Metohija. Current UNHCR data show return of some 18,000 Serbs, but in reality this number is some 6,000, or 2.1%. UN Mission and other international stakeholders organized the process of the return, but no results. Therefore, Serbia remains the country with the highest number of refugees and displaced persons in the whole of Europe.
No justice for the victims
After June 1999, close to 1,000 Serbian and other non-Albanian civilians have been abducted and eventually killed. In July 1999, 14 people, including children, in the village of Staro Gracko were killed while harvesting in the field. In the winter 2002, a bomb was planted and set-off under a passenger bus killing many Serb passengers. In August 2003 a group of Serbian children playing by the river in village of Gorazdevac , were killed. Thousands of other crimes against Serbs in the Province have been committed and none of the culprits brought to justice although justice and police are directly managed by UN and EU missions (UNMIK, EULEX).
Human organs trafficking
In December 2010, Special Rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Swiss MP Dick Marty , published Report on trafficking of human organ of abducted Serbs in 1999. The Parliamentary Assembly adopted the Report and passed Resolution demanding independent international investigation. So far no results because the people involved in this organized crime are Kosovo Albanian top politicians, former leaders of the terrorist KLA (UCK). They enjoy support and protection from Washington, London and Berlin.
We demand that the investigation in the human organs trafficking in Kosovo and Metohija be conducted under auspices of UN Security Council without further delay.
Illegal occupation of Serbian-owned property
After June 1999, Kosovo Albanians simply occupied all immovable and movable possessions of 250,000 Serbs who left Kosovo, but also of Serbs who remained there. Often, owners were either killed or expelled by force from their properties. In September 1999, the UN founded a body that was supposed to facilitate the return of property to legal owners, the Housing and Property Directorate, but there are no results.
General insecurity
Since June 1999, there was almost no freedom of movement outside the so-called enclaves in which Serbs found their safety. Today Serbs still cannot access their businesses and land without risk of being attacked end even killed. They still cannot go churches and cemeteries without KFOR military escort. Some of Serbian enclaves even today continue to be fenced by barbed wire and their inhabitants living in ghetto-like conditions.
Rewriting history
Ever since NATO aggression in 1999, there has been systematic destruction of any traces of Serbian monuments and Christianity in Kosovo. Some 150 Serbian Orthodox churches and medieval monasteries have been destroyed, originating from as early as 13th and 14th centuries, including some from the UNESCO List of World Heritage. In addition, there has been a wide-spread exercise to rename remaining churches and monasteries as “Byzantine” or “Albanian”, or “Albanian castles and towers.
Violation of right to health
Kosovo Albanian authorities have been stopping and seizing shipments of medical equipment and medical drugs intended for medical facilities in Serbian enclaves. In addition, they have been willfully and intentionally trying to worsen situation for Serbian populated areas, by cutting the electric power supply. For three years in the row, in winter time they have been cutting power supply to Serbian enclaves.
Violation of right to education
Since June 1999, all cities and towns in Kosovo except Mitrovica in the north were ethnically cleansed and became mono-ethnically Albanian. Serbs and other ethnic groups were driven to villages. School facilities were inaccessible for Serbian schoolchildren. They had to resort to inadequate premises for schools. However, most drastic situation is in Gorani community. The Goranis are local Serbian speaking ethnic group of Muslim belief, who have been exposed to incessant assimilation attempts and forced to accept Albanian language and Albanian curriculum. This pressure still goes on.
Struggle for peace and struggle for social, economic, political and cultural human rights are the duty of peace movements and all peace loving forces.
Freedom, equality in rights and opportunities and sovereignty of states and nations are preconditions for full respect of human rights as provided for in the UN GS Declaration on human rights.
Liberal corporate capitalism in its imperialistic stage is the chief source of massive violation of the basic human rights of the mankind.
Global economic, financial, political and moral crisis of the western societies is accompanied by the most massive violation of the basic human rights after the end of the Second World War.
Global interventionism, wars and violations of human rights, disrespect of the international law and abuse of United Nations, are immanent features of corporate capitalism.
As the NATO aggression against Serbia (FRY) 13 years ago had shown there are no humanitarian military interventions whatsoever.
NATO has become the most dangerous tool for massive violation of human rights in the second half of XX and first two decades of XXI centuries. Therefore NATO as remnant of the cold war area should be abolished and its entire military bases, as well as military bases of member countries all over the world, should be dismantled.
The use of the missiles with depleted uranium should be formally banned by international convention.
Abuse of human rights for spreading domination of imperialism is impermissible and should be stopped forthwith.
All Serbs and other non-Albanians expelled from the Province after NATO aggression 13 years ago are entitled to free and safe return to their homes in the Kosovo and Metohija Province.
Territorial integrity and sovereignty of each country should be fully respected in the interest of peace and stability. Natural and economic resources, including oil and natural gas reserves, are subject to sovereign control and exploitation by concrete countries and can not be excuse for any interference or intervention from abroad.
The role of the UN, respect of the UN Charter and UN GS Declaration on protection human rights should be reaffirmed and reinforced.
The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia should be respected and UN SC resolution 1244 (1999) fully implemented.
Unilateral secession of Serbian Province of Kosovo and Metohija is not acceptable and should not be recognized. We call for peaceful solution of the issue of the status respecting UN SC resolution 1244 and equal human rights of all inhabitants of the Province.
All pressures and blackmails against Serbia to trade its sovereignty over the Province of Kosovo and Metohija in exchange for candidacy or membership in European Union are neocolonial methods which should be condemned and rejected as absolutely unacceptable.
About the author: Zivadin Jovanovic, President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, Serbia
The original source of this article is Global Research
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
Boundaries of the Banovina districts of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1929-1941Regardless of the reached agreement on the Croatian ethnopolitical autonomy in Yugoslavia, the (Roman Catholic) Croatian traditional and historical animosity and even a hate against the (Christian Orthodox) Serbs remained extremely strong – a fact which both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini knew very well to exploit in the coming events of the 1941 April War against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.Partition of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941Originally, Yugoslavia signed the pact with the Axis Powers on March 25th, 1941 but due to the British plot, the military putsch was ...
The former Yugoslavia was engulfed by many conflicts and ethnic and religious differences tore away at the very fabric of this nation. Like all wars, atrocities took place on all sides but the mass media in general focused on Serbian atrocities, while neglecting brutal crimes committed against the Serbian community. This certainly applies to the glossing over of war crimes done by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).However, more and more evidence is coming to light about brutal KLA death camps and killing people for organs. Therefore, will former KLA members be charged with war crimes and will the “real truth” ...
Due to the international media’s continued claims about the «annexation of Crimea», it’s been difficult for the citizens of the US and Europe to make sense of the details of the peninsula’s recent history. Exactly three years ago, on March 16, 2014, the Crimeans were offered a choice: to rejoin Russia or to return to the constitution of 1992 that proclaimed Crimea a legal, democratic, secular state whose relationship with Ukraine was based on bilateral agreements. That constitution was unilaterally abolished by Kiev on March 17, 1995, and here’s what’s surprising: no one at that time in the West demanded that the Ukrainian ...
Recently, the West and the Middle East pundits and analysts have been trying to analyze the provisions of the new draft constitution proposed by the Russian side as a solution to the Syrian conflict.Naturally, analyzing the provisions, any of the sides involved in the conflict is trying to present itself as the legitimate government. That raises the question of whether to adopt such a draft or not, because a newly appointed government would have to comply with a new constitution. Not surprisingly, not only the moderate opposition and illegal armed groups, but the official Syrian authorities as well subject the ...
As work nears completion in the first phase of an ambitious project in Montenegro to develop a highway that will connect the Adriatic port of Bar with Serbia, Western officials and mainstream media are ramping up attacks on the endeavor. Western commentators are united in condemnation, ranging from fear-mongering over China’s role to disparaging the plan’s viability. Consistently, they dismiss it as “the highway to nowhere,” implying foolishness on the part of Montenegro and presenting it as a cautionary tale on the dangers of doing business with China. The theme fits neatly within the framework of Washington’s campaign to economically ...
Later this month, Barack Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima by the American military on August 6, 1945, and the destruction three days later of the Japanese city of Nagasaki, rank among the greatest war crimes of the 20th century.One would think that after 71 years, the United States would finally be prepared to acknowledge that the incineration of two defenseless Japanese cities, causing some 200,000 deaths, was a militarily unnecessary act.Nothing of the sort will happen. Obama “will not revisit the decision ...
To gauge the transformation in the response by the U.S. military, the mainstream media and the public to a U.S. war crime, one need only compare the reactions to two of the most heinous American crimes: the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the gunning down of innocent Iraqis on a Baghdad street in 2007.The latter was captured on a cockpit video from attacking Apache helicopters and revealed in a video released by WikiLeaks ten years ago today. Wikileaks obtained the video from a conscientious U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning. The My Lai incident was revealed to the public ...
Post-colonial empires are complex organizations. They are organized on a multi-tiered basis, ranging from relative autonomous national and regional allies to subservient vassal states, with variations in between.In the contemporary period, the idea of empire does not operate as a stable global structure, though it may aspire and strive for such. While the US is the major imperial power, it does not dominate some leading global political-economic and military powers, like Russia and China.Imperial powers, like the US, have well-established regional satellites but have also suffered setbacks and retreats from independent local economic and political challengers.Empire is not a fixed ...
Today the Old (dying out) Continent is under multi-faced crises pressure some of them having older roots but the others are the product of current political decisions and moves by the European decision-makers (and those who are behind them across the Ocean).The European oldest and mostly painful crisis-problem is a biological declination of the whole continent what from the economic point of view means, at least for the western countries, an import of a huge number of the „outsiders“ in order just to keep the same level of the economic production and national GDP. This solution of course produces a ...
After the division of Macedonia in 1913 (according to the Bucharest Peace Treaty) neither Serbia, Bulgaria nor Greece recognized the existence of a Macedonian ethnolinguistic nation and, therefore, an assimilation policy of Macedonia’s Slavs was carried out by the state’s authorities of all those three countries. Greece referred to Aegean Slavo-Macedonians as Slavophone Greeks or Macedoslavs (the region was and is today officially called as “North Greece”), Serbia referred to Vardar Slavo-Macedonians as Serbs from “South Serbia” while for Bulgaria Pirin Slavo-Macedonians were Bulgarians.When the WWI started in 1914, Bulgaria sided with Central Powers and in the fall of 1915 ...
If the Trump phenomena showed anything, it showed the consensus reality the mainstream media attempted to create concerning Hillary’s certain victory, as well as the consensus reality erected for decades, is not omnipotent.In fact, the earliest days of mass print media were erected on a famous fraud known as the “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835 – something researcher Chris Kendall has long called attention to – wherein the “educated,” “elite” widely accepted the mainstream publications’ claim bat people inhabited the lunar surface.In our day, a similar hoax still reigns, as mainstream media is literally as credible as Weekly World News’ Bat Boy ...
The reports that black Africans are being sold at slave markets in "liberated" Libya for as little as $400 is a terrible indictment of the so-called "humanitarian intervention" carried out by NATO to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.In March 2011 virtue-signaling Western "liberal" hipsters teamed up with hardcore neocon warmongers to demand action to "save" the Libyan people from the "despotic" leader who had ruled the country since the late 1960s. “Something has to be done!” they cried in unison.Something was done. Libya was transformed by NATO from the country with the highest Human Development Index in ...
Russian literature fans will recall a moving spectacle from Dostoevsky’s novel “The House of the Dead”. As political prisoners are marched off under guard to Siberia, village folk are handing them food and other provisions that they will need on their long journey. The poor villagers are probably scraping the bottom of their own barrel in order to show Christian Orthodox compassion to those unfortunates. The allegedly nasty czarist guards do nothing to thwart these poignant expressions of humanity. Chances are (and Dostoevsky strongly suggests it) that they themselves feel considerable sympathy for their pitiful charges. Now, fast forward.Albeit depicted ...
"In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…."Today, Christopher Columbus is celebrated as a mythical hero by some – complete with songs, poems, and fictional tales about his great adventure across the Atlantic to explore the majestic land that would eventually be known as the Americas. There are fifty-four communities named after the explorer in the United States, including the District of Columbia. “Hail, Columbia” was the United States’ unofficial national anthem until 1931. A federal holiday, “Columbus Day,” is celebrated every second Monday in October.Despite all of this, historians have begun to tear down the Columbus myth: ...
Millions of white people glorify mass murderers because their sense of identity and place in society is deeply tied to white supremacy.“It is important to name and shame the mass murderers.”The perpetrators of crimes against humanity are often elevated to positions of respect and admiration. It all depends on who did the killing, and who was killed. Now the murderers are being called to account. The new movement in the United States against police and other state violence has inspired this welcome change taking place all over the world. The criminals are being exposed decades and even centuries after their atrocities ...
Once NATO’s 1999 war on Yugoslavia came to an end, units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) poured across the border. The KLA wasted little time in implementing its dream of an independent Kosovo purged of all other nationalities. Among those bearing the brunt of ethnic hatred were the Roma, commonly known in the West as Gypsies. Under the protective umbrella of NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR), the KLA was free to launch a pogrom in which they beat, tortured, murdered and drove out every non-Albanian and every non-secessionist Albanian they could lay their hands on.Not long after the war, I ...
With the recent failed bid by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab League at the UN security council, to try and end Israelis’ occupation of Palestinian land and to create a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders, it seems an appropriate moment to review the situation for Palestinians since 1915.What is the background to the demonization and brutalization of Palestinians? Most of all, why is the international community was assisting properly and why has it not assisted the Palestinians in protecting or restoring their inalienable rights over decades? Why is their situation so brutally upside-down almost a century after ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
UN negotiator on Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari wanted to honor and commemorate Finnish Nazi SS troops in 1999 when he was the President of Finland. He wanted to have the Finnish taxpayers and the Finnish government fund and finance the construction of a plaque in the Ukraine to commemorate the deaths of Finnish Nazi SS troops killed during Operation Barbarossa. Ahtisaari is not, alone, however, in seeking to honor and celebrate the legacy of Nazis and the SS.Kosovo: German recruitment of Albanians for the SS Nazi Skanderbeg DivisionKosovo Albanians have similarly honored and commemorated the legacy of Nazis and the SS. ...
The new coronavirus and its accompanying disease Covid-19 has stopped the globe in its tracks. Governments, markets and news cycles have become dominated by the pandemic. Europe is now the epicenter for the disease, with reportedly more fatal cases of infection than China where the virus first erupted in December.Several European Union countries have declared themselves states of emergencies, including Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Italy. The 27-member bloc has sealed off external borders. Some states, such as Poland, have begun closing borders with other EU members. Brussels, the administrative center of the EU, is alarmed because the much-vaunted single ...
