The State In Blue

From September 1990 to July 1991, the Serbian authorities adopted a number of decisions and laws aimed at making the school network in the republic functional, and at setting up a single educational system. Thanks to these measures, a number of primary and secondary schools throughout Kosovo-Metohija (the southern Serbian province), schools where teaching was conducted in the Albanian language, and several university departments and faculties were closed down during the academic year 1990/91. With regard to enrollment in secondary schools, the Serbian Assembly announced entrance examinations limiting the number of pupils studying in the Albanian language: of 36,000 pupils who had completed their primary school education, only 10,250 could enrol in a secondary school. The entrance examination for classes in the Serbian language provided for 800 places over the total number of pupils who had completed their primary education.

The Kosovo Institute of Education, the Institute for printing schoolbooks and other auxiliary educational and scientific institutions, dismissed over 18,000 teachers who had taught in the Albanian language, all with the aim of achieving a single educational program. The explanation given was that they refused to use ``uniform schoolbooks.'' For this reason special measures were introduced in 139 primary schools, seven kindergartens and in all cultural institutions.

The Serbian Government and the Serbian Parliament decisions were also applied in special schools: 34 ethnic Albanian teachers were sacked from a school for deaf and dumb children in Prizren, allegedly for not following the curriculum of the Republic of Serbia, even though the curriculum they were implementing had been drawn up in Belgrade.

Serbia's policy was upheld by Serbs living in Kosovo and Serbs in Serbia Proper as the setting up of a state governed by law in the whole of Serbia's territory. Only a small group of intellectuals from Belgrade and Prizren protested in the Serbian Parliament on July 26, 1991.

Some 250,000 pupils studying in the Albanian language completed the 1990/91 school year according to the curriculum which had been drawn up by the suspended Kosovo Institute of Education. After the Serbian authorities made enrollment in higher grades conditional to the passing of additional exams based on the curriculum of the Serbian Institute of Education, ethnic Albanian schools were opened in private houses in Kosovo.

According to data given by President of the ``Nail Praseri'' Association of Ethnic Albanian Teachers Redzep Osmani and Director of the suspended Pedagogical Institute of Kosovo Halim Hiseni, 274,280 pupils attended primary schools in the 1992/1993 school year, while 63,340 attended secondary schools.

According to data given by ethnic Albanian educational authorities, the Serbian police raided ethnic Albanian schools during the June enrollment period with the aim of confiscating the schools' records. There were 25 raids in schools and other educational institutions and the result was that 1,200 school reports, 20 stamps, 296 form-registers were confiscated, while 25 primary and secondary school directors, three teachers and four school secretaries were called in by the police for interrogation. Four directors and one teacher were severely abused.

Research carried out by the Fund for Humanitarian Law in the second half of June 1993 shows that after suspending and suppressing Kosovo's educational system, the Serbian authorities introduced various forms of pressure and violence against all who participated in the autonomous ethnic Albanian school system or supported it.

The director of one of 11 secondary schools in Pristina was arrested four times for working in an ``illegal school.'' He was last arrested on June 18, 1993. While attending a meeting of secondary school directors at the Pedagogical Institute of Kosovo, several state security inspectors burst in and demanded that all those present show their identity cards. The police then proceeded to confiscate all documents pertaining to schools, while policemen in uniform ordered the Secretary for Secondary Education in Pristina and the vice-president of the Ethnic Albanian Association of Teachers to go with them. The police hit a highly respected professor who is considered be an authority on ethnic Albanian education with their truncheons. Speaking of his experience with the Serbian police the school director says: ``I was interrogated by several inspectors from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. about the school, and a fight which had taken place in front of the school in early November 1991. They kicked me, but the worst thing of all was when they made me take my shoes off and put my feet on a chair, after which they proceeded to beat my feet with truncheons. They would occasionally put my feet into cold water, and then continue beating. In the end they forced me to take a bomb they had brought and throw it on the floor. It was a dummy. They let me go saying that I would really learn all about the police if I revealed that I had been beaten. The doctor who examined me found limb contusions and head injuries. He told me openly that I could suffer a permanent loss of hearing in my right ear.''

According to the director's testimony, the police visited the school the next day. They took with them the school's form-registers and remaining records and continued interrogating him about the ethnic Albanian school system. The director's impression is that the police were greatly irritated by his decision to continue working in the school. He is convinced that they will not leave him alone.

On that same day, Serbian police inspectors raided the A. family house in the Pristina suburb of Vranjevac where a secondary school with 1,688 pupils is housed. They demanded that the teachers hand over the school records, and when they refused to do so, the teachers and children watched while the police carried out the form-registers.

On November 1, 1991 the A. family gave their house in Vranjevac to the Secondary School of Economic Studies. A few days before the start of the school year, a group of 50-odd policemen burst into their yard and carried out a search. They took seven men, family members and neighbors for ``questioning.'' Two men were beaten up at the police station. One of the men who had been detained later fled abroad.

When the school started working, ``Elektrokosmet'' (electrical supply company) cut the school's electricity. The explanation given was that the school was ``using private electricity'' and so violating Serbian laws. The owner of the house was given a 5,800 DM fine. The owner of the house then linked the house he lived in to the school, thus supplying it with electricity.

Two members of this family fled to Germany after an incident in which one them hit a policeman who had attacked him, while two other policemen had held him at gun point. All this took place in a family house during one of the frequent police visits. The youth and the uncle manage to flee from the house, while M.A., the eldest member of the family, wrenched the gun from a policeman who was preparing to fire after the two men. Police reinforcement did not manage to find the two fugitives. The police then attacked M. They continued beating him at the police station. They let him go on condition that he ordered the male members of the family to stop clashing with the police. He was to find his son and brother and not tell anyone that he had been beaten by the police.

When the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) representatives learned of the case, they offered to go with M. A. to the police station and help defuse the situation. At the station they were met by a police inspector, who according to M. A. told CSCE representative Veniamin Karacostaoglo a lot of lies about him and thus humiliated him. The CSCE representative was not received, while M.A. was taken to a room to be interrogated. He was beaten specially for having turned to an ``UNPROFOR member.'' One of the inspectors laughed while hitting him, asking: ``Where are those guys from the CSCE to protect you now?''

M.A. told the representatives of the Fund for Humanitarian Law that the police continued to maltreat him because of his son: ``The police continue coming to my house looking for my son and brother. They came to fetch me on May 17, to take me to pay that electricity bill. I didn't go, but I asked them how they had got hold of my bill. On May 25 they came asking for my son's address in Germany. I didn't tell them. They were looking for me on June 18 when they took away the school's form-registers. Because of all that I am now in hiding, and I don't sleep at home anymore. I don't drive either, because they recognize my car and stop it. I know they won't leave me alone. I have made over the house where the School of Economic Studies is housed to my son, and he is far away enough from the Serbian police.''

During two years of negotiations on the ethnic Albanian school system, the Serbian side has offered to allow classes in the ethnic Albanian language within the laws and regulations determined by the Serbian authorities, aimed at setting up a single educational system in the whole of Serbia. The ethnic Albanian educational authorities are trying to make it clear that the first condition which must be met in order that the situation be normalized, is to allow pupils to return to schools and to allow teaching in the Albanian language in schools.

An analysis of the law, curricula and decisions adopted by the Serbian authorities with regard to education in Kosovo, show that with their implementation, Kosovo Albanians have been deprived of the right to make autonomous decisions concerning schools and education. Kosovo Serbs, on the other hand, have been given the status of privileged citizens in acquiring education and in managing institutions taken away from ethnic Albanians.

The recognition of the Kosovo Albanians' right to decide independently on their education within the Serbian state could lead to an agreement between ethnic Albanian educational authorities and the Serbian authorities, which would certainly help in resolving the Kosovo question.

During the past two months political tension in Kosovo has mounted. Cases which have been investigated show that the number of incidents increased after the first official statements saying that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would not extend the mandate of the CSCE observer missions. A growing number of armed incidents and deliberate attacks on Serbian police patrols are being countered with massive police repression (ethnic Albanian houses are searched, ethnic Albanians are arrested arbitrarily and physically abused). All these measures are used to make the ethnic Albanian population understand that all terrorist provocations against organs of the Serbian authorities will be regarded as individual and collective ethnic Albanian responsibility.

Four deliberate successive attacks on police patrols took place in Glogovac, Pec, Prizren and Podujevo between May 23 and July 25, 1993. While trying to discover the perpetrators, the Serbian police applied the following measures: extensive searches of ethnic Albanian houses, mass arrests of ethnic Albanians and the use of force during interrogation.

During the attack on a police patrol at the entrance to Glogovac on May 23, 1993, two policemen were killed and five seriously wounded. According to the investigating judge of the Pristina District Court, the attackers used automatic weapons with lethal ammunition. At least 26 bullets were fired at the police car from close range, killing the driver and one policeman.

Humanitarian Law Fund representatives talked to villagers from two of eight villages where, according to the Pristina Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms, the Serbian police searched ethnic Albanian houses and maltreated the villagers without reason, while many were later beaten at the police station. R., a student from the village of Glanoselo several kilometers away from Glogovac says that a group of 30-odd policemen entered his house early in the morning, several hours after the incident. He didn't know about the attack and murder of the policemen. The police made him leave the house undressed saying that they knew he was the killer. His father was handcuffed. They were searching for weapons. The old man kept repeating that he knew that his son couldn't have done something like that, and that there were no weapons in his house.

Speaking of the maltreatment and humiliation he underwent, R. said: ``They were taking us to the center of the village when a policeman from a nearby hill reported via talkie-walkie that a man was watching from a tree in the yard of a neighboring house. Half the policemen went to that house and there beat up my cousin who had climbed a tree to see what was happening. They also beat up his son, so that the two of them had to seek medical help. That night and the following morning they searched 15 of the 20 houses in the vicinity and beat up some 10-odd people, including a 14-year-old boy. The police found a hunting rifle for which Dzemail Ladrovci had a permit, and a 100-year-old rifle at Sabet Ladroci's place. Both had to report to the police station. When I refused to show them where a cousin of mine lived, a policeman hit me in front of my father, which I found particularly humiliating.''

According to R.'s testimony, the worst took place at the police station in Pristina: ``They took me to room 118. The inspectors entered and one of them immediately started hitting me. He asked if I supported Kosovo Republic. I said I did. They continued kicking me and hitting with truncheons. They beat me for about ten minutes, and continued with the interrogation. At one moment two policeman and one in plain clothes grabbed me and stuck a truncheon into my mouth and then proceeded to hit me with whatever came to hand. Three were standing by, watching. It was over when they took me out into the corridor handcuffed, and tied me to a radiator. I stood there for about two hours.

State security inspectors Ljutfi Ajazi and... I think the other one was Ivic (the number one policeman in Kosovo, ed. note) took me to their building. I learned later that prior to their arrival they had talked to CSCE observer mission representatives (Veniamin Karaconstanoglo and Peter Allan Prahar). They interrogated me without beating me. They first claimed that I had killed the policemen, then that I knew the names of the killers, and then they accused me of having fought for the Croatian Army, that my brother and his wife were members of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and that they were killing innocent people. All this just because I worked as a labourer in Zagreb in 1991, and because my brother worked there at the same time too. Then they started interrogating me about my stay in Albania, claiming that I had trained at some special military training camps. I had been there in order to receive medical treatment for injuries received during four months in the Pristina jail, after participating in the 1990 demonstrations.

That evening they let me sleep over at my cousin's place. He is also maltreated by the police. I had to report back the following morning at 7.45 a.m. sharp. They questioned me then about the work of the Committee for Human Rights and about politics. They let me go again, but I had to report back in four days. That time they demanded that I tell them the name of the killer. I repeated that I didn't know and that I condemned all terrorist acts. They asked me what I thought of the murder. I said I agreed with Ibrahim Rugova (ethnic Albanian leader) and Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) leader Vuk Draskovic that it was the work of Serbian Radical Party (SRS) leader Vojislav Seselj's paramilitary formations, aimed at starting war in Kosovo. Inspector Ivic said that we had killed those policemen and that Vuk Draskovic was murdering in Belgrade. He also told me to tell whoever asked, that we would disappear off the face of the earth.

When they were releasing me, the police threatened that I would be liquidated unless I changed my political stands. I asked for a document showing that I had been arrested. They didn't give me anything. I said that I was going straight to the Human Rights Committee and would say what they had done to me. They said: `Go wherever you like, and say whatever you wish'.''

Until August 1990, E.V. had worked at the police station in his village in the vicinity of Glogovac. He was sacked like other ethnic Albanian policemen at the time. Several days after the incident at Glogovac he was taken down to the police station. With regard to police behavior, he said the following: ``They pushed me into a car in which there were already some 15-odd men. They were pushing people into the boot. In front of the police station they hit us on the head with truncheons. They told me to step out of line. They shouted at me and pointed me out as a traitor who didn't want to work with them. They hit me. One tried to handcuff me, but I pushed him away. The pushed me down and started kicking me. My former colleague, police commander Vladimir Todorovic shouted at them to leave me alone, and that that hadn't been the agreement. A younger inspector whom they call Bugarin (Bulgarian, ed. note) came specially to find me. He tried to hit me in the heart with the butt-end of a rifle, but I twisted and he got my shoulder. He hit a youth called Enver on the head, and nearly struck his eye out. Enver fell next to me and I didn't dare pick him up. I was taken to a young inspector. I refused to sit down, asking why he was offering me a chair when they had brought me in like a terrorist. I said that I didn't know anything about the attack on the police and that at the time I had been at home with my family. I asked him why he didn't kill me like a man, and not humiliate me this way. After that he told me to join the other men who had been brought in. I had to pass a line of policemen and was hit by each one of them.

They put us in a corridor. There were 150 of us. The corridor led to the toilet. Policemen at the other end of the corridor kept beating people closest to them. In an attempt at avoiding the blows they were withdrawing backwards, so that we were squashed together like sardines in a tin. Those policemen made us stand on one foot with our hands in the air. We heard that they had been brought in from Prokuplje, specially for this occasion. We spent over five hours like this. Many people, including myself, were bloody from the beatings. I asked for water and to see the doctor. One of the policemen then asked me if I knew he was Seselj's Chetnik. I withdrew while he grabbed a youth--Hasan Buzaki and asked for a knife to slaughter Shiptars (derogatory term used by the Serbian authorities to refer to Kosovo Albanians) with. He was demented. Police commander Vladimir Todorovic and his deputy Cerin came forward and took him away. They tied him because he was resisting strongly and screaming. A new group of policemen arrived. They immediately told us that they were Seselj's Radicals and that they had butchered a lot of Moslems in Bosnia, and that they would do the same to us. They asked if anyone had Rugova's picture. To my surprise an older man said he did. They brought a telephone and ordered him to call Rugova. In broken Serbian the old man kept saying that he didn't know the number. They insisted, laughing at him and hitting him. It was all rather sorry and comic until they beat him up. After that he couldn't stand up.

The police ordered those who had worked with the police earlier to step forward. I was the only one. They took me to a room nearby where there were six policemen. They started shouting at me that I had killed the policemen. They ordered me to take my shoes off and to lie down on the bed where they would tie me. I said that they would have to kill me first. One of them jumped and hit me with a pistol knocking out one of my teeth. Two beat me with truncheons, two with planks which had nails in them, while the other two just laughed. I bled. I grabbed a cushion, and tried to soften the blows. I later used the pillowcase to bandage my head. They beat me up and took me back to the corridor.

A man whose face they slashed with a knife bled heavily. They let out one man at a time, and threatened that if anything happened they would kill us all. I worked for the police for years and I know how the police beat, but this... this is inconceivable.''

Cases investigated in the field show that police behavior towards ethnic Albanians is based on the assumption that all ethnic Albanians are secretly armed. The committee for the protection of human rights and freedoms in Pristina has data on 1,521 cases where ethnic Albanian houses were searched and the people physically abused, allegedly for not wishing to hand over weapons they keep in secret hiding places.

With regard to this, the Belgrade weekly ``NIN'' brought a story about the youth Hisni Orluri from Krajmirovci near Lipljan and described his appearance, a week after he had been interrogated at the police station: ``troubled blue eyes, with even bluer rings under them, bruises on the shoulders and arms and swollen hands, are proof that the interrogations are not just verbal.'' The journalist quotes the youth on why he was detained: ``Three months ago they started demanding of my father that he hand in weapons. He told them that he didn't have any, and they said that his son would probably be more sincere. I was ordered to report the following Thursday, and I don't know what to do now. We have no weapons, but I know they won't believe me.''

That unfounded suspicion, interrogations and the beating of ethnic Albanians are milder forms of police violence, is borne out by the case of Adem Zecirja from Djakovica who was tortured and beaten to death in jail. The report on the death of prisoner number 1,790 signed by doctor Suzana Razovic of the Institute for Forensic Medicine, says that death took place on February 16, 1993, as the result of a large number of bloody suffusions all over the body.

Humanitarian Law Fund representatives talked to an 18-year-old youth from the village of Ajvalija who saw the murder of his uncle Hazif and the wounding of his uncle Sami. According to the youth, on December 3, 1992 his two uncles were selling cigarettes at the market in Pristina when the police carried out a raid. By chance he and his father passed by when the police tried to drag his uncle Sami into a car. The uncle resisted and the police beat him. He managed to get away and fled towards the mosque yard. The police fired in the air. Uncle Hazif started running towards the mosque, too. The youth was hidden behind the mosque wall and watched the police fire from automatic weapons at his uncles. Hazif died on the spot while Sami was hit in both legs.

Uncle Sami spent two months in hospital. During that time he was interrogated, and criminal proceedings were started against him for resisting representatives of the law. The case was later dropped. The youth's family did not complain to the Serbian state authorities, since they believe that this would just be ``a waste of time.''

Data on armed incidents in the past two months show that the targets of attack have not been Serbian or ethnic Albanian neighbours and fellow citizens, but Serbian organs of authority. Ethnic Albanian politicians and some Serbian opposition leaders believe that terrorism in Kosovo, and especially the attack near Glogovac, are the work of paramilitary groups sent from Serbia to carry out certain tasks for the Serbian authorities.

According to the Serbian authorities, terrorism in Kosovo is part of the ethnic Albanian leaders' separatist policy. Data concerning new cases of violence indicate that the intentional stepping up of armed incidents and provocations is aimed at creating the impression of an ethnic conflict. One of several such incidents took place on June 17 in Pristina. An ethnic Albanian woman Hava Ajeti died while leaving her house. Going down the steps she came across a plastic bag which someone had thrown in through the front door. She opened it to see what was inside and a bomb exploded.

Humanitarian Law Fund representatives talked to Hava's husband, and he believes that his wife's death and the increasing number of explosions around ethnic Albanian houses point to the Serbian authorities' intentions to make war against the ethnic Albanian population.

There is widespread belief among Kosovo Albanians that the Serbian state organs and not the Kosovo Serbs are responsible for the intentional violence in Kosovo. Kosovo Serbs are increasingly criticising and openly accusing the behaviour and policy of the Serbian state organs. Compared to ethnic Albanians who accuse them of violating human and political rights, accusations made by Kosovo Serbs concern the looting of civilian property, corruption and lawless behaviour.

Miners and metal workers at the Trepca mine have been on strike for months. They accuse the (Serbian) management of looting, and say publicly that precious metals are being sold through private firms owned by former and current Serbian ministers and prime ministers. The director's answer was an order, informing all employees of ``the threat of war'' and the military importance of the mine (information carried by the Belgrade daily ``Borba'' on May 18 and June 19, 1993).

The implementation of Serbian laws under which the publishing house ``Rilindja'' which included the Albanian language newspapers ``Skendija,'' ``Fjalja'' and ``Bujku'' was transformed into a state-owned (Serbian) firm called ``Panorama,'' resulted in a strike and the dismissal of the ``Rilindja'' Serb director. The employees (mostly ethnic Albanians) rejected all efforts to enforce directors and editors in the Albanian language papers. The former director of ``Rilindja'' was tagged a ``Serb traitor'' because he opposed the closing down of the firm, and because his economic policy was supported by ethnic Albanians.

The mediation of the CSCE observer mission in Kosovo with regard to ``Rilindja'' made the Serbian authorities agree to stop forcing ethnic Albanian journalists to work for the Serb-sponsored ``Panorama.'' Had the CSCE mandate in Kosovo been extended, the Serbian authorities' demand that ``Rilindja'' pay a higher lease for the use of its own offices would probably have been resolved satisfactorily.

According to data at the disposal of the Fund for Humanitarian Law, the CSCE observer mission in Kosovo showed a high degree of diplomatic skill in resolving each individual incident. It introduced the protection of human rights and principles of objectiveness, tolerance, restraint and persistence in Kosovo's everyday life. With their decision to discontinue the CSCE's presence in Kosovo, the Serbian authorities have made another politically detrimental move.

Compared to Vojvodina (northern Serbian province) and Sandzak (Serbian region), there are no registered cases which would prove that Kosovo Serbs and Albanians are using force against each other because of ethnic differences and hatreds. In private life they avoid each other. Their spheres of social and political life are separate. With the exception of the police, Serbian institutions function only on paper, while the committees, bodies and institutions of the former Autonomous Province of Kosovo function internally, as part of the daily life of ethnic Albanians.

Investigations in the field have led the Fund for Humanitarian Law to the conclusion that the arbitrary and unchecked behavior of the Serbian police towards ethnic Albanians disclose a police state, and not one governed by law. In spite of the Serbian authorities' custom of using police terror in dealing with Kosovo Albanians because of their political stands, it is encouraging that the inhabitants of Kosovo are not at conflict for ethnic reasons.

The Fund for Humanitarian Law underscores that police terror has not resulted in mass fear among Kosovo Albanians. They have learned to set out documented facts concerning terror sponsored by the Serbian authorities for political reasons.

This report was drawn up on July 1, 1993.