> ----------
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Thursday, May 20, 1999 8:00 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Separation of Men and Mass Killing Near Vucitrn
>
> ===================================================
> Kosovo Flash #40
>
> SEPARATION OF MEN AND MASS KILLING NEAR VUCITRN
>
> (New York, May 20, 1999) Serbian forces forcibly separated and then
> summarily
> executed tens of ethnic Albanian men traveling in a convoy near the town
> of
> Vucitrn (Vushtri in Albanian) on May 2 and 3, Kosovar Albanian refugees
> have
> told Human Rights Watch. The total number of dead may exceed 100.
>
> Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed six Kosovar Albanians from the
> Vucitrn region in refugee camps in Kukes last week. The witnesses,
> interviewed
> separately, provided consistent accounts of how Serbian police and
> paramilitaries pulled ethnic Albanian men from a convoy of internally
> displaced
> persons, demanded money, and then shot some of the men in their custody.
>
> Albanians from Vucitrn and the surrounding villages were forced by Serbian
> forces to leave their homes at the end of March and the beginning of
> April, all
> of the interviewees said. While some Albanians were able to stay in one
> spot
> until May 2, others had to move several times because of ongoing attacks
> by
> Serbian forces, either with small arms or by shelling. Ultimately, many
> displaced persons ended up in villages to the northeast of Vucitrn, such
> as
> Bajgore, Vesekovce, Kurillove and Sllakovce (all place names in Albanian),
> which
> became overcrowded with displaced Albanians. Several witnesses reported
> that
> they had to live with as many as one hundred persons in one house, and
> that
> others were forced to sleep in the open air.
>
> The area where the refugees had gathered was largely under the control of
> the
> Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In the beginning of May, however, Yugoslav
> and
> Serbian forces launched an offensive, and shelled several villages in the
> region
> around Bajgore. On May 2, government forces reportedly broke through the
> KLA's
> front line near Bajgore, forcing those sheltering in the area to flee. A
> convoy
> of refugees set out towards the villages of Sllakovce and Ceceli, where
> they
> were joined by other ethnic Albanians who had sought refuge in those
> places. At
> that point, the convoy consisted of several hundred vehicles and three to
> five
> thousand refugees, witnesses estimated, and stretched all the way to the
> village
> of Upper Studime (Studime e Eperme in Albanian). The Yugoslav forces
> reportedly
> followed the refugees as they traveled, burning many houses in Sllakovce
> and
> Ceceli.
>
> Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that they stopped to rest and discuss
> their
> plans in Upper Studime. Yugoslav Army forces were based in a warehouse in
> Lower
> Studime (Studime e Poshtme in Albanian), they said, a village the refugees
> would
> have to pass through to get to Vucitrn. S.A., a thirty-year-old woman
> from
> Novosella e Begut (in Albanian), who was on the first tractor of the
> convoy,
> told Human Rights Watch what happened around 8:00 p.m. on May 2:
>
> "[We] decided to tie a white cloth to our tractor, to show that we wanted
> to
> surrender. But before we got to Studimë e Poshtme, they started shooting
> and
> shelling us in an awful way. I used a mattress to cover my children, and
> we
> drove on to Studime e Poshtme. When we got to the warehouse, we saw a
> line of
> soldiers on the left hand side of the road. They stopped us, and told us
> to get
> out of our tractors, and put our hands behind out heads, and then to sit
> down on
> the road. The soldiers started cursing us, and walked among us, kicking
> and
> beating some of us. One woman was beaten just because her child was
> crying."
>
> The soldiers, who were joined by policemen and paramilitaries between 8:30
> and
> 9:00 p.m., went from tractor to tractor in the convoy, cursing and
> threatening
> the refugees. At the same time, the soldiers coming from Sllakovce and
> Ceceli
> had reached the convoy as well. K.B., a thirty-four-year-old Albanian man
> from
> Vucitrn, told Human Rights Watch:
>
> "When [the police and paramilitaries] arrived at my part of the convoy,
> they
> asked my brother where his KLA uniform was, and his gun. But he said he
> didn't
> have any because he wasn't a member of the KLA. Then they hit him with
> the butt
> of a gun, after which they came to me, and told me to get off the trailer.
> When
> I got off, he hit me with his gun on my cheekbone, forehead and mouth,
> breaking
> one of my teeth. Then they stabbed me with a bayonet, and almost cut off
> part
> of my ear. They took me by my elbow, pointed a gun at my back, and
> dragged me
> some twenty meters away. They pushed me towards a little stream, and I
> jumped
> over it, and fell down. When I got up, they hit me four times in the back
> of my
> head with a gun, and once in my ribs. Later, a doctor told me that they
> had
> broken one of my ribs. I fell again, and lay for about two minutes, after
> which
> I got up, and went back to the tractor."
>
> Human Rights Watch inspected and photographed K.B.'s wounds during the
> interview
> in Kukes, Albania. The top of his left ear was torn, but had been
> repaired by a
> doctor in one of the refugee camps, and his right front tooth was broken.
> Others fared worse. Zeqir Aliu, a forty-four-year-old man from Novosella,
> related what happened to his family:
>
> "At about 9 p.m., the paramilitary and army stopped us. I couldn't see
> them
> very well, it was already dark. They took away our money and jewelry.
> Then,
> two paramilitaries with masks and bandanas took my uncle, Remzi Aliu (54),
> and
> my nephew, Ramadan Aliu (38). They asked them for money. Then they took
> them
> away some thirty meters, and shot them with a burst of gunfire from their
> automatic weapons. Then they took Hajrula Aliu and his wife, but they
> gave them
> [the police and paramilitaries] 500 German Marks, so they didn't kill
> them."
>
> B.A., a nineteen-year-old man from Lower Studime, told a similar story:
>
> "When [the soldiers coming from Ceceli] came to us, a Serbian soldier
> grabbed my
> brother, who was twenty-seven years old, by his elbow and took him some
> three
> meters away from the tractor. There, he asked for money, and soon after
> that he
> shot my brother with a pistol in the back. At the same time, they took my
> uncle, shot at him and kicked him, and he fell on the ground. We saw two
> bodies
> lying on the ground, and we thought they were both dead. After that, they
> took
> my father as well, and while they pointed a pistol at his throat, they
> demanded
> money. My father gave them one hundred German Marks, but they asked for
> one
> thousand. I told my father to give it to him, so my father came back to
> the
> tractor and gave him another nine hundred Marks. They then released my
> father,
> but right away they caught my cousin, and asked him for money as well. So
> my
> father gave them again five hundred Marks, after which they released my
> cousin.
> After the army left, we heard my uncle asking for me to come and help him.
> A
> few minutes later, my father and grandfather went to him and carried him
> to the
> tractor, because he had been hit in his lower leg, so he couldn't walk.
> When
> they turned my brother over, they saw he was dead."
>
> Other witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported how men unknown
> to
> them were executed in front of their eyes. The soldiers and
> paramilitaries
> reportedly walked up and down the tractor convoy, harassing, robbing and
> sometimes executing the refugees. The witnesses all reported hearing
> repeated
> shooting during the period between approximately 9:00 and 10:30 p.m., when
> the
> troops left the convoy. About an hour later, around 11:30 p.m., policemen
> from
> Vucitrn came. They forced the refugee convoy to move on towards Vucitrn,
> where
> they arrived around 12:00 a.m., midnight, May 3.
>
> Several witnesses reported that they saw many dead bodies along the road.
> The
> exact number of executed refugees from the convoy is unknown. Four
> separate
> witnesses claimed to have seen twenty-five, thirty, seventy and "over a
> hundred"
> dead bodies, respectively.
>
> The varying numbers may result from the fact that the witnesses were
> located in
> different parts of the convoy, so that those towards the front of the line
> saw
> less than those at the back. None of the witnesses interviewed by Human
> Rights
> Watch was in the last part of the column, so the number of executed men
> may be
> higher than the witnesses have reported.
>
> In Vucitrn, the refugees were directed towards an agricultural cooperative
> near
> Motel Vicianum, where they spent the night sitting in a fenced off area,
> guarded
> by the police and some soldiers. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that
> there
> were several thousand refugees there, and that the area was so crowded it
> was
> impossible to stretch their legs, let alone sleep. According to the
> witnesses,
> the guards roamed among the refugees all night, checking their papers, and
> in
> several cases beating people.
>
> In the morning, somewhere between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m., May 3, around
> thirty
> policemen entered the compound. Two different witnesses separately
> identified
> Dragan Petrovic, the police commander of Vucitrn, as the officer in
> charge, and
> a third witness identified the Vucitrn police chief without knowing his
> proper
> name.
>
> The police ordered the men between the ages of eighteen and sixty to
> separate
> themselves from the women, children and elderly men. The police checked
> the
> identity papers of the 500 to 600 men who had been separated out. From
> this
> group, all of the tractor drivers were allowed to rejoin their families,
> all
> together about 200 men.
>
> A large truck then came, witnesses said, loaded fifty to sixty of the
> remaining
> men, and took them away in the direction of Kosovska Mitrovica.
> Approximately
> ten to twenty minutes later, the truck returned empty and transported
> another
> group of men in the same direction. Witnesses reported that the truck
> returned
> to reload with men at least eight times.
>
> While the men were being transported, the tractor drivers were told to
> load
> their families onto their vehicles and drive towards Kosovska Mitrovica.
> Those
> who were among the first to leave the compound told Human Rights Watch
> that, as
> they drove by, they saw the truck used to transport the men parked outside
> the
> prison of Smrekonica. The witnesses claimed that they saw there several
> of the
> men who had been taken away at the agricultural cooperative in Vucitrn,
> including some of the witnesses' own family members.
>
> Another witness - not one of the six interviewed from the Vucitrn convoy -
> also
> claimed to have seen ethnic Albanian men in and around the Smrekonica
> prison on
> May 3. This thirty-eight-year-old man from Bajgore, S.B., also
> interviewed in
> Kukes, said he had arrived in Smrekonica on the morning of May 2 on foot
> with
> another group of approximately 3,000 villagers from the Bajgore area.
> Around
> 5:00 p.m. that day, the police came to his uncle's house, where he was
> hiding,
> and ordered him to join the rest of the group in the Smrekonica school
> yard,
> which is next to the prison. S.B. told Human Rights Watch that he saw
> several
> thousand men being held in the prison, although it is not clear how he
> arrived
> at this number or whether he saw these people in the prison or around it.
> He
> also claimed that approximately 300 men staying with him in the school
> yard were
> taken to the prison. A few men were released from the prison every hour,
> he
> said, and all of them appeared to have been beaten.
>
> The convoy from Vucitrn traveled under police escort through Smrekonica to
> Kosovska Mitrovica and then alone through Srbica, Pec and Klina, where
> they
> spent a night. From Klina, a smaller road south was taken through
> Kramavile and
> Gegje (in Albanian) to the main road which leads to Prizren and then the
> Morina
> border crossing with Albania, which they crossed on May 4.
>
> According to the witnesses interviewed in Albania who had male relatives
> taken
> in Vucitrn, none of their family members had arrived in Albania in the
> past two
> weeks. The witnesses expressed fear that they may never see their
> relatives
> again.
>
> ***For further information about violations of human rights and
> humanitarian law
> in Kosovo, see the Human Rights Watch website at www.hrw.org on the
> "Crisis in
> Kosovo" page. To subscribe to Kosovo Human Rights Flashes, send an
> E-mail to
> [log in to unmask]***
>
>
>


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