Human Rights Group Charges Abuses Have Begun in Kosovo

"Serbia apparently feels free to accelerate with impunity its violations of human rights in Kosovo," according to an April 8 Human Rights Watch/Helsinki (HRW) report. HRW workers, who traveled in Kosovo from September 1993 through January 1994, said that with the world's attention focused on Bosnia-Herzegovina, "the number of incidents of police abuse increased dramatically in 1993, with more than 5,700 cases of police maltreatment and 1,400 arrests reported in the first four months alone. " There were 5,700 incidents reported to a human rights organization in Kosovo for 1992.

Abuses included beatings and torture by police, ransacking homes and entire villages in searches for weapons, beatings for using the Albanian language, collecting deeds to homes and forcing out the owners, and the torture and sometimes killing of members of the largest political party for Albanians, who constitute 90 percent of the population of Kosovo. "When people talk about the war in the former Yugoslavia spreading to Kosovo, they don't seem to understand that it's already there, " HRW Executive Director Jeri Laber told a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. "Our concern is that the harassment of the Albanian people cease before that erupts into more violence.

Serb Charged as War Criminal in Germany

German federal prosecutors brought possible war crimes trials of perpetrators of Serbian atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina closer to reality last Feb. 15 with the arrest of 38-year-old Dusko Tadic on charges of "participation in genocide, murder and serious assault." Tadic was discovered living in Munich, accompanied by his wife and child, and was arrested on a Munich street in a commando operation.

Tadic was identified by the Sudwestfunk television station in Baden Baden, which collects information on war criminals from Bosnia who may be living in Germany. Witnesses in Germany have accused Tadic of crimes in the Omarska detention camp in northwestern Bosnia, where Muslim prisoners were held in the summer of 1992 during the first months of the war.

"Every day after Dusko Tadic was finished in the interrogation room, we had to wash blood from the floor," Tesmija Elezovic, a former Omarska inmate, told German reporters. "He forced prisoners to bite off each other's sexual organs, and sat and laughed as they bled in the most awful ways. In a garage he himself cut off men's genitals. He was a butcher. "

Human rights investigators say between 1,000 and 5,000 Bosnian Muslims may have been killed at the Omarska camp. Some German officials have called for turning Tadic over to the newly formed U.N. war crimes tribunal. German prosecutors maintain, however, that under German law they have the authority to try war criminals in Germany.

Colleague Accuses Clinton Officials of Ignoring Genocide

Richard Johnson, who handled Yugoslav affairs in the State Department from 1990 to 1992, has accused two Clinton administration political appointees, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Peter Tarnoff and State Department Counselor Timothy E. Wirth, of cynically disregarding their knowledge of Serb atrocities. Johnson took a position on the staff of Rep. Frank McCloskey (D-IN) after resigning his State Department job to protest U.S. apathy about the slaughter in the Balkans. He made his accusation in a study he prepared at the National War College entitled "The Pin Stripe Approach to Genocide."

Johnson described a lunch conversation in the spring of 1993 in which Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel argued that mass killings of Muslims by Serb forces and creation of Serb concentration camps were cause "for decisive outside intervention."

Tarnoff demurred, saying that if President Bill Clinton intervened and failed, "failure in Bosnia would destroy the Clinton presidency. " Wirth, according to Johnson, said the "moral stakes" in Washington were higher, consisting of "survival of the fragile liberal coalition represented by this presidency."

Johnson, who attended the lunch, said there were other Department of State officials present who also heard and were outraged by the remarks. A State Department spokesman said on Feb. 3 that Wirth did not recall making such a statement, and that the words attributed to Tarnoff "do not reflect his views. " The State Department spokesman pointed out that this year's annual State Department human rights report formally confirms on behalf of the United States that "acts of genocide took place."

In his study, Johnson had written, "Senior U.S. officials know that Serb leaders are waging genocide in Bosnia, but will not say so in plain English because this would raise the pressures for U.S. action. " Genocide is specifically forbidden by the 1949 United Nations Genocide Convention, to which the U.S. is a signatory.

Israeli B’Tselem Condemns Killings by Israeli Civilians

Israeli human rights researcher Eitan Feiner reported a pattern of neglect by Israeli authorities in dealing with 206 cases of settler violence against Arabs from the start of the Palestinian uprising in December 1987 until the end of 1992. His report, issued on March 15 by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, said that of 62 Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians from 1988 through 1992, in only 11 cases were Israelis brought to court, and only one was convicted of murder. Another was convicted of manslaughter, and six others were found guilty of negligent homicide.

One of the settlers tried was Rabbi Moshe Levinger, leader of the settlers in Hebron who, while shooting wildly down a main Hebron shopping street, killed a Palestinian shoe merchant in the merchant's own store. Levinger served three months of a five-year sentence.

"The Israeli government has failed in its task of protecting the lives, persons and property of Palestinians from repeated attacks by Israeli civilians in the occupied territories," the B'Tselem report declared. It also pointed up the dual system of law in which Jews living in the West Bank or Gaza are tried in Israel, presumed innocent until found guilty, and their homes not subject to demolition. Palestinians charged with a similar crime in the same area can be detained without charges, tried in military courts, and their families subjected to collective punishment, including home demolitions, even before they are convicted.