Kosovars Must Stand Up For Democracy, Justice and Human Rights for All

By Aaron Rhodes and Gazmend Pula

Vienna and Prishtina, 19 August 1999. Our organization, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), has been warning the international community about repression and violations of the rights of Kosovars by Serbian regimes since the 1980s. We have published many, many reports; we have undertaken many fact-finding missions; we have organized international conferences and press conferences; we have provided briefings to diplomats; we have spoken in the United Nations and in the OSCE; we have urged support from powerful national governments and we have voiced our concerns in Belgrade. We have tried to mobilize action for a just solution of the issue and to confront all the human rights problems in Kosovo, especially those originating from the colonial policy of Serbia that took Kosovo from autonomy to the genocide of recent months.

Many of the members of the Helsinki Federation—the Helsinki Committees in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Serbia, Montenegro, Germany and of course our American colleagues in Human Rights Watch—have worked in the framework of the IHF as we have engaged for freedom, democracy and dignity of Kosovo and tried to de-politicize and de-ethnicize the issues by emphasizing support for universal human rights for all people as people.

Now, in the aftermath of the NATO humanitarian intervention to end the Serbian repression and humanitarian disaster in Kosovo, Kosovo is in effect free, but without a legitimate government whose responsibility would be to protect fully and efficiently the rights of all its people. Kosovo is becoming an international «protectorate», but the interregnum is still characterized by serious lack of order and security. The KFOR, the United Nations, the OSCE, and other international governmental structures have taken on the responsibility to provide the only legitimate and legalistic governmental authority until political processes in Kosovo can be organized that will ensure fairly and democratically elected representatives to assume office. In the meantime, when Albanians have been efficiently freed from the Serbian repression, there is the danger of some reversal of the direction of repression. Namely publicly available information and reports of KFOR, UNMIK, UNHCR and other IGO and NGO sources, clearly indicate that what seems to be organized violence against large parts of non-Albanian population, driven by revenge sentiments of authoritarian individuals, groups and structures, are creating a climate of persecution of Serbs and thus perpetrating their exodus from Kosova.. Some of these hate-and-revenge-driven groups seem to be lightmindedly ready to challenge even the international liberators and peacemakers in Kosova, including KFOR segments itself. Such potential ingratitude and self-destructive recklessness simply must not be allowed to happen.

While the world is working and trying to help Kosovars, but at the same time carefully watching how the Kosovars will handle their new-found freedom, this authoritarian and repressive violence against non-Albanian population is compromising seriously the image of Albanians as the massive victims of Serbian ethnic cleansing and genocide; this despite new mass graves of killed Albanians being discovered every day, the still-on-going partitioning of Mitrovica and violence of some remaining and disguised Serbian paramilitary groups in Kosova. Instead, full cooperation between all the relevant Kosovar political and other factors with transitional international authorities in Kosovo should be established without delay. Cooperation, not confrontation, will secure Kosovo’s path to a democratic future.

It remains to be seen whether or not the people of Kosovo have the discipline and the commitment to fairness and civil society that democracy requires. Restraint must be exercised to fight the drive for revenge and instead attention should be turned to a democratic future based on full and genuine respect for human rights for all citizens of Kosova, irrespective of ethnic and other affiliation. Immense damage has already been done to the image of Albanians in Kosovo in international public opinion by the ethnic violence. In turn this could seriously slow down and severely undermine the eagerness of the international efforts for the reconstruction and establishment of a prosperous and democratic Kosovo. The potentially threatening alternative would be the sliding of the long suffering people of Kosovo into anarchy, chaos, organized crime and civil violence.

We have denounced acts of violence and revenge against the Serbs and Roma in Kosovo as unacceptable acts. Many of the Serbs and Roma who have been killed, injured, and driven from their homes have had no part whatsoever in the suffering caused by the Serbian regime in Kosovo, and even if they had, there is no right to take the law into one’s own hands. Justice has to be done by subjecting to legal and orderly procedures all those responsible or suspected for war crimes in Kosovo, speedily and efficiently. Revenge-driven self-justice is unacceptable in the democracy and rule of law toward which Kosovo should be moving. The community cannot tolerate, cannot excuse, cannot justify these acts which seem to copy the program of ethnic cleansing organized by the Serb forces over the past ten years.

Those who have committed these crimes are doing unbelievable damage to the project of building a democratic Kosovo where human rights are respected—and they provide grounds for the anti-Albanian Russian and Serbian propaganda about an alleged new round of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, protected by the international community. All the enemies of a free and democratic Kosovo are capitalizing on these crimes and using them to embarrass the Kosovo humanitarian intervention and its noble objectives, Albanians themselves, and organizations—like the IHF—that have tried to help Kosovo over the years.

These unfortunate and irresponsible actions are proving that, in the absence of Serb oppression, the worst enemy of human rights in Kosovo could become the Kosovars themselves. The UNMIK has been slow—much too slow—in bringing in the necessary international police task force to provide security and order and thus protect all the citizens of Kosova. There has been, as a result, the formation of a power-vacuum, in which some evil, irrational and misguided impulses are trying to take over rule. Still, the UNMIK is not to blame. Those who committed the crimes are to blame.

Surprisingly enough, these violent acts, with honorable, albeit insufficient exceptions not followed by deeds, have not been denounced strongly and systematically enough by media editorials, political and other factors or by the self-proclaimed leaders of the community. Instead, some leaders seem to be calculating about how to gain popularity and power.

That is why internationals i.e. KFOR and the UNMIK, urgently must assume a much more assertive and vigorous role in the protectorate i.e. in Kosova, especially in the domain of security and order, normalization of life and institution-building. The war phase in Kosovo was successfully completed by the NATO humanitarian intervention, and the peace phase should follow suit just as vigorously.

Leadership that does not stand for human rights has no place in the modern world and does not do justice to its own people, nor the international effort to liberate and rebuild Kosovo, nor to the memory of the victims we mourn. And leadership based on expedient personal or group self-interest, not on the integrity of the community, is not leadership at all. It will be a tragedy if Kosovo loses this exceptional opportunity to build a genuinely democratic and prosperous future based on strongest respect for human rights and rule of law that were so tragically denied to the people of Kosovo during the entire century.

Aaron Rhodes is Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.
Gazmend Pula is chairman of the Kosovo Helsinki Committee.