TITLE: SERBIA-MONTENEGRO HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994 AUTHOR: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DATE: FEBRUARY 1995 SERBIA-MONTENEGRO The United States and the international community do not recognize Serbia-Montenegro as the successor state to the former Yugoslavia and have suspended the "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" ("FRY") from participation in the United Nations, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), and other international organizations. Serbia-Montenegro is dominated by Slobodan Milosevic, who is serving his second 5-year term as President of Serbia. He controls the country through his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), which lacks majorities in both the "Federal" and Serbian Parliaments but holds the key administrative positions. The SPS abolished the political autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina in 1990, and all significant decisionmaking since that time has been centralized under Milosevic in Belgrade. As a key element of his hold on power, Milosevic wields strong control over the Serbian police, a heavily armed force of perhaps 100,000 which is guilty of extensive, brutal, and systematic human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings. Another important factor in Milosevic's rise to power and almost total domination of the Government is his control and manipulation of the media. Freedom of the press is greatly circumscribed. The Government discouraged independent media and resorted to surveillance, harassment, and eventual suppression to inhibit the media from reporting its repressive and violent acts. At year's end, the Government's legal moves against a major independent newspaper threatened to still its voice. Police elements routinely monitor opposition leaders, human rights workers, and political dissidents. In addition to the absolute power which Milosevic wields over Serbia-Montenegro, until August his Government actively fostered violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina by providing military, economic, political, and moral support to ethnic Serbs responsible for massive human rights abuses including "ethnic cleansing." The Government of Serbia-Montenegro announced at that time that it would stop the flow of all nonhumanitarian aid across its boundaries into Bosnia and Herzegovina; in September, it allowed the deployment of a mission sponsored by the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia (ICFY) to observe adherence to border controls. In return, the United Nations Security Council voted to suspend temporarily some of the sanctions previously imposed on Serbia-Montenegro so long as ICFY observers continue to verify that the border remains closed. U.N. economic sanctions continued to impact the economy for the third successive year. An economic stabilization program introduced in January succeeded in bringing hyperinflation under control, but by year's end the program was beginning to show serious cracks. The hard currency black market had reappeared, consumers struggled under the double burden of high prices and a shortage of local currency, unemployment continued at levels in excess of 50 percent, and independent labor unions tried unsuccessfully to mobilize labor protests. The net results were the reduction of a once thriving middle class to near subsistence levels and concomitant increases in crime, including organized drug trafficking. The Government continued to inflict egregious abuses on the one-third of the population who are not ethnic Serbs, and repressed voices of opposition in the ethnic Serb community as well. Government officials carried out sanctioned extrajudicial killings, torture, brutal beatings, arbitrary arrest, and a general campaign to keep the non-Serb populations repressed. While an atmosphere of fear and violence pervades all of Serbia-Montenegro, the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo and the Muslims of Sandzak suffer the heaviest abuses. Repressive acts against these minorities increased dramatically after the Government refused to extend the mandate of the CSCE monitoring missions in 1993. RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from: a. Political and Other Extrajudicial Killing Political violence in Serbia-Montenegro, including killings by police, resulted mostly from direct and indirect efforts by Serbian authorities to suppress and intimidate ethnic majority groups. Leaders of minority communities in Kosovo and Sandzak, and to a lesser extent Vojvodina, reported numerous acts of violence and intimidation aimed at repressing non-Serbs and Muslims. The level of violence was most severe in the Albanian- populated region of Kosovo, where police repressed expressions of political and community life, and in the Muslim-populated region of Sandzak, where "ethnic cleansing" continued, with homes inhabited by Muslims being turned over to Serbs. According to the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms (CDHRF), a monitoring organization based in Pristina, Kosovo, 17 ethnic Albanians were killed by police during the year; 11 of them were shot by police, and the others died while in police custody, reportedly due to mistreatment or beatings. In most cases, the authorities claimed that those killed were shot while fleeing or resisting arrest. Police, however, appear to have resorted to deadly force with little or no attempt to apprehend the alleged suspects by other means. A Serbian police officer in July shot and killed a 6-year-old ethnic Albanian boy, Fidan Brestovci, while he was riding in his parents' car. The officer later claimed he had mistaken the car for one driven by a wanted felon. In March, following an argument in a Kosovo Polje restaurant, a Serbian police officer shot and killed Faik Maloku and seriously wounded Xhevat Bejzaku. Maloku evidently failed to produce a personal identity card on demand. The officer was detained for investigation, but no formal charges were filed against him. In early August, a large Serbian police contingent killed Hasan Ramadani, a former political prisoner, while searching his house in Podujevo for illegal weapons. In September, when violence broke out in the town of Decani during a police raid on market day, Serbian police fired indiscriminately, according to eyewitnesses, and killed a young Albanian mother of two while she was watching from a window. b. Disappearance The reduced level of paramilitary activity in Serbia-Montenegro led to a sharp drop in the number of kidnapings and disappearances. Human rights agencies reported no new cases of disappearance or officially sanctioned kidnaping. In May Serbian authorities "extradited" the notorious paramilitary figure Milan Lukic to Bosnian Serb authorities in the "Serbian Republic" (RS) where he is believed to have been set free. Lukic was scheduled to stand trial for his role in the Strpci kidnapings in February 1993 when 17 ethnic Muslims and 2 Croats were taken from the Belgrade-Bar train as it crossed a narrow strip of Bosnian territory. None of those who disappeared have been heard from. Paramilitary forces are presumed to have murdered them, but their families continued to petition the Government for information on their fate. c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment While the law prohibits torture, police in Serbia routinely beat people severely when holding them under detention or stopping them at police checkpoints, especially targeting ethnic Albanians. According to human rights agencies, police beat thousands of Kosovar Albanians and Sandzak Muslims during searches for illegal weapons, and extracted "confessions" during interrogations that routinely included beating the suspects' feet, hands, and genital areas with fists and nightsticks, use of electric shocks, and verbal intimidation. In late November, Ismail Raka, an ethnic Albanian from Kaganik in southeast Kosovo, died while in police custody. His family was told he had committed suicide by jumping from a fifth-floor window; photographs of his body show evidence of torture and severe beatings. Sabit Vllahia died in Podujevo in early December, and Hasan Cubolli, age 81, died in Podujevo on December 27 while being held by the Serbian police. The use of excessive force in Kosovo and Sandzak was both routine and capricious. Police allegedly beat Sylejman Bytuqi when they raided his home in Malisheva and found an unregistered gun. Four days later, local police severely beat Mustafe Rukovci in Gnjilane after failing to uncover any weapons in a search of his home. Serbian police beat and harassed the family members of suspected political activists or those they believed to be in possession of illegal weapons. Apparently confident there would be no reprisals, police often beat their victims in public view or in front of their families. On February 21, police reportedly searched the house of Ibrahim Havoli, an ethnic Albanian, and, because Havoli was not at home, beat his brother. Amnesty International reported that 2 days later, 40 police officers searched the home of Shemsi Gashi in Pristina, brutally beating him, his 2 sons, and 2 guests in front of the rest of the family. In Pec, police took an ethnic Albanian secondary student off a school bus in April, beat him, and carved Serbian nationalist symbols into his chest. Police allegedly told one beaten man that they would drop criminal charges against him if he signed a statement saying he had not been beaten. They warned another one that he would have trouble with notorious paramilitary leaders Zeljko "Arkan" Raznjatovic and Vojislav Seselj if he talked. In May police in Kosovo stopped two men for no apparent reason as they drove their children to school and beat them so severely they were hospitalized for 3 days. When it turned out that the men were ethnic Serbs, officials at all levels demanded that proceedings be started against the police. Prior to 1994, the Government of Montenegro had generally displayed more tolerance toward its ethnic minorities than had its Serbian counterpart. In February and March, however, Montenegrin police beat and tortured 25 Sandzak Muslims active in the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) whom they had arrested on a variety of weapons charges. According to defense lawyers, Harun Hadzic was beaten for 48 hours without a break, given electric shocks, and forced to wear a painfully hot asbestos cap. Police beat Hadzic and the other victims with truncheons, making them count the number of blows out loud, tied them to radiators, deprived them of food, water, and sleep, and threatened to kill them. Police allegedly forced a truncheon first into Avdea Ciguljin's anus and then into his mouth. Sandzak Muslim political leaders and human rights activists believed the beatings were aimed at creating a climate of fear in the Muslim community to destroy the SDA and ultimately alter the demographic balance in the region by causing Muslims to flee. In the Sandzak region, Serbian authorities were similarly abusive. The Humanitarian Law Fund (HLF), a Belgrade-based human rights organization, documented numerous instances in which local authorities used torture and physical abuse during a series of massive house-to-house searches carried out in Prijepolje between January 27 and February 17. Many of those beaten singled out district chief Mileta Novakovic as having been particularly brutal. Some beatings were clearly politically motivated. One victim told an HLF representative that his interrogation began with a berating for his political activities followed by a severe beating. Fadil Osmanovic, a teacher and vice president of the SDA in Berane, committed suicide after being tortured at a police station and ordered to report to the police again. In May police beat Mustafa Dzigal in a Novi Pazar prison after questioning him about his contacts with CSCE representatives. Nearly 100 Kosovar Albanians and Sandzak Muslims have been convicted over the past 2 years and are serving prison terms on the unsubstantiated grounds of conspiring to undermine the integrity of the State. Insofar as the real grounds for these charges appear to have been that these persons were active in ethnic Albanian and Sandzak Muslim political parties, they may be said to have been prosecuted for their political associations rather than for criminal activity. d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile Federal law permits police to detain suspects without a warrant and hold them incommunicado for up to 3 days without charging them or granting them access to an attorney. After this period, police must turn a suspect over to an investigative judge, who may order a 30-day extension and, under certain legal procedures, subsequent extensions of investigative detention up to 6 months. Police routinely held suspects well beyond the 3-day statutory period. It is generally during this initial period that detainees experience the worst treatment and abuse. During investigative detention, detainees theoretically have access to legal counsel, although in practice access is only occasionally granted. Defense lawyers in Kosovo and Sandzak have filed numerous complaints about flagrant breaches of standard procedure which they believed undermined their clients' rights. The courts ignored those complaints. In November and December, police began a massive roundup of some 200 ethnic Albanian former members of police and security forces in Kosovo. Lawyers reported that most of those detained were subjected to harsh beatings and electric shock torture, held longer than the law permits before charges were brought, and subjected to more beatings after appearing in court. A group of 25 Montenegrin Sandzak Muslims arrested between January 26 and March 20, most of them active in the SDA, were held without charge for longer than the law allows. They were not allowed to contact defense lawyers until February 8, when the high court in Bijelo Polje, Montenegro, overturned a ruling by the investigative judge that suspended their right to counsel. In the interim, police interrogated the defendants in the absence of their lawyers and, after subjecting them to brutal physical torture including the use of cattle prods, obtained incriminating statements from them. In June the Montenegrin investigative judge widened the scope of the investigation to include another 12 suspects, further delaying the trial date. On December 28, 21 defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 2 to 7 years for "attempting to undermine the territorial integrity of the State." The head of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) in Montenegro, Hajrun Hadzic, received the stiffest sentence of 7 years, to begin immediately rather than after the appeals process. Defense lawyers and human rights workers have also complained of excessive delays in filing formal charges and opening investigations. The ability of the defense to challenge the legal basis of their clients' detention was further hampered by the difficulty they encountered in gaining access to copies of the official indictment and the decision to remand the defendant into custody. In some cases, prosecutors have failed to share material evidence with the defense in a timely fashion, and judges have prevented defense attorneys from reading the court file. The investigative judges, formally responsible for every aspect of the investigation, often delegate most or all responsibility to the police or state security service. Although this is allowed under law, the free hand given to the police often reduced the role of the investigative judge to one of pure formalism. Defense lawyers frequently complained of difficulty in gaining access to their clients, even during questioning by the investigative judge, a restriction rarely placed on public prosecutors. In a country where the majority of ethnic Serbs are armed, police selectively enforce the laws regulating the possession and registration of firearms so as to harass and intimidate ethnic minorities. Serbs are rarely, if ever, charged with similar crimes although they are equally well armed, generally with illegal or unregistered weapons. An exception occurred in September when Serbian President Milosevic moved against members of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS). One SRS parliamentary deputy, Vakic, was stripped of his parliamentary immunity for illegal possession of explosives and automatic weapons. Often, police in Sandzak and Kosovo simply order a member of an ethnic minority to turn in a certain weapon and a specified number of bullets within a set time, on threat of detention or torture. The victim, if not in possession of a weapon, is generally forced to purchase one on the black market in order to turn it in to the police. Police do not similarly harass ethnic Serbs, and despite high crime rates arrests of Serbs for possession of illegal weapons are rare. In January Serbian police arrested Rivzat Halilovic, leader of a faction of the Macedonian Party of Democratic Action while he was in Serbia, on highly suspect charges of espionage. The "secret maps" that he was accused of handing over to Pakistani agents could be purchased at any Belgrade book store. In Kosovo, Serbian police continued a policy of frequent, arbitrary detention of political activists. Following a concert in Urosevac commemorating the death of 5 ethnic Albanians in violent clashes with police, Serbian authorities ordered the arrest of some 40 of those present, including prominent members of several local branches of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). The police allegedly beat them in the course of interrogation. The arrests were designed strictly to intimidate and were not connected to the concert in any way. On February 4, three unidentified men kidnaped Veljko Dzakula, a former "vice president" in the self-proclaimed "Republic of Serbian Krajina" (RSK), from a busy street in downtown Belgrade. The night before his disappearance, he gave an interview to independent television Studio B highly critical of the Yugoslav army. Five days after he disappeared, representatives of the RSK "interior ministry" admitted to holding Dzakula in Glina prison on charges of espionage. A Belgrade-based human rights lawyer claimed that Serbian police, working closely with the RSK state security service, kidnaped Dzakula and "extradited" him to the "RSK" without allowing him to defend himself. Although the territory of the "RSK" is internationally recognized as a part of Croatia, Dzakula was charged with a crime under the "FRY" Criminal Code. Exile is neither legally permitted nor routinely practiced. No specific instances of the imposition of exile as a form of judicial punishment are known to have occurred. e. Denial of Fair Public Trial The authorities frequently deny this right to non-Serbs and to persons they believe oppose the regime (see below). The court system comprises local, district, and supreme courts at the republic level, and a Federal Supreme Court to which republic Supreme Court decisions may be appealed. There is also a military court system. According to the Federal Constitution, the Federal Constitutional Court rules on the constitutionality of laws and regulations, relying on the republic authorities to enforce its rulings. The Federal Criminal Code of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia still applies. Under federal law, defendants have the right to be present at their trials and to have an attorney, at public expense if needed. Both the defendant and the prosecutor may appeal the verdict. Article 116 of the Yugoslav Criminal Code, which allows for sentences of up to 10 years for "undermining the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," is often used selectively to convict Kosovar Albanians and Sandzak Muslims on flimsy or circumstantial evidence. In February Kosovo district courts sentenced more than 30 ethnic Albanians to terms ranging from 1 to 10 years under Article 116 for allegedly organizing "illegal defense forces" under an independent Republic of Kosovo. According to Amnesty International, defense lawyers complained that statements taken during interrogation--and subsequently used in prosecuting the Kosovar Albanians--were solicited under severe physical and psychological pressures. Delays and seemingly arbitrary changes in the charges similarly marred the ongoing trial of another group of 25 Muslim political activists on weapons charges in Novi Pazar, Serbia. Defense lawyers did not deny that their clients were in possession of illegal arms but maintained that the laws were being selectively enforced and used as a means of intimidating the Sandzak Muslim community. The trial ended in a conviction, but the original weapons charges were suddenly changed to the more serious criminal charge of attempting to undermine the territorial integrity of the State. f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence Federal law gives republic ministries of the interior sole control over the decision to monitor potential criminal activities, a power routinely abused. Authorities regularly monitored opposition and dissident activity, eavesdropped on conversations, read mail, and tapped telephones. In December human rights advocates objected to an announcement by the Federal post office that it had been registering all mail from abroad, ostensibly to protect mail carriers from charges of theft. Although the law includes restrictions on searches, officials often ignored such restrictions. In Kosovo and Sandzak, police systematically subjected ethnic Albanians to random searches of their homes, vehicles, and offices, asserting they were searching for weapons. The CDHRF reported that in the first 3 months of 1994 police searched over 1,000 Kosovar Albanian homes, often physically abusing the inhabitants. As an example of such methods, on a typical day in Kosovo (July 22), police raided Hetmen and Nezir Makolli's Pristina home and seized a licensed hunting rifle, searched the home of Hysen Hasani and his sons in Lipljan, and raided the home of Hasan Fetaj in Suva Reka, threatening to draft him into the Yugoslav army. Similar scenes were repeated thousands of times in Kosovo and Sandzak. In January and February, police conducted a series of massive house-to-house searches in Prijepolje (Sandzak). Police also routinely stopped private vehicles in Kosovo and Sandzak and searched them and the passengers without probable cause. Authorities often confiscated foreign currency from drivers and passengers, although it is not illegal to possess foreign currency. g. Use of Excessive Force and Violations of Humanitarian Law in Internal Conflicts The Government's decision to close the border with Bosnia in August, exempting only food, clothing, and medicine, was an implicit acknowledgement of the support it has provided to the Bosnian Serbs and their policy of ethnic cleansing since the beginning of the Bosnian war. (See the report on Bosnia and Herzegovina for an account of excessive force and violations of humanitarian law which the Milosevic regime consistently aided and abetted.) There were numerous credible reports of Yugoslav army units operating in eastern Bosnia as "volunteers." Following the downing of four Galeb-type planes by NATO forces in February, an obituary of one of the pilots appeared in the major Serbian daily Politika. Although Serbian authorities officially denied any involvement in the incident, the obituary announced that the pilot, a Montenegrin citizen, died fighting for his country--"Greater Serbia." In Serbia itself, authorities frequently subjected members of ethnic minorities to intimidation, with the goal of provoking their emigration. Ethnic Albanians and Muslims were severely punished for even the slightest violation of laws that were selectively enforced by Serbian police and judicial authorities. Harassment and intimidation of ethnic Croats in the multiethnic province of Vojvodina continued. Documented incidents of harassment and intimidation of ethnic minorities in Vojvodina were at lower levels compared with previous years, but the official statistics provided little comfort to those who still retain bitter memories of forced conscription and physical abuse from the recent past. While overt forms of harassment were down, ethnic Croats and Hungarians complained about more subtle forms of abuse, including alleged plans by the Serbian government to alter the ethnic composition of communities by forcibly resettling Bosnian and Croatian Serb refugees. In February a self-described "Chetnik" held Sinisa Vidakovic at gunpoint and threatened to kill him if he and his family did not move out of town. In Sremska Kamenica on May 7, an unknown person threw several crude, home-made bombs at the residences of local Croats. A similar bomb exploded in front of the Franciscan church in Subotica in June. Local authorities did little to investigate the incidents. Although Serbian authorities prosecuted one former paramilitary leader for crimes committed in Bosnia and claimed to be about to charge others, many other known and suspected war criminals were never the targets of a formal investigation. Some individuals suspected of criminal activity connected to the conflict in Bosnia and the earlier war with Croatia hold prominent positions in the Serbian, Montenegrin, or "FRY" governments. Other suspected war criminals serve as members of Parliament.