[Senate Hearing 106-443]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-443
THE KOSOVO REFUGEE CRISIS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
on
THE CURRENT KOSOVO REFUGEE SITUATION AND THE SCOPE AND ADEQUACY OF THE
RESPONSE OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
__________
APRIL 14, 1999
__________
Serial No. J-106-14
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
63-248 WASHINGTON : 2000
SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman
STROM THURMOND, South Carolina PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
JON KYL, Arizona HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
BOB SMITH, New Hampshire
Manus Cooney, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Bruce A. Cohen, Minority Chief Counsel
______
Subcommittee on Immigration
SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan, Chairman
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
JON KYL, Arizona CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
Lee Liberman Otis, Chief Counsel
Melody Barnes, Minority Chief Counsel
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Abraham, Hon. Spencer, U.S. Senator from the State of Michigan... 1
Hatch, Hon. Orrin G., U.S. Senator from the State of Utah........ 3
Kennedy, Hon. Edward M., U.S. Senator from the State of
Massachusetts.................................................. 5
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont... 7
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, U.S. Senator from the State of California 9
Biden, Hon. Joseph, R., Jr., U.S. Senator from the State of
Delaware....................................................... 37
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WITNESSES
Panel consisting of Vjosa Dobruna, Kosovar refugee, and director
and founder, Center for the Protection of Women and Children,
Pristina, Kosovo; Aferdita Kelemendi, Kosovar refugee, and
director, Radio/TV 21, Pristina, Kosovo; and Mentor Nimani,
Kosovar refugee, and coordinator, Humanitarian Law Center,
Pristina, Kosovo............................................... 10
Statement of Julia V. Taft, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau
of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Department of State,
Washington, DC................................................. 41
Panel consisting of Bill Frelick, senior policy analyst, U.S.
Committee for Refugees, Washington, DC; and Maureen Greenwood,
advocacy director for Europe and the Middle East, Amnesty
International USA, Washington, DC.............................. 59
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Dobruna, Vjosa:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 13
Attachment: Reports of Massacres by Serb Forces in
Kosovo, dated Mar. 27-Apr. 8........................... 15
Frelick Bill:
Testimony.................................................... 59
Prepared statement........................................... 63
Greenwood, Maureen:
Testimony.................................................... 71
Prepared statement........................................... 74
Kelmendi, Aferdita:
Testimony.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 19
Nimani, Mentor:
Testimony.................................................... 20
Prepared statement........................................... 22
Attachment: From the Humanitarian Law Center, dated Apr.
12, 1998............................................... 23
Taft, Julia V.:
Testimony.................................................... 41
Prepared statement........................................... 45
APPENDIX
Questions and Answers
Responses of Julia V. Taft to Questions From Senator Leahy....... 79
THE KOSOVO REFUGEE CRISIS
----------
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Immigration,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:11 a.m., in
room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Spencer
Abraham (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Also, present: Senators Specter, Grassley, Kennedy,
Feinstein, Schumer, Hatch (ex officio), Leahy (ex officio), and
Biden (ex officio).
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SPENCER ABRAHAM, A. U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
Senator Abraham. We will begin our hearing at this time,
and I want to thank so many people who have been involved in
helping to put together today's activities, to our ranking
member, Senator Kennedy, and his staff, and to Chairman Hatch
and the full Judiciary Committee staff.
Today's hearing, of course, is on the Kosovo refugee
crisis. I will make a few opening remarks, and then I have
asked Senator Hatch, who has had a long interest and
involvement in these issues, to join us today and he will make
some brief remarks, as will our ranking member of the Judiciary
Committee, Senator Leahy. And we are also joined, of course, by
subcommittee members Senators Kennedy and Feinstein.
Today, we will examine the Kosovo refugee crisis. The
hearing will focus on what I consider to be a tragedy of epic
proportions, a tragedy that constitutes the single largest
humanitarian disaster in Europe since the end of World War II.
On March 24, just 3 weeks ago, NATO launched air strikes
against Serb targets in Yugoslavia. Mr. Milosevic immediately
raised to a new level his brutal campaign against the
inhabitants of the province of Kosovo. He directed his forces
to sweep through towns and villages, and target their
residents, 90 percent of whom were ethnic Albanians.
``Ethnic cleansing'' is a euphemism. What Slobodan
Milosevic's forces did was to rape, murder and remove ethnic
Albanians from Kosovo. It is said that one's home is the safest
refuge, but for Kosovar Albanians this has not been the case.
Across Kosovo, individuals, indeed entire families, were forced
to leave their houses. Many were awoken in the middle of the
night with a knock on the door or worse. Fathers and sons were
removed from their families, leaving women and children to
wander toward the border, not knowing, and perhaps never
knowing, the fate of their loved ones.
According to U.S. intelligence and other sources, the human
rights abuses being committed in Kosovo are immense. In Arllat,
Serb forces executed 200 ethnic Albanian men. In Dakovica, the
bodies of 70 ethnic Albanians were found in two houses, and
another 33 bodies were found in a local river. In Goden, on
March 25, Serb forces executed 20 men, including school
teachers. In Likovc, Malisevo and other towns and villages,
they torched homes and burned shops to the ground.
And in town after town, in village after village, Serb
forces expelled Kosovar Albanians, with the numbers soon
climbing into the hundreds of thousands. It is difficult to
fathom the horror of police and military forces surrounding
entire neighborhoods and forcing those of a particular
ethnicity to leave, but that is precisely what has happened.
There have been some who have questioned the extent of the
atrocities being committed in Kosovo. I think that today's
hearing and the testimony we are about to hear will help
resolve any doubt. We will also be addressing the scope and the
adequacy of the response of the United States and the
international community, focusing on several aspects of this
subject.
First, it is reported that last week Macedonian police
removed refugees from a site there, separating people from
their families and forcing them onto planes bound for Turkey.
More than $400,000 in U.S. taxpayer money was used for these
flights which apparently removed many people against their
will.
Second, food, shelter and other items needed by the
refugees for their survival were not available for many days
after the refugee flow began and are still in desperately short
supply in some places. These shortages raise questions about
the level of preparedness for the brutal campaign Mr. Milosevic
began as soon as international observers had left Kosovo in
anticipation of the air strikes.
Third, the administration announced last week that it might
place up to 20,000 Kosovar refugees whom the United States has
offered to accept at our naval base in Guantanamo Bay. This
gives rise to some questions about what this plan involves and
how it would work in practice. Finally, we will see what we can
learn about what is happening and what is likely to happen to
the internally displaced Kosovars who are still within Yugoslav
territory.
This crisis has touched the lives of not only Kosovar
Albanians, but also families right here in the United States
and in my home State of Michigan. Many Americans are eager to
help and have offered food, shelter and money to aid the
refugees.
To give just one example, the Gerber Baby Products Company,
based in Fremont, MI, has donated 21,984 cases of baby food
products for the infants of refugees fleeing from Kosovo.
Gerber informed our office yesterday that two truckloads had
already arrived in Albania and that five to eight more
truckloads were being readied for shipment. As Michigan's U.S.
Senator, I want to commend this Michigan company, but all
Americans who have made donations, for stepping in to help in
this needy situation.
Of course, that is not the only way the crisis has affected
Americans. In California, Texas and Michigan, and throughout
the Nation, the fate of Staff Sergeant Andrew Ramirez,
Specialist Steven Gonzalez, and Staff Sergeant Christopher
Stone is very much on our minds.
The numbers we are dealing with in this refugee crisis are
enormous. Yet, with large numbers, it is often possible to lose
the full picture of human tragedy, the human face, for behind
every number and every statistic, there is a story that must be
heard.
One of the goals of this hearing is to see to it that we do
not lose sight of the human face of this tragedy. That is why I
am pleased that we were able to help bring here three people
forced out of Kosovo who will tell their stories. And I would
like to thank the International Crisis Group, the Kosovo Action
Coalition, Mercy Corps International and the International
Rescue Committee for their help in locating these important
witnesses.
At this time, I would like to also mention that not
everyone who would have liked to tell their story could be with
us here today. We will not hear from people like Eranda Rudari,
a 28-year-old ethnic Albanian. A resident of Pristina, Eranda
knew the Serbs were removing people from their homes in Kosovo,
but she felt relatively safe. She was 9 months pregnant and
could not imagine being evicted.
But 10 days ago, Serbian troops wearing masks barged into
her apartment and ordered her and her family to leave. She told
them she was about to have a baby. They said they didn't care.
Her family drove for 4 days to reach the Macedonian border
before they were forced to abandon their car. They soon entered
a muddy field, where she was forced to sleep in the cold and
the rain under plastic sheeting. The next day, she made it to a
camp with tents, but she has yet to have her baby and can only
hope that she will receive the medical care she needs to ensure
the safe delivery of her child.
I hope that we will not forget about Eranda and her child
as we consider what actions we as a Nation must take in regard
to the refugee crisis in Kosovo. I look forward to hearing the
stories of those witnesses who could be with us here today, as
well as testimony from the administration and from refugee
organizations involved in facing this tragedy. That testimony
should be before the Congress as we continue to consider how we
respond to this refugee crisis.
I want to thank everybody, as I said at the outset, who has
helped us to prepare today's hearing.
At this point, I will turn to the chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, Senator Hatch, for his comments.
STATEMENT OF HON. ORRIN G. HATCH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF UTAH
Senator Hatch. Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee, Assistant Secretary Taft, representatives of the
humanitarian assistance community, and our guests from Kosovo,
thank you all for being here. And I appreciate your courtesy in
yielding to me, and also Senator Kennedy's courtesy, which he
has always shown to me.
I commend Senator Abraham and Senator Kennedy for holding
this important hearing so soon after we have reconvened from
the spring recess. Senator Abraham and Senator Kennedy have
been voices for responsible and humanitarian refugee and
immigration policies since both of them first came to the
Senate. I was pleased we were able to work together on this
very important matter.
I commend the State Department and the non-governmental
organizations for everything they have done thus far. I believe
I share with every member of this committee the conviction that
Congress should assist in doing all it reasonably can to
alleviate the suffering that has been caused by Milosevic's
barbaric campaign.
Barbarism is how one might perhaps inadequately describe
the deliberate and despicable policy Milosevic has unleased in
Kosovo. ``Ethnic cleansing'' has been another term used to
describe depopulation of ethnic groups in the Balkans. But that
term fails to capture the horror of systematic executions,
rapes, and forced exodus of Muslims that we have witnessed in
the past weeks. This is, ladies and gentlemen, quite starkly,
genocide.
Applying the legal definitions in the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, we are, in
my view, confronting the most severe man-made humanitarian
crisis in Europe since World War II. Another point on
definitions. Having read Dr. Dobruna's powerless testimony
early this morning, I think we should strictly accept her point
and refer to the Kosovars as deportees rather than refugees.
For the purposes of this hearing, we need to adhere to a
certain focus that limits our discussions to the deportee
crisis at hand. We do not as of this day have a comprehensive
view of the degree of devastation wrought by Serbian forces
against the Kosovars. We have seen over half a million people
on the borders of the contiguous nations, but we don't have any
idea exactly how many are there.
We do not know today the fate of thousands of men and boys
separated from their families. There are credible reports of
mass rapes, of children's throats slit in front of their
parents. We have no idea as to the dimension of this terror,
and I hope that one of the first things today's hearing begins
to articulate before the American public is the level of
atrocities committed by Serbian military police and
paramilitaries against this civilian population.
While this deportee crisis is inseparable from the broader
foreign policy issues confronting this administration,
Congress, and NATO today, we will have other forums to debate
the broader policy. But two questions have been raised about
this deportee crisis that should be addressed today. One has to
do with the charges that NATO's intervention caused this
crisis, and the other has to do with the question as to why the
administration and its allies were unprepared for the level of
humanitarian disaster that we face today.
Let me say here that I find the first suggestion, that
NATO's bombings caused this crisis, to be completely without
merit. We have plenty of evidence that these genocidal plans
were already in place and, in fact, were already being slowly
implemented before March 24. Further, we have a clear
historical record that these types of barbarous policies are
what Milosevic perpetrates. The attacks on civilian populations
throughout the wars in Croatia and Bosnia are well-established.
Therefore, I find it completely unfair and wholly dishonest to
accuse the administration and NATO of causing this crisis.
To assert this specious causation, however, raises a
disturbing irony. I have a vivid and bitter memory of a
dramatic discussion I had with then Bosnian Prime Minister
Haris Siladzic in the summer of 1995, when he had come to the
United States to plead for us to lift our arms embargo against
his forces besieged by the well-armed Serbs.
He met with me moments after pleading unsuccessfully with
Vice President Gore. President Clinton had refused to meet with
him. When I asked the Prime Minister what was the Vice
President's reasoning, I was told that the administration
believed that lifting the arms embargo would cause the Serbs to
attack the eastern enclaves of Zepa, Gorazde and Srebrenica.
This is, of course, what the Serbs did anyway weeks later. Over
7,000 unarmed men and boys were herded out of town and
massacred.
In retrospect, I do not know what is more astounding, the
administration's completely fallacious logic then or the fact
that, with the graves of Srebrenica as a glaring lesson, they
were unprepared for Milosevic's campaign of genocide unleashed
in the last 2 weeks. By looking at the number of deportees and
learning of then new atrocities, I fear that many more
Srebrenicas have occurred. If the administration learned the
lessons of Srebrenica, then whywere they unprepared?
Again, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your hard work, your
leadership and your courtesy, and I thank my colleagues,
Senator Kennedy and the other Democrats as well, for allowing
me to go forward.
Senator Abraham. Senator Hatch, thank you very much.
We will now turn to our ranking member on this
subcommittee, Senator Kennedy, and again I thank you for your
help in putting the hearing together, Senator.
STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD M. KENNEDY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS
Senator Kennedy. Well, thank you, Senator Abraham. All of
us are deeply appreciative of you to have this hearing this
morning. And we thank our chairman and Senator Leahy, as well,
giving the Senate of the United States an opportunity to hear
from our friends. And we want to extend to them the warmest
welcome.
We know it is never easy to relive these days of terror
which each of you have gone through, but we want you to know at
the very start how welcome you are and how important your
presence here is and how the American people value, one, your
extraordinary courage and, second, your commitment to your
families and your loved ones, and for your willingness to share
with us what is happening over in your homes and in your
communities and in your country. So we thank all of you very,
very much for being here.
Slobodan Milosevic's reign of terror has created the
largest refugee crisis since World War II. Hundreds of
thousands of Kosovar Albanian refugees have been forced to seek
safe haven in other countries. From the testimony of refugees
who have made it to safety, we are beginning to learn the true
dimension of the brutal atrocities that they have witnessed and
suffered.
Serbian forces have terrorized villages and towns
throughout Kosovo, forcing ethnic Albanians to flee their homes
on a moment's notice. They have seen Serbs destroy all that
they hold dear. They have seen family members, friends and
neighbors tortured and murdered. As they fled to save their
lives, they saw their homes destroyed. Those who could not run
fast enough, like one handicapped man and his wife, were shot
as they attempted to flee.
These refugees have traveled for days with only the clothes
on their backs and with little food or water. They have endured
every degradation we can imagine. They have been raped and
beaten and stripped of valuables, including passports and
documents to establish their identity. Families have been
separated. Women and children worry about the fate of their
husbands, fathers and brothers, who perhaps were rounded up and
murdered by the Serb forces, or spared, only to be used as
human shields.
Refugees who have reached the safety of camps have been
forced to live and sleep in muddy open fields, exposed to cold
winds and rain, in squalid conditions, with no sanitation or
running water. They are the fortunate ones. An estimated 4 to
600,000 Kosovar Albanians are still trapped in Kosovo. Little
is known about their fate, but the few reports we have received
are deeply disturbing.
The Kosovo crisis has presented the United States and NATO
with a monumental military and humanitarian challenge. We are
meeting the military challenge by spending millions of dollars
a day to assist NATO in the war against the Serb aggression,
and it is a war we intend to win, and will as soon as possible.
Equally important is the humanitarian challenge we face. As
a leader in refugee policy and the wealthiest country in the
world, we must be in the forefront of international efforts to
meet the humanitarian needs of the refugees and ease their
suffering. We must be ready to provide humanitarian assistance
on a scale commensurate with the crisis.
I commend the administration for its steps thus far in
easing the plight of refugees, and I think we are all very
grateful that Julia Taft is a leader in that whole effort,
someone who brings enormous skill and talent and compassion to
this position. We have provided thousands of tents and blankets
and water containers, and over a million humanitarian daily
rations to hundreds of thousands of traumatized refugees.
In the weeks ahead, we must be prepared to do more. The
humanitarian needs in the region are enormous and will continue
to grow. As Mrs. Orgata, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees,
has recommended, and as the refugees themselves prefer, we are
trying to relocate the refugees within the region. Albania is
one of the poorest countries in Europe and has been very
generous. The people of Albania have opened up their homes and
shared what little they have with thousands of refugees, and we
need to assist Albania with the high cost of caring for them
and be prepared to do more to assist humanitarian efforts in
Macedonia and Montenegro to make sure the refugees are treated
well.
The Kosovar refugees have suffered enough. They have done
nothing to merit indefinite detention and confinement in a
refugee camp. We can do better, and we should. To the greatest
extent possible, we should give them a fitting respite from the
violence in their homeland in a manner respectful of their
dignity and their liberty until they can safely return to their
homes. Refugee organizations in the United States have been
flooded with telephone calls from Americans willing to open up
their homes to these refugees, and I welcome the fact that the
administration has given second thought to resettlement in
Guantanamo Bay.
Finally, we must not forget the hundreds of thousands of
internally displaced refugees. We have reports of anywhere from
400,000 to 600,000 that are really in desperate, desperate
condition. And we are mindful that in a matter of hours, days,
without water and food, there is a real danger to their lives.
There are, I think, three different options. One is the air
drop, with all of the complexities and difficulties, and
wondering whether you can get the food to the right people at
the right time, and diversion of those resources and dangers to
those who are involved in it; second, a humanitarian corridor,
which is always difficult to establish, but has been
established through a lot of leadership, actually, in the
Congress. Years ago, we established it in Biafra and other
circumstances. Third, we can work with some countries where at
least their presence--perhaps the Greeks or Russians may be at
this time more acceptable.
But we have to move, and time, hours--this isn't a decision
for next week; this is a decision for today and tomorrow. And
if we are serious, as I know we are, we have to take one of
those three steps and we have to take it now.
I appreciate the Chair indulging me.
Senator Abraham. Thank you very much, Senator.
We are also joined today by the ranking member of the full
Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy. We appreciate hispresence,
along with Senator Hatch's.
Senator Leahy, we will turn to you for a statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF VERMONT
Senator Leahy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I know this is
a matter of great concern to you. You have expressed this not
just in this hearing, but in other meetings we have had, and I
appreciate your doing this.
The Kosovo refugee crisis is the most significant
humanitarian emergency in Europe in half a century. The number
of Kosovar Albanians who have seen their loved ones brutalized
or murdered before their eyes and who have been driven from
their homes into a life of misery and uncertainty has shocked
the conscience of the world. It has led to the first NATO
military operation in 50 years.
We are fortunate to have with us today refugees who
recently fled from Kosovo and who can talk about the relief
operations there. As I said to them before the hearing started,
I appreciate you being here. I am so sorry for the reason you
are here.
Over 600,000 Kosovar Albanians have fled to neighboring
countries. That is about the same population as my own State of
Vermont. Another 700,000 are displaced inside Kosovo. Children
have been lost, women and girls have been raped, men and boys
have been taken away, their fates unknown. Those alive are
living in squalid camps with no idea of what the future holds.
The international community is struggling to respond, and
the United States will do its part. I know we are going to be
hearing from Julia Taft later and I appreciate her being here.
I will do everything I can as a member of the Appropriations
Committee, especially the Foreign Ops Subcommittee, to support
supplementary funding for this relief effort.
We have to acknowledge the tremendous sacrifice Albania and
Montenegro are making. They are poor countries, yet they have
shared what they have. Private relief organizations in this
country are already doing a great deal as we await the
supplemental request from the administration. Vermonters,
including Vermont school children, have been raising money and
collecting and sending food and clothing.
We are fortunate to have the employees and volunteers of
the Vermont Office of Refugee Resettlement and other groups
helping all over this country. In 1996 I worked closely with
those groups when we rewrote our political asylum law. I now
wish more than ever we had prevailed, and I would compliment
two Republican Senators who broke with a majority of their
party to vote for my amendment to preserve political asylum and
this Nation's place as a safe haven for oppressed people around
the world.
We won in the Senate by 51 to 49. Senator Abraham and
Senator Hatch voted with me on that. Unfortunately, our
amendment was replaced in a conference with the House with
provisions making it more difficult for people who have
suffered political, religious, or other persecution, but who
lacked proper documents, to obtain sanctuary in the United
States. It is beneath a great country like ours.
If we are going to criticize Macedonia and others for not
living up to international norms in the treatment of refugees,
it is time we recognize that our own law, the U.S. law, as
unfair and unworkable. What we did was wrong. Under our law, if
Kosovar refugees reach our shores to escape persecution, they
could find themselves quite possibly on the next plane home,
wherever home might be. They could be expelled summarily
without a hearing if they came here without the proper
documents.
How many Kosovar refugees have a valid visa or passport?
Yet, the law that Congress passed--a stupid law, a mean law--
says that they have to have that. We have watched on television
as the Serbian police have systematically confiscated and
destroyed ethnic Albanians' identification papers, the papers
that our law requires them to have. How likely would it be for
these Kosovar refugees, not fluent in English, to ask for
political asylum upon their first meeting?
We have spoken with refugees from Africa and Asia and we
have recalled the refugees from Europe and World War II. Today,
our attention is on Kosovo. We are united in this and, Mr.
Chairman, we will do our part. If the United States, the most
powerful, wealthiest nation on Earth, stands for anything--the
dignity of people, the humanity of people, and democracy--we
must help. We must help, first and foremost, immediately, on
the refugee problem, and then we must help to get these people
back to their homes.
Thank you.
Senator Abraham. Thank you very much, Senator Leahy.
We also joined today by Senator Dianne Feinstein, of
California. Senator Feinstein, thank you for being here as a
member of our subcommittee. Would you like to make an opening
statement?
STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
just want to welcome the three people that are here and tell
you that our hearts and thoughts are with you.
Although there have been many other places on Earth where
we have seen man's inhumanity to man, there is one thing that
the United States stands really firmly for. We are not going to
be a part of a world that tolerates this kind of genocide and
ethnic cleansing.
Particularly as a woman, I believe, beginning with Bosnia,
it was the first time since I have been born that we have seen
rape used as an instrument of terror, as an instrument of war.
As far as the women of the world are concerned, we can't stand
by and watch this happen.
I really look forward to hearing your testimony. What we do
now is very important. How we help you and your people go home
is very important, and whether there is a home there for you to
go to is very important. I am hopeful--and I have suggested
this to Mr. Berger--that the United States be the heart of a
kind of Marshall Plan of the 1990's whereby we can, in two
stages, beginning with Albania and Macedonia, the second stage
with Kosovo as soon as it is possible forpeople to safely go
home, launch a major effort of massive food relief, massive rebuilding
of homes, and massive help to reestablish the economic infrastructure
of your area and Albania and Macedonia. I hope this suggestion will be
taken seriously because I think for many of us just solving this with
bombs isn't an appropriate solution.
So I look forward to hearing what you have to say today,
and I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing.
Senator Abraham. Thank you, Senator.
We will now turn to our first panel which consists of three
people who were recently forced out of Kosovo. We will hear
from Dr. Vjosa Dobruna, who is the director and the founder of
the Center for the Protection of Women and Children, in
Pristina.
We will then hear from Ms. Aferdita Kelmendi, who is the
editor of Radio 21, an independent radio station in Kosovo. And
then we will also hear from Mr. Mentor Nimani, who is an
attorney who helped gather evidence of atrocities for the
International War Tribunal.
As everybody knows, all three of our witnesses were
recently forced to flee Kosovo and we appreciate their
willingness to come before us today, and share their
experiences. And as I said in my statement, there have been
some who have questioned the magnitude of the problem, both
with respect to the condition of people who have had to flee,
as well as to some of the atrocities that have been alleged.
And we thought that this panel perhaps more than anybody that
we might hear in the Congress could help put to rest anybody's
questions with regard to these issues.
So we thank you for being here. We appreciate very much how
far you have traveled to be with us today. Thank you. We will
start with you, doctor.
PANEL CONSISTING OF VJOSA DOBRUNA, KOSOVAR REFUGEE, AND
DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER, CENTER FOR THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN AND
CHILDREN, PRISTINA, KOSOVO; AFERDITA KELEMENDI, KOSOVAR
REFUGEE, AND DIRECTOR, RADIO/TV 21, PRISTINA, KOSOVO; AND
MENTOR NIMANI, KOSOVAR REFUGEE, AND COORDINATOR, HUMANITARIAN
LAW CENTER, PRISTINA, KOSOVO
STATEMENT OF VJOSA DOBRUNA
Dr. Dobruna. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank
you for having me before this committee. My name is Vjosa
Dobruna. As a pediatrician and human rights activist, I founded
and I direct the Center for the Protection of Women and
Children, in Pristina, which is a community clinic in Kosovo.
The Center works with war trauma victims of former wars in the
former Yugoslavia, families in need, and handicapped children.
We also cooperate with international non-governmental and
private organizations to monitor humanitarian and human rights
violations.
I am here to discuss the humanitarian catastrophe in and
around Kosovo. I would also like to share with you some of my
experiences during the recent weeks of the massive and
systematic Serbian campaign of attacks against civilians in
Kosovo.
Over 1 million Kosovars have been forced from their homes
and are now outside of Kosovo or stranded inside. As of now, at
least 500,000 people, civilians, are trapped inside Kosovo
without access to food, medical care, or even shelter. Only one
region, for example, which is 20 miles northeast of Kosovo--
there are 250,000 displaced persons, and these displaced
persons are displaced all through the year since April 1998.
And they are just searching for a safe haven and finally they
reach this territory. Sixty-five thousand of them were without
shelter for a year. These figures do not include the
approximately 100,000 young men also believed to be missing.
Conditions inside Kosovo are completely desperate and full
of terror. Children and the elderly are dying right now of
starvation and exposure. In one village yesterday, three old
men died, and a child. I want to make an important point here
about the people who have left Kosovo. These people, myself
included, are not refugees. We are deportees. We have been
forced to leave our homes. We did not choose this. We did not
run, even though conditions were very bad. We stayed until we
were forced out. So I ask you to please refer to us as
deportees, not refugees.
Now, something about my town. Pristina, which until
recently, until 2 weeks ago, was a city of more than 250,000
inhabitants, now has a population of approximately 15,000 to
20,000, mostly Serbs. I was among those forced to leave
Pristina by Serbian security forces. Before forcing us out of
town, Serbian security troops demanded money and beat us, both
my sister and I. They beat my brother-in-law very badly,
threatening his wife that they would kill him.
Even before I left Pristina, I had changed apartments every
night for the previous 6 nights, since I was told by a friend
that my name was on the list of targeted ethnic Albanians.
Others on the list were not lucky. Human rights lawyer Bajram
Keljmendi, along with his two sons, one of 16 and another one
of 29, were abducted by Serbian security or paramilitary forces
in front of his wife and grandchildren. It was Tuesday and
Wednesday, 10:00 to 1:00 a.m. in the morning. Serbian police
told the family to kiss him goodbye; they would not see him
again. Bajram's body was found 2 days later on the road next to
a gas station. He had been shot in the head repeatedly. His
sons were killed with him.
Security forces also targeted civilians who had worked with
international organizations, local staff. Kujtim Dula, from
Gjakova--Djakovica, in Serbian pronunciation--worked with an
international organization. He was working with OSCE Kosovo
Verification Mission, headed by U.S. Ambassador William Walker.
Kudjim Dula was killed by Serbian security forces who called
him a spy, then shot him when he came to answer his parents'
door. There were widespread reports of attacks throughout
Kosovo, and especially in Pristina, onthose who assisted the
OSCE monitors.
Another friend of mine, a doctor colleague of mine, Izet
Hima, was a surgeon at the Gjakova hospital. Serbian
paramilitary police executed him and burned his house down, and
they did it in front of his two daughters and his wife. These
were not spontaneous acts of anger; they were premeditated, and
Serbian forces have clearly targeted those in positions of
leadership and respect in the ethnic Albanian community in
Kosovo.
I have only listed a few cases, a few incidents. Summary
executions, mass killings, forced expulsion of civilians from
their homes--these continue everyday throughout Kosovo. I am
presenting to this committee a list of places where summary
executions are believed to have taken place since the departure
of the verification mission. I am going to present it to you
after I finish my statement.
The idea that attacks on civilians began only after NATO
began bombing is untrue. One night in late February, at 11:00
p.m., I received a phone call saying a woman was giving birth
on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo. The woman was--her
name was Abida Roshi and she was 29 years old and she was from
the village of Dinza in the municipality of Kacanik.
Serbian forces had expelled her and her family from a
village in the border district of Kacanik. The next morning,
after I located an internationally marked car, I drove to the
border area where I found the woman. She had walked back to her
home village to bury the child who had already died, and she
was severely ill herself. So I did what I could to help her.
As soon as I left, Serbian security forces appeared at her
family's house and demanded to know what they had been doing
talking to foreigners. The family, including the mother, was
forced to walk through a mine field and into Macedonia the next
day. My Center and other non-governmental international
organizations verified hundreds of such cases in the year
before the NATO bombings, and these cases were growing rapidly
in the months before the bombing began. The new wave of these
cases we documented starting with Christmas 1998.
After being ordered out of Pristina myself, I rode with my
family to the border. I rode in the back of the car, covered by
a sheet, so the police would not recognize me as a human rights
activist. By the time we reached the long line of cars waiting
to cross, we had seven adults and two children in the car.
While in line, we were forced by Serbian police to keep the
doors shut and windows closed for at least 24 hours. We waited
in line for some 56 hours. As we waited, we saw many trains
passing on the railway beside us carrying thousands of
refugees. People in this queue started recognizing members of
their family, people who are really being deported like cattle.
We can see their faces out of the windows of the train. There
are thousands and thousands of them, and the trains were coming
every 2 to 3 hours across the border.
We heard one man in the car behind us crying because he saw
his elderly father in the crowded window of one passing train
headed for the Macedonian border. Hours later, the train would
return empty and new people were loaded and brought to that
place.
When we finally reached the Blace border-crossing at the
border with Macedonia, the situation was inhuman. The flow of
deportees into Blace seemed to be well-coordinated between
Serbian and Macedonian border guards. The deportees slept in
the open, in an enormous muddy pit, with little or no water at
all, no food for the first 2 days. There was no proper medical
care, and international aid organizations were not permitted
access to the camp by the Macedonian police. I personally was
kept from providing immediate aid to a 17-day-old baby, a
citizen from my town, an infant suffering from severe
dehydration. The baby died in my hands.
The mother didn't want anybody to take the baby away. The
mother was a 20-year-old citizen of Pristina and she had
delivered the baby without any medical care in Pristina, and
she was forced to flee and she spent 12 hours at the railway
station in Pristina before she was deported. She was put on the
train and deported in Blace.
Conditions for deportees outside Kosovo are now improving
somewhat. However, the situation at the Radusa camp, which is
still controlled by the Macedonian government, is appalling.
Deportees are treated like prisoners, live in the open, have no
access to clean water, and international aid agencies and
journalists are denied access to the camp. In addition, the
forcible relocation of deportees, as you probably know, by the
Macedonian authorities last week has ripped hundreds of
families apart.
Today, my information is that in one camp called Brajde,
two persons, husband and wife, with their child, tried to
escape from the camp through the wire. And they were caught by
Macedonian police, who beat the woman and lacerated the throat
of the man with a knife. And this case is being documented by
human rights activists in Skopje, Macedonia.
As bad as this situation is, I am more frightened than ever
about the situation inside Kosovo. We know that many terrible
crimes are being committed there now. Mr. Chairman, we know
from the reports that are getting out. We know because we have
seen it day after day, month after month, for a year in almost
every village in Kosovo. We have seen it since 1990,
practically, but not on a large scale. We know that people are
starving, that they are being marched out of their homes, that
the men are being separated from their families and that many
of them are being killed.
As you can hear from my testimony, the facts about the
situation in Kosovo and on the border in Macedonia speak for
themselves. I cannot really add to these facts, but I must say
again NATO bombs did not cause this situation. Milosevic did
it, his politics, his regime. NATO bombs did not force me from
my home. The Serbian forces did. I am grateful for the NATO
bombs, really. They were our only protection when we were in
Pristina.
Nevertheless, we must have more than bombs in Kosovo and
bread in Macedonia. At this moment inside Kosovo, the majority
of civilians are starving. They have had practically no food or
medicine for weeks. The majority of civilians are not living in
their own houses, but they are hiding in basements or dying in
fields. Bombing is not protection enough for these people
inside Kosovo; it will not stop the executions and it will not
stop the starvation. Also, bombing will not change the
situation in Macedonia or in Albania either.
Humanitarian aid for the camps is badly needed, but does
the world expect to care for these people forever in border
camps? Clearly, the only solution is for them to return to
their homes, and that is what they want. We have talked to
hundreds and hundreds of deportees and they all want to stay
near their homes. We shouldn't cut their hope that soon they
are going to go back home. To do that, they must be protected.
They must be protected by a NATO force inside Kosovo.
I know this committee deals primarily with refugees,
immigration, not with military matters. But immigration to
Europe and the United States is not the answer for deportees
from Kosovo. For us, there is only one answer--to go home in
safety, to rebuild our lives, and to rebuild our homes.
Mr. Chairman, members, thank you for listening to me.
Senator Abraham. Thank you very much.
Dr. Dobruna. And I will add this list also for your record.
Senator Abraham. Thank you very much, doctor.
[The prepared statement and attachment of Dr. Dobruna
follow:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Vjosa Dobruna
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for having me
before this committee. My name is Dr. Vjosa Dobruna. As a pediatrician
and human rights activist I founded and direct the Center for
Protection of Women and Children, a community clinic in Pristina,
Kosovo. The Center works with war trauma victims, families in need and
handicapped children. We also cooperate with international non-
governmental and private voluntary organizations to monitor
humanitarian and human rights violations.
I am here to discuss the humanitarian catastrophe in and around
Kosovo. I would also like to share with you some of my experiences
during the recent weeks of the massive and systematic Serbian campaign
of attacks against civilians in Kosovo.
Over one million Kosovars have been forced from their homes, and
are now outside Kosovo or stranded inside. As of now, at least 500,000
civilians are trapped inside Kosovo, without access to food, medical
care or even shelter. That figure does not include the approximately
100,000 young men also believed to be missing. Conditions inside Kosovo
are completely desperate and full of terror. Children and the elderly
are dying right now of starvation and exposure.
I want to make an important point here about the people who have
left Kosovo. These people, myself included, we are not refugees. We are
deportees. We have been forced to leave our homes, we did not choose
this. We did not run, even though conditions were very bad. We stayed
until we were forced out. So I ask you to please refer to us as
deportees, not refugees.
Pristina, which until two weeks ago was a city of more than 250,000
inhabitants, now has a population of only 15,000-20,000, mostly Serbs.
I was among those forced to leave Pristina by Serbian security forces.
Before forcing us out of town, Serbian security troops demanded money
and beat us, both my sister and I. They beat my brother-in-law very
badly, threatening his wife that they would kill him.
Even before I left Pristina, I had changed apartments every night
for the previous six nights, ever since I was told by a friend that my
name was on a list of targeted ethnic Albanians.
Others on the list were not as lucky. Human rights lawyer Bajram
Kelmendi, along with his two sons, was abducted by Serbian security or
paramilitary forces in front of his wife and grandchildren. Serbian
police told the family to kiss him good-bye, they would not see him
again. Bajram's body was found two days later, on the road next to a
gas station. He had been shot in the head repeatedly. His sons were
killed with him.
Security forces also targeted civilians who had worked with
international organizations. Kujtim Dula, of the western town of
Gjakova [Djakovica] worked with the international staff of the OSCE
Kosovo Verification Mission, headed by U.S. Ambassador William Walker.
Kudjim Dula was killed by Serbian security forces who called him a spy,
then shot him, when he came to answer his parents' door. There are
widespread reports of attacks throughout Kosovo, and especially in
Pristina, on those who assisted the OSCE monitors.
Another friend of mine, Izet Hima, was a surgeon at the Gjakova
hospital. Serbian paramilitary police executed him and burned his house
down. These were not spontaneous acts of anger. They were
premeditated--and Serbian forces have clearly targeted those in
positions of leadership and respect in the ethnic Albanian community in
Kosovo.
I have only listed a few incidents. Summary executions, mass
killings, the forced expulsion of civilians from their homes; these
continue every day throughout Kosovo. I am presenting to this committee
a list of places where summary executions are believed to have taken
place since the departure of the verification mission.
The idea that attacks on civilians began only after NATO began
bombing is untrue. One night in late February, at 11 PM, I received a
phone call saying a woman was giving birth on the border between
Macedonia and Kosovo. Serbian forces had expelled her and her family
from a village in the border district of Kacanik. The next morning,
after I located an internationally marked car, I drove to the border
area, where I found the woman. She had walked back to her home village
to bury the child, who had already died, and she was severely ill
herself, so I did what I could to help. As soon as I left, Serbian
security forces appeared at the family's house and demanded to know
what they had been doing talking to foreigners. The family, including
the mother, was forced to walk through a minefield and into Macedonia.
My center and other non-governmental and international organizations
verified hundreds of such cases in the year before the NATO bombing,
and these cases were growing rapidly in the months before the bombing
began.
After being ordered out of Pristina myself, I rode with my family
to the border. I rode in the back of the car, covered by a sheet, so
the police would not recognize me as a human rights activist. By the
time we reached the long line of cars waiting to cross, we had seven
adults and two children in the car. While in line, we were forced by
Serbian police to keep the doors shut and windows closed for at least
24 hours; we waited in line for some 56 hours. As we waited, we saw
many trains passing on the railway beside us, carrying thousands of
refugees. We heard one man in the car behind us cry out, because he saw
his elderly father in the crowded window of one passing train, headed
for the Macedonian border. Hours later the trains would return empty.
When we finally reached the Blace border crossing at the border
with Macedonia, the situation was inhuman. The flow of deportees into
Blace seemed to be well-coordinated between the Serbian and Macedonian
border guards. The deportees slept in the open, in an enormous muddy
pit with little or no water or food for the first two days. There was
no proper medical care, and international aid organizations were not
permitted access to the camp by the Macedonian police. I personally was
kept from providing immediate aid to a 17-day old infant suffering from
severe dehydration; the baby died.
Conditions for deportees outside Kosovo are now improving somewhat.
However, the situation at the Radusa camp, which is still controlled by
the Macedonian government, is appalling. Deportees are treated like
prisoners, sleep in the open, have no access to clean water, and
international aid agencies and journalists are denied access to the
camp. In addition, the forcible relocation of deportees by the
Macedonian authorities last week has ripped hundreds of families apart.
As bad as this situation is, I am more frightened than ever about
the situation inside Kosovo. We know that many terrible crimes are
being committed there now. Mr. Chairman, we know from reports that are
getting out. We know because we have seen it day after day, month after
month for a year, in almost every village in Kosovo. We know that
people are starving, that they are being marched out of their homes,
that the men are being separated from their families, and that many of
them are being killed.
As you can hear from my testimony, the facts about the situation in
Kosovo and on the border in Macedonia speak for themselves. I cannot
really add to these facts, but I must say again, NATO bombs did not
cause this situation. NATO bombs did not force me from my home. Serbian
forces did. I am grateful for the NATO bombs. They were our only
protection when we were in Pristina.
Nevertheless, we must have more than bombs in Kosovo and bread in
Macedonia. At this moment inside Kosovo, the majority of civilians are
starving. They have had practically no food or medicine for weeks. The
majority of civilians are not living in their own houses, but are
hiding in basements or dying in fields. Bombing is not protection
enough for these people inside Kosovo. It will not stop the executions
and it will not stop the starvation.
Also, bombing will not change the situation in Macedonia or
Albania, either. Humanitarian aid for the camps is badly needed, but
does the world expect to care for these people forever in border camps?
Clearly, the only solution is for them to return to their homes. To do
that, they must be protected. They must be protected by a NATO force
inside Kosovo. I know this committee deals primarily with immigration
and not military matters, but immigration to Europe and the United
States is not the answer for deportees from Kosovo. For us, there is
only one answer--to go home in safety, to rebuild our lives and homes.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for hearing my testimony today.
______
Reports of Massacres by Serb Forces in Kosovo, March 27-April 8
Re: Reports of massacres in Kosovo over the past two weeks.
To: Friends of Kosovo.
From: Holly Burkhalter, Physicians for Human Rights.
Date: April 8, 1999.
Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and other human
rights and humanitarian groups are in Macedonia or Albania collecting
information from refugees about atrocities, as are many news outlets.
The U.S. Government is also making available on a daily basis a great
deal of information about reported massacres. Because none of us is
able to investigate within Kosovo, we have not been able to confirm
most of these reports. However, in the interest of at least compiling a
picture of how extensive killings by Serb forces appear to be within
Kosovo, I have pulled out the reported incidents from the many sources
that have crossed my desk to date. Again, PHR has not confirmed these
cases, but if even a portion of the incidents are accurate, the
situation within Kosovo is clearly perilous for the one million Kosovar
Albanians who remain within the country at the time of this writing. I
am afraid that we can say with confidence that thousands have been
killed in the past two weeks.
Note: (1) Please forgive me for not using consistent Albanian or
Serb spellings for these towns. This document was assembled in haste.
(2) When I had several reports of an incident, I have included them
all. They may or may not refer to the same incident. (3) In all cases
the victims are ethnic Albanians. In all cases but one, where the
perpetrators were thought to be Arkan's people, the perpetrators are
Serb military or police. (4) I did not have dates for the actual
incidents in some cases. All the incidents were reported to have
occurred within the last two weeks, unless otherwise stated. (5) Final
note: This is not exhaustive, by any means. It is simply a portion of
the reports that have filtered out of killings over the past two weeks.
I have not included in this list reports of detentions, rapes, or other
abuses which have been reported.
Srbica: 115 ethnic Albanian males executed by Serb forces (Source:
USIA report of 4/1 covering events of the previous week, based on U.S.
intelligence sources.)
Pec: 50 ethnic Albanians killed and buried; Arkan's men thought to
be the perpetrators. (Source: USIA report of 4/1.)
Drakovica: 70 bodies found in two houses, 33 bodies found in nearby
river. (Source: USIA report of 4/1.)
Rogove: Serb forces execute 50. (USIA Report of 4/1.)
Landovica to Balla e Cerges, southern Kosovo: The KLA reported on
3/27 that 500 people had been massacred in southern Kosovo. Source:
Kosovo Briefing #59, Open Society Institute.)
Srbica: 150 Albanians were reportedly short dead in the Srbica
sports stadium. (Source Sunday Telegraph, 3/28.)
Suka Reka: 100 civilians were killed in Suva Reka. (Source:
Committee for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms, Pristina.) 50
were killed in Orahovic and Suva Reka. (Source: AFP, citing Albanian
Television on 3/27.) The USIA report of 4/7 cited refugee sources as
claiming that 40 men were killed at Suva Reka on April 4, and their
bodies dumped into mass graves.
Krushe Evogel: 112 men were burned to death in a school house on
April 1. (Source: The Times of London, 4/3.)
Velika Krusa/Mala Kruse: More than 100 killed by shelling. Witness
Melaim Bellanica brought out a list of 26 names. (Source: Associated
Press, citing the BBC.) Human Rights Watch reported that a massacre
occurred at Velika Krusa with 40 adult male victims. Human Rights Watch
indicated that there appears to have been a separate massacre at Mala
Kruse, with 12 victims. CNN reported 112 victims at Mala Kruse.
Gjakove: There were large scale killings in Gjakove beginning on 3/
24. (Source: Human Rights Watch, 4/3.)
Location? 500 men were marched into a field and killed. (The Times
of London, 4/6/99, location not given.)
Location? 15 young men were massacred. (Source: Sunday Telegraph,
4/4/99. No location cited.)
Location? Four children were killed when their parents did not have
money for bribes to get across the border. (Source: New York Times, 4/
6. No location cited.)
Sopine Village: Serbe police killed 10 people at Sopine village.
(Source: New York Times, 4/6/99.)
Ternse: Serb police killed 47 at Ternse. (Source: New York Times,
4/6/99.)
Izbica: 150 people, including women and children were killed at
Izbica. (Source: The KLA, as cited by the Washington Post on 4/6. US
Government sources report 270 killed since mid-March in Izbica, which
were cited in the USIA's 4/7 report.)
Pusto Selo: 70 were killed at Pusto Selo. (Source: The KLA, as
cited by the Washington Post on 4/6.)
Jovic: 34 people were killed at Jovic. (The KLA, as cited by the
Washington Post, 4/6.) This incident was also cited in the 4/7 USIA
document.
Pec-Prizren Road: 15 were killed on the Pec-Prizren road. (Source:
Human Rights Watch 4/2.)
Location? 50 villages torched since 4/3, 22 reported atrocities, 3
mass graves in Dureka area in Malisevo and in the Pagarusa Valley. NATO
seeking information on 27 incidents of atrocities. (Source: James Shea,
NATO spokesman, 4/7.)
Gornje Obrinje: 12 killed in Gornje Obrinje. (Source: US Government
sources, 4/7.)
Pristina: 6 paralyzed patients at Pristina hospital killed.
(Source: Ambassador David Scheffer, War Crimes report, 4/1-2.)
Kuraz Village: 70 bodies were found in Kuraz village on April 1.
(USIA report, 4/7.)
Bruznic: Serb forces reportedly burned down this village near
Vucitrn last week. A Kosovar Albanian refugee also claimed that Serb
forces have killed 100 ethnic Albanians (at Burznic?) Since the
Rambouillet conference. (Source: USIA report, 4/7.)
Negrovce: According to refugee reports, Serb forces reportedly
executed five ethnic Albanians on 5 April. (Source: USIA report, 4/7.)
Senator Abraham. We will now turn to Ms. Kelmendi. Thank
you very much for being here as well. We appreciate it.
STATEMENT OF AFERDITA KELMENDI
Ms. Kelmendi. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my
name is Aferdita Kelmendi. I am the Director of Radio/TV 21, in
Pristina, and I am honored to appear before you today.
I thank you for calling this hearing, and I hope that
through my testimony you will understand, and those who are
watching and listening will understand what a terrible thing
has happened in Kosovo. I hope you will hear my story and ask
yourself, how could this have happened? But more importantly, I
hope you will ask, how can we stop it?
I wish it were over, but I know it is not over, especially
for thousands of people still trapped inside of Kosovo. They
are starving and they are afraid for their lives. I know this
because I was starving, too, and I was afraid for my life and I
was afraid so much for the lives of my children.
Before I tell you my story, I want to make one important
point, the same point my friend Vjosa has made. I am not a
refugee. I did not leave Kosovo by choice. I was forced to
leave and my family was forced to leave. I am not running from
a civil war. I am a deportee, as all my friends, my journalists
and my people were deported. I was forced to leave by men with
black caps and guns who came specifically to make me leave.
When I came to my radio station on the morning of March 29,
before I arrived, I saw from a distance the police raiding the
station. They broke down the door and destroyed the entire
station and all of its equipment. I stayed back by the car and
then I drove quickly to where my family was hiding. Three
families were hiding in one house, 21 people in two rooms.
We were very afraid that they would come to find us, so we
left in three cars, seven people in each car. We were going to
hide in another flat. We did not want to leave Pristina. But as
soon as we were on the road, we were stopped by two armed men
in a green Mercedes. They demanded that we pay them 200 DM,
deutschemarks, for each car or they would burn our cars with us
inside. And, of course, we paid. These men then forced us to
follow them. When we asked where we were going, they told us to
shut up and threatened to kill us. They led us to the edge of
the city on the road to Macedonia and they told the police at
the checkpoint to let us pass, apparently because we had paid.
Once we were on the road, which is only 35 miles to the
Macedonian border, we were stopped twice, each time by a group
of armed men who demanded more money from us. And, thank God,
we had money to give them. Both times, I was not sure whether
we would be killed or allowed to go.
About one-and-a-half miles from the border, we reached the
end of a long line of cars. We stopped there and we waited. We
waited there for 3 days and 3 nights. We had no food. There
were seven in our car and we were all starving. Everyone in all
the cars around us were starving. You could hear children
crying for lack of food. We had only a little bit of water, so
we took small sips and stayed very still to conserve energy.
After 3 days, my son decided to walk to the border to see
what was happening. He came back after 3 hours and he told us
that the border was closed to cars. So we abandoned the car and
we all got out and walked one-and-a-half miles. When we reached
the border near Blace, we entered the field in ``no man's
land.''
In that field, conditions were horrible. Everyone was
exposed to the rain and cold. There was no food, no tents, no
medical help. There was only huddled people, some of whom were
very, very sick, and some of whom were dying. We were there for
7 hours. Amazingly, by pure coincidence, I saw Vjosa across the
field and we met together. Vjosa knew a physician from Doctors
of the World who had come into the field to try to help the
sick people.
When this physician was going out, she took Vjosa by the
hand, and Vjosa took my hand and I took my child's hand, until
we had a chain of seven people. We walked to the Macedonian
police barrier. The police let out the doctor and Vjosa, but
they stopped me and said, where are you going with them? I
looked him in the eye and spoke in Macedonian, which surprised
him, and I said I am a doctor and we are taking these people
out. So he let me and my family out, and that was the 1st of
April.
Although my story is horrible, I know many others whose
stories are worse than mine. My own friend, Gazmend Berisha--he
was a correspondent for my radio station in Suva Reka; he did
not get out. They executed him in the street. I still cannot
believe that I will never hear his voice again. I cannot even
bear to think about it.
As terrible as that is, and as terrible as my situation has
been, what is more terrible is that there are still people
trapped inside Kosovo. We know they have no food. We know they
are constantly afraid, saying to themselves maybe today they
will come and kill my brother, my sister; maybe they will put
my old mother on the train and force her to leave; maybe they
will take my little son and I will never see him again.
We must help these people. Please, Mr. Chairman, I ask
America to help. I want to thank NATO for the help you have
already given. When we were in Pristina, we would say we wish
we could have bombing 24 hours a day. Only when we hear the
bombs dropping do we know they will not come for us.
But bombs cannot stop these men with guns and black masks.
Bombs cannot make it safe for me and for my family to return to
our homes. We must have protection. We cannot go back without
the protection of NATO. If, and only if, NATO comes to protect
us, then the killing will stop. Then the starvation will end.
Then it will be safe to return to our homes; only after NATO
comes, not before.
Mr. Chairman, I am a journalist. My good friend Gazmend
Berisha was a journalist. We set up my radio station, Radio 21,
to be a voice for the people of Kosovo, the first free,
independent voice in Kosovo on the radio. We are a voice for
peace and for democracy. We are a voice of moderation. But our
voice has been silenced. Now, Kosovo has no voice. We hear
nothing from Kosovo, only black silence.
So I want to go back to help give the people their voice
back. I know we can start over, even though we have nothing,
but we cannot do it without your help and the help of the
United States. I hope you will help us. I hope you will give us
protection so we can return and start again from the beginning.
Thank you very much for hearing my testimony today.
Senator Abraham. Thank you. We all know how hard this has
been and we appreciate what you have done today. Thanks a lot.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kelmendi follows:]
Prepared Statement of Aferdita Kelmendi
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Aferdita
Kelmendi. I am the Director of Radio/TV 21 in Pristina, and I am
honored to appear before you today. I thank you for calling this
hearing, and I hope that through my testimony you will understand, and
all those watching and listening will understand, what a terrible thing
has happened in Kosovo. I hope you will hear my story and ask
yourselves, ``How could this have happened?'' But more importantly, I
hope you will ask, ``How can we stop it?'' I wish it were over, but I
know it is not over, especially for thousands of people still trapped
inside Kosovo. They are starving, and they are afraid for their lives.
I know this because I was starving, and I was afraid for MY life, and
my children's lives.
Before I tell you my story, I want to make one important point, the
same point my friend Vjosa has made. I am not a refugee. I did not
leave Kosovo by choice. I was forced to leave, and my family was forced
to leave. I am not running from a civil war. I am a deportee. I was
forced to leave by men with black caps and guns, who came specifically
to make me leave.
When I came to the radio station on the morning of March 29, before
I arrived I saw from a distance the police, raiding the station. They
broke down the door and destroyed the entire station and all of its
equipment. I stayed back by the car, and then I drove quickly to where
my family was hiding. Three families were hiding in one house--21
people in two rooms.
We were very afraid that they would come to find us, so we left in
three cars, seven people in each car. We were going to hide in another
flat, we did not want to leave Pristina. But as soon as we were on the
road, we were stopped by two armed men in a green Mercedes. They
demanded that we pay them 200 Deutchemarks for each car, or they would
burn our cars with us inside. So of course, we paid. These men then
forced us to follow them. When we asked where we were going, they told
us to shut up and threatened to kill us. They led us to the edge of the
city on the road to Macedonia, and they told the police at the
checkpoint to let us pass, apparently because we had paid.
Once we were on the road, which is only 35 miles to the Macedonian
border, we were stopped twice, each time by a group of armed men who
demanded more money from us, and, thank God we had money to give them.
Both times I was not sure whether we would be killed or allowed to go.
About one and a half miles from the border, we reached the end of a
long line of cars. We stopped there, and we waited. We waited there for
three days. We had no food. There were seven in our car and we were all
starving. Everyone in all the cars around us were starving. You could
hear children crying for lack of food. We had only a little bit of
water, so we took small sips and stayed very still to conserve energy.
After three days, my son decided to walk to the border, to see what
was happening. He came back after three hours and he told us that the
border was closed to cars. So we abandoned the car, and we all got out
and walked one and a half miles.
When we reached the border near Blace, we entered the field in ``no
man's land.'' In that field, conditions were horrible. Everyone was
exposed to the rain and cold. There was no food, no tents, no medical
help. There was only huddled people, some of whom were very, very sick,
and some of whom were dying. We were there for seven hours. Amazingly,
by pure coincidence, I saw Vjosa across the field and we met together.
Vjosa knew a physician from Doctors of the World, who had come into the
field to try to help the sick people. When this physician was going
out, she took Vjosa by the hand, and Vjosa took my hand, and I took my
child's hand, until we had a chain of seven people. We walked to the
Macedonian police barrier. The police let out the doctor and Vjosa, but
they stopped me and said, ``Where are you going with them?'' I looked
him in the eye and spoke in Macedonian, which surprised him. I said ``I
am a doctor'' and we are taking these people out.'' So he let me and my
family out. That was the first of April.
Although my story is horrible, I know many others whose stories are
worse than mine. My own friend, Gazmend Berisha, he was a correspondent
for my radio station in Suva Reka, he did not get out. They executed
him in the street. I still cannot believe that I will never hear his
voice again. I cannot even bear to think about it.
As terrible as that is, and as terrible as my situation has been,
what is more terrible is that there are still people trapped inside
Kosovo. We know they have no food. We know they are constantly afraid,
saying to themselves, ``maybe today they will come and kill my brother,
maybe they will put my old mother on a train and force her to live in a
field, maybe they will take my little son and I will never see him
again.''
We must help these people. Please, Mr. Chairman, I ask America to
help. I want to thank NATO for the help you have already given. When we
were in Pristina, we would say ``We wish we could have bombing 24-hours
a day.'' Only when we hear the bombs dropping do we know they will not
come for us.
But bombs cannot stop these men with guns and black masks. Bombs
cannot make it safe for me and for my family to return to our homes. We
must have protection. We cannot go back without the protection of NATO.
If, and only if, NATO comes to protect us, then the killing will stop,
then the starvation will end, then it will be safe to return to our
homes. Only after NATO comes, not before.
Mr. Chairman, I am a journalist. My good friend Gazmend Berisha was
a journalist. We set up my radio station, Radio 21, to be a voice for
the people of Kosovo, the first free independent voice in Kosovo on the
radio. We are a voice for peace and for democracy. We are a voice of
moderation. But our voice has been silenced. Now, Kosovo has no voice.
We hear nothing from Kosovo, only black silence. So, I want to go back,
to help give the people their voice back. I know we can start over,
even though we have nothing, but we can not do it without your help and
the help of the United States. I hope you will help us. I hope you will
give us protection, so we can return and start again. Thank you very
much for hearing my testimony today.
Senator Abraham. Mr. Nimani, we appreciate your being here
today and we will now give you the opportunity to give your
testimony. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF MENTOR NIMANI
Mr. Nimani. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank
you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. My name is
Mentor Nimani. I worked for the Humanitarian Law Center, a non-
governmental organization monitoring human rights violations in
Yugoslavia. Our main office is in Belgrade. I worked as the
coordinator of the Pristina office.
The Humanitarian Law Center worked closely with the
International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague gathering
information for the prosecution of war criminals. I coordinated
two projects. The first project investigated reports of missing
persons. The second project monitored human rights in Kosovo
after the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, was set up in Kosovo.
As part of the second project, our office monitored the
trials of persons falsely accused of terrorism. A number of
these persons were represented by Mr. Bajram Keljmendi, a
highly respected lawyer and fighter for human rights. After the
trials, we would meet in Bajram's office and discuss the cases,
which were often political trials. Our office would publish
reports discussing aspects of the trials which we considered
unfair.
Two weeks before the NATO bombings started, Serb
authorities came to our office in Pristina. Luckily, the only
one there was a cleaning woman. We were in another city in
Kosovo investigating a report of a missing person. The cleaning
woman later told us that the Serb authorities searched the
office to see what we were up to. This was a bad sign. After
the visit, we copied important data onto disks and erased
everything from the computers.
On March 25, the day after the bombings started, I received
a call from my boss in Belgrade, whom I prefer to leave
unnamed. She had received a call from Bajram Keljmendi's wife
informing her that Bajram and their two sons had been taken
from their home in the middle of the night by a group of armed
men in black uniforms with police insignias. Their bodies were
found several days after. They had been shot. Bajram's sons
were my close friends.
When the bombing started, my coworkers and I knew that it
would not be safe to return to the office. During the first 8
days of the bombings, I worked at home. People would call me at
home to report information about what was going in Kosovo. I
would type it up and send it to our office in Belgrade. I have
brought a few of these reports with me today.
It was difficult to go out into the streets. I heard
constant reports of buildings throughout the city being
destroyed by Serb forces. One week into the bombing, I learned
that our office in Pristina had been looted and destroyed.
On the ninth day of the bombings, my boss from Belgrade,
who is a Serb, came to get me out of Kosovo. She feared for my
safety. We tried to go to Macedonia, but there was a long line
of cars and we could not get in. The border was closed toward
Macedonia and there was no intention of opening it. We decided
to go to Belgrade instead. My boss had a Serb taxi driver who
drove us. She took me, another female coworker, and my
coworker's brother to Belgrade. En route, we must have passed
20 checkpoints. Each time, the taxi driver, who was the only
one who spoke to the authorities, managed to convince the Serb
authorities that we were all Serbians.
I hid in my boss' apartment in Belgrade for 3 days. I did
not feel safe there and decided to go into Montenegro. We made
it to Montenegro without a problem, but as a young man I did
not feel safe there as well. My co-worker's brother and I left
for Albania. In Albania, I could continue my work.
In Tirana, I began to talk to other refugees and document
their stories. They spoke to me of the ordeals they had
suffered and the atrocities they had witnessed. I spoke to one
group of refugees from Peja, or Pec, which is in Serbian. They
told me that the Serbian authorities had expelled them from
Kosovo and ordered them to walk to Albania. The men were
separated from the women, and they were threatened with death
if they did not come up with money. To spare the men, the group
gave the authorities all their money.
On the way to Albania, two children and an elderly woman
died. The group traveled without food or water, but their worst
experience was when they reached the border. There, Serb
authorities forced them to stay the night. While they were
trying to sleep in the open, loud speakers played. On the loud
speakers, they heard the voices of children screaming as they
were being killed. They also heard continuous threats of
atrocities that would be committed against them, including
descriptions of how they would be killed. One woman I spoke
with said that this was the worst experience of her life. She
will never be able to recover from this.
Another man and woman from Gakova, another city in Kosovo,
described their escape from that city. Soldiers shot at them as
they fled. They believe that 80 percent of the city has been
set on fire and destroyed. In one mosque they passed in Gakova
as they fled, they saw as many as 300 bodies of people slain.
I thank you for the opportunity you have given me to tell
the American people about what is going on in Kosovo. Everyone
must know what is happening. Now, if I may approach to give you
the reports I have brought.
Senator Abraham. Certainly. We are glad to enter them in
the record. Thank you very much, Mr. Nimani.
[The prepared statement and attachment of Mr. Nimani
follow:]
Prepared Statement of Mentor Nimani
Mr. Chairman, Members of Committee, thank you for giving me the
opportunity to testify today. My name is Mentor Nimani. I worked for
the Humanitarian Law Center, a non-governmental organization monitoring
human rights violations in Yugoslavia. Our main office is in Belgrade.
I worked as the Coordinator of the Pristina office. The Humanitarian
Law Center worked closely with the International War Crimes Tribunal in
The Hague, gathering information for the prosecutions of war criminals.
I coordinated two projects. The first project investigated reports of
missing persons. The second project monitored human rights in Kosovo
after the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, was set up in Kosovo.
As part of the second project, our office monitored the trials of
persons falsely accused of terrorism. A number of these persons were
represented by Bajram Keljmendi, a highly respected lawyer and fighter
for human rights. After the trials, we would meet in Bajram's office to
discuss the cases, which were often political trials. Our office would
publish reports, discussing aspects of the trials we considered unfair.
Two weeks before the NATO bombing started. Serb authorities came to
our office in Pristina. Luckily, the only one there was the cleaning
woman. We were in another city in Kosovo investigating a report of a
missing person. The cleaning woman later told us that the Serb
authorities searched the office to see what we were up to. This was a
bad sign. After this visit, we copied important data onto disks and
erased everything from the computers.
On March 25, the day after the bombing started, I received a call
from my boss in Belgrade who I prefer to leave unnamed. She had
received a call from Bajram Keljmendi's wife informing her that Bajram
and their two sons had been taken from their home in the middle of the
night by a group of armed men in black uniforms with police insignias.
Their bodies were found several days later. They had been shot.
Bajram's sons were my close friends.
When the bombing started, my co-workers and I knew that it would
not be safe to return to the office. During the first eight days of the
bombings, I worked at home. People would call me at home to report
information about what was going on in Kosovo. I would type it up and
send it to our office in Belgrade. I have brought a few of these
reports with me today. It was difficult to go out into the streets. I
heard constant reports of buildings throughout the city being destroyed
by Serb forces. One week into the bombing, I learned that our office in
Pristina had been looted and destroyed.
On the ninth day of the bombings, my boss from Belgrade, who is a
Serb, came to get me out of Kosovo. She feared for my safety. We tried
to go to Macedonia, but there was a long line of cars and we could not
get in. We decided to go to Belgrade instead. My boss had a Serb taxi
driver who drove us. She took me, another female co-worker, and my co-
worker's brother to Belgrade. En route, we must have passed twenty
check points. Each time, the taxi driver, who was the only one who
spoke to the authorities, managed to convince the Serb authorities that
we were all Serbians. I hid in my boss's apartment in Belgrade for
three days. I did not feel safe there and decided to go into
Montenegro. We made it to Montenegro without a problem. But, as a young
male, I did not feel safe there either. My co-worker's brother and I
left for Albania. In Albania, I could continue my work.
In Tirana, I began to talk to other refugees and document their
stories. They spoke to me of the ordeals they had suffered and the
atrocities they had witnessed. I spoke to one group of refugees from
Peja. They told me that Serb authorities had expelled them from Kosovo
and ordered them to walk to Albania. The men were separated from the
women and they were threatened with death if they did not come up with
money. To spare the men, the group gave the authorities all their
money. On the way to Albania, two children and an elderly woman died.
The group traveled without food or water. But, their worst experience
was when they reached the border. There, Serb authorities forced them
to stay the night. While they were trying to sleep in the open, loud
speakers played. On the loud speakers they heard the voices of children
screaming as if they were being killed. They also heard continuous
threats of atrocities that would be committed against them, including
descriptions of how they would be killed. One woman I spoke with said
that this was the worst experience of her life. She will never be able
to recover from this.
Another man and woman from Gakova described their escape from that
city. Soldiers shot at them as they fled. They believe that eighty
percent of the city has been set on fire and destroyed. In one mosque
they passed in Gakova as they fled, they saw as many as 300 bodies of
people slain.
I thank you for the opportunity you have given me to tell the
American people about what is going on in Kosovo. Everyone must know
what is happening.
______
[From the Humanitarian Law Center, Apr. 12, 1998]
YHRF #10--From Montenegro to Pristina
(By Natasa Kandic)
None of the Kosovo Albanian displaced now in Rozaje (northern
Montenegro) and Ulcinj (Adriatic coast) have tried to return to Pec.
Only local Muslims go to take food and medicine to the mostly elderly
Albanians who are still in Pec. Albanians from Istok and surrounding
villages started arriving in Rozaje on Friday, 9 April.
Though it seems as if all Kosovo is in Rozaje, no international
humanitarian organizations have a presence here. Reporters come, take
notes if the story is about a massacre, and then return to Podgorica to
wait for a military coup. There are over 1,000 people in the mosque--
children, elderly, sick. They have not had a bath since they came to
Montenegro on 27 or 28 March. Younger men are seeking ways to get out
of the country and find somewhere to make a living. They would all send
their families back to Kosovo if their safety was guaranteed.
A teacher from Pec tells me the inhabitants of her neighborhood
were driven from their homes and taken to the indoor sports stadium on
30 March. They were held for 12 hours and then the army returned them
home. The next day, they were again driven out and ordered to go to
Montenegro. The first men who drove them out and took them to the
stadium had camouflage paint on their faces and wore black caps. The
teacher said the soldiers who took them home said, ``We have orders
that you should return to your homes.'' Those who ordered them to leave
for Montenegro, she says, wore police uniforms.
Here in Rozaje, I was told that several people were killed while
the inhabitants were being driven from their homes. Five men were
killed in the yard of the Kastrati house in the Brzenik II
neighborhood. A woman whose son, Nevzat, was killed, says her son, two
brothers with the last name Gega, and another three men were
slaughtered in front of her. Some odd men in uniforms and caps on their
heads came into their yard, she says. They seemed to be drunk and
shouted and cursed. They told her she would not be killed, that they
would let her live so she would pine for her dead son. They killed the
men with knives. Nevzat bled to death in his mother's arms. One of the
Gega brothers, whose belly had been slit open, lingered on for a few
hours. Other uniformed men came the next day and took the bodies away
in a truck.
When I said I was going to Pristina, everyone in Rozaje was
astounded. As I was leaving the town, the police wished me good luck.
The road to Pristina via Novi Pazar and Kosovska Mitrovica was
deserted--not a single vehicle. My first impression was that Pristina
too was deserted. The first block of apartment buildings in the Suncani
Breg district, before Matican village, was empty. Cars stood in the
parking lot. Friends of mine lived on the second floor of one of
thesebuildings. I went up, rang the doorbell and knocked. Then I tried
the knob and the door swung open. Everything inside was as it used to
be, at least at first glance. I met only two women on the block. The
residents were given 10 minutes to leave their apartments and go to the
railway station.
On the next block, I saw children playing and found some friends.
The police had not been there. But many people left nonetheless,
fearing that they would be ordered out of their homes at any minute.
Some returned on Sunday and Monday (3 and 4 April). They had waited
several days at the border and, seeing that police were not preventing
people from returning, they decided to go back home. Besides the
residents, there are people from other neighborhoods in these
buildings. Serbs and Albanians are keeping together. They lock the
front entrance at night and no one can either leave the buildings or
come in. People listen to the news until the power is cut. Only a few
phones work. They are not in touch with their family members or
relatives in other Kosovo towns and villages.
They keep talking about the events from 31 March to 3 April. By a
quirk of fate, several people from the Taslidze neighborhood remained
in Pristina--they were not there when the inhabitants were being driven
from their homes. Pristina was gripped by panic when the expulsions
from the suburban areas started. Rumors of killings and disappearances
ran round. Nobody dares report disappearances to the Serbian police.
The bombings in fact do not scare Albanians as much as ``those'' who
will come and slaughter them--``those'' being paramilitaries, police or
armed gangs.
Listening to the news on the BBC, Sky News, Tirana TV and Serbian
TV, they gather that Pristina was not as badly hit as Pec, Djakovica or
Prizren. The downtown cafes were blown up before the NATO intervention.
Some civilian facilities were destroyed by the NATO attacks and there
were civilian casualties. Everybody, myself included, is afraid of
being accused of spying and we kept away from the ruins.
On the night of 6/7 April, I talked for a long time with my friends
by candlelight. D. tells me it is the women who bring the news about
local events and that they get their information while standing in line
for bread. They tell the men when it is safe to go out or to visit with
friends in neighboring buildings. Everyone watches the news and then
talk it over. Another major topic is ``what do our Serb neighbors
say.'' These neighbors are ordinary people but a lot of importance is
attached to their words. According to D., every half hour or so, a
housewife comes to his apartment with new information from the Serbs:
``They say the situation is better today,'' or ``they say it will be a
bit better tomorrow.''
We were just leaving at about midnight when explosions were heard
and continued until daybreak. The phones were all out in the morning
and somebody said the main post office must have taken a hit. It was
only when I came back to Belgrade that I learned that not only the post
office but the Social Security Department building had also been hit
and that there were civilian casualties.
Before I left for Belgrade, I went to check up on the HLC office. I
had heard the police had been there. There was a police officer outside
the building. He let me in but said I was not to touch anything as
``something was found in here and the police will be investigating.''
As soon as I was inside, an elderly lady with a dog ran up, shouting
``Call the State Security; I was told to report if anybody came to this
office.'' The officer remained silent. ``Well, I'll be on my way now,''
I said and left. I shook with fright as she shouted after me, and
heaved a sign of relief once I had left Pristina.
On the way to Belgrade, I saw several large groups near Kosovska
Mitrovica. They were on foot, with children, making for Vucitrn. I
asked where they were going. ``Home, but we're not sure if we can,''
was their reply. When I told them to go back home, they remained silent
and just plodded on. ``People are returning to Pristina; go back
home,'' I cried out to them.
After Raska and about ten kilometers from Kosovoska Mitrovica, I
waited for hours near a bridge that had been destroyed by NATO, hoping
to find some kind of transportation. A villager came up and warned me
sternly that I was not to stand on their land. He said he had seen a
Muslim woman under the bridge before it was bombed.
______
monday and tuesday in kosovo, march 29 and 30, 1999
I reached Pristina before nightfall. I could not get to the HLC
office. The building is opposite the Police Department and prison and
the front entrance was locked. Someone inside said, ``We don't know you
and we won't open the door.'' By his accent, I knew the man was Serb
and he must known by mine that I was Serb too. I knew that the
residents were Serb and Albanian and I saw their determination to allow
no strangers into the building as the good side of Pristina. I went
round the back and saw guards at the entrance of the neighboring
building. Several men were standing behind neatly stacked sandbags. I
spoke with them and learned that they were Serb and Albanian residents
of the building and that they were guarding their homes. They had
agreed that Serbs would defend Albanians from the police, the Albanians
would defend Serbs that the KLA and all would defend themselves from
paramiltaries and other bands. When air raid warnings are sounded,
everyone goes down to the shelter except those standing guard.
From there I went to Nora's. I had just arrived when a weeping
neighbor rushed into the apartment: ``They have taken our car.'' Three
men in police uniform had come, she said, forced open the car door and
drove it away. ``Better the car than your son,'' said Nora's father. I
dialed over 20 phone numbers. Most phones were not working. It was
quiet until 4 a.m. Then there were explosions, followed by silence.
When day broke, I went to see some friends. The Keljmendis phone
was cut off. Bajram Keljmendi's shingle was still on the door of his
law office. Neighbors told me they hadn't seen his wife Nekibe since
the burial of Bajram and their sons. I asked them to give her my
regards. Then, together with Nora, a relation of Fehmi Agani and a
driver from Belgrade, I made my way to Dragodan, Fehmi Agani's
neighborhood. When we reached it, we were stopped by police. They asked
to see our papers and when they saw that Nora and Arsim were Albanian,
the one in charge ordered them out of the car. I got out too, saying we
all worked for the same organization and were looking for a friend. The
officer replied that Albanians no longer worked in Serbia and should be
on their way to Macedonia. I asked since when police had the authority
to fire people and he yelled at me to get back in the car and shut up.
I sat on the seat, leaving the door open and my legs outside the car.
He slammed the door against my legs, saying Serbia was being ruined by
such Serbs. The one in charge called someone over his Motorola. This
lasted about 10 minutes and then he waved us on. We made our way back
to the center, hardly believing that we had got off so lightly. We
drove through side streets to the Suncani Breg district. On the way, we
saw wrecked and looted stores and kiosks. We found Vjollca but she was
determined to stay with her family in Pristina. We were driven away by
her Serb neighbor. ``What kind of gathering is this? No loitering!
Albanians, inside your homes!'' he said.
In all-Albanian districts, we encouraged groups of people
discussing what to do: should they make their way to the border or stay
until the police ordered them out of their homes? Some told me no more
than 1,000 people were left in Pec, those who managed to get out of the
column the police and military escorted to the Montenegrin border. None
of them knew if it was true that Fehmi Agani had been killed, not even
his relations. They had heard the report on CNN. Nor was there any
reliable news of Baton Jakdziju, the editor of Koho Ditore. People kept
to their homes. Only the bravest went to see relations who live near
by. Only a few phones were working.
The streets of downtown Pristina were almost deserted. People were
in their apartments or the stairways of their buildings. In one of
these buildings, we spoke to residents and found Mentor. He was just
about to leave for the border. Everyone we spoke to was in a panic.
With one exception, an Albanian, who calmly repeated he would not leave
his home until he was thrown out. An elderly Serb woman came in and
stopped for a moment to chat with her neighbors. She too appears to be
fearless.
We started out for Macedonia, in two cars, at about noon. It's 75
kilometers to the Djeneral Jankovic crossing. Several cars coming from
side streets joined us. When we were on the road to the border, there
were hundreds of cars behind us. The plan was to get to the border,
wait until Ariana and Mentor had crossed and then Nora and I would make
for Belgrade. Three kilometers from the border, the column stopped.
Rumors flew around the border was closed, that police were taking cars,
that they were separating out the men * * * The sight of police with
masked faces in the column frightened us and we decided to return to
Pristina. No one prevented us. People asked us what was going on and we
tried to persuade them to go back home. But only a few cars followed
us. As we drove back, we saw that there were more than 2,000 cars in
the column. We also saw groups making their way on foot, all gripped by
a terrible fear.
We got back to Pristina, dropped off Ariana and the others and I,
Nora, her brother, and Mentor headed for Belgrade. I was afraid of what
would happen at police checkpoints. The first was just outside Pristina
on the road to Gnjilane. Our driver asked a policeman if the road to
Gnjilane was open. ``Depends on the name,'' was the reply. The officer
checked the driver's papers and let us through. The driver's papers
were examined at the other checkpoints too and we were allowed to
continue. Soldiers at a military checkpoint 10 kilometers outside
Pristina asked to see all our papers. There were no problems. We
reached Belgrade at about 10 p.m.
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash is an HLC bulletin containing the
latest information on human rights in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro.
Only reports received by the HLC offices in Belgrade and Pristina are
published.
______
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash #1
lawyer bajram keljmendi and sons missing--march 25, 1999
Bajram Keljmendi, a leading Kosovo Albanian lawyer, and his two
sons, Kastriot (30) and Kushtrim (16), were taken from their home in
Pristina at 2 a.m. on 25 March. All trace of them has been lost.
Keljmendi's wife, Nekibe, also a well known lawyer and Secretary
General of the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, informed the Humanitarian
Law Center that her husband and sons were taken by a group of armed men
in black uniforms with police insignia. The men broke down the heavy
front door of the Keljmendi home at 1:10 a.m., entered and shouted,
``You have five seconds to come out of your rooms!''
Nekibe came out first, followed by Kastriot, Bajram and then
Kushtrim. She saw two of the men strike her husband with rifle butts
and demand that he produce his weapons. Keljmendi told them he was a
lawyer, gave his name and said his family had no guns. Using
flashlights, the men searched and ransacked the house and broke
furniture, accusing the Keljmendis of wanting ``a republic and NATO''
and said this is why ``they'' had sustained heavy casualties. After the
search they left taking with them Keljmendi and his sons as well as two
mobile phones and Keljmendi's Opel Vectra car (license plates PR 143-
634). Before taking them out, they told the younger son, Kushtrim, to
kiss his brother's children because he would not see them again.
While the men were searching the house, Nekibe Keljmendi phoned the
police station and asked for help. She called again after her husband
and sons were taken. At daybreak, she went to the Police Department
where she was again told to report the case to NATO and the Kosovo
Liberation Army, and that it was not a matter for the police.
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash is an HLC bulletin containing the
latest information on human rights in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro.
Only reports received by the HLC offices in Belgrade and Pristina are
published.
______
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash #5
bodies of bajram keljmendi and sons found--march 25, 1999
The Humanitarian Law Center has received a confirmed report that
the Kosovo Albanian lawyer, Bajram Keljmendi, and his sons Kastriot and
Kushtrim have been killed. Their bodies were found on 26 March at a gas
station on the Pristina-Kosovo Polje road. According to a relative who
discovered the bodies when he went to the station for gasoline,
Keljmendi and his sons were shot dead.
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash is an HLC bulletin containing the
latest information on human rights in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro.
Only reports received by the HLC offices in Belgrade and Pristina are
published.
______
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash #2
osce mission office in pec looted--march 25, 1999
The Humanitarian Law Center has received information from Pec that
Yugoslav Army special units broke into the OSCE Mission office in Pec
and took away computers and other equipment left by the international
observers when they departed Kosovo. Police and military guards have
been posted outside the privately owned Miranda Hotel in which the OSCE
had its office.
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash is an HLC bulletin containing the
latest information on human rights in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro.
Only reports received by the HLC offices in Belgrade and Pristina are
published.
______
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash #3--March 26, 1999
The Humanitarian Law Center has been informed that Serb forces
torched a large number of stores owned by Kosovo Albanians in Djakovica
and Prizren on the night of 24/25 March during the first wave of NATO
strikes on Yugoslavia. The HLC was unable to confirm a report that
Camilj (75), Sadik (80) and Nedzmedin (40) Zherka were killed when they
left their homes to check up on their stores.
In connection with the events in Djakovica, the HLC has been
informed that Izet Hima, an Albanian medical doctor, was killed. No
independent confirmation of the report was available.
During the night of 25/26 March, the HLC was informed of the
release of Bajram Keljmendi, an Albanian lawyer. Since phone links are
cut, the report could not be confirmed.
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash is an HLC bulletin containing the
latest information on human rights in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro.
Only reports received by the HLC offices in Belgrade and Pristina are
published.
______
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash #4
situation in pec--march 26, 1999
At about 11 p.m. on 25 March, an unidentified paramilitary group
entered the home of Ahmet Nimani, a Kosovo Albanian shopkeeper in Pec,
and took away all valuable items as well as two vehicles--a four-wheel
drive and a Fiat Punto car. The first floor of the house was until
recently used by the local OSCE Human Rights office. Thanks to the
intervention of local Yugoslav Army commanders, the paramilitaries
released the nine-member Ahmeti family. According to HLC information, a
paramilitary group driving vehicles without license plates has been
active in Pec for some time. The HLC has reliable reports that this
group is responsible for the recent disappearances of Albanians in this
Kosovo town. It appears that both Serbs and Albanians in Pec know some
members of the group but fear retaliation if they identify them.
______
Yugoslavia Human Rights Flash #7--March 27, 1999
The expulsion of ethnic Albanians by Serbian police force is in
full swing in the town of Pec, Kosova, this Friday. Several
eyewitnesses called the Humanitarian Law Center to report lines of
people forced by police in Pec to march down the road leading to
Rozaje, Montenegro, past the town's bus station. Among them was the
renown lawyer from Pec, Mustafa Radonici. He was recognized by his
sister, who was looking from her window, as she lives in the part of
the town which has not yet suffered the expulsions. The group of
expelled Albanians consists mostly of the inhabitants of suburbs
Kapesnica, Zatra and Karagac as well as from downtown Pec.
Senator Abraham. At this point, if you will allow us, we
have a few questions, I think, from some of the members of the
committee here who would like to follow up. We will begin with
our Judiciary Committee chairman, Senator Hatch.
Senator Hatch.
Senator Hatch. I would like to ask each of you how well-
organized are the Serbs, and when they arrived in your town,
did it appear like they were working from a well-established
plan?
Dr. Dobruna. My understanding is that is so. I mean, they
are organized and they have divided responsibilities. And to
prove this is that there was a special group of people that
were doing search of the houses and they were taking activists.
We have the testimony of the wife of Bajram Keljmendi, the
lawyer that was executed with two of his sons.
And then we saw that these other police who were evicting
us from apartments or taking us from the road to direct us out
of the country, they didn't recognize many activists that were
there in the queue of cars in town. So they are working
separately, but very well-coordinated with the orders that they
were getting from one place.
Senator Hatch. Do you agree?
Ms. Kelmendi. I think that it was very well-coordinated in
a way that there was a strategy how to empty the city of
Pristina, for example. The first day, they were threatened by
killings, as happened with Mr. Bajram Keljmendi and his family,
and then it started with entering in the several neighborhoods
in Pristina, entering by force and telling the people that they
have to leave in 15 minutes if they want to stay alive, and
then sending them in the direction of the railway station or a
highway in the direction of Macedonia or filling the buses in
the direction of the border with Albania. So this is not
something which is happening during the night. This had to be
organized.
Senator Hatch. Mr. Nimani.
Mr. Nimani. Yes, I believe so. Everything that happened in
Kosovo is in detail organized by the Serbian authorities, and
especially the organization as far as my observation can go is
done in that sort of a manner that it will make confusion to
all the observers, and that that confusion will cause not
knowing who is responsible for that sort of organization.
That's why they organized in one way the police. In the
other way, they organized the civilian population by giving
them arms and then by allowing different groups, which we call
paramilitary groups. They had different names, starting from
the group of Arkan and then continuing with the group named
with ``black hand'' and other groups which could be gathered--I
mean, formed from the ordinary criminals, because we had
information that Milosevic has taken out of prison criminals
and sent them to Kosovo to do whatever they wanted to do.
And other information is that kidnappings that were made,
especially in Peja, were committed by the people which were in
a strong link with politicians in Belgrade, and that the police
have tolerated their activities in that city. This is the
information.
Senator Hatch. One of the horrifying things that we have
noticed about this is in the pictures of the deportees, there
is a distinct absence of men. In fact, we know that the Serbs
have been selecting men out of the groups that they eject at
gunpoint. In the last few days, the British government has
suggested that as many as 100,000 men could be missing.
So I would like to ask each of you where are the men. Do we
have evidence that they have been taken prisoner or even worse?
Dr. Dobruna. We still don't have confirmed information
about where the men are. We suppose that some of them--we have
indications that some of them were made to wear Yugoslav army
uniforms and they were walking in front of deportees, for
example, near the border of Albania, through mine fields. Or
there were open graves where they were burying the massacred
people. But there is not confirmed information what is done
with all that number of young men.
But I have this opportunity to say something else about the
population of Kosovo that will help in this case. I mean, the
population of Kosovo is a very young population. Fifty-seven
percent of the whole population are younger than 19 and they
are all young people that we are afraid are the ones that were
taken and are now on the list of missing.
Another thing that I want to mention is that since the war
started, the most vulnerable part of the population of Kosovo,
as always, are women and children. But the number of women and
children among the displaced is the greatest number ever heard.
Sixty-three percent of all displaced persons in Kosovo last
year were children younger than 18, and 25 percent were women.
Every third woman that was in that group of displaced persons
was either pregnant or the mother that was breast-feeding a
baby. It is only when we recognize these data we see how large
is the tragedy among displaced and deportees in Kosovo because
it is targeting primarily the most vulnerable, unprotected
population of Kosovo.
Ms. Kelmendi. Mr. Chairman, I don't have information where
are these people, but I pray to God to be alive.
Mr. Nimani. No, we don't have any information or
confirmation of their whereabouts. The fear is that they might
be somewhere in the cities of Rancovicevo or Paracin, but no
confirmation.
Senator Hatch. Thank you. We are grateful for your
testimony and we are grateful to have all three of you here
with us today. And we are very concerned and we will do
everything we can to help.
Senator Abraham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We will now turn to Senator Kennedy.
Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think for
anyone who has been listening to these stories, it is difficult
to hear about it, let alone imagine living through it. We thank
you again.
Mr. Nimani, let me ask you as someone who is a human rights
attorney, do you think there is sufficient evidence to indict
Milosevic as a war criminal?
Mr. Nimani. Yes, it is.
Senator Kennedy. Do you think we ought to be pulling that
information together and presenting it to the authorities and
pressing that forward?
Mr. Nimani. Yes, I think so.
Senator Kennedy. As a legal question--I mean, there is the
political issue, and I know that there are those probably in
the administration who say, well, we shouldn't do it because he
can negotiate still, and maybe negotiate the peace. There are
others that believe that if he is defined as a war criminal,
maybe others in the army may findthat that is just the final
action, and that there may be some opportunity then within the army to
develop some potential opposition that may be willing to work and see
some kind of resolution.
You can express your view on that or not, but the point is
just as a lawyer and as someone that has followed the human
rights issues, do you think that there is sufficient kind of
information that is available?
Mr. Nimani. Yes. From the legal point of view, there is
more than enough proof to indict Milosevic to war crimes.
Senator Kennedy. And will you work with the tribunal to
provide them information that you have available?
Mr. Nimani. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. I would hope, Mr. Chairman, that we would
review the materials which we have gathered here today and make
them available to those involved in that whole process. I
haven't had a chance to examine that material carefully or
closely, but this is certainly the kind of eyewitness
information, as well as the accumulation of these documents,
that is enormously powerful. And I think if the facts are
there, I think myself that we ought to certainly move ahead
with that process. I think it is a very clear continuation of
what we are involved in, and that is basically this
extraordinary humanitarian undertaking and involvement. So I
would hope that we would work it out with the members of the
committee and their staffs and perhaps with the State
Department and Justice Department to make that available.
I want to thank you all again for your information. And I
would hope, Mr. Chairman, that as far as these witnesses and
perhaps others who are associated that we could leave the
record open so that if there are others that want to be able to
make submissions to us to tell their story, at least we would
have an opportunity to collect that and it would be available
to the members, and that we would be sort of a vehicle by which
that information--there will be others as well, but we ought to
at least have the chance to receive that kind of information. I
think it would be very helpful.
Senator Abraham. Senator Kennedy, I think that is an
excellent idea. I think probably what we should do is work out
a process by which we can accomplish a couple of objectives.
First, we have distributed to everybody here the two
submissions that were made to us today, and we will get them to
the other subcommittee members' staffs. And I think probably
our staffs can determine a method by which the full
subcommittee could perhaps pass the relevant information along
on all our behalfs to the appropriate authorities.
And in terms of the record, I think this is certainly not a
topic we are going to leave today and not return to. So let's
develop a process we are all comfortable with for receiving
additional information as we go forward. Thank you.
Senator Leahy.
Senator Leahy. Mr. Chairman, I don't have questions. I just
want to again thank all three of these witnesses. It has been
difficult even to keep one's composure listening to what each
of you have said. You see the pictures, you wonder how anything
could be worse, and then you see more, you hear from people
like yourselves.
I want to compliment Julia Taft. We have changed our normal
way of doing things. Usually, a Government official like Ms.
Taft would testify first. I think it is an indication of her
own sensitivity to your plight that she offered to let you go
first so that we would hear you. And I have heard her comments
from the refugee camps.
As a child I heard stories of those coming back from World
War II who had gone to refugee camps and talked about the
terror, and wondering why people didn't move quicker, why more
things weren't done. And you have to think, Mr. Chairman, that
we wouldn't see this today, but we are, just as we have in
other parts of the world.
As I said in my opening statement, I wanted to be here not
just because of my feelings about our own immigration laws and
changes that should be made, changes in those laws that have
been supported by other members of this committee, but also as
a senior member of our Appropriations Committee, where we find
the money, if it is there, for refugee aid.
I can't think of anything that the committee could do that
is more important right now than getting aid to the refugees,
to work with the church groups and private groups and others
who are getting aid over there, to work with those who are
trying to make life better for those who are there, people who
have suffered, who have seen family members killed, and others,
to help meet not only their physical needs, but their
psychological needs. None of us here can begin to realize how
terrible that must be.
And so if the Congress is to show responsibility here, it
must act very quickly to get that aid to them. We can find the
money to support the bombing. We are talking about far less
money, to help those who have been displaced.
So, Mr. Chairman, wearing both hats as a member of this
committee--and I applaud you for having the hearing, and
Senator Kennedy, who has had a longer interest in these
problems than I or any of us here from his first day as a
member of the Senate--but also as a member of the
Appropriations Committee, we will work closely on this.
Senator Abraham. Thank you very much, Senator Leahy.
I understand Senator Schumer would like to go next. We
would normally go to you, Senator Feinstein.
Senator Schumer. I just want to ask a question after
Dianne.
Senator Abraham. Yes, we will. I assure you we will have
time.
Please go ahead, Senator Feinstein.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You have made, for me, three important points, very
important. The first is--and I think you speak for the Kosovo
people--that you want to go home. You made the point about
being deportees. You don't want to go to Guantanamo Bay or
France or Belgium or Italy, or anywhere else. You want to go
home. That is important for this committee and the U.S. Senate
to hear. The second point is that you need help and you need
protection to go home. And the third point is that the war
crimes should be documented and they should be prosecuted.
I am very interested in the men with the black masks, who
they take their orders from, and where they come from, and the
kind of evidence we can get as to their identity, we need to
bringthese people to justice, because no military allows their
people to go into people's homes wearing black masks. And I gather the
masks are all the same; they look like they are government-issued.
Can you give us any information as to what branch of the
service they belong to, where they get their orders? Have you
ever directly seen them yourselves, anything that could be
documentation on those who wear the masks?
Dr. Dobruna. I have seen them myself. They are coming
during the night, the first night that we were waiting to cross
the border on the Kosovo side, and they were knocking on the
windows of the cars, and we had to get out. Usually, the one
who was driving was the one to get out, and if there were women
who were driving, they were just stripped from their clothes
and if they didn't give money right away----
Senator Feinstein. You saw this?
Dr. Dobruna. I saw it. And then if there were men--in my
car there was a man driving, so they just told us, you have 15
seconds to give 1,000 German marks because that is how much it
is worth your life. So we had to do it. And they didn't have
any other sign. The colors of the uniform were dark blue, very
dark blue, and the masks were the same color. They go more on
black, but they were not really black. They were dark blue-
black, that kind of color, because I have seen them during the
day and during the night when they are extorting money and
jewelry or anything that was of worth in our cars.
And they didn't have any sign, but those who went to arrest
Mr. Keljmendi and his two sons, they had, some of them--they
were not always masked. Some of them, they had masks, but the
uniform was the same one, the same as others that didn't have
masks. And it was a uniform, dark color, and they had on their
right shoulder the white eagle, which is a sign that they keep
for special forces, special police forces in Yugoslavia.
Senator Feinstein. The white eagle----
Dr. Dobruna. White eagle on the right shoulder.
Senator Feinstein. The people who had the white eagle wore
the masks?
Dr. Dobruna. Yes, when they arrested Bajram Keljmendi. In
cases where we waited in this queue to cross the border, we
didn't see those signs, and the uniform was different. It was
darker and they didn't have those lines, but the marks were the
same.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much. Does anyone else
have anything to add on that?
Ms. Kelmendi. I cannot say that I can identify some of
them. I remember the face of the guy who stopped us. I am
seeing his face every night, but I don't know to whom he
belongs. Maybe he is an ordinary civilian who has taken a gun
and who is an ordinary criminal. But the most interesting is
that he had Motorola in his hand. It is something which can be
carried only by police or by some authorities who are talking
between each other. And maybe this civilian was linked with
police because in every checkpoint they talk to each other and
then release us to go. So it is organizing, but I cannot say
that I know every one of them.
Senator Feinstein. Those who have committed the rapes, do
they wear the black masks?
Dr. Dobruna. We don't have yet information about that.
Senator Feinstein. You don't have any information. Do you,
sir?
Mr. Nimani. Before the bombing started, I was on a fact-
finding mission in the town of Peja because of the masked
people. They would go in the cities in the evening, driving the
car without registration. And after the first day of bombing,
of NATO bombing, the first house to be looted was the house in
which the OSCE mission was situated. And in that house was an
Albanian family and they have identified one of those masked
people, which during the day works as an ordinary police
officer and during the night works with the mask.
He was a member of a special police force, and in Peja he
organized a group with other ordinary policemen. And we
discovered that the group was named Flash.
Senator Feinstein. Could you spell that?
Mr. Nimani. That is F-l-a-s-g, like flash from camera.
Dr. Dobruna. H.
Senator Feinstein. Oh, H.
Mr. Nimani. H, yes. They are very fast; they act very fast.
And the policeman's name who heads that group of masked people
is known. I know that name. But like 2 or 3 days ago, I got
information that that policeman was killed, but I did not have
a confirmation of that.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Senator Abraham. This is the first hearing we have had in
the new Congress of the Immigration Subcommittee, so it is the
first opportunity I have had to welcome to the subcommittee
Senator Schumer, of New York, and we welcome you and look
forward to working with you during this Congress. And now we
will turn to you for your opportunity to ask questions.
Senator Schumer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward,
as well, having served on the immigration committee in the
House for a long time, and I am glad to be here and sad that
our first hearing has to be on a subject as awful as this one.
My question is going to focus on a particular subject, and
that is the 700,000 or so Kosovars who were rooted from their
homes, were coming over the borders, and then abruptly
Milosevic didn't let them go to the borders. And to me probably
the most urgent question we can face in the next few days is
where are these people, are they starving, do they have any
means of eating and preventing death.
I have asked this question of some of the highest-level
people in our Government and, in fact, one of them is coming
over to our office in a little while to tell us what can be
done. And I will ask the Assistant Secretary that, but I would
like to ask each of you because I think this problem is so
pressing.
It would be utterly awful if, after 3, 4 weeks, our Air
Force has accomplished what they hope to accomplish, and we all
pray that they do, and yet hundreds of thousands of people
starve to death, or whatever, within the borders. And so can
each of you tell me--I know the knowledge is rudimentary. I met
with a bunch of Kosovars in New York, in my office, on Monday
and they were pleading. They said, before anything else we
would like food to get to these people, because they have
talked to some of them.
Can you tell me what you know? I know it would be anecdotal
and piecemeal, but I think this is of such immediate urgency
that we ought to know as much as we can about what is going on
to those approximately 700,000 peoplewho face such terrible
tragedy now.
Would anyone like to--maybe, Dr. Dobruna, you might start.
Dr. Dobruna. We have some sources of information there, and
now there are two questions here. One question is 700,000
people that are there that are dislocated in different parts,
and another question is about these people that are returned
back from the borders.
Senator Schumer. Right.
Dr. Dobruna. That number is different. I mean, what we saw
from across the border, there were some 10,000 there that would
not be allowed by the Macedonian government to enter Macedonian
territory. At one moment--it was the 3rd and 4th of April--they
were just forcefully returned back. We have some information
from some women who were in the cars with families. They
managed to go through wires, through the small river, and to
pass to the Macedonian side with their children, and their
husbands were made to go back.
We have only one information from that group. They said
that they didn't have any problem until they reached Pristina.
When they reached the city of Pristina, most of them they
didn't go back to their homes because they were expelled from
their homes, but they went to other neighborhoods that are not
ethnically cleansed yet. So, afterwards, telephone lines were
cut even in those neighborhoods, so we don't have information.
Senator Schumer. What about the refugees, not the people
whom Macedonia returned, but the people who were heading over
the borders to Albania, to Montenegro, and then Milosevic
stopped them from coming on his side of the border, on the
Kosovo side of the border?
Dr. Dobruna. The region of Peja, where most of the people
who are being deported to Montenegro, is ethnically cleansed.
That is that borderline of 10 kilometers that was cleansed
during all this month, so it was only a corridor. During the
last days of March, that was in function and most of the
population were cleansed already. So there is no large number;
there is no big expectation that they are going to cross to
Montenegro. That is the territory of Debar, which is some 100
kilometers northwest of Pristina, and the territory of Peja.
But on the Albanian side of the border, most people that
are being deported are from the municipality of Djakovica;
municipality of Klina Malisevo, which is completely cleansed;
and the suburb of Prizren. Prizren is one of the towns that is
not yet burned, just some neighborhoods. Djakovica is a town,
and Peja, that are 70 to 80 percent burned down completely.
And, of course, the population was deported, and some of them
that remained are in hiding or most probably they went in the
mountains in order to find a new chance to escape.
So in this situation, these territories were under siege
for many months before. So they were lacking food and medical
care long before even January. And to give an example, in the
mountains of Djesenice, 25 kilometers northwest of Pristina,
there were displaced persons that were staying there for weeks
without any food. UNHCR, Pristina office, arranged 11 times to
go to that territory in order to deliver relief to these
displaced--and they are mostly women, up to 90 percent women
and children. And they were not allowed access to those
displaced persons.
Senator Schumer. So they haven't gotten food in weeks and
weeks?
Dr. Dobruna. No. What I am saying now is 3 weeks before the
first NATO air strikes happened.
Senator Schumer. And it is continuing now, I would imagine.
Dr. Dobruna. It is continuing.
Senator Schumer. Anybody else?
Mr. Nimani. Well, the same information can be confirmed as
well. Another information is that the people which have been
expelled from Kosovo to Montenegro, they are in need for help
and aid. And no organization is going there to check them to
see what are their needs.
Senator Schumer. Ms. Kelmendi.
Ms. Kelmendi. The same information we have already--also at
the radio station, we had already from before.
Senator Schumer. So there is starvation on mass levels
going on?
Ms. Kelmendi. Yes.
Senator Schumer. And the food can't get through right now
that is being done locally?
Ms. Kelmendi. No. They are also under the siege of Serbian
forces, so it is impossible to get there.
Senator Schumer. And this number grows all the time, I
imagine, because the borders are now more or less closed? All
the borders are closed?
Dr. Dobruna. Probably, those towns that are under attack or
they are targeted several neighborhoods, the only way that they
can escape, especially after the mass executions that appeared,
they are going to escape in the mountains, and so the number of
displaced persons is growing rapidly.
Senator Schumer. One thing, Mr. Chairman, I think we ought
to try to focus on in terms of refugees is how immediately we
can get them the basic necessities, particularly rudimentary
food, to prevent mass starvation, which is what at least I am
told could happen if we don't move within the next week or two.
I thank you, and I understand what you are going through.
We want to do all we can to try and help.
Senator Abraham. Senator, thank you.
I note we have been joined by our friend, Senator Biden,
who is on our full Judiciary Committee, and also is the ranking
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Would you like to ask some questions?
Senator Biden. I would like to ask just two questions, and
I appreciate the indulgence of the committee. I am not a member
of the subcommittee, as has been pointed out, but I thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
I have actually three very short questions for any of you,
maybe starting with you, doctor. Is it your testimony that the
ethnic cleansing we are reading so much about and the world is
now seeing on a mass scale--that cleansing began before the
NATO bombing? It was already underway on a smaller scale before
NATO began to use air strikes. Is that your testimony?
Dr. Dobruna. Ethnic cleansing was going on since the strip
of autonomy in Kosovo. Data from the EU Commission shows that
starting with 1990, up to 1995, 330,000 Kosovar Albanians had
to flee Kosovo because of the repression, different forms of
repression. One of that repression was mass firing of 170,00
workers from their jobs, and I have to remind the committee
that at that time private enterprisesdidn't exist. So when
170,000 people were expelled from their jobs, that means that the only
way of living or earning any money and having a decent life was to work
for the state.
And taking into consideration that the average Kosovar
family has 7.3 members, you just now can have a picture how
many people were left at one moment without any meaningful
life. So this is one of the things that were done to Kosovar
citizens, and other abuses of their rights were done on a very
systematic, daily basis. And 330,000 had already fled Kosovo
before 1995.
In 1995, up to the start of the war, February 28, an
additional 170,000 Kosovars had fled Kosovo. So ethnic
cleansing was done systematically and it was organized a long
time ago. It was propagated by several politicians, very high-
ranking politicians and governmental officials in this so-
called Yugoslavia.
Senator Biden. Now, years ago I went early on to Bosnia and
came back and wrote a report for the President and others that
no one really believed at the time saying that rape camps that
had been set up there, actual camps that were rape camps, and
talked about mass graves. And it all turned out to be true in
Bosnia.
Do you have any evidence that you can present to us today,
any of you, not that there is rape and pillaging going on,
because it is, but that there is any systematic, as there was
in Bosnia, organizational structure for camps where women are
sent for the purpose of being used or abused physically? Do you
have any evidence of that, not speculation?
I believe it occurs, but I come to this, I admit, with a
prejudice that I think Slobodan Milosevic is a war criminal. I
have thought that for 9 years, and so on. So I don't need to be
convinced, but what I am looking for is if you have any
information, hard information or even anecdotal information,
that there is a systematic, not a random although frequently
occurring raping and pillaging, but is there any systematic
organizational structure that you are aware of or have heard of
where women are being herded into camps and/or sent off to
military bases for purposes of being sexually abused? Do you
know of any?
Dr. Dobruna. At the Center, we tried all last year to
gather facts about alleged mass rapes, but we didn't come to
the conclusion that those appeared. But we had very strong
indication that it happens and the pattern of how it happens in
three sites of Kosovo. But we didn't manage to document it
because of several reasons. One was a very strong patriarchal
society. Second was that most men that were witnesses of those
had made their wives or daughters leave Kosovo, paid high
prices to take them out because of the honor of the family, and
especially if it is done by the enemy, it is ruined. So we
didn't succeed to document. Now, we have information and we
believe that it is true, but nobody can yet document that.
Senator Biden. I appreciate your candor. And I am afraid we
are going to be able to document it later, but I appreciate
your candor.
My last comment--and my time is up, but one of the things
Americans will often say, and many people here think is that
this has been orchestrated by a rabid nationalist named
Milosevic and guys like Arkan and others who are--let me ask
you this simple question, all three of you, if you would give
me some sense.
Although in the last 10 years, the proportion of Serbs in
Kosovo is less than it was 25 years ago, you probably had
neighbors or coworkers, ordinary people, who were Serbs, not
Kosovars, not Albanian Serbs, not Muslims, but Orthodox
Christians. What is your sense of how those--if you had any
coworkers or friends or neighbors whom you had lived with in
some peace and harmony, what is your sense of their attitude
toward what is going on in Kosovo now, if you can characterize
it? I understand you may not be able to.
Ms. Kelemendi. I will tell you their behavior in some
cases. For example, there is a neighbor of a friend of mine, a
Serb who--for example, for many years they were neighbors and
they go to each other to drink coffee. And they were in
ordinary life very good neighbors. But when everything happened
in those days, this neighbor says to his neighbor, you have
only 5 minutes to leave. And my friend couldn't believe that
that is happening because he thought that his neighbor was
something who knows him very well.
But there is another case. For example, there is a Serbian
neighbor who is caring about his Albanian neighbor who is
closing the doors of the building, caring about the old
building and saying to Albanians, don't worry, I am here and I
will try to protect you.
There is another case in one place, in a neighborhood in
Pristina, where only three Albanian families are left there and
one Serb family. When these paramilitary forces came there,
this Serbian neighbor goes out with a gun and says to them,
this is my zone, you cannot enter here.
Senator Biden. It varies.
Ms. Kelmendi. Yes. So these are the cases, but these are
only cases. You cannot say that this is something which is
usual.
Senator Biden. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have gone over
my time. I would like to ask unanimous consent that a statement
I have be entered in the record.
Senator Abraham. Without objection.
Senator Biden. I thank the witnesses here for your courage,
and I am confident we will be of courage and we will not relent
in our effort to see to it that this is righted. Thank you.
Senator Abraham. Senator Biden, thank you for joining us
and we will include your statement.
[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
I would like to begin this morning by thanking Senator Abraham for
holding this hearing on the issue of the Kosovo refugee crisis.
I would also like to welcome Assistant Secretary Julia Taft, and
each member of our panel of private witnesses who have agreed to
testify before us here today. The human emergency that has developed in
the region as a result of massive outflows of refugees is staggering.
Assistant Secretary Taft, I know that you have been actively
involved in relief efforts in the Balkans for some time now, first
focusing aid on alleviating the plight of internally displaced in
Kosovo, and now attempting to respond to the needs of the enormous
number of refugees scattered throughout Kosovo's neighboring states. I
understand that you visited the Balkans at the beginning of the month,
and have recently returned from a conference in Geneva at which donor
nations gathered to coordinate an international response to meet the
needs of those who have fled Kosovo. I look forward to hearing your
testimony today.
As you are all aware, there are now over six-hundred thousand
ethnic Albanian Kosovars scattered across borders in the Balkans.
Approximately half a million of them fled Kosovo after March 24 of this
year. Not due to the commencement of NATO air strikes, as the Serb
propaganda machine would have the world believe, but as a result of
Slobodan Milosevic's policy of ethnic cleansing.
Let us not forget that Milosevic had forty thousand troops massed
at the Serbian border, waiting for the order to wipe the ethnic
Albanian presence from Kosovo. He alone is responsible for the massive
exodus of the past three weeks.
Though the blame for the present level of human suffering lies
squarely on the shoulders of Milosevic, the United States and our
allies are absolutely correct in responding with all of our resources
to provide for those who left of their own volition or were driven at
gun point from their homes.
Unfortunately, the places they have fled are not wealthy. Albania
and Macedonia are among the poorest countries in Europe. They lack the
resources to respond effectively to the rapid influx of refugees. In
addition to being materially difficult, it is politically difficult for
some states to accept refugees. Macedonia is a fledgling democracy
where potentially de-stabilizing ethnic tensions lie just beneath the
surface. The presence of over one hundred thousand ethnic Albanians is
only increasing these tensions.
Montenegro is part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia itself,
and vulnerable to the Serbian authority in Belgrade. Already the
Washington Post has reported a crackdown on the independent media in
that republic. Whether or not they can afford politically to continue
to host over fifty thousand refugees is highly questionable.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the refugee situation is the
question that no one here can answer with certainty. What is the fate
of the estimated four to five hundred thousand internally displaced in
Kosovo? They may not have crossed an international border, but these
people are facing the same devastating consequences of being forced
from their homes as those who have. Even worse the international
community cannot reach them to give much needed aid.
The Administration was right to provide a place for twenty thousand
refugees, should these people so desire. We must do our part to provide
a safe haven for ethnic Albanians until such a time when they can
return to a Kosovo where their security is assured.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for allowing me to be here today. I look
forward to hearing from our witnesses.
Senator Abraham. We have also joined by another member of
our subcommittee, Senator Specter from Pennsylvania, and so I
will turn to him for his questions at this time.
Senator Specter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I join my colleagues in thanking you for coming, and
certainly understand the tremendous travail and problems that
you have sustained. So we appreciate you being here to give us
information which will enable us to proceed on quite a number
of lines. I could not be here earlier. We are having hearings
on independent counsel at the same time, but I wanted to come
by.
With respect to the sequence of events on the atrocities
being committed here by the Serbs, there has been an argument
that the NATO bombing has either caused it or expedited it.
There has been a very careful analysis done to the contrary,
that President Milosevic had this plan long in advance and
carried it out, and that this was something that was going to
occur with or without the NATO bombing.
I would be interested in the sequence of events, if some of
these atrocities began prior to March 24th on the NATO bombing.
Could you shed any light on that, Dr. Dobruna?
Dr. Dobruna. Yes. I mean, my opinion is that NATO just
accelerated the ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing was ongoing
for years now, and as a citizen of Kosovo I think that this
should have been foreseen.
Senator Specter. It has been going on for years, you say?
Dr. Dobruna. It has been going on since 1989, practically,
since adoption of the constitution of unification of Serbia.
That constitution was adopted March 28, 1989. So since then,
the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo was done systematically,
perfectly.
Senator Specter. Was it intensified at some point in the
past?
Dr. Dobruna. It was intensified after the NATO air strikes.
Senator Specter. After the strikes?
Dr. Dobruna. Yes. It is just intensified, but they have
already cleansed several territories.
Senator Specter. You say they had planned?
Dr. Dobruna. Yes, they have planned.
Senator Specter. How do you know that?
Dr. Dobruna. It was announced in media. There were
documents published in the Serbian language for years that this
was going to happen. Several leaders, political leaders and
high officials in Serbia have announced it. Of course, they are
saying that during election campaign, but nevertheless it is
not excused like it was only for internal purposes. But we knew
it was going to happen, but unfortunately we were not aware
that it was going to happen on this large scale and all this
brutality as it happened these days.
Senator Specter. I understand that you wish to be
classified as deportees and not refugees so that you will have
status to return to Kosovo. Is that true, Mr. Nimani?
Mr. Nimani. Yes.
Senator Specter. To what extent is the country decimated?
How much rebuilding will it take? From what we have seen here,
the reports that we have, it is going to be an enormous
rebuilding job. Could you shed any light on that, Ms. Kelmendi?
Ms. Kelmendi. I think that before it happened, almost the
biggest part of the population, more than 50 percent of Kosovo,
was already destroyed; all the villages were destroyed during
this year of war. In the meantime, now the biggest damages are
done to the cities, but nevertheless people are ready to go
back.
Senator Specter. Is that the general attitude, that people
do want to return and rebuild the homeland?
Ms. Kelmendi. Yes, of course.
Senator Specter. What is your sense as to how it will be to
return? What is the future likely to hold with so much
animosity and hatred having built up for such a long period of
time? Will you be able to return and live in peace?
Ms. Kelmendi. The population of Kosovo already was peaceful
for many, many years and they didn't want to fight. And
finally, in Rambouillet, they signed the peaceful agreement
solving the problems of Kosovo, and we didn't reach this
agreement because of Mr. Milosevic and the Serbian government,
who didn't want to sign that agreement.
And from my point of view, we didn't ask for NATO bombing,
but Milosevic asked for it. And so in this direction, we ask
for protection, and that protection is as it is in the
Rambouillet document, so NATO forces as peace-keeping forces in
Kosovo, and as a protection not only for Albanians, but also
for Serbs in Kosovo, from Belgrade.
Senator Specter. Just to follow up on what Senator Biden
had asked about, the business about gathering evidence as to
President Milosevic is ongoing. And I concur with what Senator
Biden has said and many have said that we should treat
Milosevic as a war criminal, and we have had representatives in
Kosovo from the State Department acquiring the evidence for
presentation to the War Crimes Tribunal.
So to the extent that you are able to provide any
information--and it is complicated to find the evidence, but if
you see raping where there is a superior officer present or
where there are others present who are condoning it and that is
a sign of official action, or where there is torture or where
there is any violation of human rights and people are condoning
it of superior rank, that is an indication that others are
involved.
And we have a system of justice which will require,
notwithstanding what Milosevic has done, that we are able to
prove these cases in court. So to the extent that you are able
to provide any information along that line, it would be very,
very helpful.
Again, we thank you for your courage. Thank you for coming
and we will do our very, very best to help you. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Abraham. Senator Specter, thank you.
I want to, in conclusion, rather than more questions--I
think you have very effectively addressed the questions that
all of us have--thank you again for what you have done and the
courage of coming here. I hope as many of our colleagues who
are not here today as possible will have the opportunity either
to see the C-SPAN coverage of this or to hear and learn more
about what you have told us.
I hope those who have been skeptics about the nature and
degree of the atrocities that have taken place will, because of
this hearing, have a better and fuller understanding of exactly
what has happened and continuing to happen. And I hope that
people who have had some doubtsabout exactly what you have gone
through will appreciate better what you have, and also appreciate your
desire to be able to go back home.
There is a tendency, I think, often when refugee situations
or deportation situations or expulsion occurs like this--people
jump to quick conclusions that somehow people want to be
somewhere else, whether it is the United States or it is
Germany or other places where resettlement temporarily occurs.
But as I think we have learned, most people are alike in the
world; they want to be back home. And I think you have all very
eloquently made that case, and I hope that we can do as a
Congress and as a country as much as possible to make that
happen, but also in the interim make sure that as many people
as possible who are still suffering can be protected and in as
humanitarian a way as possible be taken care of during the
period of time before it is possible for them to go home.
So on behalf of our committee and on behalf of the U.S.
Senate, I want to thank each of you for your courage and for
taking a little time to share your experience with us. We are
deeply appreciative and we will do our best to follow up in the
ways we have already indicated. Thank you.
We will now ask our Assistant Secretary of State to join
us, and this panel is certainly welcome to stay with us if you
would like, or if you have other commitments to move on to
those at this time.
On our second panel today, we will hear from Julia Taft,
who is the Assistant Secretary of the State Department's Bureau
of Population, Refugees, and Migration. I too want to thank you
for being with us and for agreeing to allow the refugee panel
to appear first. I think it probably puts in context all of
what you plan to say and all of our thoughts here today
probably as eloquently as it could.
Assistant Secretary Taft is the person who is in charge of
refugee matters at the Department of State, which is a serious
responsibility even in the best of times, and obviously an
extraordinarily challenging job at the moment.
You have served with distinction in this administration and
in others, and we all have appreciated working with you over
the last couple of years and look forward to working together
as we confront now probably the most serious challenge not only
that we have had recently but, as we have discussed, in a very
long period of time. So thank you for being here and we will
turn to you for your testimony.
STATEMENT OF JULIA V. TAFT, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE,
BUREAU OF POPULATION, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATION, DEPARTMENT OF
STATE, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Taft. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. During
the past 3 weeks, the world has witnessed one of the most
sustained and cruel crimes against humanity during this
century. It is a very somber note to be leaving this millennium
on and one that I hope that we can work together to try to
remediate as soon as possible.
The calculated dislocation of hundreds of thousands of
Kosovars during this past year by Serb forces has reached
devastating proportions in recent weeks. Since March 24, almost
half a million refugees have been forced from Kosovo, and many
thousands more may yet flee. I think all of us today have been
profoundly moved by the testimonies of the three persons that
we have heard. They have really put the human face on this
tragedy and I am pleased to have been able to hear them.
I am also pleased that the NGO's were able to find them and
that your committee wanted to have them be here, and that the
State Department, in spite of all the things that are going on
in Skopje and Tirana, was able to get the visas in a matter of
just days.
I would like to take this opportunity to give you an update
of the situation as we see it in Macedonia and Albania, and our
efforts in other countries to provide protection and assistance
and what we see ahead. I will be glad to answer questions. You
have set some forward in your remarks, Mr. Chairman, and I want
to make sure that we cover all of those.
The U.S. and its NATO allies are working with humanitarian
organizations to alleviate as much of the crisis as we can. We
will do whatever is necessary to ensure that Milosevic's
current campaign of ethnic cleansing does not stand and that
refugees can return to their homes, villages and towns and
rebuild their lives.
What we have watched ever since the Rambouillet process is
a systematic expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians. I want to
emphasize here that this expulsion was well underway before
NATO bombing commenced. We have already heard from the previous
witnesses. I won't go into detail, but I would like to make a
point about the issue of the expulsion and whether they are
called deportees or whether they are called refugees.
A deportee connotes the method in which people left and, in
fact, the pernicious way and terrifying way in which these
people were expelled from their country does make them
deportees. However, as refugees, that connotation should not be
diminished either. These people are deportees and they are
refugees because they are afraid to go back home, for fear of
persecution. So I hope that we can use both of those
references.
While over 680,000 Kosovar Albanians have been forced to
flee, hundreds of thousands are believed to be still displaced.
The figures that we are operating on in the State Department
are between 700,000 and 800,000. After a short lull when
borders with Macedonia and Albania were closed by the FRG, and
after large numbers of refugees seemed to have disappeared on
the FRY side, we saw that this past weekend there was a
resumption of small movements into Macedonia and Albania.
We haven't talked enough about Montenegro. Montenegro, as
the chart that Senator Biden has shows, has received 36,000
refugees. But over the weekend and in the last 24 hours, they
got 1,700 more. These are coming up from the area of Pec and
they are now in Montenegro, so that border is opening.
Senator Biden. Mr. Chairman, if I can make a point, I
didn't mean to interrupt by putting this up, but this is only
current as of 48 hours ago.
Ms. Taft. Yes, sir, that is right.
Senator Biden. Thank you.
Ms. Taft. I have it as of 6:00 a.m. this morning, but----
Senator Biden. My point is your figures are more accurate
than mine. That is the point I was making.
Ms. Taft. But the point I wanted to make, sir, is that
there is still some movement out, not enough as far as I am
concerned, but there still is movement out. And in Montenegro,
at the port of Bar, there are tens of thousands of World Food
Program commodities, some of which are being able to be
processed within Montenegro by the ICRC, by World Vision, by
Mercy Corps International, to use to get access to the people
in Montenegro who have been affected by this.
The refugees tell of extreme violence--people forced to
leave their homes at gunpoint; women and children forcibly
separated from their husbands, fathers and sons; homes and
villages torched. Even more serious are the reports of
arbitrary and summary executions, of mass graves, and most
recently of the rape of young women and girls. We are extremely
concerned about the fate of the 700,000 to 800,000 who remain
in Kosovo, and are exploring a variety of ways to meet these
people so that they can be given life-sustaining support.
Senator Kennedy, you mentioned earlier about the three
options. I assure you all three options are being pursued, and
I would be delighted to share--and that is very sensitive--the
modalities for how we might be able to reach these people, and
we will be glad to give a briefing to you and your staff.
The biggest problem we have is that the Serb authorities
have not provided the security assurances needed for any of the
modalities to ensure access by ICRC or other international
organizations. Last week, Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott and I
visited Albania and Macedonia and other countries in the region
to thank them for their support, particularly Albania and
Macedonia, but also urge very strongly an open-borders
attitude. This was particularly difficult in Macedonia because
of all of the doubling--day after day, the influxes were
doubling for Macedonia, and they were very politically
concerned about the destabilization.
In fact, Milosevic's plan is to destabilize Albania and
Macedonia and other front-line states. So it was very important
for us to go and try to do whatever we could to reassure them
that we and the allies stand by them. But we stressed very
firmly with the government of Macedonia the importance of
getting that border open and keeping it open. And I am pleased
to be able to say that having worked all night long with them a
week ago Saturday, decisions were made to open up the NATO
camps, get them ready for opening on Sunday. They were opened
up Sunday night and the people from the border area in no man's
land all were processed into those camps by morning of Tuesday,
so that the muddy, awful, terrible valley of death that was out
there--there wasn't death; there were 11 deaths, but it was
just a terrible humanitarian mess. That has now been cleared
out, very much thanks to NATO and the willingness of the
Macedonians to let these people come forward.
In spite of the forced expulsions of the Serbs and the
stories that we have all heard, I have not, nor have any of the
relief agencies or NATO people, heard anyone blame the NATO
bombings on their plight. In fact, everybody has been very
supportive of the efforts that have been made to stop
Milosevic's aggression.
On my way back from the region, I joined my counterparts
and other major donors in countries in the region for an UNHCR
conference to see how we can improve the coordination of the
response on a multilateral basis, and I think that was a useful
thing to do. Operation Sustain Hope was announced by President
Clinton on March 5 to coordinate our own humanitarian response
to the refugee crisis, and we have committed $150 million in
financial and material assistance since the crisis began.
This includes $50 million recently authorized to help
address the urgent needs of the refugees, $25 million, of
course, which is from our emergency account, and $25 million
from the Defense Department.
The limited capacity of Albania and Macedonia to cope with
this enormous number of refugees has really overwhelmed them,
and while I would like to pay special tribute to the generosity
of the people of these countries, you know, the first flows--
80,000 of the first people who went into Albania went into
families, and 60,000 that went into Macedonia went into
families. The challenge now is making sure those families don't
get overwhelmed and to make sure that the assistance that is
directed for the refugees also goes to support the families.
I would also like to commend Turkey for stepping forward on
this issue of the absorptive capacity in Macedonia. Macedonia
was really getting overwhelmed and they did not believe that
they could sustain the constant influx of people, unlike
Albania which, of course, is all Albanian. There is a different
ethnic balance in Macedonia.
For this reason, we offered to try to get other countries
to give temporary asylum to these people to help take the
burden off Macedonia, and the first country to come forward was
Turkey and they had offered to take 20,000. We offered to
assist in the financing of their program, as well as to offer
temporary asylum to 20,000 for the United States.
Many other countries have come forward. I have got a whole
list of those that have expressed willingness to provide
temporary asylum. But at this point, we think that the Turkish
offer, the numbers that are going to Germany, those that are
going to Norway, and the ability of Albania to absorb more has
gotten us a respite right now, so that the United States is not
actively transporting any of the 20,000 that we said that we
would give temporary assistance to.
NATO, I must say, throughout the entire effort has been
wonderful. They have established air cells and air bridges, and
there are over 50 flights a day which are coming into Albania
and 50 flights a day coming into Macedonia. It is getting very
crowded, as you can imagine, in the warehouses and the
airstrips, but the relief program to undergird the UNHCR is
making great progress.
From the United States side, of course, we have been
providing tens of thousands of HDR's already, and we are
sending in a million. Those are humanitarian daily rations. We
have been underwriting the World Food Program, a third of its
costs. We have about 600 military personnel working on the
humanitarian program. In addition, we have just given ICRC $3
million to really launch a major tracing program and they have
established a hotline in Geneva, as well as processing in the
various countries of asylum so that they can work very closely
on family tracing.
Let me just spend one minute clarifying exactly what the
status of Guantanamo is. Guantanamo is prepared to receive 500
people when we need them to come out of the region. They are
ready in the facility, which does not have concertina wire,
which would be humanely managed. But right now, we have not
asked DoD to activate this request, but if it is required--and
we still have 700,000 people still inside of Kosovo. If they
all come out, we are really going to be overwhelmed and we will
have to do a major airlift.
We all are aware of the problems of Guantanamo. You all are
as aware as anyone. Fortunately, at the State Department, the
colleague Assistant Secretary, Harold Coe, was the lawyer in
the private sector who sued the U.S. Government in terms of the
treatment of Haitians and Cubans on Guantanamo. So he and I
have been working very closely on this and we know the
constraints on Guantanamo. We have talked with the NGO's and
the human rights groups, and that is why it is a--you know, it
is there, but we really do not expect to have to use it.
I know that a number of your constituents may have been
calling you about processing of refugees or their relatives as
refugees. I think I can say no more about this at this point
except that we believe that most of the people want to stay in
the region. They want to go back home to their homes. Right
now, our focus is trying to provide care and feeding and
security and safety for those that are in the locations of
Albania and Macedonia, and we do not at this time have a
program that we would process any of these candidates for
refugee status. However, we are working to try to collect as
much information as we can, and should it be appropriate, we
stand ready to come back to you and talk to you about refugee
numbers and how we might proceed.
On that, sir, those are the highlights that I wanted to
share with you and I am glad to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Julia V. Taft follows:]
Prepared Statement of Julia V. Taft
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. During the past three weeks the world has
witnessed one of the most sustained and cruel crimes against humanity
during this century. The calculated dislocation of hundreds of
thousands of Kosovars during this past year by Serb forces reached
devastating proportions in recent weeks. Since March 24 almost half a
million refugees have been forced from Kosovo and many thousands more
may yet flee.
I am honored to have the opportunity of testifying before you today
on the U.S. government's efforts to assist and care for the refugees. I
would like to give you an update on the situation of the refugees in
Macedonia and Albania, our efforts and those of other countries to
provide protection and assistance, and what we see ahead. I will then
be happy to answer any questions you might have.
The U.S. and its NATO allies are working with humanitarian
organizations to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. We will do whatever
is necessary to ensure that Milosevic's current campaign of ethnic
cleansing does not stand and that refugees can return to their homes,
villages and towns and rebuild their lives in Kosovo.
What we have watched ever since the Rambouillet process is the
systematic expulsion of Kosovo Albanians. I want to emphasize here that
this had begun before the NATO bombing commenced. While over 680,000
Kosovo Albanians have been forced to flee Kosovo in the past year, the
majority during the last three weeks, hundreds of thousands more are
believed to be displaced within Kosovo. After a short lull, when
borders with Albania and Macedonia were closed by the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia and after a large number of refugees on the FRY side
disappeared, we saw this weekend the resumption of small movements of
refugees out of Kosovo.
The refugees tell of extreme violence: people forced to leave their
homes at gun point, women and children forcibly separated from their
husbands, fathers and sons, homes and villages torched, passports and
other identity documents confiscated. Even more serious are the reports
of arbitrary and summary executions, of mass graves, and most recently
of the mass rape of young women and girls.
We are extremely concerned about the fate of between 700,000-
800,000 ethnic Albanians who remain in Kosovo, many of whom are
displaced. We are exploring ways to reach these people with the
humanitarian assistance they so clearly need but as you can imagine
there are many security constraints. The FRY government has not
provided the security assurances needed nor the authorization for ICRC
or other international agencies and NGO's to operate in Kosovo.
Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott and I visited Albania and Macedonia
and other countries in the region from April 3 to 5 to thank them for
supporting NATO operations and for receiving the refugees and to
underscore our commitment to providing the assistance needed to address
the impact of the unfolding humanitarian, economic and security crises.
Witnessing the masses of people who have been stripped of their
dignity, identity cards and wordly possessions was a profoundly moving
experience. In spite of their forced expulsion by the Serbs, many
herded into box cars and transported to borders, all the refugees
expressed support for NATO and the effort of the Allies to stop
Milosevic's aggression. On my way back, I joined with my counterparts
from other major donors and countries in the region at a conference
hosted by UNHCR to map a coordinated multilateral strategy for the
humanitarian response.
Operation ``Sustain Hope'' was announced by the President on April
5 to coordinate our own humanitarian response to the refugee crisis in
the region. The U.S. has committed over $150 million in financial and
material assistance since the crisis began just over a year ago. This
includes the $50 million recently authorized by the President to help
address the urgent needs of the refugees. We are sending over 1 million
humanitarian daily rations to the region, as well as tents and other
relief supplies. Other countries are also mobilizing large relief
efforts.
The limited capacity of Albania and Macedonia to cope with these
enormous numbers of refugees was completely overwhelmed. I would,
however, like to pay tribute to the enormous generosity of the people
of these two countries who have so generously opened their countries
and their homes to refugees. In Albania, approximately 80,000 refugees
are being housed in private homes. Macedonian families are hosting
about 60,000. I would also like to commend Turkey for stepping forward
immediately to take 20,000 refugees and help alleviate the pressure on
Macedonia--a gesture which the USG has volunteered to help finance.
Because of the enormity of the effort required and despite the best
efforts of UNHCR and the other relief organizations on the ground, NATO
was asked to take a role in undergirding the humanitarian assistance
infrastructure.
NATO, with its logistical and operational expertise, is working
closely with UNHCR and other aid agencies to build refugee camps,
distribute aid and assist with transportation and the organization of
relief efforts. In Albania, thirty camps are being built throughout the
country. While UNHCR remains the lead humanitarian organization this
cooperation is an example of the excellent coordination between NATO
and UNHCR. We are now beginning to see the situation for the refugees
improve although much still needs to be done to ensure that all receive
the full range of assistance they need.
The President has also directed that additional U.S. forces be
deployed in Albania and Macedonia to support the relief effort. We
anticipate the deployment of at least 1,000 airlift, medical,
engineering, logistics and security personnel. About 600 U.S. military
personnel are already in the region to support the humanitarian
operation.
ICRC has begun efforts to trace and locate missing persons to help
reunite families. It has established a hot line in Geneva to receive
calls from around the world and has sent tracing personnel to Macedonia
and Albania. Many other relief organizations from around the world are
assisting in this mammoth effort. We are supporting our U.S. NGO's with
funding and supplies.
As part of a multi-nation effort to relieve the effects of the
refugee outflow on neighboring countries, especially Macedonia, we have
stated that we are prepared to accept up to 20,000 refugees. We are
prepared to implement this commitment when necessary. However, as in
other refugee crises, our preference has been to ensure safe and humane
refuge in the region, as close to Kosovo as possible so that people may
return home when it is appropriate to do so. Based on a recent visit to
the region of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR has advised
us, as well as other countries that have made commitments to offer
temporary refuge to Kosovars, that it would not be appropriate to
relocate refugees far from the region at this time. Thus, we are
focusing most of our efforts at present on making asylum in the region
possible. Nevertheless, the situation remains fluid and we believe that
we--as well as other governments--must remain prepared to take refugees
if the situation requires it.
I know that many of your constituents, particularly those with
relatives among the refugees, are asking why we do not bring refugees
to the United States. Our first priority is to ensure the safety and
the care of over half a million people. This is an emergency situation
and, we hope, a temporary one. Therefore, we do not anticipate a
general U.S. refugee resettlement program at this time. The aim of our
military and political action is to enable the Kosovo Albanians to
return to their homes when conditions permit. In the meantime, we are
committed to doing everything possible to work with other countries to
ensure that the refugees are provided with temporary asylum and with
care and assistance. I must underscore that everything we are doing and
planning for is geared to the safe return of the refugees to Kosovo
which we hope will be possible in the near future.
Senator Abraham. Thank you very much.
We will turn immediately to Senator Kennedy. I know he has
a conflict of schedule here.
Senator Kennedy. Thank you very much, and thank you. Julia
Taft has had a long career in working on refugee matters and I
think all of us are very fortunate to have her services now. I
join with others in commending your typical courtesy in letting
the others speak and then responding to questions now.
A few matters, because we have a number of our colleagues
here, just quickly. I am sure it has been the experience of
other members here--we have a strong Albanian population in my
own State of Massachusetts. We have many there that have
relatives, they believe, in the refugee camps and they are in
touch with us. We are trying to be in touch with you, but they
are interested in if there are going to be the movements of
people at least being considered, rather than going to an
interim step down in Guantanamo.
The object of our policy is for safe return, but as we have
seen, picturing the worst kind of case possible, I think having
someone think of how we can facilitate the movement of people
and whether we can not go through a transition in Guantanamo
Bay, but have some other kind of way which they may be joined
either with families or relatives or settled here--I think
having someone in your Department that is working with these
would be helpful, and we would obviously want to cooperate in
that.
I would always hope--and this is a long way down the road--
NATO troops have been great in setting up these matters, the
tents. I mean, it is unbelievable how well and fast--I mean, it
is miraculous; it is the one great hope that has happened out
there, what has been done when we finally got to it. But we
want to hope that they are not going to transition out.
You know, we let these other groups who are inundated with
these kinds of challenges and doing so well and have done well
in the past and all the rest of it in this transition period--I
don't see it coming up right now, but it is something that we
have all learned about. When they transition out, they have in
the past, when it has not been done well, left these agencies
up in the air, and I would hope that that would not be the
case.
I see Senator Schumer, who has been enormously interested,
as I and others have about the conditions of these other
individuals who are displaced and are facing extraordinary
human tragedy. But let me mention three quick areas.
We have a wonderful friend from Vietnam refugee days named
Tom Durant, who works up at Mass General. He has just been over
there for 2 weeks and I have been in touch with Tom, and he
feels that there is an enormous need for vaccinations over
there. We have been free from these contagious diseases almost
miraculously, but there is an enormous need in terms of
vaccinations, and particularly the spread of diseases like
measles. They are going to come back and make some
recommendations. I am just giving you a heads-up.
First, the help and assistance for children. So many of the
children are separated from parents, and the degree of trauma
that children have been going through and what we can do in
terms of help and assistance in terms of getting people that,
you know, obviously are going to be able to communicate with
language and culture and, you know, their chance to do so. You
are not going to have, I suppose, an enormous pool, but this is
an area of special need.
And then a second area of concern that he had was what you
mentioned in your testimony about the people in his instance of
a small, tiny cottage in Macedonia where they had 51 people
living there, which you pointed out in your testimony were the
first refugees that came there were settled in these various
houses. And they have enormous kinds of pressures, and we are
dealing with the humanitarian needs we want to be able to help
and assist people who have really been attempting to--they are
enormously poor people in any kinds of events and they have
been opening up their homes, and we want to try and do this.
I will make sure that some of these ideas that Tom has will
get to you in a timely way very quickly. But if you could take
a look at those and then we can follow up with staff with you
to see how those measures would be going on.
Ms. Taft. Fine.
Senator Kennedy. Just finally--and I know there are
communications, and you mentioned earlier when Senator Schumer
wasn't here the delicacy of these negotiations between air
drops, between mercy corridors which we have done. Biafra was a
case, but we have done it in other humanitarian areas as well
with some success, and sometimes it has been impossible, or
otherwise working with the Russians or the Greeks as being more
acceptable to try and get that in.
As I understand it, it is better to get that in a situation
which is sensitive, and therefore would welcome the chance to
be able to do that. And I respect your limitations to be able
to talk about it. I think you have gathered the sense yourself
of urgency that many of us have about the hours that are going
by and the importance of the immediacy of trying to deal with
the issue. It is just one of enormous kind of dimension and
incredible need, and I think we really have to take risks for
assistance on this.
I don't think we can play this with a safe dimension. There
is just too much at risk now. So I would hope that we are
really going to be as forthcoming as we possibly can. That is
certainly at least this individual's hope and expectation on
it, and I will look forward to hearing from you and others
about what the state of play is on it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Taft. If you have just a minute, I know you have to
leave, sir, but let me just say really quickly you talk about
the miracles here. It was just 3 weeks ago that the Serbs
started, and I am amazed that we don't have outbreaks of
disease. Three instances of measles; 11 people died in
Macedonia. This is really amazing, as tragic as any of this is.
There is a vaccination campaign that is getting started with
UNICEF and WHO in Albania, and will start in Macedonia.
On the issue of the separation of children, there is a
wonderful story I have to just tell you of our ambassador in
Albania, Marisha Lino, who was out at one of these camp sites
and she saw a mother with several children who was crying. And
she goes and she talks to her and puts her arm around and says,
you know, I am so sorry for you, but at least you have your
children here. And she said, no, I don't. And she had four
young children, and she said, I have triplets, 6-year-old
triplets that got separated from me in Pec and they ended up on
one bus and I ended up on another bus and I am in Albania and I
don't know where they are.
So our ambassador got in touch with the ICRC, in Geneva,
and said the mother thinks these children went to Montenegro.
Can you see if you can find them? And in very short order, they
did find these children in one of the camps in Montenegro,
because ICRC is still there. They are not reunited, but at
least they know where each other belongs. And I think we are
going to find many, many more stories like that as it proceeds.
With regard to the issue of air drops, you know, we are
talking about really dangerous, life-threatening interventions
either for NGO's or for the military that fly an air drop or
for agencies who are unarmed. And in all of these instances
going in in a non-permissive environment is really very
dangerous. But we are working on the details with all of the
interlocutors that you have mentioned.
And the thing that has been very helpful is we have gotten
calls from many Members of Congress who have been in touch with
their constituents who have helped us pinpointand map out where
these pockets of people are, in addition to some of the surveillance we
have been able to gather. So we can pretty much figure out where these
people are and, in terms of corridor, trying to find very targeted ways
to get them.
But it is very dangerous and it is really a question of how
much further is Milosevic going to go in this war against his
own people. You know, I mean if he and his troops will not
allow even humane access, it just further underscores the fact
that this man--you know, he wants his land, but he hates his
people. And we have got to figure out who else can get to him
on these life bridges because, as you say, every minute is
perilous there.
Senator Kennedy. Well, we appreciate it, Ms. Taft, and we
obviously can tell from your own reaction and response your
deep desire to try and get some resolution of this. We will
look forward to working with you.
I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for this hearing, and
I look forward to working with you. I think that we are going
to have a great deal of work to do over the period of these
next days and months, and I think it has been enormously
reassuring to have the breadth of interest and support that you
have brought through this committee on these issues.
In this area of humanitarian concern, there is no question
about the uniformity of interest of all the American people.
There may be some differences in other aspects of policy over
there, but there is absolutely none in this area, and we are
going to do everything we possibly can to work with you and all
of those groups, independent groups, church groups, and other
international groups that can possibly help and assist the
children, the women, the families and the people that have been
so terribly abused.
We thank you.
Senator Abraham. Senator Kennedy, thank you, and thank you
for working with us on this hearing. We appreciate it and look
forward to continuing this effort.
Senator Schumer.
Senator Schumer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I again want
to thank you. Some of us didn't have a chance for an opening
statement, but I want to thank you for your efforts and
leadership, and Senator Kennedy as well over the years. This is
an example of Congress working at its best, the Senate working
at its best, in a bipartisan way.
I also want to say, Ms. Taft, I appreciate the obvious
compassion you show. You are doing a job that is a huge
logistical job, but your feelings are strong. I would just like
to dwell a little bit more on the area I talked about with the
refugees. In fact, the NSC is going to brief a few of us on
this issue, so there are probably some things that you can't
say, but just in general, because to me we do have this
immediate crisis on our hands.
You are right. Within 3 weeks, the refugee assistance that
we have led and NATO has done is nothing short of remarkable.
There is a strain on resources. We need more tents, more food,
more blankets, but it is amazing what has been done. The place
that we haven't been able to do anything yet and has the
greatest immediacy and which relates to this immediate crisis
is the 700,000 internally displaced Kosovars who are in a
desperate race against time.
We don't know much about their fate because they are
internal. We know some, but not enough. But word is beginning
to trickle out--more massacres, rapes, possible starvation. And
I have heard some of these from own constituents who are in
touch with people. Fortunately, we have cell phones and you can
actually hear some of the anecdotal, awful evidence about what
is going on. So it seems to me that this calls for immediate
action.
Yesterday, I talked to Sandy Berger about this and he said
this was the most immediate, pressing problem we face at the
moment in any sphere. And so I would like to ask you the same
questions, and I know you might be somewhat constricted in how
you can answer--that I will ask the NSC people at our meeting
in a little while.
The first is how much do we know about these however many
hundreds of thousands of people within Kosovo who were cleared
from their homes, tried to come over the border, but then were
stopped and are somewhere in Kosovo? How great are the risks--
you mentioned the risks--of each particular type of plan? The
obvious one is drop food, and the obvious answer is the C-130
is sort of a sitting duck and the food wouldn't get there
anyway, so then the question of safe havens; third-party
assistance, which, as you say, has been done in part through
your efforts in other places. Getting a neutral third party to
be involved in this and then maybe having some kind of relief
through the air, preferably, or the ground is probably the best
way to go, but one fraught with many difficulties.
Can you comment on these things and give us whatever you
are at liberty to disclose about what can be done, because I
think all of us feel the angst of these people, particularly
when you meet with their relatives who are here and just day by
day, minute by minute, hanging by a thread when they don't know
what will happen within the next 10 minutes to their relatives,
their friends, their family.
Ms. Taft. The last food deliveries that were made by the
network of NGO's and UNHCR, et cetera, inside of Kosovo was
March 23, and then people left. So from then on, the normal
food deliveries, which were always pretty meager anyway, from
Serbia down to Kosovo--those stopped and it was a question of
what was remaining in the pipeline or inside of the various
stores in Kosovo.
All of the UNHCR facilities were ransacked and a warehouse
of WFP's was ransacked, so we believe there is virtually no
externally supported--so this is what has prompted us--I mean,
well, not only, but this is a very sad commentary on what these
people are able to have. We have had reports that they are
eating berries. In Africa, we call it famine foods when you
find different ways to cope for the time being. But this is a
big problem, and particularly for the elderly and the children.
So in terms of trying to get at these people, we do have a
pretty good idea. And I wouldn't say it is just the people who
were turned away from the border. There was always a lot of
internal displacement, and this is what happened even long
before the bombing started, where the Serbs were displacing
people from the villages and sending them to the cities. And
the cities like Pristina ended up with 150,000 more people than
they had had before the war. So a lot of these people were
displaced. Not all of them had tried to get out and then come
back in. We have aerial photos, which you will no doubt be able
to see, of where we know there are clusters of people who are
out in the open.
Senator Schumer. Do you have any idea how many?
Ms. Taft. We have estimates, yes, sir.
Senator Schumer. Can you tell us?
Ms. Taft. It ranges from a few hundred to several thousand.
Senator Schumer. In each cluster?
Ms. Taft. Yes. We can't count them.
Senator Schumer. Obviously not.
Ms. Taft. And then there is a particular area in the
Drenica triangle where we have had some very good reports via
constituents of Congressman Engel and probably you and others
where we are trying to piece together on-the-ground estimates.
But, you know, estimating populations of displaced persons----
Senator Schumer. Very hard.
Ms. Taft [continuing]. Is almost a science. And after I
finish answering your questions, I want to get back to this
because this has been a plaguing problem we had in Macedonia
and I would like the record straight on that. But, anyway, on
the issue of where the people are, we can find them.
In terms of interventions, the first one everyone thinks of
is air drops, which have worked in some places sometimes, but
certainly did not work in Turkey when the Kurds were in the
mountains in Turkey, have not really worked in the Sudan and
other places because they are very unwieldy and if you have to
drop them from 15,000 feet on pallets with parachutes, you
never know who is going to get hit on the ground or whether
they will be diverted. And 15,000 feet off the ground is very
dangerous for any aircraft going in a non-permissive
environment.
Senator Schumer. And to go much higher, you would risk--
just the food would be gone.
Ms. Taft. Right. So our military has said if anyone is able
to do air drops, a neutral country or a UN agency, we will
provide guarantees in terms of our air space for access.
Senator Schumer. Right.
Ms. Taft. But that does not enable permissiveness on the
part of the Serbs. That has to be done.
Safe havens require ground troops. Third-party neutrals I
have talked about in terms of air drops. We also are working
with some NGO's to see if they can't negotiate a way to get in.
And, finally, an area that you didn't mention, but I keep on
trying to push, is the smugglers' routes. The area between
Albania and Kosovo has for centuries had various routes, and
this is where the KLA has been able to come in and out. I don't
think there is enough structure there, but we stand ready to
anyone who is able to get their pack animals or go inside to
try to assist, and that is another feature.
So I hope that answers some of your questions. You will get
more specifics, I am sure, from the NSC, but this is on a very
urgent--let's look at all sides.
Senator Schumer. I don't know what the answer is and there
are no good answers, obviously, as there are no good answers in
this whole region right now. But let's just make sure we do
everything we can because we would rue the day, as I mentioned
earlier, if our air war succeeded 3, 4 weeks from now and then
we saw that tens of thousands of people had died and maybe
didn't have to.
Ms. Taft. Well, I am afraid we are going to find that
anyway because of the way they have been treated and displaced
so brutally for so long.
Senator Schumer. Do we have reports of--I mean, what is the
food level of the people? I guess it is different in many of
the different places. How imminent is starvation for some of
these folks?
Ms. Taft. Obviously, individuals' metabolism operates in
different ways. I mean, for a real famine in an African
context, it takes about 2 months where the body--but you have
to have water and you have to have some famine foods. I am not
a nutritionist, so I can't really answer that, but let me just
say that I am sure the situation is dire.
Senator Schumer. Thank you. And again, Mr. Chairman, thank
you, and I thank you for your herculean efforts under the most
difficult of circumstances.
Ms. Taft. We have got a lot of people working very hard in
a good way, and I want to thank the bipartisan nature of this
because I guess I am lucky in Government because I get to do
the humanitarian activities that everybody has a very strong
non-partisan and humane approach to. And I have always felt
that, and I am really pleased that you are having this hearing.
We have a lot of work to do together and I appreciate this.
Senator Abraham. Secretary Taft, we appreciate you being
here. I also want to thank you and the State Department for
helping actually to facilitate the participation today of our
refugees, deportees, or whatever term they choose or we choose
to use. Getting the visas in time for their appearance made, I
think, this hearing more helpful and meaningful, so thank you
for that.
I want to just ask a couple of questions. In the testimony
we heard earlier, there were some concerns raised about very
recent actions in the Macedonian camps that sounded obviously
very concerning. That kind of comes on the heels of something I
raised in my opening statement, the concerns that have been
expressed with respect to the perhaps in some instances
involuntary removal from the Macedonian refugee areas of people
on planes, which was actually reported in the media and how we
came to hear about it.
I just wondered if, in your judgment, these situations--
well, let's just start with some of the things mentioned this
morning. Are these problems that you are hearing about or is
this information that is new? And if it is in the latter
category, is it something that we can try to address
immediately?
Ms. Taft. Let me start with what I know and then what was
new to me.
Senator Abraham. Sure.
Ms. Taft. When we were in Macedonia last weekend--no--the
weekend of the 3rd and the 4th, it was very clear that the
Macedonians were not able to open that border. There was no
place for them to go. When we got the camps operational, in
just a matter of 24 hours, a decision was made that they could
open to receive people from no man's land and from the rest of
Blace if there was some movement out.
The president on down in Macedonia said that we have to
have an evidence that somebody else is going to help share our
burden. At that point, Turkey came in and they sent in two
flights; they sent in two relief flights, and then they
processed out people before IOM and the UNHCR had fully
documented them. They say that they didn't force anybody on a
plane, and I have to believe them because after the flurry came
up, they said, listen, we are not taking anybody out unless IOM
and UNHCR processed them.
At the same time, 300 buses of people from Macedonia--the
government put on 300 people and sent them to the south, to
what ended up being Albania, and that was pretty messy. But the
people are all under shelter now and there is a UNHCR presence
and they are now being documented, as are the Turks. I think
about 1,000 people, in total, went out in these unregulated
ways.
I got a telephone call in Geneva saying, Julia, the whole
thing is going to collapse if you don't authorize some payment
for the Macedonian aircraft to transport people to Turkey. And
I said, is somebody watching this? And they said yes, so they
put people on the planes. The ambassador swears that there were
not people who were forced and ripped apart from families and
put on planes. But you never can tell.
I mean, I was involved in the Vietnamese airlift, you know,
24 years ago and these things tended to be not according to any
regime or voluntary or structured way that the UNHCR or the
U.S. Government or IOM wanted. So we said we would not pay any
more money until there was a process. So I must say about 1,000
people did get out in an irregular process. Now, it is in
place. No flights are going to any of these countries, whether
it is Germany, Norway or Turkey, that have not been registered
by IOM. We have launched tracing services to pick up all the
families that were in these other places, and anyone that is
split, we have an agreement they will be reunited in the same
location.
Senator Abraham. So you feel pretty confident that at least
going forward----
Ms. Taft. Well, you know, this is--I can't----
Senator Abraham. Let's put it this way, that there are as
many safeguards as can be reasonably put in place for the
future. That is kind of where we are at?
Ms. Taft. Absolutely, and I must say the first couple of
days were not done according to any standard that we would
want. But we are remedying it and getting on with how we really
need to do it in the future.
Senator Abraham. Well, I think the tone of all of us here
should be, recognizing the emergency nature, that we can
probably, in post-mortem, talk about preparedness, and so on.
But right now at least this Senator is mostly interested in
going forward in terms of whether or not we feel we have got a
sufficient now oversight situation where we can provide those
assurances that are reasonable.
I recognize we are not going to be able to operate in this
situation the way we would in the context of a non-warlike
circumstance, and so on. But I just want to make sure that you
feel comfortable that you have been given the help to do what
you need to do in that respect.
Ms. Taft. Yes, sir, and we have invested the resources. We
have given $3 million now to make sure that the systems are
working and in place. Let me just say that even during the
early hours of this negotiation, there was a concern that
Macedonia was going to say if 1,000 leave, we will let 1,000
more in from no man's land. And our position was that is
inhumane; you can't do it. We are showing we are moving people
out. You have got to move all these people into shelter which
was being put up.
Senator Abraham. Right.
Ms. Taft. And I said to them, I said, you know, if you want
countries to give temporary asylum, they will only give
temporary asylum to healthy refugees, and they are not going to
be healthy if they are out in the rain and the mud. And they
then immediately started allowing them to come forward, so I
think it is in hand now.
Senator Abraham. Well, let us know, too. I think this is a
situation where, if we are going to have the kind of
congressional involvement that I am sure you want and support,
if there are problems developing it is probably better that on
the front end we try to address them or give you help if it is
needed.
Back to the earlier panel--and you were going to address
that as well--were some of the reports that we heard from our
first panel about ongoing problems ones that are consistent
with the reports you have been getting or is this something
new?
Ms. Taft. I hadn't heard about the two people that had left
Brajde camp, sort of escaped and gotten beaten up. That was
news to me. My colleague said that she had read a report. I am
going to find out about that. The issue that we have there is
what do we want NATO to do, what do we want the host country
security forces to do, police forces to do, and what do we want
the UN system and NGO's to do. And these are starting to get
mixed up.
NATO has put the infrastructure in; they are trying now to
turn it over to the UNHCR and to NGO's. We are trying to make
sure that there is no gap and there is no precipitous hand-
over. NATO has done an incredible job in doing these camps
virtually overnight, but there needs to be a seamless transfer
here and a lot more involvement of the UN to help that happen.
The question then comes, what do you use the NATO forces
for? Would they do perimeter security or internal camp
security? And this has not been resolved. In the meantime,
since they are in--and I am mostly talking about Macedonia--
since these camps in Macedonia are really in the jurisdiction
of Macedonia, their police have a responsibility. But I must
say they were quite heavy-handed and not well-trained for this,
and we are aware of that and we are trying to work out a way to
make sure that they just do perimeter security and we have some
other ways to deal with inside the camp.
Senator Abraham. Good. Well, I think it is important to
convey that concern to--I am sure you are trying to--obviously
the Macedonian officials because we have had visits just
yesterday from--the Macedonian ambassador to the United States
came up to the Hill, and I know they are interested in securing
some support and help in their efforts. And that is harder to
obtain if the information we are getting is of the sort we have
heard this morning.
Now, the transfer, as you described it, sort of from NATO
to voluntary agencies in terms of running these camps--do you
have a timetable on when that is expected to be happening?
Ms. Taft. It is different for each camp, and I find this
quite concerning. Each of the various NATO troops on the ground
have been helpful in setting up a camp. So the Germans put up a
camp and the Turks put up a camp and the Brits put up a camp,
and they are now negotiating with certain NGO's that are active
in Macedonia that we are supporting to do pieces of services in
those camps.
My feeling is--and we have been talking with the UNHCR
about this--these should all be UNHCR camps and there needs to
be a clarity of which NGO's are going to be the partners to do
what services in each of those camps. We can't goaround this
region having an Italian camp here, a USA camp here. I mean, this is
not rational.
I think the biggest challenge--and I am going to have to go
out there again this week--is to see if we can't come up with a
proper, organized way to deal with the military on this and to
have a system which is accountable to the international
community and have the NGO's provide those services. NATO has
told us they are not going to pull out their support until
there is a proper turnover, but I think it has to happen fairly
soon.
Senator Abraham. I agree. Back to just the general
question of the population still within Kosovo and the
possibility that if somehow the opportunity for them to leave
occurred and they in larger numbers did so, I know everybody,
and I am sure your office more than anyone, is shuddering at
the possibility of having to deal with another surge of that
sort. Are we prepared, in your judgment, to deal with that or
do we have to do more, given the potential numbers. And if so,
what can we do?
Ms. Taft. Well, given the difficulty it is to reach these
people inside of Kosovo, I really pray they can get out. I
don't care if we have to work harder than we are working now.
Senator Abraham. Sure. Well, everything I have heard
today, I think, indicates that----
Ms. Taft. Well, let me just say that Macedonia is probably
at its absorptive level. Turkey will take more. We are working
on some camp sites in Albania. Albanians politically want to
have these people stay there, and we are trying to figure out
how we can make it an asset rather than a liability. I am sure
Italy will take more. We have pledges from many countries to
take more who come out, if they are able to get out.
One of the unknowns here also that we haven't talked enough
about is Montenegro and whether or not only the 65,000 refugees
that are in Montenegro might go out through Croatia or to
Bosnia. We don't know, but we are ready for those. I don't
know. I think we will be because we now know who our partners
are. We now know where every tint in the world is. We now have
a sense of the magnitude of this, and that is one of the
reasons in Albania we are trying so desperately to move the
people from the mountain side, Kukes, where they have come
across the border, down into the other parts of Albania because
if there is another influx, that is where they are going to
come in and they are going to need to be taken care of.
In Macedonia, that no man's land in Blace is all cleaned
out and they are sanitizing it and putting up another area to
be able to receive more people. We will be, I think, in OK
shape, but the people who come across will not be, and so we
may need to identify real field hospital sources and things
like that if they are to come out, and I am sure contingencies
are working on that.
Senator Abraham. Well, I think that is reassuring
information, though, because, as I say, there will be time for
post-mortems, but I think the concern I am getting from some of
my constituents--and we have large populations of people from
these areas in our State--is just that given the tenor of
things leading right up to the initiation of the bombing, the
sense that this might happen seemed at least to a lot of people
in the communities in my State as a very real possibility.
And they are deeply concerned now that there wasn't more
preparation. Whether that was proper or not in terms of
assessment, the concern now is now that we are there, now that
we have got this potential, are we getting ready and will we be
ready if something additional happens.
Ms. Taft. Just to disabuse your constituents and to set the
record straight, UNHCR was in Albania, for instance, working on
contingencies for outflows. We had expected 60,000 people last
June into Albania. Only 18,000 came, so that they still had a
process where they could absorb 60,000 there and about 20,000
in Macedonia. We also had prepositioned or in the procured
pipeline enough food for 400,000 people for 6 months. We, of
course, thought that was going to feed the people inside
Kosovo, but it still was available for redirecting for them
outside.
I think that everybody was surprised at the intensity and
the unbelievable inhumanity of the expulsion of these people so
dramatically. But, you know, if you think about being able to
serve 500,000 people without the incredible problems that you
could anticipate in very inhospitable areas, particularly in
Albania, I think it really is amazing how well it has gone. But
we have a lot of work to do in contingency, but I don't think
it was because we were so unprepared; also, very fortunate to
have NGO's that had been working in Kosovo, knew the people,
had really good systems in place. They evacuated to Macedonia
and then Albania, and they are the ones we are going to have to
rely on in the next months ahead.
Senator Abraham. So one of the problems is that while we
had food, it was in Kosovo?
Ms. Taft. Some was; 1,000 metric tons was in Kosovo. Some
was in Serbia. We had a lot in Bar, the port of Bar, and it is
still there or in Montenegro, plus we had food on the high seas
and call forwards around the world, the World Food Program did.
So, that has not been the problem. Right now, it is just how do
you get enough food up one road going up into Albania, which is
the same road that you need to bring people down on to get them
away from the border. So it is going to be probably more
difficult if we don't have NATO around to construct yet again
lots more tents, but I have been assured that if we need them
for another surge, they will do whatever is necessary.
Senator Abraham. The last question I am going to ask is
just sort of a follow-up on your comments with regard to
Guantanamo and the possibility of temporary resettlement there
to meet America's commitment. You indicated that you don't
foresee the likely need for that at this point. If there was an
overflow from people who have been prevented from leaving, is
it likely that would trigger the need to----
Ms. Taft. I think it would. I mean, depending on how big
an overflow it is, I do believe it would. Now, what we need to
do right now--and I really do need guidance from the committee
here, and the House Judiciary Committee, too. There are a
variety of ways to bring refugees in. There are a variety of
ways to protect refugees offshore, you know, whether it is
parole, whether it is temporary protective status, whether it
is bringing people in as refugees with a round-trip ticket to
go back home. We have a variety of options.
The bottom line is how do we process--whatever we are going
to do, how is the best way to process it. And I come out right
now that we will probably need to process people closer to
home. We certainly can't do it in Albania; it istoo dangerous.
You don't have the infrastructure. Macedonia would be difficult, so we
might have to bring them to Guantanamo and process them in for whatever
status they might have in the United States. We really need to think
through this and what would make the most sense.
In the meantime, we are going to try to collect as much
data and information we can about people who do have relatives.
And if we find these people, we will be ready to move with
those that would more likely want to come to the United States,
but I don't think we are there yet. I really think we have to
talk about it. We want to have these contingencies. That is why
we have Guantanamo as a contingency, but let's hope we don't
need it.
Senator Abraham. Well, hopefully, that is true. The other
issue I know that may be raised in the next panel is the
question of whether or not it is more cost-efficient, as
opposed to the costs that would be involved in bringing people
to Guantanamo and housing them there in a humane way, to
perhaps support the housing of people closer, perhaps in
Albania or other places where right now they may have reached a
limit, but with assistance perhaps less expensive costs than
would be incurred if----
Ms. Taft. We are doing that, we are doing that.
Senator Abraham. How much do we have? I mean, in other
words, do we----
Ms. Taft. We have identified the sites. We have identified
the sizes of the encampments we would have. DoD just needs to
figure out how they are going to pay for it, and I need to have
money to pay for the social services of the NGO's inside of it.
But we have planned to go ahead with that, and so anything----
Senator Abraham. Would that be an option for the 20,000?
Ms. Taft. Yes, sir; yes, sir. But, you know, if 700,000
more come out, 20,000 is a drop in the bucket.
Senator Abraham. Sure.
Ms. Taft. So we really have to have broader contingencies.
But what we are doing now is responding to the interests of the
Albanians, the plea of the UNHCR, and the plea of the refugees
themselves that they want to stay close to Kosovo.
Senator Abraham. I agree.
Ms. Taft. So we are going to do this 20,000--well, it is
not a big camp of 20,000, but several locations, and we will
pay for it and we will get that up and running. It is in
process of the design and hopefully will be up in just a few
weeks.
Senator Abraham. Well, I am going to end questions at this
time. I am certain we will continue to work together with your
office and our committee, and also perhaps follow up with
additional hearings at appropriate points, if that is called
for. But we appreciate what you are dealing with right now, and
I think frankly having this hearing was in part for us at least
an opportunity to catch up a little, but also to expose people
here to exactly the magnitude of the challenge you confront.
So what I will do is leave the record open, since a number
of our colleagues had to leave, for additional questions they
may want to submit to you in writing, although perhaps some of
that will happen just as a matter of our ongoing relationship.
Ms. Taft. Thank you.
Senator Abraham. Thank you very much.
We have a third panel, so what we are going to do is
adjourn at this time and return at 1:30 p.m., and then we will
start up again at that time so people can have an opportunity
to make some lunch plans, as well as other accommodations, and
then we will begin again.
The meeting is temporarily adjourned.
[The subcommittee stood in luncheon recess from 12:10 p.m.
to 1:42 p.m.]
[The subcommittee reconvened at 1:42 p.m., Hon. Spencer
Abraham presiding.]
Senator Abraham. The hearing will resume at this time, and
I must begin by welcoming our audience here who stayed with us,
or perhaps just arrived. We have one panel remaining, and I
appreciate and want to thank the panelists for the patience
they have shown both to stick it out this long and also to
agree to this interruption for the break we took.
I stressed, I think, in the last panel that this is an
issue that certainly is not going to consume only 1 day of
attention from this subcommittee. I expect we will be on this
issue or the issue of the refugees here from Kosovo for some
time, and so we may well be inviting people back on other
occasions. But right now we will hear from panel, which
includes two representatives from organizations that have been
very important with respect to this crisis.
We will hear first from Bill Frelick, who is Senior Policy
Analyst for the U.S. Committee for Refugees. And then we will
hear from Maureen Greenwood, who is the Advocacy Director of
Amnesty International for Europe and the Middle East.
Again, I think that in light of the fact that there aren't
a lot of other Senators likely to attend, we are not going to
put the lights on here. We would ask you to keep the length of
your remarks reasonable, but we are not going to keep you to
the 5-minute limit if there is important information we should
share.
So we will start with you, Mr. Frelick. Thank you for being
with us.
PANEL CONSISTING OF BILL FRELICK, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, U.S.
COMMITTEE FOR REFUGEES, WASHINGTON, DC; AND MAUREEN GREENWOOD,
ADVOCACY DIRECTOR FOR EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST, AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL USA, WASHINGTON, DC
STATEMENT OF BILL FRELICK
Mr. Frelick. Thank you. I will submit my written remarks
for the record.
Senator Abraham. Without objection, that will be included.
Mr. Frelick. And what I would like to do is to just make a
few highlights, bearing in mind especially the testimony that
you have already heard today. And I think we were all very
impressed with that and note that.
The situation has been incredibly fluid and what I might
have said here last week when we were first planning this
session and what I say today could be very different. Our
priorities have shifted throughout. I think that the real
turning point was the unilateral declaration of the cease-fire
by Milosevic, accompanied by the absolute closure of the border
at that point.
If there was ever any doubt prior to that that this was a
mass expulsion, that this was a spontaneous movement based on
the bombing campaign alone, those doubts were laid completely
to rest. And I think that we can mark that as a changing point
in terms of the improvement of the situation for those people
who had managed to escape up to that point, but it also
presents a grave warning for the safety of the people who are
still left inside Kosovo today. So I would like to address both
of those groups.
First, looking at the refugees outside the country, as has
been mentioned earlier today and I would reiterate, because the
situation is so unstable and so unpredictable, we need to be
preparing now for the next influx. And one issue that we have
heard addressed is the prepositioning of aid and assistance and
the pipeline of aid to these very inaccessible areas, but the
other that I think we really need to underscore is the issue of
protection at the border so that we don't have a repeat of the
conduct of Macedonia when they were treating refugees,
traumatized people, in a completely summary fashion, in a
deplorable fashion really, given the conditions.
I would take issue, although I agreed with most everything
that Julia Taft said earlier, when she used the word
``processing'' to describe the herding of these people in the
dead of night, without UNHCR, without any transparency, and
splitting up families. I think that was a poor choice of words.
What we need to do now beyond focusing on the camps--I
think we have put a great deal of focus on the camps this week
and getting assistance to the camps. That is fine,that is one
thing. And the camp that was mentioned to you, in particular, that is
the Macedonian government-run camp is a cause of great concern.
However, I would like to draw your attention to the critical need to
support refugees who are staying in private homes.
It is the culture of the Balkans not to keep people in
camps and to get them into private homes as quickly as
possible. We have seen that in Croatia, we have seen that in
Bosnia. And, yes, we have seen it in Serbia as well, Serbs
opening their homes to Serbian refugees.
In Macedonia, according to the latest figures that I have,
60 percent of the refugees are actually staying in people's
homes. And in Albania, even more remarkable, in this short
period of time it is up to 80 percent now that are actually in
people's homes. I myself have slept in the private homes along
the northern Albanian border--extremely poor people, houses
filled with refugees. They made a little more space available
for me coming up there.
I know the kind of hospitality, I know the ethnic
solidarity for this region, and what we need to do is to
facilitate that and to promote that. We are getting enough food
into the camps. We don't have enough food going into these
people's homes so they can keep them open, and that is
something that I think is extremely important.
I also want to simply mention that--and I think the
Government has come around on this--the idea of having a
massive evacuation to third countries, including to the United
States, really puts the cart before the horse in the way that
you approach a refugee emergency. And I don't want to dwell on
that, but I do want to say, in particular, that Guantanamo is
still on the table.
Whatever improvements they are talking about making to it,
which would certainly be welcome, it is still a rights-free
zone. A baby born there is still a stateless person. We are
taking people who are traumatized, who need succor, who need
healing, who need support, and you isolate them out there, and
I think that that is the wrong way to treat people. It is not a
humane thing to do. No matter how you sugar-coat Guantanamo, it
is still Guantanamo, and I have been there as well.
So I think the emphasis has to be the traditional emphasis
in a refugee emergency. It is providing safe asylum in the
region, getting assistance there as quickly as possible, and
then helping the local community to try to build the
infrastructure. They need sewage lines, they need water piping,
they need roads, electricity, you name it. We could be putting
a great deal of money into that.
If the people are able to return home quickly, which you
heard from all the refugees here and that I have heard from
refugee testimonials as well--that is what they want to do;
they want to return home--then, fine. Then you have rewarded
Albania and possibly Macedonia for their good behavior, for
their generosity. But if this becomes an even more protracted
conflict and if they can't go home soon, you want now to begin
creating the opportunity for local integration so that people
will be able to remain in the region where they share the same
culture.
I would like to turn my attention now to the question of
internally displaced people. I was heartened to hear the
questions that Senator Schumer was asking earlier today. These
are the same questions that we have been asking ever since that
border was closed.
What we see are all the signs of a genocide, an impending
genocide or a genocide that is ongoing. Genocide does not have
to be massacres in gas chambers, although we may well hear
quite a bit of evidence about massacres. And, again, speaking
from personal experience I was outside of Srebrenica and Zepa
when they fell. I was interviewing refugees as they came out of
the woods. I interviewed the women who were separated from
their men just hours before and, of course, they have never
seen those men again. I remember that very clearly. There is a
track record here, and in tracking genocide we have to be aware
of the willingness, the intent, as well as the capacity to
commit genocide, and we are seeing both occurring now.
So one thing is massacres; the other is expulsion.
Milosevic has already succeeded in expelling 25 percent of the
population. But what I want to focus on today is the question
of starvation, using food as a weapon. In Bosnia, we saw a
tactic, and we saw it again and again and again, where Serb
forces surrounded areas, besieged them, shelled them, and cut
them off from food. That was the strategy. Rarely did troops
engage each other in direct battle. That is not the way the war
in Bosnia was fought. The targets were civilians, they are not
combatants, and the tactic was to besiege them and to starve
them out.
What I saw last year when I was in Kosovo was a systematic
campaign to deprive and to deplete the food resources in
Kosovo, and I want to just highlight four or five of the points
very quickly that were used at that time, and we can see the
effects today.
First, there were severe restrictions on basic commodities
moving into Kosovo from Serbia proper. I went in on an
International Rescue Committee vehicle. It was thoroughly
searched; every box was opened. We had humanitarian daily
rations. They opened up every single box and examined every one
of them. Commercial trucks had a very, very difficult time
getting through, and on page 8 of my written testimony there is
a list of the controlled commodities, which includes just about
everything that you need to live.
Second, there was a scorched earth campaign pretty well-
documented, but most people were focusing on the direct
atrocities that were committed against people. I would like to
draw your attention to the burning of fields, the destruction
of crops, burning of haystacks, burning of food stores
themselves, killing of livestock. Paramilitaries went through,
killed livestock, and dropped their carcasses into wells to
contaminate the water.
Next was a sniping campaign. Serb snipers prevented ethnic
Albanian farmers from harvesting their crops. So even if aerial
photography was showing the crops were full, the crops couldn't
be harvested. And for the spring planting--for the crops that
should be coming up soon, they were not able to do the planting
for the same reason, fear of snipers and the actual shooting of
farmers when they went onto their fields.
And, finally, there was the creation of 300,000 internally
displaced people last year. And what those people did was they
stayed in the private homes of other people and they ate their
winter stocks. So between destruction of food, consumption of
food, and the prevention of production of food, we had a
systematic campaign to deplete the food resources of Kosovo,
such that Kosovo became completely dependent on the provision
of humanitarianaid from outside sources. And we have gotten
some indication from Julia Taft about what that pipeline looked like.
The situation now is that that pipeline has been completely
and utterly destroyed. Those food warehouses have been looted
and burned. None of the agencies that were operating there,
including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the
UNHCR, all of the non-governmental organizations that are
international, plus very importantly the local NGO's that did
heroic work there last year--they have all been either removed
from the country, or in the case of the local ones completely
decimated.
So now we are faced with a critical food situation, and
this brings the question of the fatal miscalculation that we
are still seeing today, that we saw in President Clinton's
remarks yesterday about grinding down the Serbs, and that we
saw in the lead editorial in the New York Times yesterday about
wearing out the Serbs. This is a war of attrition. We are
hitting the supply lines of the Serbs, but in the time it is
going to take through a bombing campaign to grind down the
military machine, these people will be dead.
The discussions about the decision to deploy these
helicopters--even after the decision was made, we are told that
it will take another month for them to come in. We don't even
have a decision on ground troops yet, and we were told in that
same New York Times editorial that for just 70,000 troops--and
I have heard talk of 200,000 before they would enter--that that
would take another 6 weeks before they could be deployed.
So the military time line is completely out of sync with
the humanitarian needs in Kosovo, and I think that is the
reality that we are staring in the face right now. Civilians
will starve before men with guns, before soldiers. So what do
we do about it? We are all grappling with this question, and as
I say, I appreciate Senator Schumer's concern. I have heard all
the reasons for not doing food drops. However, I think that we
need to bust food in there through the air, through the ground,
however we can do it to get food in as quickly as possible.
I would caution against the creation of safe havens, and I
do this because we have a very unhappy history with safe
havens, per se. They have been a half-measure, they have been
death traps. They have been used to prevent people from seeking
asylum abroad. And what we have seen, whether it be in
Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, or Kibeho in southwestern Rwanda,
or Erbil in northern Iraq, is that people there are not
genuinely protected and they can actually be subject to
massacres as well.
But time is not on our side, and I think that what we have
to do is a rapid deployment of troops to come to the rescue of
starving people and people that are on the executioner's block
in Kosovo. Julia Taft said one other thing that sort of caught
me the wrong way. She talked about the responsibility of
Milosevic for his people.
The fact of the matter is Milosevic does not see the ethnic
Albanians as his people. If we keep maintaining the fiction
that these are his people and we keep assigning responsibility
and expect him to act responsibly toward them, we are going to
be faced with an immense tragedy. We have to make the decision
that they are not his people. They don't want to be his people,
he doesn't want them to be his people, and we need to draw the
line and realize that Serb police and ethnic Albanian civilians
don't mix.
Thank you very much.
Senator Abraham. Thank you, Mr. Frelick.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Frelick follows:]
Prepared Statement of Bill Frelick
the kosovo refugee crisis
Thank you, Chairman Abraham, for the opportunity to testify
regarding the humanitarian needs of Kosovar refugees and displaced
persons.
The U.S. Committee for Refugees is a nonprofit, nongovernmental
organization, which for 40 years has defended the rights of refugees,
asylum seekers, and displaced persons in this country and throughout
the world. Our organization has been documenting the conditions of
refugees and displaced persons in former Yugoslavia since the beginning
of the conflict, as indicated, in part, by our publications devoted to
this issue:
``Yugoslavia Torn Asunder: Lessons for Protecting Refugees from
Civil War'' (1992).
``Croatia's Crucible: Providing Asylum for Refugees from Bosnia and
Herzegovina'' (1992).
`` `Preventive Protection' and the Right to Seek Asylum: A
Preliminary Look at Bosnia and Croatia,'' International Journal of
Refugee Law (1992).
``Human Rights and Humanitarian Needs of Refugees and Displaced
Persons in and outside Bosnia and Herzegovina,'' Helsinki Commission
testimony (January 25, 1993).
``Civilians, Humanitarian Assistance Still Held Hostage in
Bosnia,'' Refugee Reports (February 1993).
``Voices from the Whirlwind: Bosnian Refugee Testimonies'' (1993).
``Last Ditch Options on Bosnia'' (1993).
``East of Bosnia: Refugees in Serbia and Montenegro'' (1993).
``No Escape: Minorities under Threat in Serb-Held Areas of
Bosnia,'' Refugee Reports (November 1994).
``War and Disaster in the Former Yugoslavia: The Limits of
Humanitarian Action,'' World Refugee Survey (1994).
``The Death March from Srebrenica,'' Refugee Reports (July 1995).
``Bosnian Refugees,'' Hearing before the Subcommittee on
International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on
International Relations, House of Representatives (September 25, 1995).
``Germany to Begin Returning Bosnians,'' Refugee Reports (September
1996).
``Bosnian Minorities: Strangers in Their Own Land,'' Refugee
Reports (October 1997).
``State Department Welcomes, Then Backs Off, Serbian `Humanitarian
Centers' in Kosovo,'' Refugee Reports (September 1998).
``Shaky Ceasefire in Kosovo; Displaced People Come Out of Woods,
Fears Remain,'' Refugee Reports (November 1998).
``Fighting Heats Up Kosovo Winter,'' Refugee Reports (February/
March 1999).
Today, we come to you at perhaps the darkest hour we have seen
since these human tragedies began six years ago. In the past, we have
testified about the possibilities for humanitarian action. Today's
testimony will reflect the marginalization of the humanitarian
community in this conflict.
I thought long and hard about what recommendations to make to you
today. I have considered every angle I can think of. Recommendations
that would adhere to principle seem to hold little hope for the rescue
of people who are now in immediate danger. I can and will decry how we
have come to the present juncture, but I fear that the recommendations
I would want to make are limited by the presuppositions and
miscalculations that have gone before.
The refugee situation in and around Kosovo remains extremely fluid
and unpredictable. However, at this moment, NATO and the humanitarian
arms of the international community working with local Albanians and
Macedonians have managed to bring a modicum of order to the chaotic
disaster that overwhelmed Macedonia and Albania during the first two
weeks of the air campaign. The primary reason for an improved refugee
situation, however, the closing of the borders with Macedonia and
Albania by Serb forces on April 7, raises even more serious concerns
about the welfare and safety of those now trapped within Kosovo itself.
Outside Kosovo, the stopped refugee flow provides what might only
be a short breather before the next influx. The international community
must attend to the needs of those who have already arrived. It also
needs, however, to prepare for the next influx so that we do not repeat
recent mistakes. This includes improvement of the infrastructure and
logistical capacity of Macedonia and Albania to receive and care for
sudden and large refugee influxes. It also includes the need for the
international community to be clear about its expectations regarding
Macedonia's treaty obligations as a signatory to the UN Refugee
Convention, so that we do not witness a repeat of Macedonia's harsh and
shabby treatment of vulnerable and traumatized people last week.
At the same time, the international community must remain seized
and sharply focused on the civilians outside our reach: those who
remain inside Kosovo, among them perhaps a half million internally
displaced persons in dire need of food, shelter, and other relief
assistance. Refugee testimonies tell us that those left behind are in
grave danger and that the threat of genocide is real and immediate. The
international community, and the United States in particular, bears a
heavy moral responsibility for their safety, perhaps for their very
survival.
NATO's military time-line is out of sync with the humanitarian
needs of the civilian population inside Kosovo. Essentially NATO has
opted to wage a war of attrition. Unfortunately, such a military
strategy presupposes a long stretch of time to accomplish its
objectives. However, before such objectives can be achieved, before the
bombing campaign can succeed in degrading Yugoslavia's military
capacity to operate, Yugoslav military and Serb police and paramilitary
forces will already have succeeded in accomplishing their objectives:
the death, burning, terror, and displacement of the ethnic Albanian
population.
We have witnessed NATO debate about whether to deploy AH-64D Apache
helicopters capable of attacking tanks and armored personnel carriers
and watched NATO arrive at a decision to deploy them, only to be told
that the U.S. military cannot make them operational in Kosovo for
another month. Extend this process to the larger and pertinent question
about deploying NATO ground troops into a nonpermissive environment in
Kosovo. How long will such a decision take? How soon after such a
decision will NATO be able to mount an invasion force? By the time the
first invading NATO soldier sets foot inside Kosovo, will there still
be a civilian population inside the province to be saved?
In Bosnia, humanitarian agencies operated throughout the conflict,
often providing what came to be known as the ``humanitarian alibi''
that covered the failure of the international community's political and
military wings to take responsibility to rectify the causes of the
human misery that the humanitarians were trying to treat.
The conflict in Kosovo has taken a different course. With the
bombing campaign of March 24 all organized humanitarian actors have
been removed from the scene: There are no international human rights
monitors operating in Kosovo; the International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are out;
international NGO's, which distributed food and other relief supplies,
are sidelined outside Kosovo; and the local humanitarian organizations
that have done heroic work inside Kosovo during the last year have
themselves been decimated by the onslaught of the Serb forces. I
recently received a message from a young Kosovar who had worked as an
interpreter for American aid workers before he became a refugee last
week. He said that all local activists were targeted, and that Mother
Theresa Society warehouses were looted and burned and that all Mother
Theresa Society activities inside Kosovo have stopped. The Mother
Theresa Society was the largest of the local humanitarian agencies
operating within Kosovo.
In summary, humanitarian agencies cannot bring assistance to those
in need inside Kosovo. Human rights organizations cannot directly
monitor abuses. For the time being, this is a military operation that
leaves little room for any other form of intervention. However, the
military has a responsibility to assist and protect those made even
more vulnerable by the onset of all-out war, particularly in the
absence of any space for humanitarian agencies, including the ICRC,
which has a specific mandate under the Geneva Conventions to operate in
wartime.
We are left, however, with strange, ironic, and tragic discord
between the military and humanitarian realities. NATO embarked on the
bombing campaign purportedly to stop the slow ethnic cleansing of
Kosovo and to prevent the destabilization of the region that could be
caused by mass refugee flows. Tragically, but predictably, it had the
opposite effect. This was because the opposing military forces didn't
actually engage each other. NATO planes and missiles struck at
targets--such as buildings, bridges, fuel depots, and air defense--only
indirectly connected to the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing. Serb
police and paramilitary units, unable to strike back at NATO planes,
retaliated against their easiest, and favored, target--unarmed
civilians. A high-tech war conducted from high altitudes was completely
ineffective in thwarting a low-tech war being conducted with small
arms, truncheons, and arson against civilians on the ground.
In criticizing U.S. and NATO policymakers, I don't in any way mean
to suggest that I am absolving Milosevic and his henchmen of their
responsibility for war crimes. The blame and responsibility for killing
and terrorizing civilians and for looting and burning their homes and
properties rests squarely on them. Nevertheless, whatever NATO's
intentions and goals, its bombs provided a cover under which ethnic
cleansing accelerated both in swiftness and brutality. Nongovernmental
organizations predicted the retaliatory attack on civilians that a
bombing campaign would precipitate. On January 22, two months before
the start of the air campaign, one of our colleague agencies,
Physicians for Human Rights, wrote to President Clinton saying: ``A
bombing campaign alone might open Kosovar civilians and international
humanitarian workers to reprisals by the thousands of Serb forces that
remain in Kosovo. The deployment of ground forces across Kosovo is
needed to protect the human rights of civilians living in the region.''
In fact, the bombing campaign precipitated such reprisals, and the
consequent refugee flows and regional destabilization that they were
intended to prevent. Had President Milosevic intended to ethnically
cleanse Kosovo all along? It certainly was a wish, but not necessarily
a plan. He is the consummate opportunist, and will take what he can get
away with. Last year, his strategy did not appear to be ethnic
cleansing per se--the magnitude of that task and its prospects for
success too daunting. So, he followed a classic counter-insurgency
strategy, in the process of which his forces displaced about 300,000
people within Kosovo.
We can debate whether this would have become ethnic cleansing by
slow bleeding in the absence of NATO bombing, instead of the hemorrhage
that occurred after March 24. My guess is that it may well have
happened. However, I also think that the hemorrhage could have been
avoided if a significant number of NATO troops had been deployed in the
region during the Rambouillet negotiations such that Milosevic would
have had to consider the credible threat of a NATO ground incursion
before embarking on his campaign of accelerated ethnic cleansing. As it
was, Milosevic proceeded, confident of President Clinton's loud
assurances that he had no intention of committing ground troops.
internally displaced people and other at-risk civilians inside kosovo
Amnesty International and others today will testify regarding the
reports of atrocities and other human rights abuses occurring inside
Kosovo. But, I want to add a few words based on our previous experience
with refugees on how to interpret what we are seeing from the
sidelines. Refugee testimonials about Serb police and paramilitary
units separating men and boys from their families as they were being
expelled are credible, plentiful, and chilling. I was on the frontline
in Bosnia in 1995 when Srebrenica and Zepa fell. I interviewed the
women who had just seen their husbands and fathers taken away. They
never saw them again.
The closing of the border on April 7 represents the loudest and
clearest warning of the dangers these people face. From Nazi Germany to
Cambodia, we have seen the significance of closed borders for regimes
that have demonstrated the will and capacity to commit mass murder.
Genocide has many tools. It does not require gas chambers or even mass
graves. Milosevic is using a combination of tools:
Expulsion is one. Make no mistake. The estimated 418,000
refugees who appeared in Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro between
March 24 and April 7 were not spontaneous arrivals fleeing falling
bombs. They were expelled. When it suited Milosevic's purposes to
declare a unilateral ceasefire and stop the refugee flow, he stopped it
on a dime, and ordered the displaced who were still heading toward the
border to make an about-face return into the hands of their
persecutors. That demonstration of power and control is truly
frightening.
Massacre is another tool. Amnesty International and
others, I am sure, will give credible testimony today of killings. We
have already seen a pattern of atrocities taking place, such as the
Racak massacre on January 15, and can only imagine how many such acts
may have been repeated since the international human rights monitors
left.
The final tool of genocide that I want to focus on,
however, is a campaign of calculated starvation. We have seen this used
in most of the major genocides or attempted genocides of this century,
including the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, and, most recently, the current
Sudanese regime. The victims are denied an avenue of escape and are
denied food. Whether or not they are detained by the state authorities
perpetrating genocide, they are at least confined to an area where they
have little or no access to food. Eventually they starve or, weakened
by malnutrition, succumb to disease.
Last year, the U.S. Committee for Refugees began documenting the
use of food as a weapon in Kosovo. I traveled to Kosovo, and was struck
by the Serb authorities' concerted and systematic efforts to limit
Kosovo food imports and production. Here is the pattern that I saw and
documented at that time:
(1) Serb authorities imposed local ``control'' of basic food items
into Kosovo. I entered Kosovo from the Belgrade road in a clearly
marked and UNHCR-licensed International Rescue Committee vehicle. Serb
police thoroughly checked the humanitarian daily rations (HDR's) we
were carrying, opening and examining every box. After arriving in
Kosovo, I discovered that local commercial trucks carrying essential
food stuffs had much greater difficulty. Here is the list of
``controlled'' commodities that I obtained during my visit: wheat
flour; rice; oil; margarine; butter; sugar; salt; meat and meat
products; milk and milk products; all kinds of cheeses; canned fruits;
canned vegetables; canned fish; mashed potatoes; pasta; corn;
unprocessed wheat; livestock; animal feed; detergent liquid and powder;
soap, shaving cream, tooth paste and shampoo; all kinds of lubricants;
diesel fuel, heating fuel; gas; medicines and medical equipment. Local
markets in Pristina showed significant price increases and commodity
shortages. In addition to my first-hand observation of this, Newsday
reported August 2: ``Serbian police have seized shipments of essential
foodstuffs on the main road into Kosovo. * * * A Kosovo transport
company that had two shipments seized in the past two weeks said the
prohibited goods include: sugar, flour, milk and milk products, edible
oils, animal feed, grains, meat and live animals. Random checks in
Pristina, Kosovo's capital, show that such goods are not widely
available, and certainly not in private shops run by Albanians. They
are available in limited quantities at state-owned stores run by Serbs,
but prices in Kosovo are double elsewhere in Yugoslavia.''
(2) Serb forces engaged in a scorched earth policy to destroy last
year's food stocks and to cripple Kosovo's capacity to produce food
this year. During attacks on ethnic Albanian towns and villages, Serb
forces looted houses and stores of goods and food. Serb forces also
deliberately burned agricultural fields, haystacks, winter food stocks,
and firewood. Serb paramilitaries killed livestock, sometimes dropping
their carcasses into wells to contaminate the water.
I have the honor today of testifying today with the director of the
Center for Protection of Women and Children in Pristina. This heroic
NGO, whose reports we have closely followed during the past year,
reported on August, ``Hundreds of houses are in flame. Grain fields are
in flame too. Targets of the constant shelling are mostly innocent
civilians * * * animals, houses, and food.'' On August, Reuters cited a
World Food Program official in Kosovo saying that the area around
Malisevo was ``a wasteland of destroyed villages and burned fields
littered with dead cattle.'' The scorched earth policy was unconnected
to military strikes. On August 5, the Washington Post reported on U.S.
Ambassador Christopher Hill's visit to central Kosovo, saying, ``He
[Hill] noticed several villages and towns that were burning today in
areas where there was no fighting.''
(3) Serb snipers prevented ethnic Albanian farmers from harvesting
their crops last autumn or from planting seeds for the crop due this
spring. Such sniping was reported by Catholic Relief Services on July
16. In the Drenica area, in particular, ethnic Albanian farmers
reported that they were not able to harvest their wheat crop because of
Serb snipers.
(4) The Serbian police harassed and persecuted local humanitarian
aid workers in Kosovo who distributed food and other humanitarian aid
to displaced civilians. On July 11, Serb police arrested the vice
president of the Djakovica regional Mother Theresa Society, Fatime
Boshnjaku, and twoother Mother Theresa Society workers, for delivering
food to a town under KLA control. Local independent media also reported
that Serb snipers ``positioned in the vicinity of the open pit coal
mines in Bellaqevc shot and wounded two humanitarian workers while they
were distributing aid.'' (Reported by the Open Society Institute on
July 17.) On August 24, three Mother Theresa Society aid workers were
killed while delivering three metric tons of food parcels and stoves
that they had received from a USAID-funded convoy. Shortly after
passing through a Serb checkpoint, and while in an open field in mid-
afternoon, their vehicle, piled high with white boxes marked with the
blue emblem of Doctors of the World, came under direct shell fire.
There were no uniformed KLA soldiers reported in the area.
(5) Serbian forces raided food warehouses. On Sunday, July 26, Serb
police raided the Mother Theresa Society warehouse in Vucitrn and
confiscated 12.5 metric tons of wheat. The raid occurred during food
distribution to the needy, causing additional fear among would-be
beneficiaries. (Reported by Mercy Corps International on July 28.)
During the winter, food stocks were depleted. More than 200,000
internally displaced persons were in Kosovo at the time. They were not
accommodated in camps or collective centers. In some cases, they were
in the woods without shelter. In many other cases, internally displaced
people found shelter with local host families, consuming their food
stocks. In any case, the displaced were usually in inaccessible areas
or fearful of coming to central locations for food distribution.
Kosovo is not a self-sufficient food producer in the best of times.
With planting and harvesting brought to a halt last year, with food
deliveries cut, and with food stocks consumed or destroyed, there are
no reserves at the present time.
Serb and Yugoslav military strategy in Kosovo will follow the
pattern of Bosnia: They will avoid direct confrontation with opposing
armed forces, but will prefer to encircle, shell, and besiege targeted
civilian populations.
What is the present situation for internally displaced people in
Kosovo? On Sunday, April 11, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said,
``They lack the basic elements of relief and are particularly short of
food. The weather currently is against them. It is snowing today in
western Kosovo.''
The American and world public are not aware of the calculated steps
Milosevic has taken over the course of the last year to use food as a
weapon. Few are aware that, after a year of squeezing Kosovo of its
last food reserves, starvation can now be used as a tool of genocide.
Because there are no television cameras inside Kosovo, because we no
longer see images of hungry, desperate refugees (and because those we
do see are now being fed and cared for), the public is not yet aware,
let alone roused, by the looming threat of starvation inside Kosovo.
NATO's war of attrition is ill suited for these circumstances.
Those least able to hold out are the very people this campaign is
supposed to protect. They are likely to succumb before it has a chance
to succeed. NATO military planners may think that time is on their
side. In humanitarian terms, this is a fatal miscalculation.
what not to do
For persons displaced within Kosovo: An internal safe haven is a bad
idea
On Monday, April 12, the former director of the State Department's
Bureau for Refugee Programs, Princeton Lyman, wrote an op-ed piece for
the Washington Post arguing in favor of creating a safe haven for
ethnic Albanians inside Kosovo modeled on the safe haven for the Kurds
in northern Iraq in 1991. The northern Iraq model is flawed in a number
of respects. First, the Kurds in northern Iraq were unwelcome in both
neighboring Turkey and Iran, and essentially had nowhere to flee. As
previously mentioned, Albania has welcomed these refugees; refugees
needing to flee Kosovo have a place of refuge outside the country.
Second, in 1991, Saddam Hussein was already beaten by coalition forces
at the time the safe haven was declared. He was in no position to
resist, and coalition ground troops did not have to fight their way
into northern Iraq. Milosevic has not been beaten and his troops are in
Kosovo. Prior to Milosevic's defeat, if the international community set
its sights on defending only a patch of Kosovo territory as a haven for
persecuted civilians, it would signal its willingness to concede
control of the rest of Kosovo to Serb forces and, in effect, give the
green light to cleansing those areas of their ethnic Albanian
population.
Lyman quickly brushes past the international community's unhappy
experiences with safe havens in Bosnia, Rwanda, and elsewhere. As I
mentioned previously, I was near Srebrenica and Zepa as the survivors
of those safe areas straggled out. Srebrenica and Zepa stand as
monuments to the international community's failure to resist ethnic
cleansing. They represent the international community's timidity in the
face of aggression and brutality. Finally, they represent a false
promise that has undermined the international community's credibility
and encouraged despots to test its resolve. The promise of safety has
too readily lured innocent people into death traps. Furthermore, the
very existence of such safe havens has often been used as the excuse to
deny asylum to would-be refugees. People who are frightened, people who
seek refuge outside their borders are told to remain in places where
the international community continues to recognize the sovereignty of
the very powers that have been persecuting them. Safe havens are an
invitation to ethnic cleansing. To say that one particular area of a
country is safe, concedes that the surrounding area is not. It invites
the ethnic cleansers to herd people into the safe areas. At that point,
whetherin Kibeho in southwestern Rwanda or Srebrenica in eastern
Bosnia, international forces who were present at the time did not
prevent massacres of people whose safety they were there to ensure.
For refugees outside Kosovo: Now is not the time for a resettlement
operation, temporary or permanent, to Guantanamo or to the U.S.
mainland
With tens of thousands of refugees stranded in the no man's land
between Kosovo and Macedonia last week, Macedonia threatened to close
its borders if NATO did not remove the refugees from its soil. Under
this blackmail, and seeing mass misery and suffering on the Albanian
and Macedonian borders, and a tide of incoming refugees, the United
States and allied countries agreed to resettle the refugees on a
temporary basis. The U.S. agreed to take 20,000 refugees and to house
them at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
At the height of a refugee emergency, the primary concerns ought to
be quickly providing clean water, adequate sanitation, food, shelter,
medicine, and clothing. Just as important is the issue of protection--
ensuring that refugees are not forced back to their country or
prevented from fleeing violence and persecution, and that they are not
mistreated in the country to which they have fled.
As a general rule, the complex logistical task of delivering
humanitarian assistance in refugee disasters dictates bringing the aid
to the refugees where they are. The exception to this rule is if
security concerns require refugees to be moved away from border areas.
The ideal solution to a refugee crisis is for refugees to be
allowed to return to reclaim their homes and property. Resettlement is
normally used as an option after time has elapsed, for refugees who
cannot return to their homeland. It is used after other options have
been exhausted, and after refugees have been registered and screened.
Resettlement should never be imposed on refugees against their will,
and families should always be kept together. Until now, resettlement
has always been considered as a permanent solution.
In making the offer of ``temporary'' resettlement, the United
States and allied countries were well intentioned. They were responding
to the Macedonian threat to close its borders. The offer was made to
prevent refoulement and to preserve first asylum, and, for that, the
motive behind it is praiseworthy. But, the temporary resettlement
decision was hurried and ad hoc. The allies committed themselves to a
course of temporary resettlement before fully considering other
alternatives more in accord with the wishes of the refugees themselves.
After the evacuation policy was announced, Kosovar refugees were
dragged, manhandled and forced onto planes against their will. It was
heartbreaking to watch news footage of traumatized refugees being
treated this way.
As noted previously, Serb police and paramilitary forces separated
many men and boys from their families during the expulsion. Others have
joined the KLA. Intact refugee families in Albania or Macedonia have
been the rare exception. Especially in a society as traditional as that
of the ethnic Albanians, women, children, and the elderly do not want
to be taken long distances from their husbands, fathers, brothers, and
sons.
The logistical difficulties and cost of transporting tens of
thousands of refugees out of the region at the height of the emergency
is a misuse of resources and further complicates an exceedingly
difficult relief aid pipeline. Choosing which refugees are in greatest
need of resettlement, which countries are most appropriate to resettle
them, and registering and tracking them as they move is time and labor
intensive. Failure to plan resettlement properly results in chaos,
including splitting families.
We were pleased to learn that the U.S. government does not appear
to be rushing forward to bring Kosovar refugees to Guantanamo. However,
construction of the camp reportedly continues and if the United States
sees fit to evacuate refugees from the region, it is still committed to
holding them there. This is a bad idea. The U.S. courts have
essentially declared Guantanamo a ``rights-free zone'' as far as
refugees are concerned. Refugee children born there would be stateless;
any rights would be severely limited. Several years ago, Haitian
refugees sent to Guantanamo were put in tents on a tarmac, surrounded
by barbed wire and watchtowers. I was there. It was isolating and
intimidating--not a place for traumatized guests of our country in need
of succor and healing.
Some have suggested bringing the refugees to the U.S. mainland,
certainly a preferable alternative to Guantanamo. In due time, if
Kosovar refugees cannot return to their homeland, the United States may
well have good reason to offer permanent resettlement to some,
particularly those with family connections in the United States. At the
present time, however, this is premature, unnecessary, logistically
complicating, wasteful of resources, and sends the wrong message to the
ethnic cleansers inside Kosovo. It does not take into account other
alternatives that support the refugees' preference to return to Kosovo
as soon as they can do so in safety and dignity. If Macedonia, indeed,
cannot be persuaded to allow refugees to remain on its soil, the wishes
of the refugees ought to be taken into account, and they should be
relocated in the most humane manner possible to Albania, where they
would be welcome.
Although poverty stricken and overwhelmed with refugees already,
Albania is willing to take in refugees threatened with expulsion from
Macedonia. Despite their poverty, Albanians have shown remarkable
solidarity and hospitality toward the ethnic Albanian refugees from
Kosovo. In manycases, they have opened their homes and have shared what
little they have.
Temporary resettlement outside the region should be considered as a
last resort. Not now. Both the wishes of the refugees and the goals of
the international community are for the prompt and safe return of the
refugees to their homes. The focus on resettlement--at Guantanamo or
the U.S. mainland--at this time, is ill-advised and unnecessary.
what to do
Needless to say, it's easier to say what not to do and what has
been done wrong than to give the prescription for ``solving Kosovo.''
Regarding refugees outside Kosovo
This is largely a question of timing and staging. I would have made
very different recommendations last week at the height of the sudden,
chaotic mass influx than I am making today.
Obviously, we need to be better prepared in the event of another
mass influx. Reception camps on the immediate borders need to have
adequate sanitary facilities, sources of potable water, food, tents,
blankets, vaccines, etc.
As essential as assistance needs are, there is also a need to
protect the principle of first asylum. In Macedonia, especially, the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees--perhaps with emergency assistance from
OSCE monitors stranded outside Kosovo--should be an active and visible
presence on the border, receiving and registering refugees, and
preventing the kind of summary treatment of refugees by the Macedonians
that caused gratuitous suffering and hardship last week.
Every effort should be made to assist the ICRC, the UNHCR, and
other agencies involved in the tracing and reunification of split
families.
Resources should be poured into Albania, especially, and Macedonia
as well, to build their capacity to host large refugee populations. It
is remarkable at this early stage of the refugee crisis, that 60,000 of
the 98,000 refugees estimated to remain in Macedonia (as of April 11)
are living in private homes. Although I do not have this week's figures
on the percentage of the 300,000 refugees in Albania who are living in
private homes, on April 7, the Washington Post reported that more than
130,000 were being hosted in private homes (``Albanians Share What
Little They Have,'' by Peter Finn, Washington Post, April 7, 1999, p.
A1 and A16).
Despite the large number of people who have been displaced in the
Balkans since 1991, relatively few have remained in camps within the
region. Whether the hosts are Croats, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims),
Serbs, or Albanians, they have opened their homes to the displaced. The
international community should encourage and facilitate such
hospitality and generosity.
Rather than build a refugee camp in Guantanamo that should and
likely will remain empty, the U.S. government and military ought to be
building Albania's infrastructure--sewage lines, roads, electricity,
water pipes, to enable it to support this huge surge in its population.
The cost of maintaining 20,000 refugees at Guantanamo would be about $1
million per day, $180 million if they were to remain there for six
months. Instead of squandering enormous resources on massive relocation
schemes, those resources should be poured into Albania. In addition to
emergency relief aid, Albania's infrastructure should be improved--
roads, housing, sewage, electricity. If the Kosovo crisis is resolved
and the refugees are able to repatriate, such improvements will be a
permanent benefit to Albania after the crisis is over, a reward for its
generosity of spirit and a contribution to regional stability. In the
event the refugees are not able to return to Kosovo, building up
Albania's infrastructure would enhance its ability to absorb and
integrate this massive increase in its population. If the conflict is
protracted and return delayed, this would help refugees to integrate
into Albania and to contribute to its economy rather than be a drain on
it.
Regarding internally displaced people and other at-risk civilians
To be honest, I don't feel that I have the answers. I am not a
military expert and at this point in time, this is a military question.
I can't tell the military how to do its job. But I think we need to
agree on what its job ought to be.
On April 7, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, ``Of all gross
violations, genocide knows no parallel in human history. Though we have
no independent observers on the ground, the signs are that it may be
happening once more in Kosovo.'' This is a remarkable statement by the
UN Secretary-General who has a history (during Rwandan genocide, for
example) of exercising extreme caution in characterizing an ongoing
situation as genocidal. In the meantime, the U.S. government has been
uncovering evidence of mass graves and gathering other information
indicating that mass killings might be taking place. But genocide can
be perpetrated without mass executions. As we have already established,
above, the Serbs are denying food to the displaced, itself a grave
breach of Protocol II, Article 14 of the Geneva conventions.
The retired generals now serving as pundits for the television
networks tell us all the reasons air drops of food parcels will not
work. I concede that they might not. Food dropped from planes might
fall into the wrong hands and feed Yugoslav soldiers and Serb police.
However, one rule ofwar I do know is this: men with guns do not starve;
civilians do. We are not going to beat the Yugoslav military by
starving them out, and if we did, the civilians would perish long
before them. This is a risk we have to take. Until the military can
secure territory and deliver food and other relief aid overland, there
is no choice but to try dropping food in as an emergency interim
measure to keep people alive. Will it feed all who are hungry? Of
course not. It is no panacea. Not remotely. But in the absence of any
other means to deliver food, it needs to be tried.
Humanitarian assistance is one side of the coin. Protection is the
other. I don't want to be simplistic. But I don't understand the U.S.
government. On the one hand, our government is busy documenting and
publicizing evidence that genocide is happening. On the other, it is
saying that it has no intention of introducing ground troops until
Milosevic has agreed to their arrival (the ``permissive'' environment).
If the U.S. government believes what it is saying about genocide, how
can it wait for the perpetrators of genocide to give their permission
for it to introduce the ground troops that are supposed to protect
people from those same perpetrators?
Bolstered by the evidence of genocide that the U.S. government
itself has collected, its failure to suppress genocide will be all the
more forgivable. It is already too late to prevent the onset of a
genocidal campaign. It is too late to suppress its completion? The
military time-line is utterly out of sync with the moral imperative to
suppress genocide. I don't want to sound cavalier about the lives of
American and other allied servicemen. But the people on the
executioner's block cannot wait for a risk-free, soldier-friendly
environment for invasion. They can't wait for the massing of 200,000
troops, if that will take months of build up and field support.
Can the military respond quickly enough? If we take them at their
word, the answer is no. Frankly though, I don't know if they should be
taken at their word. How quickly could the U.S. armed forces respond if
their Commander in Chief gave clear, unambiguous orders for their rapid
deployment in Kosovo? Needless to say, they haven't heard such an
order. In the meantime, NATO seems shy about massing troops and armor
in the event of such an order.
It may not be the time to talk about the political settlement of
this conflict. Suffice it to say, if ever there was a chance of
muddling through with a compromise ``autonomy'' foisted on both
unwilling Serbs and ethnic Albanians, that point has passed. It is time
for the United States, leading the international community, to jettison
that approach and to revise the presuppositions and goals for Kosovo
and the region.
Even at this juncture, no government has challenged the
international presupposition of preserving the existing borders of the
six republics that made up the former Yugoslavia, thereby maintaining
Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. The international community's goal of
maintaining the status quo on borders stems largely from the Helsinki
principles of 1975, which affirm the territorial integrity of all
existing states. But the Helsinki principles embrace a quid pro quo;
for their borders to be respected, states must respect the rights of
minorities within those borders.
Serbia does not. It has been as exploitative and repressive as any
colonial power. For years, Serbia has brutally suppressed even modest
expressions of ethnic Albanian rights. Serbs living in Kosovo, less
than 10 percent of the population, have overwhelmingly worked in the
security apparatus or in controlling the region's rich mining and
energy reserves. Long before the current rupture, the Serb and Albanian
communities of Kosovo--with no common language, religion, or culture--
have been segregated and at loggerheads.
How can the U.S. maintain its position of restoring Kosovo's
autonomy within Serbian (or Yugoslav) sovereignty? It can't have it
both ways; it can't accuse the Serbs of committing genocide against
ethnic Albanians and then require the ethnic Albanians to remain in
Serbia. The United States needs to reassess its policy. It needs to
support an independent Kosovo, internationalizing the border between
Kosovo and Serbia.
An independent Kosovo need not create a precedent for every
minority's claim to self determination. The Helsinki principles would
remain the valid framework for assessing such claims. But Milosevic's
abuse of minority rights has disqualified Yugoslavia from the Helsinki
guarantee for territorial integrity. To uphold those same Helsinki
principles, however, the price of Kosovo's independence would be
guarantees from the ethnic Albanian authorities that they will respect
the rights of the Serb minority living there. Based on prior experience
in Croatia and Bosnia, I am not sure how many Serbs would want to
remain in a non-Serb-controlled Kosovo, but those who would want to
should have the opportunity to stay or to return.
Regardless of the political solution, NATO has clearly stated its
objective to be the withdrawal of Milosevic's police and army from
Kosovo. I am convinced that they will not leave unless they are forced
out. That, frankly, at this point, is the only way to protect the
civilian population. Serb police and ethnic Albanian civilians don't
mix. Any autonomy that envisions such a mixture is doomed to tragic,
bloody failure. The international community cannot keep a peace
predicated on holding them together. But it can enforce a separation.
And that enforcement can and should devolve to the Kosovars themselves.
Ultimate success hinges not only on arming and training the citizens of
Kosovo to defend themselves, but on reconstructing war damaged
properties and infrastructure as well as promoting civil society and
democratic institutions. Aligning nationality and statehood would
enable the people of Kosovo to become the masters of their own fate
and, in time, the guarantors of their own security.
Senator Abraham. We will now turn to Ms. Greenwood. Thank
you for being here, and again I apologize for the delay in
getting this panel started.
STATEMENT OF MAUREEN GREENWOOD
Ms. Greenwood. Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me here
today to discuss the Kosovo refugee crisis. I think it is so
important that you are paying attention to this issue.
For the last 3 weeks, we have all watched the images of
these refugees flash across our TV screens--a lost child, a
mother's tears, an exhausted man's blank face. Each of these
pictures is a fleeting glance at a very dark nightmare come to
life.
We have already heard extensive details about what is
happening actually to the refugees. Many of the points that I
wanted to make have already been mentioned and they are in my
written testimony, which I submit for the record.
Senator Abraham. We will put it all in the record.
Ms. Greenwood. But I did want to focus on international
norms for treatment of refugees and U.S. responsibilities. The
refugees in northern Albania currently have eyewitness tales of
systematic extra-judicial executions carried out by Yugoslav
and Serbian security forces and paramilitary groups. In short,
Yugoslav security forces and paramilitary units are conducting
a calculated campaign of mass expulsion, and the refugee crisis
is a direct result of these policies.
Now, while Kosovo has mainly just come to American
attention in the last few weeks, Amnesty International for the
last 10 years has been calling it a human rights crisis and
trying to alert the world about its potential to explode. Ever
since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic dissolved the
autonomy of Kosovo and disbanded the parliament in 1990,
Amnesty has been talking about systematic human rights
violations, including torture, ill treatment by police, death
in police custody, unfair trials for political prisoners. The
frustration and anger built up in Kosovo, and it is precisely
because of these long, unaddressed grievances have erupted in
this kind of anger that has led to the violent conflict.
None of the abusers for the past 10 years in human rights
violations in Kosovo have yet been brought to justice. Amnesty
International has people in the field right now directly taking
testimony from refugees. We are also going to be monitoring the
treatment of refugees in Europe and if they go to any other
places.
One thing about the terminology. Yes, the refugees said
that they would prefer to be called deportees. But we are also
calling them refugees, as Assistant Secretary Taft noted,
because ``refugee'' means that they have certain legal rights
according to the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees.
The treatment of refugees is governed by clear legal
standards, all of which the U.S. has accepted. These are the
following principles. Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro are
obligated to allow all refugees at their border to enter, and
to provide them with protection at least until other solutions
are found, such as voluntary resettlement to a third country or
voluntary repatriation, when it is safe to do so.
Refugees must be accorded basic rights, such as access to a
determination procedure for status and respect for the
principles of family unity, reunification and choice. No
refugee can be moved to a third country involuntarily. Other
countries must share in the responsibility for protecting
refugees. The principle of non-refoulement is the cornerstone
of refugee protection. Refugees should not be returned to their
country if they have a well-founded fear of persecution.
From the outset of the crisis, Amnesty International has
called on the international community to provide adequate
assistance for countries neighboring Kosovo, including offering
resettlement opportunities. But the wishes of the refugees must
come first. They need to be respected and must be foremost in
any consideration of what happens.
We are keenly aware of the enormous stress that the refugee
crisis has placed in Kosovo's neighbors, and we welcome the
offers that have come from third countries toassist in
relocating some of these refugees. However, we strongly condemn the
involuntary nature of a significant number of these relocations,
carried out by the Macedonian authorities, as well as the fact of
family separation. This topic has already been discussed today.
Other governments are expected to admit Kosovar refugees
under a temporary protection agreement. We are troubled by the
lack of international consensus regarding the meaning of
``temporary protection.'' For instance, in Bosnia-Herzogovina,
temporary protection was used as an excuse in some cases to
forcibly return Bosnian refugees before it was safe for them to
go home. We believe that any temporary protection status should
not be used as a means of circumventing full refugee status,
and the U.S. Government has an important role to play in
standard-setting in terms of influencing its European partners
in the treatment of refugees.
We also have related concerns about the suggestions that
have been advanced about Guantanamo. I understand that the
plans are currently on the back burner, but Amnesty
representatives have visited Guantanamo on several occasions
when it housed Cubans and Haitians the last time in November
1994. Rather than being a place of welcome, and despite the
best intentions of the military, Guantanamo had many of the
attributes of a prison camp, with concertina wire and
restrictions on movement.
It is unacceptable to confine these refugees for the
duration of their stay in the United States to Guantanamo. They
should have the right to full and fair U.S. asylum
determination procedures once they are under the control of the
U.S. authorities. Neither Guantanamo nor Guam nor any other
U.S. territory should be used as a dodge to evade U.S.
obligations under its own and international law. While in most
major displacements, most refugees prefer to go home, the
international community has a responsibility to offer these
refugees protection, if that is what they choose.
Finally, the terrible cost of this human rights and
humanitarian catastrophe demands once again that we seek more
effective ways to address chronic abuses of universally
recognized human rights before they explode into civil wars,
uncontainable hatred, or genocide. For many years, Amnesty has
been documenting the human rights abuses in Kosovo. We can't
help but wonder how things might have been different if the
U.S. Government and its allies in Europe had devoted a little
bit more sustained and serious attention to these abuses over
the last 10 years.
What if Western governments had spoken more strongly and
more consistently against the repression of the Serb
independent media, non-governmental organizations, and Serb
dissidents, and against the repression of Albanian institutions
and culture in Kosovo? Perhaps this crisis could have been
avoided. If NATO governments had promoted peaceful resolution
to the conflict in Kosovo much earlier, perhaps the ethnic
Albanians would not have been persuaded to join the KLA and
resort to violence.
If the U.S. and its allies had denounced the atrocities
committed by Croatian forces against Croatian Serb civilians in
1995 and 1996 and had pressured the Croatian government to
pursue justice for the victims, perhaps the Serbs would cling a
little less ardently to the conviction that they have been
victimized by the West. If the international community had
embraced more vigorously the work of the International Criminal
Tribunal for War Crimes in the former Yugoslavia, perhaps some
of those now conducting some of the human rights violations,
such as Arkan, would now be arrested. We will never know for
sure about these ``what ifs,'' but I urge the U.S. Government
to ensure that we consider questions like these before they
turn into crises.
What can the U.S. Government do now? One thing that the
U.S. Government can do is to share all intelligence, including
satellite photos and Yugoslav security force radio
communications, with the International Tribunal. And Senator
Kennedy mentioned the need to share information with the
Tribunal. The Tribunal has told Amnesty, and it has been
reported, that they are greatly disappointed with the amount of
intelligence that they are receiving, which is what Graham
Bluett, the deputy prosecutor, said last week.
Second, NATO forces need to arrest indicted war crime
suspects. Third, we need sufficient financial support for the
Tribunal. In addition, U.S. support for an international
criminal court would also be a factor in deterring abuses, and
the lack of such support is regrettable. The U.S. Government
needs to take the lead in refugee protection and in human
rights throughout the world.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Greenwood follows:]
Prepared Statement of Maureen Greenwood
Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the Kosovo refugee
crisis.
For the last three weeks, we've all watched the images of these
refugees flash across our TV screens--a lost child's bewildered gaze, a
mother's anxious tears as she ponders the fate of the husband she left
behind in Kosovo, an exhausted old man's vacant stare as he faces the
prospect of spending his remaining days in exile. Each of these
pictures is a fleeting glimpse of a very personal, unfathomable
nightmare come to life.
Amnesty International has received consistent and credible reports
that members of Yugoslav security forces and paramilitary units have
arrived at houses and apartment blocks of Kosovar Albanians and forced
the inhabitants to leave. Some refugees describe seeing houses and
apartments in flames as they left the city. Some refugees expelled have
been ordered on trucks or busses, some transported to the border in
sealed trains, and others have made their way on foot. The men were
either detained or rounded up and taken away while women and children
were ordered to continue their journey. Refugees in Northern Albania
have eye-witness tales of systematic extra-judicial executions carried
out by Yugoslav and Serbian security forces and para-military groups.
The vast majority of those who have succeeded in fleeing the country
are women, children, and elderly men. Many of the refugees have been in
appalling condition--weak from lack of food and exhaustion. In short,
Yugoslav security forces and paramilitary units are conducting a
calculated campaign of mass expulsion and the refugee crisis is a
direct result of these policies.
NATO nations must be galvanized by their responsibility to help
ensure that no further harm comes to these people, who have suffered
more than most of us can imagine. NATO nations, including the United
States, must be absolutely committed to fulfilling these international
obligations. The U.S. government has spoken, and rightly so, of the
international national obligations being violated by Yugoslavia. But
these will be significantly weakened if we now fulfill international
norms in a half-hearted way, or worse, violate them. Amnesty
International will be watching carefully to see whether all those
expelled from Kosovo by the Yugoslav government--wherever they end up--
receive the full legal protection they are afforded under international
law.
These refugees have already experienced numerous violations of
their rights. They have been uprooted from their homes and brutally
expelled from their own country. Some have been forcibly returned,
while others have been denied entry at borders because of delays and
closed border crossings. Many have been forcibly relocated, separated
from other family members, and placed in temporary refuge schemes
rather than accorded their rights under the 1951 United Nations
Convention on Refugees. In addition, refugees have been forced to
remain for days at borders, without any of the necessary assistance to
maintain even the most basic of their needs, including food, water,
sanitation and shelter. In too many instances, those responsible for
giving these people immediate refuge have cast aside standard
procedures designed to ensure that refugees are given the protection
they are due under international law.
While the full dimensions of the refugee crisis unfolded, Amnesty
International dispatched researchers to Macedonia and Albania to take
detailed testimonies from refugees about the human rights violations
they have witnessed and experienced. Amnesty International has been
documenting and publishing the systematic violations for a decade,
since Serbia dissolved Kosovo's parliament in 1990. For the past ten
years Amnesty has been denouncing a human rights crisis, including
systematic torture, ill-treatment by police, death in police custody,
and unfair trials for political prisoners. Frustration and anger built
up in Kosovo because those responsible for these abuses have never been
brought to justice. These long un-addressed grievances contributed to
the violent eruption of the conflict today.
Today we face a situation that changes day-to-day. Amnesty
International is very worried about the internally displaced people
inside Kosovo, as we have little information about their welfare.
Meanwhile, as the situation for many of the refugees begins to
stabilize, Amnesty International is preparing an increased presence in
the field. In addition to documenting refugees' accounts of human
rights crimes, we will be monitoring the standards of protection they
are receiving in host countries, both in the region and in host
countries outside the region.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Washington Office as of yesterday, there are currently 65,500 refugees
and displaced in Montenegro, 116,500 in Macedonia, and 314,300 in
Albania. Humanitarian evacuations from Macedonia have reached 9,351
people. According to UNICEF there are between 400,000 and 750,000
internally displaced persons.
Those fleeing the current conflict are refugees under the 1951
United Nations Convention on Refugees, an international treaty, which
the U.S. is subject to. The treatment of refugees is governed by clear
legal standards, all of which the U.S. has accepted.
Our monitoring of the protection of refugees will be guided by the
following principles:
Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro are obligated to allow
all refugees at their border to enter and to provide them with
protection, at least until other solutions are found, such as voluntary
resettlement to a third country or voluntary repatriation when it is
safe to do so.
Refugees must be accorded basic rights, such as access to
a determination procedure for status, respect for the principles of
family unity, reunification and choice.
No refugee can be moved to a third country involuntarily.
Other countries must share in the responsibility for
protecting refugees.
Kosovar refugees should not be treated differently from
other refugees.
The principle of non-refoulement is the cornerstone of
refugee protection. Refugees should not be returned to their country if
they have a well-founded fear of persecution there.
From the outset of this crisis, Amnesty International has called on
the international community to provide adequate assistance for
countries neighboring Kosovo, including by offering resettlement
opportunities. The wishes of the refugees need to be respected and must
be foremost in any consideration of what happens, whether that is
resettlement or return. We are keenly aware of the enormous stress the
refugee crisis has placed on Kosovo's neighbors, and we welcome the
offers that have come from third countries to assist in relocating some
of the refugees. However, we condemn the involuntary nature of a
significant number of these relocations--carried out by Macedonian
authorities--as well as the fact that these forced relocations resulted
in many family members being separated from each other. We hope we have
seen the last of such callous and unacceptable treatment.
Some governments are expected to admit Kosovar refugees under a
temporary protection arrangement. We are troubled by the lack of an
international consensus regarding the meaning of temporary protection.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, for instance, temporary protection was used as
an excuse in some cases to forcibly return Bosnian refugees before it
was safe for them to go home. Consequently, we strongly believe that
any temporary protection status should not be used as a means of
circumventing full refugee status for those expelled from Kosovo. This
includes allowing all refugees meaningful opportunity to have their
individual asylum claims considered before being returned.
We have related concerns about some of the suggestions that have
been advanced for accommodating refugees in third countries. For
instance, we would be very concerned about the use of facilities like
the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, Cuba, to house refugees beyond
whatever brief period may be necessary for their initial reception into
the United States. Amnesty representatives visited Guantanamo on two
occasions when it housed Cubans and Haitians, the latter time in
November 1994. Rather than being a place of welcome, and despite the
best efforts of the military, Guantanamo had many of the attributes of
a prison camp, with concertina wire and restrictions on movement. It is
unacceptable to confine these refugees for the duration of their stay
in the U.S. Kosovar refugees should notbe denied their rights to seek
and enjoy asylum, that is, have access to a full and fair U.S. asylum
determination procedure once they are under the control of U.S.
authorities. Neither Guantanamo, nor Guam nor any other U.S. territory
or base should be used as a ``dodge'' to evade U.S. obligations under
its own and international law. While in most major displacements, most
refugees prefer to go home, the international community has a
responsibility to offer these refugees protection as long as they need
it and offer them access to asylum processing procedures if they so
choose.
Finally, the terrible cost of this human rights and humanitarian
catastrophe demands once again that we all seek more effective ways to
address chronic abuses of universally recognized human rights before
they fester and explode into civil wars, uncontainable ethnic hatred,
or genocide. For many years, Amnesty International has been documenting
a systematic pattern of arbitrary arrests, unfair trials, torture, and
extrajudicial killings directed against Kosovar Albanians by the
Yugoslav government. We can't help but wonder how things might have
been different if the U.S. government and its allies in Europe had
devoted more serious and sustained attention to these abuses over the
last ten years.
If Western governments had spoken out more strongly and more
consistently, in unison, against the repression of the independent Serb
media, non-governmental organizations, and Serb dissidents--and against
the repression of Albanian institutions and culture in Kosovo--perhaps
this crisis could have been avoided. If NATO governments had promoted a
peaceful resolution in Kosovo much earlier, perhaps the ethnic
Albanians who formed and joined the KLA would not have decided to use
violence. If the U.S. and its allies had denounced the atrocities
committed by Croation forces against Croatian Serb civilians in 1995
and 1996, in the retaking of areas occupied by Croatian Serbs, and
pressured the Croatian government to pursue justice for the victims
instead of a blind eye to these terrible crimes, perhaps Serbs would
cling a little less ardently to their conviction that they have been
victimized and vilified by the West. If the international community had
embraced more vigorously the work of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, including by pursing and arresting
all war crimes suspects indicted by the Tribunal, perhaps the Tribunal
could have served as a more effective deterrent to war crimes in
Kosovo.
We will never know for certain the answers to these ``what ifs.''
But I urge the U.S. government to help ensure that, in other emerging
human rights crises, we consider questions like these long before we
are left only to ponder them in hindsight.
One thing the U.S. government can do now is to urge NATO to share
all intelligence with the Tribunal now and arrest indicted war crimes
suspects. U.S. support for the International Criminal Court would also
be a factor in deterring abuses, and the lack of such support is
regrettable. The United States government should take the lead in
refugee protection and in supporting human rights throughout the world.
Senator Abraham. Thank you both. I guess there are a lot of
questions. We may submit some in writing and we will keep the
docket open for other members as well, but let me just ask one
question before we adjourn here and you leave us.
Each of you I think has expressed great concern about the
possibility of trying to bring people to Guantanamo or some
other location far removed from Kosovo. Succinctly, what do you
think would be a more sensible approach for us to take which
would at the same time maybe meet the commitments that have
been made by the United States, yet at the same time be more
humane and more perhaps appropriate for the people who are
refugees?
Mr. Frelick. Well, Albania, I think we need to understand,
has made an offer with no ceiling, no upper limit, that they
would take as many refugees as come, including refugees that
would be expelled from Macedonia. So there is a remarkable
offer that you don't often find in a refugee crisis of this
magnitude of a neighboring country that shares the culture,
that is in very strong solidarity with the refugees themselves,
that says just give us the wherewithal and we will do it, we
will double up, triple up, quadruple up.
So I think what we really need to do is to help the
Albanians build their infrastructure, give them building
materials, if it comes to that; give them all the support we
possibly can. I was very gratified to hear Julia Taft talk
about the actual plans now for building a camp, which I think
we should think of in terms of a transit camp with
transitioning people into private homes to the extent possible.
That is where I would put my emphasis entirely.
If it comes to a more protracted issue, because I think
even on an emergency basis we can keep them there--we can
manage to do that particularly now that we have got the kind of
presence that we have there. But if it comes to a protracted
situation where people cannot return home, at that point I
think we can talk about various avenues for bringing them to
the United States through our refugee resettlement program,
which you are very familiar with; parole authority, if that is
the appropriate vehicle to use on an emergency basis for
medical evacuations and that sort of thing.
I would just reiterate we are not at that stage now. It
complicates the issue incredibly to try to do this kind of a
mass evacuation when you are really trying to get the
assistance on the ground.
Senator Abraham. Yes. I also just have to say it seems to
me if you begin the process of taking people and displacing
them far away from Kosovo that you almost, it seems to me,
encourage the continued forcing out of people and make it more
and more difficult to produce a situation where anybody ever
goes back.
Mr. Frelick. It certainly seems to me to send the wrong
signal to Milosevic.
Senator Abraham. Yes, that is my sense, but I don't want to
preempt you. So, please, Ms. Greenwood, if you would comment on
that as well.
Ms. Greenwood. I would say the Amnesty position is similar,
but not entirely the same as what Bill said. Essentially,
although it is preferable probably both from the refugees'
point of view and for other reasons that they be in neighboring
countries, we also believe that the refugees have a right to
choose, and also that there is responsibility-sharing in terms
of the entire international community in terms of resettlement.
So we would see Guantanamo as an option for extreme short
term, as well as options to the U.S. mainland. But we would
just object to Guantanamo if it was over an extended period and
they were not allowed access to asylum processing procedures.
Senator Abraham. Were you surprised at that proposal when
you heard it, given the previous experiences with Guantanamo?
Mr. Frelick. I would have to say that when I first heard
it, which was--again, the situation has changed so greatly.
Senator Abraham. Right, I understand.
Mr. Frelick. When I first heard it, there was a huge mass
of people at the border. There were more people behind them
that we knew about. It didn't look like there was going to be a
stop in the flow. We didn't know about the clarity of the
Albanian offer. We thought they had reached their capacity, and
the Macedonians were blackmailing the international community
at that point, to put it frankly.
So it was an ad hoc response. It was a hurried response,
for understandable reasons, and I think that we need to be--
again, as you indicated in your questioning of Julia Taft, we
have to be somewhat charitable in second-guessing what they
were doing at that time. But I think we are in a different
situation now, and I applaud the flexibility of people in the
NSC and State Department and what not who didn't feel that they
had committed themselves, painted themselves into a corner and
felt that they had to just go on auto pilot here and are
willing to reconsider this. So I think that we need to applaud
that flexibility.
Ms. Greenwood. Yes, we were surprised. Most of our European
allies don't have Guantanamos where they can bring refugees in,
and if we are trying to model good behavior with our colleagues
for the treatment of refugees, Guantanamo is certainly a
strange option.
Senator Abraham. Well, I want to thank you both again for
helping us with this. We will be obviously continuing the
process of both monitoring what is happening and trying to help
in the crafting of solutions. With the uncertainties obviously
that exist in any time of war, it is very hard, as you both
have said, to ascertain today where we are going to be in
another week or 2 weeks, and a lot of views may change. I think
we should in some sense establish for the record that there has
to be a lot of flexibility here because we really can't
prejudge things too far down the road.
Hopefully, as I have said, and maybe in just sort of
summary remarks about today's hearing, we have sent a strong
signal to people who had doubts about the extent and the depth
of the problems and the atrocities that have been committed
that, in fact, today we have established clearly that no one
should be in the dark any longer.
I think we have established that there is a strong
bipartisan willingness on the part of this committee, and I
think probably the broader Judiciary Committee and the Senate
certainly to try to work together to provide assistance, to
find solutions. But we will need the ongoing involvement and
ideas of people who are interested in and have experience with
these refugees issues and other issues that pertain to this
type of tragic condition.
Certainly, as the chairman of the subcommittee, I am very
interested in reaching out to as many people as possible who
want to help. I am hopeful that we will see the generosity of
our country on display here not just in terms of what
Government can do, but, as we have already begun to see, what
individuals can and will do.
So with that, I thank this panel, as I thank the audience
and our earlier panels as well, and we will adjourn the hearing
at this time.
[Whereupon, at 2:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Questions and Answers
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Responses of Julia V. Taft to Questions From Senator Leahy
Question 1. The lack of information about the numbers and fate of
internally displaced people in Kosovo makes it difficult for relief
workers to prepare for a new flood of refugees should Milosevic decide
to reopen the border. Relief agencies have urged the administration to
release relevant aerial and satellite photography of Kosovo. What is
the Administration's position with regard to this request? Is the
United States dedicating photo interpretation resources to gather
evidence in Kosovo so people who have committed atrocities may be
brought to justice?
Answer 1. With the opening up of Kosovo and the deployment of NATO
troops, the needs of internally displaced people in Kosovo are being
addressed. NATO and UNHCR relief operations are moving quickly to
locate and provide aid to IDP's throughout the region. Relief efforts
to IDP's are being aided by information gathered from various
intelligence sources including imagery taken by U.S. satellites of
possible IDP locations. Additionally, using the latest GIS technology,
the USG has been working with UNHCR and others to develop a
comprehensive mapping system of Kosovo which will combine maps with
databases to provide valuable information on road systems for
humanitarian operations, numbers and locations of IDP's, and possible
damage assessments of housing in urban and rural areas.
On the issue of bringing the perpetrators of atrocities to justice,
the USG is working very hard to support the Tribunal. We have
contributed substantial resources to this effort, including a voluntary
contribution to the Tribunal for the Kosovo investigation, a team of
FBI personnel to assist with the investigation, and the use of national
technical means.
Question 2. In an April 3rd New York Times article an
Administration official was quoted as saying that, ``while it would be
difficult to persuade Congress to raise the overall ceilings for
refugees, the Administration could admit several thousand Kosovar
Albanians to the United States by cutting the number of refugees
admitted from other parts of the world.'' The fact is, the
administration, and not Congress set the refugee ceiling at 78,000.
Both the Senate and the House have issued bipartisan requests to
increase the ceiling without success. In light of the recent crisis,
and the prospect that the situation may continue to deteriorate,
shouldn't the Administration raise this ceiling?
Answer 2. Section 207(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act
provides a mechanism to increase refugee admissions levels during the
fiscal year if the President determines, after appropriate
consultations with the Congress, that (1) an unforeseen refugee
emergency exists, (2) the admission of additional refugees is justified
by grave humanitarian concerns and is in the national interest, and (3)
the admission of these refugees cannot be accomplished under the
regular refugee admissions program for the current fiscal year.
On April 21, after careful review of the situation of Kosovar
refugees and in response to an appeal by the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), the Administration announced that the United States
would participate in the multi-national Humanitarian Evacuation Program
initiated by the UNHCR. The President authorized the Secretary of State
to consult with the Senate and House Judiciary Committees about the
need to increase the fiscal year 1999 refugee admissions ceiling by
20,000 to accommodate the admission of ethnic Albanian refugees from
Kosovo. The Administration is currently in the process of carrying out
the Congressional consultation process.
Question 3. How much is left in the Emergency Refugee Migration
Assistance (ERMA) Fund? What is the Administration going to request in
supplemental funding for refugees, and how much of this will go to the
UNHCR and how much for other NGO's?
Answer 3. Prior to the enactment of the supplemental appropriation,
$7,857,659 was available in the ERMA Fund. The current balance is
$172,857,659, which includes funds from the supplemental.
The Administration's final request for supplemental funding was
$266,000,000 for the Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) account and
$165,000,000 for the ERMA Fund.
As programming decisions are made in response to events and on the
basis of who can address the needs of the population, figures regarding
fund allocations between organizations are not available at this time.
We based our budget on providing the traditional U.S. share of 20-25
percent to the major humanitarian international organizations,
including UNHCR, but will monitor for effectiveness of programming
before making particular funding decisions. (In compliance with
legislation, the Administration will notify Congressional committees
before contributions to UNHCR are made.) Funds will also support
directly the programs of non-governmental organizations that complement
international assistance efforts.
Question 4. The UNHCR reports that several cases of measles have
been confirmed among refugee children in Albania. Do relief agencies
have the necessary medicines and medical supplies to deal with the
acute health needs of the refugees?
Answer 4. The only significant outbreak of measles reported among
refugees in Albania and Macedonia was in the Kukes area in April.
UNICEF and WHO immediately began a series of immunization programs for
refugees in that area. Additional immunization programs have been
conducted in refugee camps and public centers in Macedonia and Albania
since April. Immunization campaigns are also being planned for IDP's in
Kosovo.
Question 5. The Administration planned to use Guantanamo naval base
to temporarily shelter Kosovar Albanians should it be necessary.
Refugee groups have expressed concern about this decision. What is your
view?
Answer 5. Initially, the Administration considered providing
temporary protection for several thousand Kosovar Albanians at
Guantanamo naval base. However, after further review the Administration
determined that resettlement in the United States, under the auspices
of the refugee admissions program, was a more appropriate means of
providing protection for these individuals. Persons resettled in the
U.S. as refugees are legally eligible to work and to receive
assistance, such as medical care, as needed.
The United States remains steadfast in its determination to
establish peace in Kosovo and ensure conditions which will permit the
refugees to return to their homes. We expect most of the Kosovars
resettled in the United States will want to return to Kosovo once it is
safe to do so. The U.S. Government will assist those who wish to when
conditions permit.