Keywords: transitional justice; facing the past; post-Yugoslavia;
This report is the result of systematic monitoring of the establishment of transitional justice in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, conducted by the human rights organizations Humanitarian Law Center (Belgrade) and Documenta (Zagreb). The disintegration of the Yugoslav federation was marked by three high-intensity armed conflicts: in Croatia (1991-95), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-95), and Kosovo (1998-99), in which at least 130,000 people lost their lives, millions they were forced to leave their homes, and hundreds of thousands of houses were destroyed. In addition, shorter armed conflicts, with relatively few casualties, occurred in Slovenia (June-July 1991) and Macedonia (January-November 2001). More than 1,300 Serbs, Roma and Albanians, recognized by the Albanian public as Serb collaborators, were killed after armed conflict and the arrival of international forces in Kosovo between June 12, 1999 and the end of 2000. The fate of some 17,000 missing in the region is still unknown. The transition from a state of armed conflict and state repression to a period of peace and the building of democratic institutions requires these societies to decide on mass human rights violations from the recent past. The set of measures taken by the authorities and civil society to address these violations of rights constitutes a complex of transitional justice, the basic elements of which are fact-finding, trials, reparations, and institutional reform.
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Keywords: Reparations;victims;wars in ex-Yugoslavia;humanitarian law;war crimes trials;
The obligation of the State to provide adequate financial redress to victims of human rights abuses is defined in numerous international conventions on human rights and is derived from the fundamental legal principle of accepting responsibility for harm done. In most societies that have gone through periods of massive human rights violations, the issue of financial reparations for victims is one of the most important elements of establishing the rule of law and providing justice for crimes committed in the past. Identification of victims, creation of programs suitable for the needs of victims, and ways in which those programs are financed are just a few of the important issues considered by post-conflict societies in their overall effort to provide reparations to victims of human rights violations. // This Report offers a review of 15 cases in which HLC represented victims and which resulted in court decisions in 2012. There were a total of 18 judgments, 12 of which were negative and six positive, which awarded a total of RSD 1.76 million to victims of human rights abuses.
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Keywords: mass-graves; Body-Hiding;war crimes trials;Kosovo war;
From 2001 until today, mass graves with 941 bodies of Albanians killed in Kosovo in 1999, mostly civilians who died outside the fighting, have been discovered on the territory of the Republic of Serbia. According to the UNMIK Office on Missing Persons and Forensic Medicine (KNLSM), 744 Kosovo Albanian bodies were found in Batajnica near Belgrade, at least 61 bodies in Petrovo Selo, and a mass grave with 84 bodies near Lake Perucac. Subsequently, at least 52 more bodies were discovered in the Rudnica mass grave. From the statements and testimonies of witnesses, as well as from the available documentation from that time, it is evident that the term "remediation of the terrain" was widely used within political, military and police structures to denote illegal removal of corpses and their burial mass graves, with the aim of covering up crimes.
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Keywords: war crime trials; War Crime Trials in Serbia; facing the past;
During 2017 and 2018, the HLC monitored all war crimes trials that took place on the territory of Serbia, ie a total of 20 cases before the war crimes departments of the Higher and Appellate Courts in Belgrade, as well as one case before a court of general jurisdiction. For all cases, the report provides brief overviews of the proceedings and the HLC's main findings in relation to the case, which are important to the public. A large number of war crimes proceedings processed in this report have been going on for several years, and previous HLC annual reports on trials are relevant for a complete insight into the course of proceedings and findings related to these cases. The report also includes the trial for one crime that the competent prosecutor's office of general jurisdiction did not qualify as a war crime, although all the circumstances of that case indicate that it is a war crime. The report pays key attention to the work of the War Crimes Prosecutor's Office (TRZ) and courts in public parts of court proceedings, and primarily analyzes indictments and verdicts in each individual case. The work of other bodies involved in the processing of war crimes - the War Crimes Investigation Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia (MUP), the Protection Unit, etc., cannot be analyzed at the level of individual cases, because there is no publicly available data.
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Keywords: Refugees; War in ex-Yugoslavia; Humanitarian law; forced mobilization; violation of the human rights in Serbia; International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia;
The dossier "Forced Mobilization of Refugees" is the twelfth file of the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), which aims to provide the public with evidence of systematic and widespread violations of human rights of refugees in Serbia. The dossier is based on more than 500 statements of forcibly mobilized refugees given to HLC researchers during 1997 and 1998 and members of the families of refugees who died or disappeared after being sent to the area of armed conflict; court documents from more than 120 litigation before the courts in Serbia for damages, in which the HLC represented forcibly mobilized refugees or their families; evidence presented before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as well as documents obtained by the HLC from the Serbian Ministry of the Interior under the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance. The Dossier also used HLC reports on the forced mobilization of refugees published in the 1990s, reports from other domestic and international human rights organizations, as well as media reports.
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Keywords: Humanitarian Law;war crimes;Croats in Serbia and Montenegro;concentration camp;
According to the research of the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), the largest camp formed in Serbia was in the Penitentiary-Correctional Facility (KPD) Sremska Mitrovica. In addition to this camp, there were also camps in the Banat villages of Begejci and Stajićevo, then in the JNA barracks in Aleksinac and the Penitentiary in Niš. In Serbia, there were also smaller transit camps and centers where detainees stayed for several days, before being transferred to some of the larger camps. Although there were more such places, this file singled out facilities in Šid, the Military Police Training Center in Bubanj Potok and the JNA barracks in Paragovo. All camps, except Nis, which was in the zone of responsibility of the 3rd Military District (VO) of the JNA, were in the zone of responsibility of the 1st VO of the JNA. The camp was secured by members of the JNA Military Police. JNA officers were appointed to the positions of camp commanders, but the Security Directorate of the Federal Secretariat for National Defense (UB SSNO) had real control over the camps. The captured civilians and fighters spent from a couple of days to nine months in the camps. About 7,000 people passed through the camps, and about 3,500 people were kept in them for a long time.
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Keywords: war crimes; Srebrenica; war in Bosnia and Hercegovina;
After the Republika Srpska Army (VRS) conquered Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, forcibly relocated tens of thousands of civilians from the area and killed more than 7,000 men, it set out to conquer other protected zones in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) - Zepe. After forcibly relocating more than 4,000 civilians from the Zepa enclave, on July 27, 1995, the VRS forced Bosniak representatives from Zepa to sign a capitulation agreement that provided for the surrender of BiH Army soldiers and other "able-bodied people" in Zepa to the VRS. Hearing stories about the crimes committed after the fall of Srebrenica, the men from Žepa fled to Žepa Mountain. During the work on this file, the HLC sent over a hundred requests for access to information of public importance, requesting additional information about the units that participated in the reception of men from Zepa and their deportation to camps, as well as about individual members of these units. In most cases, the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Serbia (MoD) and the Ministry of the Interior refused to provide the requested information, citing their secrecy or claiming that they did not have such information. In a number of cases, the MoD and the MUP (mostly police administrations from the interior of Serbia) nevertheless provided the requested information. On the other hand, other state bodies (Institute of Forensic Medicine, Hospitals, Courts, Cemeteries) were more willing to provide the requested information to the HLC. Based on these data and other sources, the HLC determined that some of the persons who participated in the capture and abuse of Bosniaks from Žepa are still in important positions in the institutions of the Republic of Serbia.
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Four war crimes trials are under way in Serbia: two for war crimes against Bosniaks, one for war crimes against Albanian prisoners and one for war crimes against Albanian civilians. On December 12, 2005, the War Crimes Chamber of the Republic of Serbia handed down a verdict for war crimes against prisoners of war in the Ovčara case. On December 14, 2006, the Supreme Court of Serbia overturned the verdict of the War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court and remanded the case for retrial. In addition, the trial of two former reservists of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior for the murder of a Kosovo Albanian during the NATO bombing is underway before the District Court in Nis. Organized by the Humanitarian Law Center, the mentioned trials are monitored by the families of the victims and representatives of the victims' associations. Encouraging witnesses / victims to participate in war crimes trials is also a HLC priority in supporting domestic war crimes trials.
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The verdict of the War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court against Scorpios accused of killing six Bosniak civilians in Trnovo, BiH, in July 1995, issued on April 10, 2007, is not based on law and facts established during the evidentiary proceedings. It seems that the court was guided by political and not legal reasons, in order to adjust to the attitudes of the Serbian authorities regarding the responsibility for the Srebrenica genocide in the context of the International Court of Justice ruling and show understanding for the patriotic orientations of some Scorpios.
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Content: Security Issues, Employment, and Application of Law on the Use of Languages and Anti-discrimination Law in Kosovo; Return of Displaced Persons to Kosovo in 2007 and 2008; Kosovo Institutions Applying the Law on the Use of Languages; Application of Anti-discrimination Law and Law on the Use of Languages in Kosovo Public Companies; Implementation of the Law on the Use of Languages in the Kosovo Education Process.
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Following the increase in the number of incidents in North Mitrovica/Mitrovicë which occurred at the end of December 2008, and throughout January 2009, HLC-Kosovo conducted research to systematically monitor the implementation of minority rights in practice, in particular the extent of the implementation of point 31 of article 58 (state responsibilities) of chapter III of the Kosovo constitution and points 3.2 and 3.52 of article 3 of the Law on the Protection and Promotion of the rights of Communities and their Members in Kosovo. The research also sought to identify the level of security in North Mitrovica/Mitrovicë, as well as the causes, consequences and impact that the incidents have had on the overall security situation and everyday life of citizens living in this region. For this purpose, HLC-Kosovo conducted 40 interviews with representatives of local municipal authorities, the judiciary, police, civil society and citizens of all ethnic backgrounds.
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