Concerns in Europe January June 2001
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- Identity-based Violations
Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001 91
Amnesty International September 2001 AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
FRY citizens - would be arrested and transferred to the Hague. The first - and to date, the sole - such arrest - took place on 23 March, when Milomir Staki , former mayor of Prijedor, was arrested and subsequently transferred to the Hague on 28 March. On 1 April former President Slobodan Miloševi
was arrested by Serbian special forces at his home in Belgrade, and charged with corruption and abuse of power under applicable domestic law. Against a background of increasing financial pressure from the EU and particularly the USA, in advance of the donors conference due to take place on 29 June - at which a $1.25 bn aid and reconstruction package to the FRY was to be agreed - the government decided to present the bill on cooperation with the Tribunal to the Federal Parliament in the week ending 22 June 2001. It rapidly became apparent to the government that the bill would not be passed by the parliament - primarily due to opposition from the Montengrin SNP; consequently, and by-passing the parliament, on Saturday 23 June the Federal Government adopted the bill by decree. On Monday 25 June, lawyers acting for Slobodan Miloševi
lodged an appeal against its constitutionality; on Thursday 28 June, the day before the donors conference was due to take place, the Constitutional Court decided to freeze the decree until they could establish whether it was constitutional or not. Ignoring the ruling of the Constitutional Court, the Serbian authorities, lead by Prime Minister Zoran Djindji
, immediately took steps to transfer Slobodan Miloševi to the Hague before the 29 June deadline, and on the evening of 28 June, the former President was transferred by helicopter to the US base at Tuzla, from where he was flown to the Hague. The same evening, the FRY President Vojislav Koštunica appeared on national television where he publically denied that he had been informed of the plans to transfer the former President, describing the transfer as “neither legal nor constitutional”. The following day, Zoran i i ,Prime Minister of the FRY - and deputy leader of the Montenegrin SNP - resigned in protest at the transfer, precipitating a crisis in the Federal Government. AI welcomed the transfer of Slobodan Miloševi
to the custody of the Tribunal, but was concerned that no progress was made on the transfer of those co- indicted with the former President - Serbian President Milan Milutinovi ; former Serbian deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovi ; chief of staff of the VJ during the Kosovo conflict, Dragoljub Ojdani , and former Serbian minister of internal affairs, Vlajko Stojiljkovi .- or other indicted suspects remaining at liberty in the FRY.
for crimes allegedly committed by the police and the army in Kosovo were initiated by both civil and military courts. On 12 May, Vukadin Milojevi , president of Niš Military Court confirmed that 193 military personnel - mainly reservists - had been indicted for crimes committed against the civilian population in Kosovo that “caused the death or jeopardized the lives and security of people, their dignity or morale, as well as their property” between 1 March 1998 and 26 June 1999. Six VJ reservists have also been accused of war crimes under domestic law, and their cases referred to civilian courts for trial; similar charges against an officer were reportedly dropped after investigation. In an increasingly acrimonious dispute between the military and the police, General Nebojša Pavkovi ,
NATO air strikes, has repeatedly denied the involvement of the army in any abuses of human rights or war crimes. Sreten Luki , former commander of the Serbian police force in Kosovo, was controversially appointed as Serbia’s deputy Interior Minister for public security (the head of Serbia’s police force) on 20 January. In May he announced that 66 police officers and police reservists had been charged with murder, theft, arson and armed robbery committed during the Kosovo conflict in 1999, and that a further 244 police officers or reservists had been arrested and remanded for 30 days in connection with offences against ethnic Albanians.
On 11 May 2001 the FRY acceded to the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM); a law on national minorities - yet to be presented to the Federal Parliament - was also in the process of being drafted by Rasim Ljaji , the Federal Minister of National Minorities and Ethnic Communities throughout this period.
Reports of racist incidents occurred throughout the period: in February leaflets bearing a Nazi swastika were stuck onto the door of the Belgrade Rex cinema, where an exhibition on the history of Roma in Belgrade was being shown; similar leaflets were also posted on a synagogue and a Jewish municipal building, and in the Jewish cemetery in Belgrade. The Centre for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade came under a similar attack. In Kikinda, Vojvodina, anonymous letters making death threats were reportedly sent to several Jewish families, and the facades of their houses sprayed with swastikas in April. In the same month racist flyers produced by a group calling themselves the Council of Serb nationalists appeared in Apatin. Antisemitic and racist graffiti were also reported to have appeared in Novi Sad in May and in Sombor in June. Following a complaint made by the Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC), proceedings took place at Niš District Court against two skinheads - Oliver Mirkovi
- accused of inciting racial, ethnic or religious hate in an attack on a 15-year-old Roma boy and his father on 8 April 2000 in Niš. Oliver Mirkovi and Nataša Markovi were
alleged - along with a minor against whom separate Yüklə 1,36 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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