Filipovic: Serb officers: Serb killings

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

To get a further understanding of why Filipovic "of course" belongs in
prison, I attach perhaps his most explosive article, based interestingly,
largely on an Army intelligence report apparently written to gauge the
readiness of the army to take part in further conflicts, for example with
Montenegro.

I submit the issue is not whether Filipovic deserves 5 or 7 years in prison
for publishing an article like this on an enemy web-site when the regime
was censoring through fear, internal publication of such material.

The issue is whether Filipovic deserved imprisonment for publishing this
anywhere.

There are two appropriate cautions that come to my mind on reading this
article.

1) Was Filipovic biased by being dependent on financial contributions from
the IWPR, in a situation in which he was unable to work freely domestically.

2) NATO found far fewer mass graves then at first they considered probable.
I do not recall the refugees mainly reporting the deaths of children. On
the other hand it seems possible that for regular Army soldiers the death
of children would stick particularly in their minds whereas the death of
adult men, who had been described to them as KLA terrorists would have been
less shocking. There would therefore be a reporting bias by them, and by
Filipovic.

Well, no doubt a lot will come to light in the next five years to give a
fuller picture of these events now that there is free access to the Serb
inside story.

While people read this report I would like them to remember it is an
example of a report for which a member of this list believes the author
should be imprisoned .

This an interesting concrete question of the application of the marxist
principle of the dicatorship of the proletariat.

Chris Burford

London



Serb Officers Relive Killings

A Yugoslav Army intelligence report gives a unique insight into the
enormity of war crimes in the Kosovo enclave last spring

By Miroslav Filipovic (BCR No.130, 4-Apr-00)

War-weary Serb officers have spoken for the first time of sickening
atrocities committed by the Yugoslav Army in Kosovo during the NATO bombing
campaign.

One field commander admitted he watched in horror as a soldier decapitated
a three-year-old boy in front of his family. Another described how tanks in
his unit indiscriminately shelled Albanian villages before paramilitary
police moved in and massacred the survivors.

The shocking confessions were made by officers who took part in a survey
commissioned by the Army Intelligence Unit in January and February this year.

They say the internal report gives an insight into the scale of the Kosovo
massacres for the first time - and they claim to be shocked by the enormity
of the crimes. Particularly disturbing are the combined testimonies of
field officers, which suggest that VJ units were responsible for the deaths
of at least 800 Albanian children below the age of five.

Several officers interviewed in the survey told IWPR the research was aimed
at gauging their morale against the backdrop of growing tension between
Serbia and Montenegro.

The veterans said they were appalled by the prospect of mounting a military
campaign against their ethnic cousins. They claimed to have been
traumatised by what they had seen in Kosovo and some had even taken to
drink in a bid to blot out the memories.

One officer, Drazen, who took part in the Kosovo campaign, said, "I watched
with my own eyes as a reservist lined up around 30 Albanian women and
children against a wall. I thought he just wanted to frighten them, but
then he crouched down behind an anti-aircraft machine-gun and pulled the
trigger. The half-inch bullets just tore their bodies apart. It looked like
a scene from a cheap movie, but it really happened."

Drazen concludes, "I don't know how I will live with these memories, how
I'll be able to raise my own children. I'm not willing to accept the
collective guilt. I want to see those who committed these atrocities stand
trial for their crimes."

He added, "My grandmother is Montenegrin. I'd rather kill myself than go
through all that again in Montenegro."

For many of the officers, Belgrade's propaganda is wearing thin. The
commander of one tank unit was quick to dismiss Serbian claims that the
Kosovo campaign was aimed at crushing Albanian separatists. "For the entire
time I was in Kosovo, I never saw a single enemy soldier and my unit was
never once involved in firing at military targets."

He said state-of-the-art tanks were sent out against defenceless Albanian
villages. "The tanks, which cost $2.5 million each, were used to slaughter
Albanian children," said the officer. "I am ashamed."

A reconnaissance officer for an engineering brigade said Yugoslav Army
reservists in Kosovo ran amok while their commanders did little to
intervene, "During one ethnic cleansing operation in a village in
south-eastern Kosovo, we gave the villagers half an hour to leave their homes.

"They were standing in a long line along the road leading out of the
settlement. A reservist nicknamed Crni (Black) went up to an old man who
was holding a child aged around three or four. He grabbed the toddler from
the man's arms and demanded a ransom of 20,000 German marks. The Albanian
only had 5,000. Crni took the child by the hair, pulled out a knife and
hacked off its head.

"'5,000 is only enough for the body,' he said and walked off past the other
villagers, carrying the child's head by its hair."

Vladimir went on, "All of this took place in front of dozens of people. We
were all in a state of shock: some soldiers vomited, while our young second
lieutenant fainted at the terrible sight of the headless body writhing in
the dust.

"Crni was later declared insane, discharged and sent home. But he is still
free to walk the streets, even though he committed this terrible crime."

One retired veteran of the wars in Bosnia and Croatia says the Yugoslav
Army has been responsible for the deaths of countless children over the
past decade.

"I was trained at the country's top military academies and commanded a
crack infantry unit," he said. "Kosovo was the third occasion the army was
responsible for the deaths of children. I didn't see so much of it in
Kosovo because I was more senior by that time -- but I fought on the front
line in Croatia and saw some terrible things then."

At an international conference in Ulcinj, Montenegro, entitled "The Truth,
Responsibility and Reconciliation", Baskim Hisari, who represents the
Foundation for Humanitarian Law in Pristina, focused on alleged war crimes
committed by the Yugoslav Army.

"Members of the MUP, the Army and the paramilitary units were responsible
for the deaths of hundreds of young men," said Hisari. "Many families have
been left with no male relatives at all.

"In the village of Bela Crkva alone, 64 people were shot down as they ran
away from Yugoslav Army tanks. One man, Sabri Popaj, buried them all,
including his two children.

"Eighty-three villagers were killed in Celina whilst, in Velika Krusa, 206
people were executed and another 117 are still missing. There's nothing but
a few blackened bones in the village now - some of them children's.

"There are parents who lost as many as seven children. Jovca Berisa, from
Suva Reka, lost her two children as well as 21 members of her family."