Milosevic Case Information Sheet

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Milosevic Case Information Sheet

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By: United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Date: April 5, 2005

Source: United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Milosevic Case Information Sheet (IT-02-54) "Bosnia and Herzegovina." The Hague, April 5, 2005.

About the Author: The phrase "United Nations" was used during World War II (1939–1945) to describe the dozens of nations allied together to fight Germany and Japan, most notably including China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America. These allies decided to develop a new organization to facilitate international cooperation and help prevent future wars. It would replace the League of Nations, which had failed to prevent World War II. They called it the United Nations (UN). The UN Charter was ratified on October 24, 1945. In the years since the UN has served as a forum for international negotiation and cooperation on many issues, including international security, human rights, trade and economics, and the environment.

INTRODUCTION

On January 15, 1999, forty-five ethnic Albanian civilians died in an attack on Racak, a village in Kosovo. These slayings came from a long history of violence and brutality in the region. Kosovo traditionally marked the geographic boundary between Orthodox Christian and Ottoman Muslim populations in the Balkans. It is a predominantly ethnic Albanian state, and when the Serbs obtained Kosovo from the Ottoman Empire in 1912–1913 ethnic lines proved to be a central point of contention. These battles began the history of selective and gender coded killings. The prime targets, for Serbian violence, were Albanian men. In one instance, Serbian military commanders invited peaceful Albanian men to their homes. When the Albanians arrived, they were executed. This legacy of violence and intense ethnic hostilities laid the framework for the massacres of the late 1990s. The rise to power of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1987–1989 brought the plight of ethnic Albanians to the center of the human rights debates.

Milosevic's control of power led to the 1989 removal of Kosovo's provincial status within the Yugoslav Federation of States and was followed with Milosevic's orchestration of a police state within the territory. Milosevic empowered Serbs to migrate to Kosovo and brutalize ethnic Albanians because the region provided an extension of Serbian influence. Also, many Serbs viewed Kosovo as essential to their national identity. Albanians outnumbered Serbs by nine to one in Kosovo, which led to ferocious acts by Serbs for control in the region. Serbs viewed Kosovo in the same manner that Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany previously viewed Chezkoslovakia, Austria, and other countries surrounding Germany. Furthermore, many of the tactics that the Serbs used against Albanians mirrored those of World War II Germany's policy towards Jews. This police state forced ten of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes and jobs, saw a mass exodus of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, and brought forth one of the largest diaspora communities. These diaspora communities referred to the displaced citizens of Kosovo who fled throughout Europe and North America. They fled because of political and economic repression, and they also left their homeland for fear of their safety. Milosevic's regime continued to commit atrocities against ethnic Albanians, and between 1987 and 1997, more than half of the adult male Albanian population was arrested, remanded, or interrogated.

In 1998, major uprisings occurred in Kosovo, with the first beginning in February. An excess of two thousand people died in the conflict, with seven hundred unaccounted for and another one thousand detained by Serbs. The 1998 uprisings stemmed from the formation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA first appeared in 1992, and it generally took a non-violent stance for resisting Serbian political control. In 1995, it officially changed tactics, and it began actively and openly committing acts of retribution and aggression against Serbs. The year 1995 proved a turning point for the KLA because the question of Kosovo's status was ignored at the Dayton Peace talks. The Dayton Peace Accords (drafted at the Dayton Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio) established boundaries and settlements to end the fighting between Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina are also in the Balkans, bordering Yugoslavia. The KLA felt that in order for the international community to take Kosovo's claims of sovereignty seriously, its citizens had to make a public fight. When the KLA began committing acts of violence to support their fight for Kosovo's political independence, the Serbian government labeled them as terrorists, and the killings in Kosovo increased.

In 1998, both the Serbian army and the KLA both committed atrocious acts upon one another. On several occasions, international investigators attempted to enter the area to examine the conflict, but Serbian authorities prevented representatives from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from entering the region. In January 1999, the KLA killed three Serbian policemen, and the Racak attack occurred just a few days later. The Racak attack shows the intensity of the Serbian-Albanian fights, and it also demonstrates the mass exodus of ethnic Albanians from the area. In August 1999, almost two thousand people resided in the village; by the following January, about three hundred remained.

PRIMARY SOURCE

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SIGNIFICANCE

In response to the 1998 conflicts in Kosovo, culminating with the Racak attack, United States troops entered the region under the flag of the United Nations. The U.S. troops had the mission of acting as peacekeepers. The Serbs continued their attacks against the KLA and ethnic Albanians, and they concentrated their efforts to the semi-circular part of western Kosovo that bordered Albania. In addition to international military presence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) initiated a series of air strikes on Yugoslavia for its role in the acts of genocide and suppression of ethnic Albanians. Citizens of Yugoslavia viewed these attacks as unfair and aggressive, since it was the actions of the Milosevic regime and not them that brought the violence to Kosovo. Additionally, the air strikes caused considerable damage to Yugoslavian communities and civilians.

As of 2006, the exact number of Serbs and ethnic Albanians killed in the protracted dispute is unknown, and speculation states that Serbs went to considerable efforts to cover up the bodies of Albanians. In May 1999, the ICTY charged Milosevic with war crimes in Kosovo. This action marked the first time a sitting head of state was charged with violations of humanitarian law. In 2000, Milosevic was usurped from office, and refugees slowly began to return to their homes. As ethnic Albanians returned to Kosovo, over 100,000 Serbs fled the province in fear of relation by the KLA.

Kosovo, as of May 2006, is an autonomous province within the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. The United Nations continues to monitor Kosovo. As of May 2006, international talks on the future of Kosovo have not concluded with any resolution. These UN-sanctioned talks began on February 20, 2006.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Independent International Commission on Kosovo. Kosovo Report: Conflict * International Response * Lessons Learned. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Judah, Tim. Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Periodicals

Anonymous. "Iraq and Kosovo: A Meditation on American Power." New Perspectives Quarterly. 22.4 (Fall 2005): 27-30.

Johnstone, Ian. "The Plea of Necessity in International Legal Discourse: Humanitarian Intervention and Counter-terrorism." Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. 43.2 (2005): 337-88.