WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Hina) - Balkan countries last year achieved disappointing progress in human rights, mostly thanks to the continued failure of governments to fully cooperate with the UN war crimes tribunal (ICTY), Human Rights
Watch said in its annual report on the human rights situation in the world.
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Hina) - Balkan countries last year achieved
disappointing progress in human rights, mostly thanks to the
continued failure of governments to fully cooperate with the UN war
crimes tribunal (ICTY), Human Rights Watch said in its annual
report on the human rights situation in the world. #L#
"In contrast to much of the past decade, the year saw sustained
peace in the Balkans, but disappointing progress on human rights",
the 2002 report says.
"The continued failure of governments in the region to come fully to
terms with the crimes committed during the wars of the Yugoslav
break-up was a major problem, with a detrimental impact on refugee
return, reconciliation, and political normalisation," says the
group section of the HRW on Croatia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia and
Macedonia.
The organisation says that Croatian President Stjepan Mesic
"argued forcefully for war crimes accountability and cooperation
with the ICTY. Mesic had little authority to pursue cooperation,
however, and the government adamantly refused to arrest two former
senior Croatian generals sought by the ICTY".
"More than half of the twenty-four individuals publicly indicted by
the ICTY who were still at large in the region were believed to be
harboured in Republika Srpska -- the Bosnian Serb entity of Bosnia
and Herzegovina -- which continued to refuse to cooperate with the
Hague tribunal."
"The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia also flouted its obligations to
cooperate with the ICTY. Under pressure of a cut-off in U.S. aid,
Yugoslavia arrested and transferred one indictee to The Hague and
adopted a law on cooperation with the tribunal. This law contained a
number of loopholes, however, and in a November statement to the
United Nations Security Council, ICTY Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte
complained that Yugoslavia was harbouring Bosnian Serb wartime
military commander Ratko Mladic and continuing to block access to
documents she had requested," says the report.
The organisation notes that the war crimes tribunal has not yet
indicted any Kosovo Albanian for war crimes during the conflict in
Kosovo, despite initiated investigations, nor have Serbia and the
UN Mission to Kosovo held lower-ranking Serbs accountable.
"The authorities in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia all conducted local
war crimes trials during the year, but in all three countries those
proceedings were seriously flawed by evident witness tampering and
a biased judiciary," says the report.
Summarising, HRW concludes the Balkans could not reconcile with its
war-time past in 2002.
"The result was a grave injustice to the thousands of victims of war
crimes committed during the Yugoslav wars."
This also had a profound effect on the region's reconstruction,
reintegration and political development.
"With each ethnic population still holding the others collectively
responsible for wartime abuses, refugees and the internally
displaced remained reluctant to return home to communities where
they would be in the minority," HRW says.
The lack of accountability for violations committed during the war
helped sustain laws that stripped some refugees and internally
displaced of their pre-war property rights, on the presumption that
they had abandoned their homes voluntarily, rather than out of
fear, continues HRW.
"As the year came to a close, more than 1.5 million refugees and
internally displaced persons remained unable or unwilling to
return to their pre-war homes in the region, and much of the wartime
ethnic cleansing seemed increasingly irreversible," notes the
report.
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