Gross violations of human rights in Kosovo, including executions, rape and forced expulsions of ethnic Albanians, have been committed by the Yugoslav army and police, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, charged yesterday.
In a 15-page report based on her recent visit to the Balkans, including Belgrade where President Slobodan Milosevic refused to meet her, Mrs Robinson called on Yugoslavia's forces to halt atrocities and withdraw immediately from the province. Evidence in the report is based mainly on testimony gathered by UN from refugees monitors in Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro.
But Mrs Robinson also criticised NATO's use of cluster bombs and destruction of schools and hospitals. She urged the US-led alliance to respect humanitarian law, including the "principle of proportionality".
She said the indictment of Mr Milosevic and four associates for crimes against humanity, including murder, during the Kosovo conflict was a major step towards tackling impunity.
She urged the Yugoslav government to "withdraw immediately and unconditionally all the army and MUP (police) units from Kosovo, as well as federal police and paramilitary forces who are responsible for gross violations of human rights in the region".
Mrs Robinson said that accounts by refugees provided "substantial evidence" of gross human rights violations in Kosovo, including summary executions, forcible displacement, rape and physical abuse affecting men, women and children.
Numerous reports from the field indicate that the Serbian military have "conducted a well-planned and implemented programme of forcible expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo," the report said.
Her report noted that 750,000 Kosovans had been forced to leave their homes. Expulsions appeared to have affected virtually all areas of Kosovo as well as villages in southern Serbia, including places never targeted by NATO air strikes or in which the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has never been present, she said.
"This last fact strengthens indications that refugees are not fleeing NATO air strikes, as is often alleged by Yugoslav authorities," Mrs Robinson said.
She said there were "confirmed" reports of the singling out and killing by Serb authorities of well-known intellectuals or activists, including ethnic Albanian political leader, Mr Fehmet Agani.
Mr Agani was taken off a train that was sent back to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, on May 7th after the closure of the Macedonian border at Blace.
"Other killings have occurred when Serbian forces opened fire on groups of Kosovars in the process of departure," she said. Her office had also received reports of soldiers or paramilitary forces shooting at groups of refugees after they were rounded up in a village waiting to depart.
"Paramilitary forces have entered houses and summarily killed inhabitants," she said.
She said that during a visit to an Albanian refugee camp she had interviewed two survivors of a mass execution. In some cases, Serbian forces appeared to have burned the corpses of executed ethnic Albanians "in attempts to destroy evidence of atrocities."
The section on torture highlighted beatings with fists and rifle butts, cruel treatment, rape and other forms of sexual assault, mutilation, shooting and threats of violence. Torture had occurred mostly outside of detention facilities, in streets, homes, the forest and on the road to the border, Mrs Robinson said. In a separate development yesterday, beaten, undernourished refugees told aid workers that as many as 3,000 ethnic Albanian men were being held in a southern Kosovo prison where guards played loud music to cover up the inmates' screams.
Ms Lindsey Davies of the World Food Programme said she had interviewed a group of 51 men who had been released from Lipljan, and were now in Senokos refugee camp in western Macedonia. They told her they had been subject to regular beatings.