Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo "versus" the crime of genocide

While the Kosovo Albanians claim that they were victims of the Serbian genocide during the 1989th century, especially at the end of the 1999th century, the Serbs deny such a thing. Since there has been a lack of proper encouragement and support from powerful Western countries, the Albanians did not insist much on a Serbian acceptance and apology as a precondition for the long-term normalization of relations between the two small Balkan states. But the discussions and controversies of historians and experts continue. What really happened in the years XNUMX-XNUMX?

The time period and the political events that took place during the last ten years of the 1990th century in Kosovo constitute one of the most dramatic periods in the context of the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. The crimes of this period were shockingly the first seen since the end of World War II. The debate related to what happened in Kosovo during the process of the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia during the 24s, remains bitter and insurmountable even XNUMX years after the end of the war in Kosovo. Kosovo Albanians claim that they were victims of aggression and genocide at the end of the XNUMXth century. Many Serbs, especially the political elite, the parties in power and those in opposition, say that there was no mass murder in Kosovo, while the departure of one million Albanians, before and during the NATO bombings, was instigated by Albanian leaders! Even after more than two decades, the Serbian political and intellectual elite accuse Milosevic not of war and war crimes, but of losing the war. By creating a counter-narrative, which is essential to deny the claims of Serbia's involvement in the genocide, today's state elite in Belgrade, under the leadership of Vučić, the former Minister of Information of the Milosevic Government, has deliberately sought to equate the criminal responsibility of historical, or, to present the victims as the main perpetrators of the crimes.

For genocide researchers, the claims of the Albanians remain to document the crimes and the purpose of the aggression, but this is not easy as access to the Serbian archives remains selective if not impossible through their categorization as secret documents. The phrase within the Genocide Convention, which defines what genocide is under international law, sees it as a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a group on racial, ethnic, religious or national grounds. This is the key part that makes something genocide. Attempts to destroy a group, just because it is a group, killing a man, just because he is a member of a group, or if the leader intends to destroy or at least partially eliminate that group.

"Defining genocide depends on the ability to detect or infer intent," says Davis Simon, professor of political science and director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.

Those who consider that the killings in Kosovo were premeditated and organized by the Serbian state, base their arguments on these pillars: the repressive actions of the Serbian state in Kosovo in the period 1989-1999, when Albanians were expelled from all public institutions , economic, medical, cultural, educational and media. It was the period when the efforts of the Milosevic regime consisted in the impossibility of the life of Albanians in Kosovo and their obligation to leave quietly to the countries of Western Europe. They were a series of different repressive acts that were being carried out in the course of committing the silent genocide against the Kosovar Albanians. In the words of Raphael Llemkin, researcher in the field of International Criminal Law and creator of the term "genocide", in the course of committing genocide, violent racist acts can be committed to destroy the national, ethnic, racial or religious identity of any group. certain. Since in the years 1989-1997 Belgrade's policy had not succeeded in denationalizing the Kosovo Albanians and in changing the demographic ratios, in the years 1998-99 it put into action objective mechanisms of physical extermination. In this case, he used the following acts of genocide: mass and individual murders, physical and psychological torture, forced displacement, sexual rape, and the placement of the civilian population in living conditions that cause death (humanitarian disaster), the deliberate prevention of the fulfillment of health needs , the violent separation of children from their parents, and others. It was an attack prepared with purpose and premeditation, to destroy, completely or partially, the identity and with it the physical presence of Albanians in the territory of Kosovo. So, the attack with the intent of genocide was not directed against individuals or a certain political or military formation, but against a community which had its own specific identity distinguished by national, ethnic, racial or religious characteristics. According to the logical meaning of the notion "genocide", we can conclude that the crime of genocide was committed against Albanians in Kosovo as a group as a whole. If the public call for the destruction of the identity of a certain group according to the Genocide Convention can be included as genocide, then in the case of Kosovo this seems very clear during the Serbian military aggression in Kosovo in 1998/99, which had the population as its main target civilians of Kosovo with the aim of mass murder, deportation and changing the demographic composition.

"If you leave us, we will kill all Albanians..."

The attack with the intention of genocide was also confirmed by Milosevic himself. According to the testimony at the Hague Tribunal of the former American NATO general, General Wesley Clark, during a joint meeting, Milosevic had declared to him quite openly: "If you leave us, we will kill all the Albanians, like as we killed them in 1946." ("Waging Modern War - Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Conflict" - September 21, 2002 by Wesley Clark). Meanwhile, the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister at the time, Vojislav Sesheli, who actively participated in the creation of Milosevic's policy, declared: "If NATO decides to bomb us, if America decides to continue with this aggression, the Serbs will suffer , but there will be no more Albanians in Kosovo"

The statements of the two highest leaders of the Serbian state given as early as the Rambouillet period reveal the purpose and goals of the Serbian doctrine for the expulsion and destruction of a non-Serb population, with the aim of creating a large state, where Albanians had no right to exist. . Recalling Serbia's aggression on Kosovo, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, in the autobiographical book "Interventions: A Life in War and Peace", says that "the (Serbian) campaign first of all had one goal: to remove and kill as many Kosovo Albanians as possible". Recognizing these ambitions of Milosevic's Serbia, the international community had the responsibility to protect the civilian population (Responsibility to Protect) in Kosovo in the face of Serbian military aggression.

MST: What is genocide?

Before we further address the topic of this problem, it is necessary to make a brief description of what is the meaning of the notion of genocide? The word "genocide" is composed of the Greek words "genos" (genus or tribe) and "occidere" (to kill, drown). This notion is extremely complex and difficult and contains in itself different meanings. The word genocide is a category of moral provenance, not just legal. The word "genocide" was first used in 1944 in the book of the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe", while the legal meaning is defined in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide , adopted in 1948.

An attack with the intent of genocide is an attack against a specific human group that has, in addition to other specifications that make it a special group, any of these four characteristics of its identity. These properties are: national, ethnic, racial or religious identity. The object of attack is not the individuals, but the group with its own identity. The attack is planned and done on purpose, that is, consciously, and this also means the identity of the attacked group. Each genocidal attack against another group as such has its own special characteristics: roots, causes, goals and dimensions. Genocide is a crime against all humanity, regardless of who it was committed against and what the consequences of the attack with the intent of genocide are, because it damages not only the group that was targeted, but also all of humanity. Genocide cannot be committed by individuals or groups of individuals. It is always an organized act that has been planned, organized and promoted by one or more state communities or their institutions. Also, the commission of genocide is not limited to any geographical space or any location, localities or more localities, but to the group or against the group as such

Genocidal attack is not only carried out by armed conflicts, although this form of genocidal attack is more frequent. Genocide is committed by any form of attack by which it is planned and hoped to destroy, in whole or in part, the group attacked as such. The attack with the intent of genocide is not directed against individuals or any community, but only against that community which has its own specific identity distinguished by national, ethnic, racial or religious characteristics. For genocide researchers, judicial researchers and judges who pronounce judgments, in which it is confirmed that genocide has occurred, "it is not necessary to have a plan of genocide", but it is essential that the perpetrator knew about the consequences of the act done. The number of victims is relevant for the group that is the victim of the attack with the intent of genocide, while for the judiciary it is important for determining the severity of the punishment. (Muhamed Shestanovic, "The crime of genocide and the crime of forgetting the genocide", Pristina, 2013, pp. 163-173).

When it comes to the numerous Serbian attacks against the Albanians of Kosovo, in the continuity of the Serbian goal to exterminate them permanently, the Albanians have been dehumanized and denationalized in order to eradicate the identity of this group as such. In this case, Belgrade, in different historical periods, and especially in the years 1989-1999, has used these acts of genocide: mass and individual murders, physical and psychological injuries, violent displacements, violent prevention of biological reproduction, separation of violent treatment of family members, denial of health protection, denial of the right to work, and others. The well-known Serbian intellectual and lawyer, Srgja Popović, known as an opponent of the Milosevic regime and its war against the Kosovo Albanians and a supporter of the NATO intervention in the Kosovo war, the crimes of the Milosevic regime against the Albanians in Kosovo qualified them as genocide, because according to him, just as there are different murders, there are also different genocides and that the genocide committed by Milosevic - which cannot be compared to the Holocaust except because he did not have the power for a crime of such magnitude - meets all the criteria that exist in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on December 9, 1948 by the UN, while it entered into force on January 12, 1951. (Srgja Popovic, "The Other Serbia" (3) , Pristina, 2022, pp. 50-51).

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The nationalist narrative

The planners and perpetrators of the crimes committed in the years 1998/1999 in the territory of Kosovo, have tried to keep the crimes quiet and minimized, and they are particularly interested in their being forgotten, declaring that all the peoples who fought in the space of the former -Yugoslavia have committed crimes. In Serbia, it was in their interest to create an artificial symmetry for what happened during the 90s. It was an attempt to make a symmetry. At the same time, in Serbia, systematic work has been done to cultivate a nationalist and victimizing narrative. The purpose of hiding the crimes from the eyes of the world has been to deny any state responsibility in Belgrade. In Serbia, they know the effects of the genocide mark on the Serbian state. Contradictions are therefore widespread. In this context, the NATO bombings against the Milosevic regime in March 1999 are compared to the fascist aggression of the Second World War, while the civilians executed in the Kosovar village of Reçak (January 1999) are considered "victims of a military event". .

In addition, racist attacks against Albanians continue to be a daily occurrence for Serbian politicians. If Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandër Vulin, a primitive nationalist and a former deputy of Mira Marković, who was head of the JUL party, describes Albanians as "Albanians", a term comparable to the word "Niger", which racists use it to insult black people, the Serbian Prime Minister, Brnabić, declared last year that "Albanian leaders are people from the mountains". It is these stereotypes cemented in the vocabulary of the Serbian political elite since the beginning of the XNUMXth century.

Milosevic's trial for losing the war

Even 24 years after the end of the Kosovo war, most of the Serbian society and political elite judge Milosevic not for what he did in Kosovo and elsewhere, but for losing the war. This glorification of the war goes as far as the interpretation of the crime against the Albanians as heroism or total denial of the crimes, an example which is also present recently in the case of Russian crimes in Ukraine, as was the case of the denial of the massacre in Bucha. Such a phenomenon has also been evidenced by the OSCE Mission in Belgrade, which in its last report (May, 2022) has mentioned with concern the appearance of murals and graffiti depicting those convicted of war crimes at the Hague Tribunal. Therefore, the OSCE Mission has taken on obligations to support actions to ensure accountability for war crimes.

Meanwhile, relations between Kosovo and Serbia remain tense due to territorial disputes and claims of Belgrade and Serbian diplomatic aggression against the new state of Kosovo. In Belgrade, the narrative is even cultivated that one day the Serbian army will "liberate" Kosovo. This situation has not moved forward even after the long Brussels dialogue, it continues since the beginning of 2011, just a few months after the legal opinion of the International Court of Justice that Kosovo's independence was a sui generis case and that "its declaration was in accordance with international law. What has been the level of progress of the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, mediated by the EU, 24 years after the end of the war, is suggestive of the fact that the two neighboring countries still have not solved the problem of car license plates, let alone the issue of normalization of interstate relations. What would the EU look like today, if in 1968, Germany and France were still discussing not about building European institutional capacities, but about the appearance of license plates of some German city in the Saarland.

From apartheid to genocide

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The Serbian government in Belgrade as early as the 1980s had warned of the possibility of changing the ethnic composition of Kosovo, which shows that it is not only a matter of military actions of 1998/99. The goal of undoing the Albanian demography was proclaimed as early as the 1980s. There were a series of different repressive acts that were being carried out in the course of committing the silent genocide against the Albanians of Kosovo. In the judicial process at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Kosovar side declared that only during the years 1990-1995 over 133 thousand Albanians were expelled from their workplaces, 25 thousand people were expelled from their homes of them and their businesses were looted, stolen or burned, 20 thousand were ill-treated, imprisoned or became the object of ill-treatment, about 2 thousand Kosovars were killed and over 250 thousand others emigrated to the countries of Western Europe due to danger of excellence and survival. While the ban on national schools, newspapers, and radio-televisions was aimed at denationalization, namely the disappearance of national identity. The Serbian government in Belgrade during this period also made efforts to change the physical environment, destroying any evidence and presence of cultural monuments and a non-Serbian civilization. The systematic destruction of mosques or Catholic churches was a planned action to annihilate the centuries-long presence of Albanians; the destruction of libraries, schools, as well as various objects of the Albanian national heritage, aimed at the annihilation of a culture, which has been preserved through the national components of the population. This campaign, in which the Albanians lived in an apartheid system, was intended to destroy the existence of the Albanians and their culture. Human Rights Watch, in a post-war report, finds that the destruction of civilian property by Yugoslav/Serbian government troops in 1999 was widespread. This organization, citing a November 1999 UNHCR survey, reports that almost 40 percent of all residential houses in Kosovo have been severely damaged or completely destroyed.

To be continued in the next issue of the Culture Supplement