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Title: Serbia-Montenegro Human Rights Practices, 1995
Author: U.S. Department of State
Date: March 1996
SERBIA-MONTENEGRO
The United States and the international community do not recognize
Serbia-Montenegro as the successor state to the former Yugoslavia and do
not permit the participation of the "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia"
(FRY) from participation in the United Nations, the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and other international
organizations. At year's end, the Government was cooperating with the
international community to end the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, in a
step-by-step process set out in the accords on ending the war in Bosnia
which were negotiated in Dayton, Ohio in November.
Serbia-Montenegro is dominated by Slobodan Milosevic, who is serving his
second 5-year term as President of Serbia. He controls the country
through his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), which lacks majorities in
both the Federal and Serbian Parliaments but holds the key
administrative positions. The SPS abolished the political autonomy of
Kosovo and Vojvodina in 1990, and all significant decisionmaking since
that time has been centralized under Milosevic in Belgrade. As a key
element of his hold on power, Milosevic wields strong control over the
Serbian police, a heavily armed force of perhaps 100,000 which is guilty
of extensive, brutal, and systematic human rights abuses.
The economy continued to limp along under the impact of the fourth
successive year of U.N. economic sanctions. An estimated 1.5 million
unemployed or redundant workers, in a workforce of 2.3 million,
struggled to make ends meet by smuggling gasoline and other contraband
goods. Industrial production, hampered by lack of raw materials and
markets, sputtered along at an average 30 percent of capacity. Largely
due to the central bank's continued tight monetary policy, the
Government managed to avoid the hyperinflation that wracked the economy
during the winter of 1993-94. In November the central bank devalued the
currency in an attempt to stabilize the exchange rate, but rising prices
continued to erode living standards. Despite initial euphoria, the
suspension of U.N. sanctions in late December with the signing of the
Dayton Agreement produced no noticeable improvement in the economy.
The Government's human rights record continued to be poor. The police
committed numerous serious human rights abuses, including carrying out
and condoning torture, brutal beatings, and arbitrary arrests. Police
repression continued at a high level against the ethnic Albanians of
Kosovo and the Muslims of Sandzak and reflected a general campaign to
keep the one-third of the population who are not ethnic Serbs
intimidated and unable to exercise basic human and civil rights. Police
elements routinely monitor opposition leaders, human rights workers, and
political dissidents.
The Government put some 150 ethnic Albanian former security personnel on
trial in Kosovo for conspiring to undermine the Government, using as
evidence confessions obtained by torture. In Sandzak similar
politically inspired trials targeted Muslim community leaders. The
President of Montenegro at year's end freed his Republic's political
prisoners. Denial of fair trial and abuse of the judicial system were
serious problems. The Government severely restricted the freedom of
assembly and association, and tacitly condoned societal violence against
religious minorities. The Government hindered the activities of human
rights monitors. Discrimination and violence against women were serious
problems, as was discrimination against ethnic minorities.
Nongovernment affiliated unions are circumscribed in their attempts to
advance workers' rights.
An important factor in Milosevic's rise to power and almost total
domination of the political process is his control and manipulation of
the state-run media. Freedom of the press is greatly circumscribed.
The Government discourages independent media and resorts to
surveillance, harassment, and even suppression to inhibit the media from
reporting its repressive and violent acts.
Opposition politicians and minority ethnic groups are routinely denied
access to the state-run mass media; they are vilified in the government-
controlled media, and their positions misrepresented. This year the
government-controlled press mounted a campaign against nongovernmental
organizations (NGO's) and international humanitarian organizations. In
some instances personnel of United Nations and religious organizations
were not granted visas to continue their work; in at least one case, the
Government revoked the registration of a major NGO.
Beginning in June, the police assisted in rounding up men of fighting
age, mostly refugees but also some citizens. The police sent them
against their will first to serve in Serbian forces in the Krajina and
Bosnia, and later to training camps in Eastern Slavonia. The Government
of Montenegro refused to allow refugees within its borders to be
forcibly mobilized.
Already burdened with refugees from the 1991 conflicts in the former
Yugoslavia, social services were almost overwhelmed by the arrival of
some 170,000 largely ethnic Serb refugees from the Krajina in August.
In contrast to 1991-92, the police acted to prevent the refugees from
commandeering the homes of ethnic minority citizens in Serbia and housed
them in public buildings. While relatives and acquaintances took in
many refugees, the Government sent the majority to areas inhabited by
ethnic minorities, principally Vojvodina and to a much more limited
extent Kosovo, further intensifying the ethnic tensions within the
country.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom
from:
a. Political and Other Extrajudicial Killing
Political violence in Serbia-Montenegro, including killings by police,
resulted mostly from efforts by Serbian authorities to suppress and
intimidate ethnic minority groups. Leaders of minority communities in
Kosovo and Sandzak, and to a lesser extent Vojvodina, reported numerous
acts of violence and intimidation aimed at repressing non-Serbs and
Muslims. The level of violence was most severe in the Albanian-
populated region of Kosovo, where police repressed expressions of
political and community life, and in the Muslim-populated region of
Sandzak.
According to the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms
(CDHRF), a monitoring organization based in Pristina, Kosovo, Serbian
authorities killed 16 ethnic Albanians during the year. Ten persons
were shot by police or soldiers and six died as a result of mistreatment
or beatings while in police custody.
Serbian police beat Shefka Latifi on June 27, both in his home and at
the police station, where he was also thrown down the stairs. A friend,
who had also been beaten, took him to the health center where police
later threatened the medical staff who were treating him. He was taken
home where he died. Photos after the autopsy showed that he had been
severely beaten on the body and about the head. One of the policemen
identified in his beating was recognized as the same man who was
involved in the beating death of Sabiat Vlahia in Podujeva in 1994.
On June 18, soldiers shot a 10-year-old boy on the grounds of a military
barracks in Kacanik. Family members were notified that they could find
his body at the hospital. They said that he had gone to fetch a stray
goat as he had many times before; the soldiers later claimed that they
thought the boy was trying to steal cigarettes.
Crimes against citizens of minority groups were rarely investigated, nor
were police held accountable for their excesses. On the rare occasion
when a policeman was detained, the case never came to trial. Kosovar
Albanian Abedin Ahmeti was arrested on April 12 in a village near
Mitrovica and taken to the police station. He was then brought to his
home where he was beaten into unconsciousness in front of his family and
then taken again to the police station. When his brother inquired after
him the next morning, he was told Ahmeti had died on the way to the
hospital. The physician's report showed that the victim had a broken
finger, injuries on his hands, head, and genitals, and hemorrhaging in
the brain. On April 19, two Serbian policemen were arrested at the
behest of the public prosecutor of the Mitrovica District Court and
charged with the murder of Ahmeti. The case had not come to trial by
year's end.
On July 11, Serb policeman Boban Krstic was brought to court for having
shot dead a 6-year-old boy and wounding his parents in July 1994.
Krstic, who had been released pending a trial and received a promotion,
was charged with "posing a threat to the community" rather than a more
serious charge. The case was
adjourned by the judge pending a "reconstruction of events."
b. Disappearance
Aside from the temporary disappearance of young men aribtrarily
mobilized to serve in Krajina and Bosnian Serb forces (see Section
1.f.), there were no reports of disappearances.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment
While the law prohibits torture, police routinely beat people severely
when holding them under detention or stopping them at police
checkpoints, especially targeting ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. According
to human rights agencies, while some Sandzak Muslims, Roma, and even
ethnic Serbs and Montenegrins suffered beatings at the hands of police,
thousands of Kosovar Albanians were beaten and tortured during supposed
searches for illegal weapons. Police extracted "confessions" during
interrogations that routinely included the beating of suspects' feet,
hands, genital areas, and sometimes heads with fists and nightsticks,
and the use of electric shocks. Apparently confident that there would
be no reprisals and expecting to have a broader impact, police often
beat their victims in front of their families. The police also used
threats and violence against family members and sometimes held them as
hostages.
Observing the trials of former security personnel in Prizren, the
Belgrade Helsinki Committee noted that while the accused had been taken
into custody in late November and early December 1994, it was not until
March 6 that they were indicted for criminal offenses. To obtain
confessions, the committee noted, "torture was used extensively and
liberally" by the security forces. The committee charged that security
forces refused to allow medical attention to the detainees either when
they were ill or when they were badly injured by beatings and torture.
During his trial in Prizren in June, Blerim Olloni testified that he had
been interrogated 14 times by state security forces since his arrest on
November 20, 1994, and tortured on almost all the occasions, sometimes
with electric shock. Rexhep Oruci told the court on June 14, that after
his arrest on November 17, he was beaten for 100 hours until November
21, when he signed a statement the police gave him. He said that the
Serbian security officers had threatened his children with "liquidation"
unless he confessed.
During the trials in Pristina in June, Avdi Mehmedoviq testified that he
had been beaten bloody several times by security forces. His brother
had also been arrested and their elderly father was beaten and brought
to their cells, on one occasion with blood visible on his head. Zeke
Bekaj stated that he was injured so badly he had to be taken for medical
treatment and was threatened that his brother and young son would be
harmed if he did not confess.
In May journalists in Montenegro reported an increasing number of police
brutality cases, some of which they termed torture. According to the
weekly journal Monitor, whereas Muslims and ethnic Albanians had been
the usual target of the Montenegrin police, many of the newer cases were
against orthodox Montenegrins and members of the Roma community. The
Podgorica police chief was dismissed, in part in response to public
protests against police brutality stemming from a case in the town of
Spuz where police apprehended a man suspected of planting explosives at
the homes of Muslim refugees. Local police beat him until he confessed,
only to have a second person come forward and admit to the crime. He
was then also beaten. In June the Interior Minister was replaced, and a
new head of Montenegrin state security appointed.
Police often administer their own brand of justice without regard to due
process. On March 5, police broke up a quarrel among neighbors in the
village of Seqeva in Kosovo and arrested four men, beating two of them
on the spot. After the men had been sentenced to 30 days imprisonment,
one policeman, unsatisfied with the sentence, again beat them severely.
Police in civilian clothes broke down the door of the home of a 60-year-
old woman on May 7 and threatened to cut off her head with a hatchet if
she did not deliver weapons they claimed belonged to her son who lived
in Germany. Police took her to the police station in Istok where she
was held for 6 hours before being freed.
The use of excessive force in Kosovo and Sandzak was both routine and
capricious. The Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the leading
political party in Kosovo, reported that over 4,000 persons had been
beaten by police in 1994. In early March, two Kosovar Albanians waiting
for a bus in Mitrovica were searched by police and then taken to the
police station and beaten, apparently because the police were unable to
find foreign currency on them. Police beat Nehat Krasniqi in the town
of Kacanik for failing to halt at a stop sign while driving his tractor.
On June 5, an apparently drunken Serb policeman hit the car of Sedat
Bajrmi near Prizren and then pointed his gun at him and began to beat
him. Other police arrived and beat him badly, seized his
identification, and left him by the side of the road.
Prison conditions in Serbia-Montenegro are adequate, and there were no
reports of abuse of prisoners, once sentenced and serving their time.
The Government permits prison visits by human rights monitors.
d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile
Arbitrary arrest and detention carried out by the police are the most
common abuses of state power in Serbia-Montenegro. Police often apply
laws only against ethnic minorities, using force with impunity. Laws
regarding conspiracy, threats to the integrity of the Government, and
state secrets are so vague as to allow abuse by the state.
Federal law permits police to detain suspects without a warrant and hold
them incommunicado up to 3 days without charging them or granting them
access to an attorney. After this period, police must turn a suspect
over to an investigative judge, who may order a 30-day extension and,
under certain legal procedures, subsequent extensions of investigative
detention up to 6 months. Police often beat people without ever
officially charging them and routinely held suspects well beyond the 3-
day statutory period. It was generally during this initial period that
detainees experienced the worst treatment and abuse. During
investigative detention, detainees theoretically have access to legal
counsel, although in practice access was granted only occasionally.
Defense lawyers and human rights workers complained of excessive delays
in filing formal charges and opening investigations. The ability of the
defense to challenge the legal basis of their clients' detention was
further hampered by the difficulty they encountered in gaining access to
the detainee or acquiring copies of the official indictment and the
decision to remand the defendant into custody. In some cases, judges
prevented defense attorneys from reading the court file. The
investigative judges often delegated responsibility to the police or
state security service and rarely questioned their accounts of the
investigation even when it was obvious that coercion had been used to
obtain confessions.
Arrests and detentions for alleged crimes were carried out in an
arbitrary fashion against members of ethnic minorities. In a country
where the majority of ethnic Serbs are armed, police selectively
enforced the laws regulating the possession and registration of firearms
so as to harass and intimidate ethnic minorities. In March 19 ethnic
Muslims of the Sandzak region were brought to trial in the local court
at Plav for illegal possession of weapons. The most frequent
justification given for searches of homes and arrests was illegal
possession of weapons; Serbs were rarely charged with similar crimes
although the weapons they possess are typically unregistered or
otherwise illegal.
Family members were sometimes held hostage by police. On January 7,
when Serbian police failed to find a man they sought in the town of
Vitia, they arrested his son, age 18, held him and allegedly beat him.
Exile is neither legally permitted nor routinely practiced. No specific
instances of the imposition of exile as a form of judicial punishment
are known to have occurred, although the practical effect of police
repression in Kosovo is to cause many ethnic Albanians to go abroad to
escape persecution.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary, but in practice
it is largely controlled by the Government and rarely challenges the
will of the state security apparatus. The authorities frequently deny
fair public trial to non-Serbs and to persons they believe oppose the
regime.
The court system comprises local, district, and supreme courts at the
republic level, and a federal Supreme Court to which republic supreme
court decisions may be appealed. There is also a military court system.
According to the Federal Constitution, the Federal Constitutional Court
rules on the constitutionality of laws and regulations, relying on the
republic authorities to enforce its rulings. The Federal Criminal Code
of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia still applies.
There is some confusion and room for abuse in the legal system because
the Constitution of Serbia (1960) has not yet been brought into
conformity with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(1992).
Under federal law, defendants have the right to be present at their
trials and to have an attorney, at public expense if needed. The courts
will also provide interpreters. The presiding judges decide what will
be read into the record of the proceedings. Both the defendant and the
prosecutor may appeal the verdict. Defense lawyers in Kosovo and
Sandzak have filed numerous complaints about flagrant breaches of
standard procedure which they believed undermined their clients' rights.
Even when the judges have admitted that the lawyers were correct, the
courts have ignored or dismissed the complaints.
Mass trials were held during 1995 in the district courts of Kosovo of
ethnic Albanian former security officers who were accused of conspiring
to overthrow the Government (see Section 1.d.). In spite of widespread
searches of homes and businesses, police turned up no credible evidence
of such a conspiracy, and the cases presented in court were based on
confessions obtained by force. The largest trial was held in Pristina
where 72 were charged and 61 brought to trial, the others having escaped
arrest. The trials in Pec, Pristina, and Gnjilane were perfunctory.
Interpreters were provided, defense attorneys were present, and
observers, including family members, were permitted if they identified
themselves to the court.
The egregious abuses of the justice system took place before the trial
when confessions were obtained by torture (see Section 1.c.). In
Pristina, Muhamet Ninami told the court that he had signed a confession
after being tied in a bent position for 90 hours, mentally and
physically exhausted, with no opportunity to see a lawyer. At the
Prizren trials, the Helsinki Committee noted a long list of abuses of
correct procedure including searching defendants' homes without warrants
and ignoring the legal stipulation that two witnesses and the defendant
must be present during a search. Although the defendants testified to
brutal beatings and torture used to obtain the confessions, and the
prosecutors did not deny their charges, the court took no action. In
Pristina the judge backdated the documents after the legal period for
detention had expired.
Ethnic Serb lawyers who were part of the defense team for the trials in
Prizren attempted to force the court to follow proper procedures. Among
other things, the lawyers asked, to no avail, that the president of the
District Court be disqualified because he had conducted the
investigations against some of the accused and because he refused to
allow testimony given by the defendants about police torture to be
recorded in the minutes of the trial.
The Government charged targeted groups, under article 116 of the
Yugoslav Criminal Code, of jeopardizing the territorial integrity of the
country and, under article 136, of conspiring or forming a group with
intent to commit subversive activities. The Fund for Humanitarian Law
found that proceedings on charges of subversion were initiated
exclusively against Kosovar Albanians and Sandjak Muslims.
Police investigated over 250 Kosovar Albanian former security personnel
and convicted 129, handing down sentences ranging from 18 months to 8
years, on the unsubstantiated grounds of conspiring to undermine the
integrity of the state. Those given sentences of over 5 years, and thus
not freed pending appeal, are in prison. Over 200 Kosovar Albanians and
Sandzak Muslims are now serving prison terms for similar charges.
Insofar as the real grounds for these charges appear to have been that
these persons were active in ethnic political parties, they may be said
to have been prosecuted for their political associations rather than for
criminal activity. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
treats them as political prisoners. In December President Bulatovic of
Montenegro freed 82 individuals, 50 of whom were considered to be
political prisoners.
f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home or
Correspondence
Federal law gives republic Ministries of the Interior sole control over
the decision to monitor potential criminal activities, a power routinely
abused. Authorities regularly monitored opposition and dissident
activity, eavesdropped on conversations, read mail, and tapped
telephones. The federal post office registered all mail from abroad,
ostensibly to protect mail carriers from charges of theft.
Although the law includes restrictions on searches, officials often
ignored them. In Kosovo and Sandzak, police systematically subjected
ethnic Albanians to random searches of their homes, vehicles, shops, and
offices, asserting that they were searching for weapons. CDHRF records
showed that Serbian police raided 2,324 Kosovar Albanian homes. Photos
of homes which had been searched by police showed chaos--furniture
broken, bedding tossed around, drawers emptied out. On May 21, the home
of Heset Vishi, who was living abroad with his family, was raided by the
police, and in his absence the police arrested his brother, ransacked
his home, and confiscated his typewriter and a computer.
Authorities entered a clinic ward in Djakovica on May 31 and
interrogated a woman about the activities of her husband 4 hours after
she had given birth. Two plainclothes detectives entered the apartment
of Hava Mustafa in Pristina on June 11 without a search warrant. They
beat the daughter who asked who they were and why they had burst into
the apartment. When the mother intervened, she was struck by the
police.
Serb paramilitaries evicted Muslims from land near Priboj on the Bosnian
border, claiming they might be in danger. The Muslims were not allowed
to harvest their crops but told that they must pay property taxes or
lose their medical benefits. Several of the Muslim-owned homes were set
on fire in June.
In June the Serbian police began to round up men of military age,
including official and undocumented refugees and some citizens, to fight
with ethnic Serb forces in Croatia (the Krajina) and Bosnia. The men
were summarily placed in busses and against their will transported
across the border without being allowed to communicate with their
families (see also Section 2.d.). One refugee from Sarajevo, whose
mother was a
Muslim and father a Serb, said that he felt like an animal being hunted
down. A woman who took part in a hunger strike staged in front of the
Serbian presidency building by relatives of the men who had been
forcibly mobilized, said that her husband had been taken away in the
middle of the night by police on June 20. Although he showed his valid
Serbian identification card, he was seized because he had spent his
school years in Rijeka (now Croatia, but then part of Yugoslavia). In
late summer, police continued to stop young men for document checks,
reportedly sending some to training camps run by the notorious criminal
and paramilitary "Arkan" in Erdut in Eastern Slavonia.
The laws regarding desertion from the military lent themselves to abuse.
While compulsory military service was the norm in the former Yugoslavia,
there were large-scale desertions when the war broke out in 1991 by men
of all ethnic groups who chose to walk away from the military rather
than take part in interethnic conflicts. Men of military age continued
to be stopped on the street for identity checks and subjected to
arbitrary harassment and possible forced recruitment. Young men of
Croatian or Albanian descent, in particular, refused to fight against
Croatia; many of them fled the country under the threat of recruitment.
After doing little for several years to enforce universal military
service or track down those who had deserted the military during the
1991 conflict, the military and police began in 1995 once again to
recruit members of minority communities, who were understandably
reluctant to support conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Leaders of the
Kosovar Albanian community believe that the reintroduction for ethnic
Albanians of forced compliance with universal military service was an
attempt to induce young men to flee the country. Almost two-thirds of
the small 10,000-member community of Croats who had lived in Kosovo for
over 700 years emigrated over the past 5 years because of pressure from
Serb nationalists and the refusal of the Government to exempt young men
from the military.
g. Use of Excessive Force and Violations of Humanitarian Law in
Internal Conflicts
The Government officially closed the border with Bosnia in August 1994,
exempting only food, clothing, and medicine. There were many reports of
unofficial support for the cause of ethnic Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia
ranging from political rallies held by ultra-nationalist leaders who
traveled from Serbia, to calls for volunteers by paramilitary groups who
took men to the battle areas in Bosnia and Croatia. The Serbian
Government actively assisted in the forced mobilization by police of
refugees and other men for the conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia (see
Section 1.d.).
Ethnic tensions were high elsewhere in Serbia, and ultra- nationalist
Serbian elements encouraged hostile acts by private citizens against
members of minority ethnic groups. In earlier cases, the local
authorities in Vojvodina ignored threats to members of ethnic minorities
who felt that they were being pressured to leave their homes. However,
when Serb refugees arrived in August, fleeing western Krajina after it
fell to Croatian attack, special police from Belgrade stepped in to
prevent the refugees from taking over the homes of ethnic Croats in
Vojvodina. Elsewhere as well, Serb refugees vented their anger on
ethnic Croats. In the Kotor Bay region of Montenegro, citizens of
Croatian descent were also subject to threats as were Roman Catholic and
Muslim Albanians in Kosovo. Leaders of Hungarian communities in
Vojvodina and Kosovar Albanians complained that the Government's policy
of refugee resettlement was planned to change the ethnic composition of
areas with significant non-Serb populations.
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
Federal law provides for freedom of speech and the press, but in
practice most of the media were controlled by the Government. Serbian
state-run radio and television (RTS), the prime source of news for the
populace, especially outside of Belgrade, has long been under the direct
control of President Milosevic's regime and was his most powerful tool
for the manipulation of public opinion. The main emphasis of the prime
time news program was on the activities of the President, the ruling
SPS, and JUL (Yugoslav Leftist League), whose leader is President
Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic.
Economic pressure was the usual weapon of the regime against the free
press. For example, state-owned enterprises were not allowed to
advertise in independent media. A shortage of newsprint continued to be
a problem for the press. The main newsprint producer in Serbia, Matroz,
supplied newsprint to the state-controlled press at subsidized prices
and made independent publications pay the much higher market price; the
independent press claimed that newspapers approved by the Government
received priority shipments. Matroz cut production from time to time,
reportedly due to unpaid electric bills, tax problems, or a shortage of
fuel. When the independent publications established their own sources
of newsprint, helped by donations from NGO's, customs sometimes delayed
or halted border entry. In Pristina, the newsprint donated by the
international community to the Albanian-language daily Bujku was
appropriated by the Serbian-language daily, leaving Bujku chronically
short of paper.
The state agency for property transition was used on several occasions
to limit the free media. On December 23, 1994, it cancelled the
registration of the Borba stock company and, in a hostile takeover, took
control of the outspoken daily, appointing the Federal Minister for
Information as its new editor-in-chief. The Borba journalists in
protest founded a new daily called Nasa Borba using their own financial
resources. Subsequently the Government initiated a criminal
investigation against the managers of Nasa Borba in a transparent
attempt at intimidation.
In August President Milosevic abruptly dismissed the head of the state-
run radio and television for apparent pro-Serb nationalist bias. Also
in August, the Kragujevac weekly Svetlost, one of the few independent
publications outside Belgrade, became the target of the Government. The
local city assembly, allegedly on orders from the ruling Socialist
Party, nationalized the paper and sent dismissal notices to the staff.
Members of the editorial board refused to leave their offices and
continued to publish under the name Nezavisnost Svetlost (Independent
Light) with material assistance from the independent weekly Vreme.
The electronic media also experienced varying forms of harassment from
the Government. Radio and television not under state control were able
to broadcast only within a limited range in the Belgrade area.
Obtaining a frequency allocation was a complicated procedure for
Serbia's 40 private radio stations. Independent radio B-92, greater
Belgrade's main source of information not subject to government control,
was never officially allocated a frequency from the Government, thereby
making its operations "illegal" and vulnerable to a shutdown. The
Belgrade independent television station Studio B endured similar legal
pressures and continuing problems with its property status. It
cancelled a program about refugees in August, apparently under pressure
from the Government. Late in the year, Studio B broadcast the BBC five-
part documentary "The Death of Yugoslavia" which was critical of the
Serbian regime and Serbian political leaders such as President Milosevic
for causing the outbreak of violence in Yugoslavia in 1991-92.
In Montenegro, journalist Seki Radoncic was convicted in May for
defamation of a high ranking army official after he criticized the
Yugoslav army for war and human rights abuses in the independent
magazine Monitor. He received a 1-year suspended sentence and a 2-month
prison term. On July 25, a member of Montenegro's state security
service bought and burned all the copies of the Belgrade magazine
Interview because it reprinted information from Interpol's most wanted
list regarding the notorious Serb criminal and paramilitary leader
Arkan.
In the Sandzak region in March, Muslim town officials in Tutin accused
the Government of imposing an embargo on information concerning
infectious hepatitis in the region and appealed to the independent press
to investigate the extent of the epidemic. Also in March, a
correspondent for the Albanian-language newspaper, Bujku, was told by
police that he would be killed if he reported about Serbian police
repression in the town of Mitrovica.
While the ruling SPS exercises control over university and student
organizations, instructors are generally free to teach their subjects,
and some of them are active in opposition party politics outside the
classroom. In Kosovo ethnic Albanians have rejected the Serbian
education system and established their own parallel system of schools
and administration. This educational structure is not recognized by the
Serbian Government and is subject to harassment.
Police raided the home used for a teachers' training college in Prizren
on May 31 and seized administrative materials. On June 19, Haz Rexha
was arrested by police and charged with holding lectures in the Albanian
language. In September police ordered 13 teachers and the principal of
a primary school in Tankosiq village to report to the police station.
The teachers were soon released, but the principal and the owner of the
home where classes are conducted were held for 4 hours and mistreated.
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
Although the Federal Constitution provides for freedom of peaceful
assembly and association, the authorities severely restricted these
freedoms, applying the laws and regulations in a capricious manner. The
FRY Government continued to treat political association by members of
ethnic minorities as a threat to the Government, harassing and arresting
leaders and members of ethnic Muslim and Albanian parties. On February
24, four members of the Democratic Action Party (SDA) who had been
circulating a petition for the return of an exiled leader were beaten by
Montenegrin police in Rozaj. On May 26, Serbian police prevented a
meeting of the LDK committees in the village of Banulla and confiscated
their documents. The home of Murat Riza Sylaj, chairman of the local
LDK branch in the village of Dubrave, was raided on June 4 by a Serbian
police squad which confiscated all LDK documents, took Sylaj to the
village graveyard and beat him so severely that he had to seek medical
care for his injuries. In September police arrested and held the
bodyguard and the driver of LDK head Rugova. Also, the Radical Party of
Serbia was prevented from holding a rally in Kosovo in June and two of
its leaders were jailed (see Section 3).
Police also engaged in petty harassment of events in Kosovo organized by
Kosovar Albanians. On April 16, Serbian police broke up 2 soccer
matches with some 4,000 fans in attendance. On June 11 in the Kacanik
region, police prevented a soccer match, and brought charges against the
captains of the two teams.
c. Freedom of Religion
There is no state religion, but the Government gives preferential
treatment, including access to state-run television for major religious
events, to the Serbian Orthodox Church to which the majority of Serbs
belong. Although there are no legal restrictions on the practice of
religion, police condoned periodic violence against religious facilities
used by ethnic minorities (see Section 5).
The State has encouraged the building of Orthodox churches on public
land in Kosovo, including an Orthodox shrine in the center of Djakovica,
a town almost completely ethnic Albanian. Work has begun on an Orthodox
church in the center of Pristina on university land. On June 19, the
imam of the mosque in Kacanik was taken to the police station for
questioning because he had prayed by name for a child who had been shot
by Serbian soldiers (Section 1.a.). On several occasions, Muslims have
been ordered to remove loudspeakers from mosques.
d. Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel,
Emigration, and Repatriation
The Constitution provides for freedom of movement, and the Government
makes passports available to most citizens. Many inhabitants of Serbia-
Montenegro who were born in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, as
well as large numbers of refugees, have not been able to establish their
citizenship in the FRY, leaving them in a stateless limbo.
The Government continues to deny issuance and renewal of passports to
many Kosovar Albanian intellectuals and political activists. For travel
to Albania, all citizens are required to have an exit visa which is
difficult to acquire, with the result that Kosovar Albanians often
travel to Albania by way of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia;
they are then subject to police harassment and the seizure of their
passports when they return to Kosovo. In May Zeke Gecaj, a newspaper
editor accompanying a delegation of the Liberal Party of Kosovo to the
United States, was stopped at the border and prevented from leaving by
police who seized his passport because he had traveled without a visa to
Albania 3 years ago.
Citizens who were born in other parts of the former Yugoslavia also
reported difficulties at borders and occasional confiscation of their
passports. Ethnic Albanians frequently complained of harassment at
border crossings. There have been numerous reports of border guards
confiscating foreign currency or passports from travelers as well as
occasional complaints of physical ill-treatment. Serbian authorities
have generally allowed ethnic Albanian leaders, including LDK head
Ibrahim Rugova, to leave the country and return, even though they
consider his party and other ethnic Albanian parties illegal. The vice
chairman of the LDK, Fehmi Agani, was held at the Macedonian border on
May 8 for 4 hours by officers who questioned him and seized his books,
papers, and the abstracts from a conference he had attended in Germany.
Although exit visas are required only for travel to Albania, the cost of
exiting the country rose rapidly during the year. At the height of the
summer vacation period the exit tax was 60 dinars per person plus 150
dinars for a car, a real impediment to foreign travel in a country where
the average wage was 300 dinars per month.
Police stepped up their checks within Serbia during the summer, asking
for documentation of citizenship and seizing men of military age with
unclear or refugee status for mobilization (see Section 1.f.). Citizens
complained that police frequently took foreign currency from those whom
they stopped.
Serbian police routinely searched citizens of minority groups for hard
currency. The Serbian police of Prizren on January 26 stopped each
pedestrian at a public square for identity checks, searched many of
them, and took the hard currency they found. In June police blocked off
the market place in Podujeva on market day and took hard currency as
well as many goods. The police did not disturb Serb merchants or
confiscate their goods. On July 11, Serbian financial police
confiscated 3 kilograms of gold and 1 kilogram of silver, as well as
other goods, in Prizren, a town known for its jewelry workshops. Only
Albanian-owned shops were targeted by the financial police. During
holiday periods, police seized passports from ethnic Albanian workers
who returned home from abroad, giving them the choice of waiting for a
court process or paying the police large sums of hard currency for the
return of their travel documents.
The Government has been very slow to issue passports to refugees.
Kosovar Albanians also have problems with issuance and renewal of
passports and are sometimes called in for interrogations by state
security officers before passports are issued. In June the Government
sent to Parliament a new citizenship law which would in practice
adversely affect the rights of many inhabitants, including those who had
been born in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, refugees, and
citizens who had migrated to other countries to work or seek asylum.
The U.N. human rights rapporteur noted that the new law would give the
Ministry of the Interior almost complete control over the granting of
citizenship. Although the law had not been enacted by year's end, the
Government served notice that it will severely limit the granting of
citizenship to refugees from the conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia. The
Government also planned to revise the eligibility status of a large
number of people, chiefly refugees, who have been granted citizenship
since 1992.
Government policy toward refugees and asylum seekers has been uneven.
Refugees are often treated as citizens of Serbia-Montenegro for labor
and military purposes but denied other rights such as employment and
travel (see Section 1.f.). The Government has cooperated with the U. N.
High Commissioner for Refugees to provide help for the more than 600,000
refugees in Serbia-Montenegro.
Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to
Change Their Government
The Constitution provides for this right, but in practice citizens are
prevented from exercising it by the Government's monopoly on the mass
media and the electoral process. While there were no elections in 1995,
in past years the authorities denied opposition parties equal access to
the state-run media and omitted many voters from the registration lists.
Observers have also noted numerous voting irregularities and raised
serious questions as to the accuracy of the vote count.
Slobodan Milosevic dominates the political system in Serbia-Montenegro.
Although formally President of Serbia, one of the two constituent
republics in the so-called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Milosevic
first weakened the authorities of the Federal Government through his
control of the Serbian police, the army, and the state administration,
and then placed his followers in key positions, including the Federal
President and the Federal Prime Minister. In November Milosevic
abruptly removed from their positions five senior party officials who
were apparently purged for their continued support of Serbian
nationalist aims in Croatia and Bosnia, a position Milosevic has now
discarded. Milosevic greatly circumscribes the Montenegrin Government's
sphere for independent action and does not tolerate significant
divergence from the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia line.
The domestic political opposition continues to be obstructed by these
extralegal means of political control and has proved incapable of
providing an effective alternative to the SPS. Many citizens are afraid
to join opposition parties unless they are economically self-sufficient
because of SPS control over many jobs. Although the SPS does not have
an absolute majority of seats in the Serbian Parliament, it has managed
to coopt one of the smaller opposition parties to allow the Socialists
to form the Government. In Montenegro, the ruling Democratic Party of
Socialists enjoys an absolute majority. In both Serbia and Montenegro,
the ruling parties have effectively blocked legislation that would
loosen their control over the state-run media. In July the SPS ended
television coverage of parliamentary debate which had been part of the
agreement worked out when the Government was formed. Although the
opposition initially walked out, and later demanded an extraordinary
session to debate the Government's action, its protests were ignored.
The Government has taken no action when threats have been made against
the personal security of members of the opposition parties, including
death threats to parliamentary deputies and their families. The
authorities did move against the notorious ultra-nationalist leader of
the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj, who was detained in
Gnjilane, Kosovo, in June on a misdemeanor charge but was put in jail
and given a stiffer sentence, apparently upon orders from Belgrade. At
the same time, his parliamentary immunity was stripped from him in an
irregular proceeding.
Ethnic Serbs dominate the political leadership in Serbia. Few members
of other ethnic groups play any role at the top levels of government or
the state-run economy, although there are no legal restrictions
preventing advancement. Ethnic Albanians, as a matter of principle,
have refused to take part in the electoral process and therefore have
virtually no representation.
Women are greatly underrepresented in party and government positions,
holding less than 10 percent of ministerial-level positions in the
Serbian and federal Governments. As with ethnic minorities, there are
no legal restrictions on their participation, and women are active in
political organizations. An exception to the lack of women in leading
positions in politics is the controversial Mira Markovic, wife of
Serbian President Milosevic. She is the leading force in the neo-
Communist United Yugoslav Left Party, through which she exerts
considerable influence on policymakers.
Section 4 Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights
The Governments of Serbia and Montenegro formally maintain that they
have no objection to international organizations conducting human rights
investigations on their territories. However, they hindered such
activities and regularly rejected the findings of human rights groups.
A number of independent human rights organizations exist in Serbia-
Montenegro, researching and gathering information on abuses and
publicizing human rights cases. The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law
Fund and Center for Antiwar Action researched human rights abuses
throughout the FRY and, on occasion, elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia.
The Belgrade-based Helsinki Committee published human rights studies and
cooperated with the Pristina-based Helsinki Committee in monitoring
human rights abuses in
Kosovo. In Kosovo the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and
Freedoms collects and collates data on human rights abuses and publishes
newsletters. In the Sandzak region, a similar council monitors abuses
against the local Muslim population and produces comprehensive reports.
All of these organizations offer advice and help to victims of abuse.
Local human rights monitors (Serbs as well as members of ethnic
minorities) and NGO's which supported their efforts worked under
difficult circumstances amid public insinuations by ultra-nationalist
leaders and the government-controlled media that they were traitors.
The constant stream of invective levelled against human rights activists
and NGO's left personnel vulnerable to public animosity. In May members
of the antiwar Belgrade Circle who had visited Sarajevo received
threatening phone calls, and one young woman was called to the police
station for questioning. Young nationalist thugs trashed the offices
shared by the small Civic Alliance Party and the Center for Antiwar
Action. A Serb told the weekly Interview that he would like to "kill
all the humanist grandmothers," naming the female head of the
humanitarian law fund. NGO's had their equipment held up by customs
officials, and financial police combed through their records. The
Government revoked the license of the Soros Foundation in May, after
subjecting it to sustained attacks in the government- controlled press.
The Soros Foundation appealed to the Supreme Court of Serbia but no
action has been taken on the case.
Serbian authorities refused to issue visas to representatives of a
number of human rights organizations, including Amnesty International
and the rapporteur for the United Nations Committee on Human Rights.
The new U.N. rapporteur, Elisabeth Rehn, was allowed to visit areas of
her choice, including Kosovo, during her second trip to the country in
December. In general, the Government continued to deny visas to
visitors whom it believed would visit the ethnic minority areas of
Serbia, or to delay the issuance until visitors agreed to a restrictive
program of meetings with Serbian officials. FRY authorities refused
numerous approaches by OSCE representatives to allow the reintroduction
of the OSCE long-duration missions to Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Sandzak,
maintaining that the FRY must first be "reinstated" in the OSCE.
In spite of a previous agreement that it could visit detainees, the ICRC
waited 7 months for permission to visit men detained in Kosovo awaiting
trial for conspiracy to overthrow the Government (see Section 1.d.).
The ICRC continues to seek permission to visit detainees from the time
they are held, when most human rights violations are thought to occur.
FRY officials stated in 1994 that they would offer limited cooperation
with the U.N. war crimes tribunal, to the extent that the local law
allowed. Both the Serbian and Federal Constitutions forbid extradition.
Although Serbian authorities promised that they would try war criminals
within the country, suspected war criminals were never the targets of
formal investigations. The paramilitary leader Arkan, suspected of war
crimes and wanted by Interpol for other crimes, carried on his
flamboyant lifestyle with impunity, traveling between his home in
Belgrade and his paramiltary activities in Serb-held areas of Croatia.
Section 5 Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion, Disability,
Language, or Social Status
While federal and republic laws provide for equal rights for all
citizens, regardless of ethnic group, religion, language, or social
status and prohibit discrimination against women, in reality the legal
system provides little protection for such groups.
Women
The oppressive nationalism fostered by years of conflict in Bosnia,
reflected in the suppression of the rights of non-Serbs in Serbia-
Montenegro, and the precarious financial situation of most families have
exacerbated the traditionally high level of domestic violence. Life in
cramped apartments, often with the added burden of refugees from the
conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, led to quarrels which often erupted
into violence, particularly wife beatings.
The few official agencies dedicated to coping with family violence have
inadequate resources and are limited in their options by social pressure
to keep families together at all costs. Few victims of spousal abuse
ever file complaints with authorities. The Center for Autonomous
Women's Rights offered the SOS rape crisis and spousal abuse hot line
together with a number of self-help groups. The Center also offered
help to refugee women, many of whom experienced extreme abuse such as
rape during the conflicts from which they fled.
Traditional patriarchal ideas of gender roles, which hold that women
should be subservient to the male members of their family, have long
subjected women to discrimination. In some rural areas, women are
little more than serfs without the right to control property and
children; in a few villages, brides are still bought and sold. Women
are entitled to equal pay for equal work and are usually granted
maternity leave for 1 year. According to the Helsinki Committee of
Serbia, the collapse of the former State and 4 years of war have
exacerbated discrimination against women. Also, women have lost
benefits they enjoyed under socialism and thereby their social safety
net. Women are active in human rights organizations; women's rights
groups continued to operate with little or no official acknowledgement.
"Women in Black," formed in 1990 to protest the war in Croatia, held
weekly silent demonstrations for which police permission was sought and
given. When that organization attempted to host a regional conference
in August in northern Vojvodina, government officials intimidated local
supporters to keep them from providing logistical support and refused to
issue tourist visas to participants from other countries.
Children
Children in Kosovo have been particularly disadvantaged by the political
struggle for control of the school system. Kosovar Serb and Albanian
elementary children are taught in separate areas of divided schools or
attend in shifts. Older Kosovar Albanian children attend school in
private homes. A 1995 U.N. Children's Fund report found that the health
situation for children in Kosovo, already the worst in Europe, had
deteriorated further. Humanitarian aid officials blamed the high rate
of infant and childhood death, as well as increasing epidemics of
preventable diseases, primarily on poverty which led to malnutrition and
poor hygiene, and to the deterioration of public sanitation. Ethnic
minorities in some cases fear Serb state-run medical facilities, which
results in a low rate of immunization and a reluctance to seek timely
medical attention.
There is no pattern of governmental or societal abuse against children,
nor is child prostitution condoned. However, violence against girls
within the family is rising, with human rights centers reporting that
some 1,000 girls approached them to report abuse during the year.
Children are not conscripted into the army. Police violence against
non-Serb children was the primary abuse (see Section 1.c.). A 14-year-
old boy looking for livestock in the Glogovac area of Kosovo was chased
down by a police car and beaten, supposedly because he had whistled.
People with Disabilities
There is no discrimination against disabled persons in employment,
education, or in the provision of other state services. The law
mandates access to new official buildings for people with disabilities,
and the Government enforces these provisions in practice. The new metro
station in downtown Belgrade provides access for the disabled.
Religious Minorities
Religion and ethnicity are so closely intertwined as to be inseparable.
Serious discrimination and harassment of Serbia's religious minorities
continued, especially in the Kosovo and Sandzak regions. Violence
against the Catholic minority in Vojvodina, largely made up of ethnic
Hungarians and Croatians, was also a problem and intensified with the
arrival of Serb refugees from Croatia. Individual Catholics were
targeted for threats and harassment.
Most threats and attacks against those of other religions were carried
out by nationalist Serbs who associate Orthodoxy with Serb Patriotism.
Catholic churches in the Vojvodina were often subject to vandalism. On
the night of May 5, a Catholic cross in the village of Bac was destroyed
by an explosive charge. On May 19, a bomb was thrown into the
churchyard of the Catholic church in Sremska Mitrovica. Vasica Catholic
church was blown up and destroyed on May 21. In June a Catholic church
in the Srem region was burned down. A Krajina Serb refugee on September
10 walked into a Catholic church in Prizren and threatened a Kosovar
Albanian priest, accusing Catholics of supporting Croatia. Krajina Serb
refugees in Vojvodina made similar threats to Croatian Catholic priests
and congregations in August and September. On August 8, young people
burst into a Catholic church in Hrtkovci at the time of the evening
service, evicted the priest and churchgoers, and announced that the
church could no longer be used.
National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
The ethnic minorities of Serbia-Montenegro suffered discrimination in
all respects. In addition to the abuses described elsewhere in this
report, there were credible reports that qualified Muslims or ethnic
Albanians continued to be driven from their homes or fired from their
jobs on the basis of religion or ethnicity. The influx of refugees from
the Serbian areas of Croatia in the summer led to sporadic outbursts of
violence and threats against ethnic Croats and Hungarians in the
Vojvodina. Police responded effectively, however, in most cases
restoring property to minorities affected. The Romani population is
generally tolerated, and there is no official discrimination. Roma have
the right to vote and there are two small Romani parties. However,
local authorities often ignore or condone societal intimidation of the
Romani community. Romani children are not taught in their own language
and often cannot afford to buy school materials. According to the
Helsinki Committee of Serbia, only 20 percent of them complete an
elementary education.
Section 6 Worker Rights
a. The Right of Association
All workers (except military personnel) have the legal right to form or
join unions. Unions are either official (government-affiliated) or
independent organizations. The official unions are numerically far
stronger than their independent counterparts, claiming a membership of 2
million, while Nezavisnost--the opposition trade union confederation--
has a registered membership of only about 85,000. The imbalance in
numbers, however, is of little significance as workers in the official
unions have little real voice, and their bargaining leverage tends to be
highly circumscribed by the Government. The independent unions, while
active in recruiting new members, have not yet reached the critical mass
to enable countrywide strikes that would force employers to provide
concessions on workers' rights. The largely splintered approach of the
independent unions has left them with little to show in terms of gains
in either wages or improved working conditions. The Nezavisnost
leadership has participated actively in international organizations.
b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively
While this right is guaranteed under law, collective bargaining remains
at a rudimentary level of development. Individual unions tend to be
very narrow and pragmatic in their aims, unable to join with other
unions to bargain for a common purpose, such as job security guarantees.
The overall result is a highly fragmented labor structure composed of
workers who relate to the needs of their individual union but rarely to
those of other workers. Despite legal guarantees for collective
bargaining, the practice was effectively undermined during the period of
the U.N. economic sanctions by the so-called Law on Minimum Salaries.
Under this law, workers made redundant by sanctions were nonetheless
guaranteed a minimum salary that was not subject to negotiation through
collective bargaining. Antiunion discrimination was also evident as the
Government cracked down on independent trade union organizers, declaring
their activities illegal and ordering their suspension from the
workplace.
There are no known export processing zones.
c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor
Forced labor is prohibited by law and is not known to occur.
d. Minimum Age for Employment of Children
The minimum age for employment is 16 years, although in villages and
farming communities it is not unusual to find younger children at work
assisting their families. With an actual unemployment rate (registered
unemployed plus redundant workers who perform only minimal work) in
excess of 50 percent, real employment opportunities for children are
nonexistent. Children can, however, be found in a variety of unofficial
"retail" jobs, typically selling smuggled cigarettes or other small
items on the streets.
e. Acceptable Conditions of Work
Minimum wage standards are established by the Government and regularly
updated to reflect changes in the cost of living.
Large socially owned enterprises, including all the major banks,
industrial plants, and trading companies in the country, generally
observe minimum wage standards, which currently stand at about $100 per
month (500 Yugoslav dinars, calculated at prevailing black market
exchange rates). Private enterprises also use the minimum wage as a
general guide, but are often more flexible in paying higher wages.
Reports of sweatshops operating in the country are rare. With the cost
of food approaching three times the monthly wage, however, most working
class families have little discretionary income remaining at the end of
the month. The official workweek, listed as 40 hours, had little
meaning in an economy with an unemployment rate over 50 percent, as
people tended to work whatever hours were available in order to maximize
take-home pay. Similarly, neither employers nor employees tended to
give high priority to enforcement of established occupational safety and
health regulations, focussing their efforts instead on economic
survival.
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