February 18, 2015 marks the 22nd anniversary since the Yugoslav Army’s attack on the village of Kukurovici near Priboj, where the elderly Uzeir Bulutovic, Musan Husovic and Fatima Sarac were killed. To date, the institutions have not identified the perpetrators, nor have the victims’ families received the status of civilian victims of war.
General Ljubiša Diković appeared on the Pink TV show Teška Rečon February 2, 2015, after the “Rudnica File” had been made public, only to deny his responsibility for the war crimes committed in Kosovo and to accuse the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) of running a “smear campaign” against him personally and against the entire Army of the Republic of Serbia. General Diković claimed he had never “planned, organized, participated, or in any way instigated the commitment of war crimes.”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) dismissed the mutual lawsuits between the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Croatia for the violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, establishing that none of the parties committed an act of genocide during the war on the territory of the Republic of Croatia in the period 1991-95, but also establishing that large-scale crimes against the civilian population were committed.
The Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor (OWCP) informed the public on Friday, January 30th, 2015 that it has requested from the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) the „entire documentation relating to the Rudnica Case“. The OWCP stated that 53 bodies have been identified at the Rudnica location so far, on the basis of which pre-trial proceedings have been launched, adding that they are requesting the documents from the HLC for the purpose of gathering further information on the crimes, which were, according to the allegations of the HLC, committed by members of the Yugoslav Army and Ministry of the Interior in April and May 1999“. The OWCP also reminded the general public that in January 2012 they established, on the basis of an inspection of the HLC’s allegations, that there were no grounds for the suspicion that General Ljubiša Diković was responsible for the war crimes alleged in the Ljubiša Diković Dossier.
On 23rd December 2014, the public consultation on the Bill on the Rights of War Veterans,
Disabled War Veterans, Civilian Invalids of
War and their Family Members (the Bill) prepared by the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Policy (the Ministry) was closed. The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) believes that this Bill should be withdrawn from the adoption procedure, because it does not reflect the real needs and diversity of victims who live in Serbia, violates the constitutional principle of equal protection before the law for every citizen, and is deeply inconsistent with international and generally accepted norms relating to the protection of victims of human rights abuses.
The Court of Appeals in Belgrade has modified the judgment rendered by the Higher Court in Požarevac, by which the accused, Boban Petković, was found guilty of a war crime against a civilian population and sentenced to five years of imprisonment, and decreased his sentence to three years of imprisonment. The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) holds that three years of imprisonment is an inappropriately mild sentence and that the mitigating circumstances that the Court of Appeals considered in the case of the accused are unacceptable from the standpoint of justice for victims of war crimes.
A talk show host on the Prva srpska televizija (First Serbian TV Station), Ivan Ivanović, mocked victims of rapes committed during and in relation to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in his show broadcast on November 30th, 2014, thus seriously offending thousands of rape victims in BiH. Human rights organizations demand that Prva srpska televizija and Ivan Ivanović make a public apology to victims of rapes committed during the war in BiH, and that they show the movie Grbavica, which discusses the fate of women who were raped in BiH, at the usual time dedicated to this talk show, in order to indicate respect for these victims.
On November 20th, 2014, it will be 23 years since the crime at the “Ovčara” farm near Vukovar was committed. In this incident, members of the Serb Radical Party volunteer units under the control of the Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) executed 265 Croat civilians and prisoners of war. The bodies of 48 of the victims have not been found to date.
The Administrative Court in Novi Sad rendered a judgment on October 22nd, 2014, dismissing the lawsuit filed by the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) against the Provincial Secretariat For Health, Social Policy and Demography (Provincial Secretariat), because they refused to grant the status of civilian invalid of war to A.S. from Vojvodina, whom JNA soldiers had attempted to kill at his job in September 1991 not far from Apatin. In view of this judgment by the Administrative Court, the HLC will file a constitutional appeal with the Constitutional Court of Serbia.
