The Commander of the Gendarmery, Milenko Božović, has suspended Vladan Krstović, a serving officer of this unit, who was indicted by the War Crimes Prosecutor (OWCP) in the Ljubenić case, at the request thereupon submitted by the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC). The HLC points out that the Serbian Army and the Ministry of Defence have declined to remove from active duty Serbian Army (SA) officer Pavle Gavrilović and serviceman Rajko Kozlina, who stand trial for the crime against civilians in the village of Trnje in March 1999.
The Court of Appeal in Belgrade has quashed the interim judgment of the Higher Court in Belgrade, which found the Yugoslav Army (YA) responsible for the war crime which occurred in the village of Kukurovići on 18th February 1993, and remanded the case for retrial. The Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC) notes that this decision shows that Serbian courts are continuing with their practice of shielding the state institutions from responsibility for past human rights violations.
The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, acting upon the appeal filed by the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), has found that the practice of anonymization of judgments is in violation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection. In his Decision, the Commissioner issued an order to the Higher Court in Belgrade to deliver to the HLC the judgment without illegal anonymization, under the threat of the imposition of a fine.
In Serbia (without Kosovo) and Montenegro, 275 people lost their lives as a result of the NATO bombing: 180 civilians, 90 members of the Yugoslav Army (YA) and five were members of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior (MUP). Except three Chinese nationals, all were citizens of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).
In Kosovo, 484 people were killed: 267 civilians (209 Albanian and 58 non-Albanian), 171 members of the YA, 20 members of the Serbian MUP and 26 members of the KLA (19 of whom died in the NATO bombing of the Dubrava prison, near Istok).
Here you can see list of names of people who lost their lives in NATO bombing.
Monday, 24th March, marks fifteen years since the Serbian army and police waged its systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing and violence directed against the Kosovo Albanian civilian population during the NATO intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) calls on the state institutions of the Republic of Serbia to secure justice for the victims of the crimes in Kosovo and their family members, by prosecuting all those responsible, regardless of their rank at the time of the commission of crimes or within the current hierarchies of power, and by providing just satisfaction to the victims for the suffering they endured.
On 12th March 2014, the Coalition for Access to Justice invited Pablo de Greiff, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, to visit Serbia, in order to make recommendations to the Government of Serbia regarding the measures which will help achieve justice for victims of crimes and other gross human rights violations committed during the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.
At the end of February 2014, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) was informed that the Ombudsman, the Office for Human and Minority Rights of the Government of Serbia (Office for Human Rights) and the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality (Commissioner) had given up on the initiative for the passing of the new Law on Civilian Victims of War, which would acknowledge the rights of all the citizens of Serbia who have been victims of war crimes and other serious violations of human rights related to the wars of the 1990s. The HLC points out that denying the status of civilian victims to numerous categories has all the characteristics of a systematic violation of human rights, and further, that the state’s treatment of these individuals is unprecedented in the former Yugoslav region.
On Thursday, 27th February 2014, it will be twenty-one years since the crime at Štrpci (BiH), where members of the Army of the Republic of Srpska (VRS) abducted 19 Bosniak civilians – citizens of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – from a train travelling from Belgrade to Bar and subsequently killed them. Women in Black, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights and the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) reiterate that the responsibility for this crime lies with the institutions of the Republic of Serbia and condemn their present-day shameful treatment of victims of this crime by refusing to recognize them as civilian victims of war.
We are appalled at the utterly irresponsible statement the President of the Republic of Srpska made during the programme entitled Interview, broadcast on 12 February 2014 on the Radio-Television of Republika Srpska, suggesting that the Humanitarian Law Center is providing financial support to the current protests in Bosnia. We insist that this is a blatant untruth and a dishonorable attempt to deceive the general public in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the entire region.
For Thursday, April 10, the promotion has been scheduled, on the premises of the Serbian Army Centre, of the book “The Srebrenica Fraud”, authored by Ratko Škrbić, who denies the Srebrenica genocide and the facts established in the judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Serbia.