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Pogodak!
This report is the result of systematic monitoring of initiatives in the field of transitional justice in the countries which came into existence following the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. The monitoring has been carried out by human rights organisations, the Humanitarian Law Center (Belgrade) and Documenta (Zagreb). The disintegration of the Yugoslav federation was marked by three high-intensity armed conflicts – in Croatia (1991-95), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-95) and Kosovo (1998-99), where at least 130,000 people lost their lives, millions were forced to flee their homes, while hundreds of thousands of houses were destroyed.... >>
HLC-Kosovo is the only nongovernmental organization monitoring trials of war crimes and ethnically motivated criminal offences in Kosovo. In 2007, HLC-Kosovo monitored 117 main hearings in 21 cases before municipal and district courts, as well as four cases before the Supreme Court of Kosovo. The persons examined in these [monitored] cases included 119 witnesses (two of whom were protected witnesses) and five ballistic experts and neuropsychiatrists. In all cases the indictments were brought and represented by international prosecutors. All the chamber presidents are international judges, with local judges serving as trial chamber members.... >>
In the period following the toppling of Slobodan Milošević, the transitional government supported domestic war crimes trials, but it soon became clear that serious impediments existed. Police was not willing to share its data on war crimes perpetrators with prosecutors, primarily because most of them belonged to the police.... >>
Every government assumes political responsibility for the deeds and misdeeds of its
predecessor, and every nation for the deeds and misdeeds of the past.
Hannah Arendt, ''Eichmann in Jerusalem''
HLC Kosovo
 
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Vision

The office of the Humanitarian Law Center in Kosovo (HLC-Kosovo) is working to document facts that will assist Kosovo society to deal with the recent past, while at the same time promoting the protection of minority rights, whose unsatisfactory situation is largely a legacy of the recent past. HLC Kosovo seeks to counter denial and political manipulation of human losses, and ensure the integrity and transparency of war crimes trials dealing with those losses. It also seeks to promote and monitor the protection of minority rights, which are fundamental to Kosovo’s democratic development, to prospects for minority return, and ultimately to a peaceful relationship between Kosovo and Serbia.

History

HLC established its office in Pristina in May 1997. Until the outbreak of hostilities between Serbian security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army in February 1998, HLC focused on documenting police repression of Albanians, investigating cases of torture, illegal detention, mass invitations of Albanians for ‘informative talks’, and political trials. From this date HLC Kosovo shifted its focus to documenting killings and disappearances of Kosovo Albanians as well as disappearances of Serbs. When NATO intervened in 1999, HLC moved its office to Montenegro, where it continued its documentation work among the 100,000 Albanians whom Serbian security forces had expelled. Following the June 1999 peace agreement that ended the war, HLC returned to Pristina along with the refugees and began documenting the atrocities that had been conducted by Serbian forces during the NATO intervention. After the establishment of the international administration in Kosovo in June 1999, HLC published numerous reports on the killings and disappearances of Albanians and agitated for Serbian authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice. It also investigated kidnappings, disappearances and murder of Serbs, Ashkalia, Bosniaks and Albanians for which members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were in the majority of cases responsible.

Programme

HLC-Kosovo implements three projects within the framework of the HLC Transitional Justice programme:

                         - Kosovo Memory Book

                         - Monitoring War Crimes Trials and Trials for Ethnically Motivated Crimes

                         - Promoting Minority Rights