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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Human rights in Kosovo far below European criteria

Belgrade/Strasbourg, 21 September 2004

Kosovo Ombudsman Marek Antony Nowicki said in Strasbourg, France, today that the level of human rights in Kosovo-Metohija is far below European criteria.

Marek Antony Nowicki

During a visit to the Council of Europe, Nowicki said the rights of Serbs and the Roma are the most in peril, adding that the key issue for Kosovo’s interim institutions and UNMIK is how to convince the Serbs that taking part in the elections is in their own interest.

According to him the issue if of utmost significance, because if the Kosovo Serbs fail to turn out for elections, it would mark a defeat for the international community and the interim institutions.

Given that Serbs have taken part in previous elections and it is questionable whether that gained them anything, a clear solution to the problem is not evident. Nowicki also said that it is a fact that their life in Kosovo cannot be called normal.

He said that there can be no mass return of displaced persons to Kosovo-Metohija, noting that displacements are particularly obvious in mixed, Serbian-Albanian environments as well as in [Serb] villages close to ethnic-Albanian ones, which implies ethnic cleansing.

According to him, one should be careful when using this phrase, because people are leaving Kosovo for ethnic and political reasons, but also for economic ones.

As an obvious example of fear that exists in the province, Nowicki mentioned a recent appeal by Serbs from Lipljan for the international forces not to remove the barbed wire dividing their town into the ethnic-Albanian and the Serb parts.