Legal Investigation of allegations on Kosovo

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Mon May 10 07:12:45 PDT 1999


<< Subj: jhurd_newparty: Important German Documents On Kosovo (fwd)

Date: 5/8/99 11:48:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time

From: nicadlw at earthlink.net (David L. Wilson)

Sender: owner-jhurd_newparty at indiana.edu

To: jhurd_newparty at indiana.edu

IMPORTANT INTERNAL DOCUMENTS FROM GERMANY'S FOREIGN OFFICE

REGARDING PRE-BOMBARDMENT GENOCIDE IN KOSOVO

Collected by

International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms

1: Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Mnster, March 11,

1999 (Az: 13A 3894/94.A):

"Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have neither been nor are now exposed

to regional or countrywide group persecution in the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia." (Thesis 1)

2: Opinion of the Bavarian Administrative Court, October 29, 1998

(Az: 22 BA 94.34252):

"The Foreign Office's status reports of May 6, June 8 and July 13,

1998, given to the plaintiffs in the summons to a verbal

deliberation, do not allow the conclusion that there is group

persecution of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Not even regional

group persecution, applied to all ethnic Albanians from a specific

part of Kosovo, can be observed with sufficient certainty. The

violent actions of the Yugoslav military and police since February

1998 were aimed at separatist activities and are no proof of a

persecution of the whole Albanian ethnic group in Kosovo or in a

part of it. What was involved in the Yugoslav violent actions and

excesses since February 1998 was a selective forcible action

against the military underground movement (especially the KLA) and

people in immediate contact with it in its areas of operation. ...A

state program or persecution aimed at the whole ethnic group of

Albanians exists neither now nor earlier."

3: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office, January 12, 1999 to

the Administrative Court of Trier (Az: 514-516.80/32 426):

"Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to

Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of Kosovo is still

not involved in armed conflict. Public life in cities like

Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc. has, in the entire conflict

period, continued on a relatively normal basis." The "actions of

the security forces (were) not directed against the

Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the

military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."

4: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office January 6, 1999 to

the Bavarian Administrative Court, Ansbach:

"At this time, an increasing tendency is observable inside the

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of refugees returning to their

dwellings. ... Regardless of the desolate economic situation in

the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (according to official

information of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 700,000 refugees

from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzogovina have found lodging since

1991), no cases of chronic malnutrition or insufficient medical

treatment among the refugees are known and significant

homelessness has not been observed. ... According to the Foreign

Office's assessment, individual Kosovo-Albanians (and their

immediate families) still have limited possibilities of settling

in those parts of Yugoslavia in which their countrymen or friends

already live and who are ready to take them in and support them."

5. Report of the Foreign Office March 15, 1999 (Az:

514-516,80/33841) to the Administrative Court, Mainz:

"As laid out in the status report of November 18, 1998, the KLA has

resumed its positions after the partial withdrawal of the (Serbian)

security forces in October 1998, so it once again controls broad

areas in the zone of conflict. Before the beginning of spring 1999

there were still clashes between the KLA and security forces,

although these have not until now reached the intensity of the

battles of spring and summer 1998."

6. Opinion of the Administrative Court of Baden-Wrttemberg,

February 4, 1999 (Az: A 14 S 22276/98):

"The various reports presented to the senate all agree that the

often feared humanitarian catastrophe threatening the Albanian

civil population has been averted. ... This appears to be the case

since the winding down of combat in connection with an agreement

made with the Serbian leadership at the end of 1998 (Status Report

of the Foreign Office, November 18, 1998). Since that time both the

security situation and the conditions of life of the

Albanian-derived population have noticeably improved. ...

Specifically in the larger cities public life has since returned to

relative normality (cf. on this Foreign Office, January 12, 1999 to

the Administrative Court of Trier; December 28, 1998 to the Upper

Administrative Court of Lneberg and December 23, 1998 to the

Administrative Court at Kassel), even though tensions between the

population groups have meanwhile increased due to individual acts

of violence... Single instances of excessive acts of violence

against the civil population, e.g. in Racak, have, in world

opinion, been laid at the feet of the Serbian side and have aroused

great indignation. But the number and frequency of such excesses do

not warrant the conclusion that every Albanian living in Kosovo is

exposed to extreme danger to life and limb nor is everyone who

returns there threatened with death and severe injury."

7: Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Mnster, February

24, 1999 (Az: 14 A 3840/94,A):

"There is no sufficient actual proof of a secret program, or an

unspoken consensus on the Serbian side, to liquidate the Albanian

people, to drive it out or otherwise to persecute it in the extreme

manner presently described. ... If Serbian state power carries out

its laws and in so doing necessarily puts pressure on an Albanian

ethnic group which turns its back on the state and is for

supporting a boycott, then the objective direction of these

measures is not that of a programmatic persecution of this

population group ...Even if the Serbian state were benevolently to

accept or even to intend that a part of the citizenry which sees

itself in a hopeless situation or opposes compulsory measures,

should emigrate, this still does not represent a program of

persecution aimed at the whole of the Albanian majority (in

Kosovo)."

"If moreover the (Yugoslav) state reacts to separatist strivings

with consistent and harsh execution of its laws and with

anti-separatist measures, and if some of those involved decide to

go abroad as a result, this is still not a deliberate policy of the

(Yugoslav) state aiming at ostracizing and expelling the minority;

on the contrary it is directed toward keeping this people within

the state federation."

"Events since February and March 1998 do not evidence a persecution

program based on Albanian ethnicity. The measures taken by the

armed Serbian forces are in the first instance directed toward

combatting the KLA and its supposed adherents and supporters."

------ Translators Notes ------

As in the case of the Clinton Administration, the present regime in

Germany, specifically Joschka Fischer's Foreign Office, has

justified its intervention in Kosovo by pointing to a "humanitarian

catastrophe," "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" occurring there,

especially in the months immediately preceding the NATO attack. The

following internal documents from Fischer's ministry and from

various regional Administrative Courts in Germany spanning the year

before the start of NATO's air attacks, attest that criteria of

ethnic cleansing and genocide were not met. The Foreign Office

documents were responses to the courts' needs in deciding the status

of Kosovo-Albanian refugees in Germany. Although one might in these

cases suppose a bias in favor of downplaying a humanitarian

catastrophe in order to limit refugees, it nevertheless remains

highly significant that the Foreign Office, in contrast to its

public assertion of ethnic cleansing and genocide in justifying NATO

intervention, privately continued to deny their existence as

Yugoslav policy in this crucial period. And this continued to be

their assessment even in March of this year. Thus these documents

tend to show that stopping genocide was not the reason the German

government, and by implication NATO, intervened in Kosovo, and that

genocide (as understood in German and international law) in Kosovo

did not precede NATO bombardment, at least not from early 1998

through March, 1999, but is a product of it.

Excerpts from the these official documents were obtained by IALANA

(International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms) which

sent them to various media. The texts used here were published in

the German daily junge welt on April 24, 1999. (See

http://www.jungewelt.de/1999/04-24/011.shtml as well as the

commentary at http://www.jungewelt.de/1999/04-24/001.shtml).

According to my sources, this is as complete a reproduction of the

documents as exists in the German media at the time of this writing.

What follows is my translation of these published excerpts.

- Eric Canepa Brecht Forum, New York April 28, 1999

=============================================================

David L. Wilson * 212-674-9499 * <nicadlw at earthlink.net>

The main enemy is at home. -- Karl Liebknecht, 1914

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