R: Human Rights Watch - Macedonian Police Abuses Documented

["Fulvio Grimaldi" <bassottovic@libero.it>]

Sull'affidabilità di Human Rights Watch e sulla sua indipendenza
dall'intelligence USA sappiamo tutto. Si ripete la manovra del rovesciamento
di una verità evidente a tutti per cui il carnefice diventa vittima e
viceversa. E' un modulo logoro, già tentato, abusato e smascherato in
Kosovo. Le prove del sostegno USA, attraverso agenzie di mercenari al soldo
del Pentagono come l'MPRI (Military Professional Resources INC), di
Alexandria, Virginia, sotto stretto controllo della CIA, sono state rese
pubbliche e mai smentite. L'MPRI ha un contratto ufficiale con il governo
macedone, per addestramento e armamento del suo esercito e,
contemporaneamente, addestra ed arma l'UCK, oggi mandatario USA della
destabilizzazione della Macedonia, come ulteriore fase della frantumazione
della Jugoslavia ai fini del totale controllo USA (in funzione antieuropea)
della regione da dove stanno per passare le infrastrutture del famoso
corridoio 8. E' significativo che l'approvazione dello studio di fattibilità
dell'oleodotto da Vargas, Bulgaria, sul Mar Nero, attraverso la Macedonia,
al porto albanese di Vlore (Corridoio 8) e l'inizio dei lavori siano
coincisi con il rinnovato uso dei terroristi UCK, questa volta in Macedonia,
sulla base delle stesse mistificazione circa la negazione dei diritti umani
alla minoranza (20%, non 30-49%) albanese. Negazione denunciata da coloro
che hanno effettuato l'unica vera pulizia etnica del Kosovo, uccidendo e
cacciando 400.000 kosovari serbi, rom, goranci, bulgari, ebrei. E' anche
interessante notare che i terroristi albanesi partono da zone sotto totale
controllo USA-GB ed escono armati da campi di addestramento delle SAS (forze
speciali britanniche), che l'oleodotto destinato ad attraversare il Nord
della Macedonia viene costruito da AMBO, un consorzio
bulgaro-macedone-albanese a prevalente capitale USA, diretto da E.L.
Ferguson, direttore della Brown & Root, associata della megamultinazionale
Halliburton, quella del vicepresidente USA Dick Cheney, la stessa che ha
costruito e effettua la manutenzione e lo sviluppo di Bondsteel, la più
grande base USA costruita dopo la guerra del Vietnam.
In questo modo gli USA controllano entrambe le parti in guerra, accendendo e
spegnendo la miccia a seconda delle proprie necessità strategiche. La
destabilizzazione della Macedonia settentrionale, inoltre, allarga il
territorio di transito dei traffici di droga, di cui i cartelli criminali
finanziatori dell'UCK sono, secondo l'Europol, i massimi responsabili in
Europa.Per ulteriori approfondimenti sull'operazione USA-UCK in Macedonia,
vedi il recente studio di Chossudovsky, "Washington finances ethnic warfare
in the Balkans",  o lo studio di Karen Talbot in "Stop Nato", "The name of
the game is oil", o un mio servizio ne "L'Ernesto".in uscita. Non resta il
benchè minimo dubbio sui rapporti storici ed attuali tra CIA e UCK.
Fulvio Grimaldi
-----Messaggio Originale-----
Da: "Paola Lucchesi" <paola.lucchesi@mail.inet.it>
A: <pck-yugoslavia@peacelink.it>
Data invio: venerdì 1 giugno 2001 10.46
Oggetto: Human Rights Watch - Macedonian Police Abuses Documented


>
>        "Ethnic Albanian men fleeing the fighting in Macedonia face severe
>        ill-treatment by the police. We have documented serious beatings
>        and torture of ethnic Albanians at the Kumanovo and Skopje police
>        stations in the last week. The victims we interviewed have the
>        bruises and injuries to back up their claims of abuse."
>
>                                       Holly Cartner
>                                       HRW Executive Director
>                                       Europe and Central Asia division
>
>
> http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/05/macedonia0530.htm
>
> Macedonian Police Abuses Documented
> Ethnic Albanian Men Separated, Tortured at Police Stations
>
> (Skopje, Macedonia, May 31, 2001) Macedonian forces are systematically
> separating out ethnic Albanian males fleeing fierce fighting in northern
> Macedonia, and severely beating some of the men at police stations, Human
> Rights Watch said today. In the most severe cases documented by Human
> Rights Watch, the ill-treatment appears intended to extract confessions or
> information about the National Liberation Army (NLA) and amounts to
> torture. The fear of violence at the hands of the Macedonian police is
also
> stopping many ethnic Albanians from fleeing to safety into
> government-controlled territory.
>
> "Ethnic Albanian men fleeing the fighting in Macedonia face severe
> ill-treatment by the police," said Holly Cartner, executive director of
the
> Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "We have
documented
> serious beatings and torture of ethnic Albanians at the Kumanovo and
Skopje
> police stations in the last week. The victims we interviewed have the
> bruises and injuries to back up their claims of abuse."
>
> On May 22, Macedonian forces launched an offensive against ethnic Albanian
> fighters of the NLA who had seized control of villages located in the
> vicinity of the northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo. An estimated fifteen
> thousand civilians remain in the NLA-controlled territory, sparking
> concerns of significant civilian casualties if the fighting continues.
> Since the beginning of the renewed offensive, Macedonian forces have
> separated out men from the civilians fleeing the fighting and have
severely
> beaten some of them.
>
> Human Rights Watch researchers have documented cases of severe beating at
> the Kumanovo police station, located in the region where the latest
> fighting is taking place, as well as at the Skopje police station, located
> in the capital city of Macedonia. Some of the tactics involved hundreds of
> blows to the soles of the victims' feet-a torture technique known as
> falanga which causes severe pain and swelling and can lead to kidney
> failure-as well as extended beatings on the hands, buttocks, arms, and
> heads of the victims. The men interviewed by Human Rights Watch indicated
> that they had heard the screams of many other beating victims at the
police
> stations, suggesting that the scope of such abuse may be widespread and
> condoned at the police stations.
>
> Human Rights Watch said that the ill-treatment violates international
human
> rights law, and in the most severe cases amounts to torture.
>
> Many of the ethnic Albanians are reluctant to talk to international
> observers because they fear further retaliation from the Macedonian
police,
> and have in some cases been warned by their abusers not to discuss their
> maltreatment. For this reason, identifying details are withheld from the
> testimonies summarized below. Some of the men were forced to sign
> confessions under torture and to implicate others in NLA-related
> activities. Large numbers of men continue to be separated out from convoys
> of fleeing civilians and taken to police stations.
>
> On Tuesday, May 29, Human Rights Watch researchers observed a group of
> approximately thirty-five ethnic Albanian men from the village of Matejce
> who were separated from their female relatives and taken into the police
> station at Kumanovo.
>
> "Jevit Hasani," (not his real name), a seventeen-year-old villager from
> Vaksince, an NLA-controlled village recaptured by government forces over
> the weekend, was arrested and taken to the Skopje police station after
> fleeing fighting in the village. He described the treatment he experienced
> in the police station:
>
> They took us in a corridor. Suddenly I was hit on the head with a wooden
> stick, and then ten or so people began beating me until I fainted. When I
> came to, I was in a room. They were swearing, insulting my mother and
> sister, calling me an NLA fighter, a terrorist nationalist. I was lying on
> the ground on my side, facing the wall when I woke up, and my shoes were
> off. They started beating me on the feet and the buttocks. At the
beginning
> they would just beat me. They would count ten hits as one, and went all
> until fifty or sixty [i.e. five hundred to six hundred hits]. This was
> before they asked me questions.
>
> [After being questioned and beaten more], they wrote a confession. Then
> they made me read the confession in front of a camera in another room. I
> had to confess I was a spy, and they made me read a list of names of
people
> in the NLA which they had prepared, and say that the NLA had refused to
let
> the civilians go out and abused us.
>
> "Jevit Hasani" was released after forty-eight hours in custody. He showed
> Human Rights Watch researchers the deep bruises and hematoma on his
> buttocks caused by the severe beatings, and explained he had continued to
> suffer the after effects of beatings to his private parts. According to
> "Jevit Hasani" many other people were undergoing beatings while he was
> being detained at the police station: "I heard other people screaming
while
> I was being interrogated, in other rooms. They were screaming in pain,
> there were a lot of them." A second witness interviewed by Human Rights
> Watch offered an essentially similar account of his beating at the Skopje
> police station, and also had deep bruises and hematoma on his buttocks and
> swollen hands, but did not want his ordeal publicized out of fear of
police
> retaliation.
>
> "Ymer Aqifi," (not his real name) a fifty-one-year-old father of six from
> Slupcane, was beaten at the Kumanovo police station on Sunday, May 27. He
> described the beatings he and eight other men he was detained with
> sustained:
>
> We were taken into a corridor. Four [police investigators] made me lie
down
> flat on my stomach. They beat me with an iron bar on the wrists, a wooden
> stick on my head, a [police] baton on my buttocks, and kicked with their
> feet however much they wanted. They were swearing, insulting my mother and
> sisters, all kinds of curses. They were asking who is NLA, where the Imam
> [religious leader] of the village was, where the civilian defenses were,
> where the headquarters were. But no one wrote down anything, they didn't
> wait for answers.
> That lasted for about an hour I lost consciousness. Then they poured water
> on me. Two policemen came when I regained consciousness and they took me
> and the others to another corridor. Down there, all night long, there were
> screaming people beneath us. You could hear how they beat them.
>
> "Ymer Aqifi" showed Human Rights Watch researchers the deep bruises and
> hematoma on his buttocks, deep bruises on his arms, bruises on his
forehead
> and the sides of his head, and his swollen hands.
>
> Twenty-five-year-old "Adem Yimeri" (not his real name), a farmer from
> Vaksince, was also beaten at Kumanovo police station. He described the
> beating to Human Rights Watch:
>
> They took us to offices and there were three [police investigators]. They
> took me to an office by myself. He said to write down who is in the NLA.
> They asked me about my relatives in Kosovo. A person entered with a wooden
> stick covered with tape and he hit me on the back. Then they hit me on the
> sides of the head [above the hairline] so the bruises wouldn't show. They
> hit me twice on the hands with the bat. Then they said, "If it doesn't
hurt
> like that, put them on the table and we will make sure you never pick up a
> rifle again." Then they hit me ten more times on the hands.
>
> Then they made me bend over a chair. One of them would hit me in the
> kidneys, and another hit me on the head. They said they would destroy my
> kidneys so I could never work again. From 12 to 4 p.m., they beat me like
> that.
>
> "Ethnic Albanian men remaining in the villages under NLA control fear
> ill-treatment and torture at the hands of Macedonian forces," commented
> Cartner. "There is little doubt that this fear is one of the reasons why
so
> many ethnic Albanian men are refusing to leave their homes in the conflict
> zone."
>
> Police forces have also abused ethnic Albanian civilians this past week
> during raids against suspected NLA sympathizers in Tetovo, the scene of
> earlier fighting between the NLA and government forces. Human Rights Watch
> researchers documented the cases of ten ethnic Albanian men who were
beaten
> during police raids in the villages of Dzepciste and Poroj on May 25.
> During the raid on the Dzepciste home of Naser Junizi, a schoolteacher and
> village leader accused by the Macedonian government of assisting the NLA,
> police commandos beat Naser Junizi, two of his brothers, his
> sixty-eight-year-old father, and his eighteen-year-old son. Police also
> entered the Poroj compound of the Saiti family, kicking and breaking three
> ribs of thirty-six-year-old Rami Saiti and attacking his
> seventy-three-year-old father and seventeen-year-old cousin before
> apparently realizing they had entered the wrong home and rapidly leaving.
>
> Human Rights Watch noted that police abuse of ethnic Albanians, as well as
> of Macedonian Slavs who run afoul of the police, is endemic in Macedonia,
> as documented in two earlier Human Rights Watch reports issued in 1996 and
> 1998. The NLA has claimed that one of the main reasons for its armed
> rebellion is the failure of the Macedonian government to address police
> abuse as well as other forms of discrimination against ethnic Albanians.
>
> Although the Macedonian police appear responsible for the majority of
> beating cases, Macedonian military forces have also been implicated in
> beatings. Macedonian military troops appear responsible for the beating of
> a family of seven in the village of Runica, in which many houses were
> reportedly burned down by Macedonian troops on May 21, 2001. Human Rights
> Watch called for an immediate end to torture and other ill-treatment at
> police stations and urged the international community closely to monitor
> the treatment of ethnic Albanians by the Macedonian forces.
>
> "The international community must do its part to bring an end to police
> abuse of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia," said Cartner. "International
> support for the Macedonian government should not mean remaining silent in
> the face of such severe ill-treatment."
>
>