40 replies to this topic

[Prishtinasi]

Pensions for War Criminals
They're facing trial, but they're not going poor.



By Rod Nordland
Newsweek

July 25 issue - In the Balkans, war crime pays. This year, a record 20 accused war criminals have been turned over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, compared with only three in 2004. But NATO troops didn't nab these fugitives in daring dawn raids. Negotiators did much of the work, offering generous financial incentives. "Everybody here in Serbia believes the government gives big money to indictees," says Natasa Kandic, head of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade. "If you want to go to The Hague, you'll be rewarded and your family will have a very good life."

Some of the incentives are legally mandated. Serbia passed legislation last year to provide pensions to its indicted war criminals. The law gives indictees a full salary, plus unspecified "compensation" for family and legal expenses. In the Republic of Srpska, the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia, benefits are even more generous: a full salary to the indictee himself, a double salary paid to his family, plus 80 euros a month to each of his school-age children. (A typical Bosnian Serbian salary is only 200 euros a month.) Family members also get four expense-paid trips a year to The Hague to visit indicted loved ones. And last year Srpska added a cash bonus of 25,000 euros for anyone who surrenders.

Still more generous inducements are offered to the really big fish. According to Serbian media reports, Gen. Vujadin Popovic got a bonus of $1 million when he turned himself on April 14. Popovic was the commander of the Drina Corps in Bosnia, which conducted some of the worst ethnic-cleansing campaigns in the region. Serbian government officials have told human-rights activists that Gen. Ratko Mladic, the accused architect of the Srebrenica massacre, was offered $5 million to turn himself in, although in the end he decided to stay on the run. (The U.S. government still has a $5 million reward for his capture.)

Why the largesse? Serbia desperately wants to begin talks to join the European Union, but progress on turning in war criminals is a precondition. Reports that generals like Mladic were living openly in Belgrade did not sit well with the Europeans; Mladic's family even drew his state pension on his behalf until last year. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has publicly supported indicted war criminals, but his coalition partners want to see progress on EU accession. So when Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, wanted for war crimes in Kosovo, turned himself in last January, he was praised by Kostunica as a patriot and received by the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch. In Nis, the mayor gave Lazarevic a new car for his family at a ceremony attended by government ministers.


Part of the reason the international community created the war-crimes tribunal was to show that atrocities would be punished rather than rewarded. Instead, "we celebrate our war criminals as heroes," says Branko Todorovic, of the Helsinki Committee in the Republic of Srpska. James Lyon, director of the International Crisis Group in Belgrade, fumes that "the government of Serbia has made financial arrangements for war criminals, but has yet to make any legal provision to take care of the victims of these crimes... It's morally reprehensible." Last week some 30,000 Muslim refugees returned to Srebrenica for the 10th anniversary of that massacre, where 7,800 men and boys were captured and executed by Serb forces. For the first time, Serbia's president attended, though his government has yet to apologize for its role in the massacres. Many of the Muslims there booed him. As long as the Serbs are rewarding their indicted war criminals with handsome pension plans, reconciliation remains a long way off.

[Tresko]

James Lyon, director of the International Crisis Group in Belgrade, fumes that "the government of Serbia has made financial arrangements for war criminals, but has yet to make any legal provision to take care of the victims of these crimes... It's morally reprehensible."

Pa da nisu citirali dotičnog Lyon-a, pa da čovek pomisli da je članak ozbiljan. Ovako, kad citiraju čoveka, koji se hvali da je za vreme bombardovanja Sarajeva, nudio osnovano podršku US, pod uslovom da se firmama čiji je on prijatelj obezbedi da zastakljuje zgrade u Sarajevu, sve se devalvira do nule.

[Prishtinasi]

James Lyon, director of the International Crisis Group in Belgrade, fumes that "the government of Serbia has made financial arrangements for war criminals, but has yet to make any legal provision to take care of the victims of these crimes... It's morally reprehensible."

Pa da nisu citirali dotičnog Lyon-a, pa da čovek pomisli da je članak ozbiljan. Ovako, kad citiraju čoveka, koji se hvali da je za vreme bombardovanja Sarajeva, nudio osnovano podršku US, pod uslovom da se firmama čiji je on prijatelj obezbedi da zastakljuje zgrade u Sarajevu, sve se devalvira do nule.

Pa Tresko nije poenta u tome ko je citiran, nego da li su tacni ovi podaci u vezi placanja, zar ne?

[Tresko]

Pa to o plaćanju smo znali i bez tog članka, jer su odavno o tome pisale i sve novine u Srbiji, ne vidim šta je tu novo. To je već stara stvar.

Ali, stavljanje Lyona kao nekakvog izvora za bilo šta, odmah devalvira članak.

[osmeh]

Pa to o plaćanju smo znali i bez tog članka, jer su odavno o tome pisale i sve novine u Srbiji, ne vidim šta je tu novo. To je već stara stvar.

Ali, stavljanje Lyona kao nekakvog izvora za bilo šta, odmah devalvira članak.

Novine su pisale - svašta pa ih nisam čitala. A to mi ostalo i danas...

Jel to ono, sluge, kako beše... i strani plaćenici... Bili su to jeftini epiteti... inflacija tih etiketiranja... više se ni ne sećam, zbog čega bi i ko, bio njima počašćen...

Mislila sam da je reč o nekom drugom ratnom kriminalu, ratnim profiterima. Baš se iznenadih.

[Erestor]

Pa, i nije neka tajna da je zlocincima placano da se predaju. Sad, cifre nisu javno poznate, a spekulacija je mnogo. Jedino ta prica o iznenadnoj i sasvim neocekivanoj navali patriotizma ne pije vodu.

[GoranBG]

Biti ratni kriminal se isplacuje??

miss'im stvarno,

[mile curcic]

Ko to biti kriminal da se ratni isplacuje?

[Erestor]

Biti ratni kriminal se isplacuje??

miss'im stvarno,

Nisam primetio.

Znaci, etnicko ciscenje lepo zivi... Zanimljivo...

[Unbeliever]

Biti ratni kriminal se isplacuje??

miss'im stvarno,

sta je tu smesno? Prishtinasi zivi u Londonu, pa je ova fraza jedan cisti prevod od engleskog:

"It pays off to be a war criminal".

ili

"Being a war criminal pays off".

nema tu niceg smesnog, gospodine.

[GoranBG]

Biti ratni kriminal se isplacuje??

miss'im stvarno,

sta je tu smesno? Prishtinasi zivi u Londonu, pa je ova fraza jedan cisti prevod od engleskog:

"It pays off to be a war criminal".

ili

"Being a war criminal pays off".

nema tu niceg smesnog, gospodine.

Za tebe i tvog druga iz Londona

Kada drugi put budesh hteo da neshto prevodish na srpski ili da nekoga opravdavash

[Gonzo]

Biti ratni kriminal se isplacuje??

miss'im stvarno,

Ajde napisi ti to na albanskom.

[WVIZ]

Poenta ovoga teksta je da su Srbi ratni kriminalci, i da se to ne kaznjava.
Pa to nije daleko od istine.
Ali ako je Prishtinashi toliko zabrinut za kriminal, neka obrati paznju na ovaj tekst, koj nije svez ali je i te kako aktuelan:

http://www.interpol..../SG20030716.asp
The Links Between Intellectual Property Crime and Terrorist Financing
Kosovo.
Text of Public Testimony of
Ronald K Noble
Secretary General of Interpol

Before the House Committee on International Relations
One Hundred Eighth Congress


An example similar to the situation in Northern Ireland is in the United Nations-administrated province of Kosovo. A significant proportion of consumer goods, (CDs, DVDs, clothes, shoes, cigarettes and computer software) available for sale, are counterfeit. The sale of counterfeit goods occurs openly and there is limited enforcement against counterfeit products due to significant legal loopholes. In Kosovo, there is a long-standing relationship between criminal organizations and local ethnic-Albanian extremist groups. This relationship is based on family or social ties. It is suspected that funds generated from IPC benefit both criminal organizations and extremist groups.


AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL:
Kosovo: Facts and figures on trafficking of women and girls for forced prostitution in Kosovo
Women and girls trafficked into Kosovo come from some of the poorest countries in Europe, where they face discrimination in access to social and economic rights and have experienced domestic or other gender-based violence.

Women are trafficked into Kosovo predominantly from Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. According to the International Organization for Migration, (IOM) a majority of the women and girls from Moldova trafficked into Kosovo had been promised a job in Italy.

Increasing numbers of local women, the majority of them girls, are being internally trafficked within Kosovo.

Women are often sold several times in transit. According to the IOM women have been sold for prices ranging from €50 to €3500.

Women and girls are now being trafficked out of Kosovo into countries in Western Europe, including Italy, Netherlands and the UK.

In 2002, it was reported that 36 percent of the trafficked women and girls in Kosovo were denied any medical care, while only ten percent were provided with regular health care; the majority of trafficked women were forced to have unprotected sex.

To date, no trafficked women or girls have obtained reparations for the physical, emotional and psychological damage they have suffered as a result of these abuses of their human rights.

UNMIK (UN Interim Mission in Kosovo) police and other UNMIK personnel, KFOR (the NATO-led international military force in Kosovo ) personnel and contractors enjoy a general immunity from prosecution, unless explicitly waived by the UN Secretary General, or in the case of NATO, by their respective national commanders.

Waivers were requested and granted in one case in 2002 and another in 2003, enabling the prosecution of two police officers.

No KFOR personnel suspected of trafficking or of using the services of trafficked women or girls can be prosecuted in Kosovo. Amnesty International has been unable to find any evidence of any criminal proceedings related to trafficking against members of KFOR in their home countries.

From January 2002 to July 2003, between 22 and 27 members of KFOR troops were suspected of offences related to trafficking, according to the UNMIK Police Trafficking and Prostitution Unit (TIPU). TIPU was unable to provide further information to Amnesty International as to whether any diciplinary proceedings had been taken against these individuals.

Following the arrival of the international community in Kosovo in 1999 there was an unprecedented escalation of the sex-industry based on trafficked women and girls. In 1999-2000 it was estimated that internationals comprised 80 percent of the clients of trafficked women and girls. In 2002 the figure decreased to around 30 per cent, but at the same time the internationals generated some 80 percent of the industry income. Today an estimated 20 per cent of the client-base come from the international community, which constitutes only about two percent of the population in Kosovo.

Relevant legislation and protocols
Trafficking of persons, in particular women and girls, in situations that amount to enslavement is included among the most serious crimes in the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The UN Protocol to prevent, Surpress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Palermo protocol) was signed by 120 states in Italy in year 2000. The protocol recognizes the need for effective prevention of trafficking with the prosecution of traffickers and the protection of human rights and assistance to victims of trafficking. Trafficked women and girls for forced prostitution are also exposed to a series of human rights abuses that violate a number of international human rights treaties including the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Children’s Convention.

In January 2001, UNMIK passed Regulation 2001/4, On the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons in Kosovo, which criminalized both the traffickers and persons who knowingly use the "services" of trafficked women. The regulation also includes a number of measures to protect the rights of the trafficked women and girl.
Kosovo itself is a lawless, criminalized state.

It is hard to see who benefits from this mess. And it is difficult to imagine the average American mom and pop thinking that these are the kind of societies their foreign policy establishment should be promoting.

There are fears that organised crime is spiralling out of control in Kosovo.

Chaos in Kosovo

Kosovar gangs pick up where the Serbs left off.

With 37,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops patrolling it, Kosovo may not be the first place one thinks of as a smugglers' paradise.

But it is.

Two different worlds converge here in Kosovo, utterly unrelated to each other. Heroin and cocaine come cheap at parties. Mercedes and BMWs, sparkling new and without license plates, cruise through the capital at dusk, packed with young men talking on cell phones. When they stop in front of key office buildings, a couple of men get out, crossing their arms as if armed and not to be messed with, while another goes inside to conduct business. The rumbling oversized tank of a British KFOR patrol turns the corner at an intersection less than 10 feet away.

Kosovo sits between two European countries overrun with organized crime. Albania, the poorest country in Europe, sits along a well-trod drug and arms trading route between Asia and Europe. The northern part of Albania, which borders Kosovo, is almost entirely in the hands of armed gangs.

To Kosovo's northeast, Serbia, after a decade of international economic sanctions and isolation, is also rife with corruption, arms smuggling and state-sanctioned theft of public funds to private bank accounts (some 300 cronies of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic have recently had their Swiss bank accounts frozen and been banned from travel to the European Union and the United States).

Organized crime loves a vacuum. Interpol now estimates that 40 percent of the heroin supply in Western Europe travels through Kosovo.

In addition, Kosovo has a past which makes it an ideal breeding ground for organized crime. For the past 10 years, since Milosevic revoked the province's autonomy, most Kosovo Albanians have been pushed out of the state sector, and forced to look for work in private ventures and abroad. Many Kosovo Albanian men went abroad to work in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the United States -- some in construction and other above-board professions, others in the underworld of drug trafficking -- to earn money to send back to their extended families. An extensive network of travel agencies helped traffic money from Europe and the United States back to relatives in Kosovo.

But certain conditions of the post-war period make Kosovo even more ideal as a base for organized crime. There is an almost complete lack of civil authority here, despite the presence of KFOR soldiers. Have your apartment broken into, car stolen, neighbor murdered, and there is no one to call. KFOR soldiers dutifully come to make a report if someone's been killed. But you can call the police emergency number in Kosovo all you want, and no one comes, because for the moment there are no functioning police. To date, some 600 U.N. international police have arrived, but the international police commissioner does not plan to deploy any of them until he has most of his 3,000 men.

In the meantime, there are virtually open borders. The fact that Serbian police destroyed many Kosovo Albanians' identity papers and license plates as they were deporting them means that KFOR allows almost anyone back in, without or without a passport. To date, there are no functioning customs officers on Kosovo's borders. KFOR soldiers check cars for weapons, but do not prevent entry for people who are, for instance, importing an enormous supply of cigarettes.

General Fritz von Korff, the commander of German KFOR forces, told journalists in Kosovo last week that his troops frequently come across smuggled items, such as massive amounts of cigarettes, when they are checking cars for weapons. But as von Korff understands it, KFOR's mandate does not permit his soldiers to confiscate any item except for weapons, and consequently the smugglers are permitted into Kosovo with their loot.

After 10 years of the most oppressive Serbian rule, the current lack of civilian authority in Kosovo is a shock, a kind of unbearable lightness of being.

The resultant crime wave threatens to make life uncomfortable not only for Kosovo's dwindling ethnic minorities, but for its long-suffering ethnic Albanian majority. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea estimated this week that some 30 people are murdered in Kosovo every week.

One of the biggest crime problems overtaking the capital Pristina is the seizure of apartments by gangs of Albanians claiming close ties to those high up in the Kosovo Liberation Army. The gangs are taking over apartments, real estate, businesses and cars from both Kosovo Albanian and Serbian owners, who have little recourse to justice.

"[The United Nations] is completely unprepared to take over law and order. In the absence of a police force and legitimate rules and legislation, a huge vacuum has occurred," said a British KFOR official in Pristina involved with civil-military relations, who asked not to be named. "That vacuum is being filled by organized crime. Representatives of Albanian gangs are inviting Kosovo Serbs to leave their apartments. Now Kosovo Albanians are being invited to leave their apartments by other Albanians."

While no statistics are available from KFOR or the United Nations on the number of property seizures, anecdotes suggest it is a growing problem. And while initially it seemed that seizures were ethnically motivated and targeted at Kosovo Serbs in the capital of Pristina, increasingly Kosovo Albanians are the victims as well. KFOR reports there have been several complaints from Kosovo Albanian residents of the Sunny Hill neighborhood of Pristina, who say their apartments were seized by Albanians from outside Kosovo.

A U.N. police commander who asked not to be identified said his force's intelligence suggests most of the organized crime in Kosovo is backed by Russians, Albanian nationals and gangs linked to the Kosovo Liberation Army. Some Kosovo analysts suggest that the KLA is doling out the seized apartments and other goodies as payment to those it owes favors -- arms procurers, financial backers and important soldiers and their relatives.

U.N. officials defend themselves from criticism that the organization's slowness in deploying police and civil administrators throughout Kosovo is in part responsible for the growing crime problem. One top U.N. commander said that unlike KFOR, which has been preparing for a Kosovo mission since February, the United Nations wasn't told it was to take over civilian operations in Kosovo until June.

Excuses aside, however, it may already be too late. An American involved in the international police force, who asked to remain anonymous, says by the time the U.N. police are deployed, criminal gangs will already have their networks set up.

Edited by WVIZ, 18 July 2005 - 23:53.

[Unbeliever]

Za tebe i tvog druga iz Londona

Kada drugi put budesh hteo da neshto prevodish na srpski ili da nekoga opravdavash

pa mozda ja i moj drug nismo i toliko pismeni na srpskom - ipak je to strani jezik za nas. ja licno nikad nisam imao niti jedan cas srpskog - sve sto znam sam ucio od TV-ja ili citajuci knjige na srpsko-hrvatskom.

prema tome, ako ja i 'moj drug iz Londona' gresimo na nekim od komplikovanijih gramatickih principa srpskog, to treba da se toleruje, eventualno da se ispravi s jednim ljubaznim i drugarskim tonom.

ova tvoja smejurija je, blago receno, muska pizdarija.

Edited by Unbeliever, 19 July 2005 - 00:06.

[gotivac]

Za tebe i tvog druga iz Londona

Mislim da bi ovaj tvoj link bio korisniji mnogim srBima koji pišu ovde, da nauče nešto o pravopisu maternjeg jezika.

Unbeliever i Prishtinashi vladaju našim jezikom dovoljno dobro, obzirom da su u pitanju strani državljani.

Ako ne bolje, a ono bar kao prestolonaslednik.

EDIT: pravopis...

Edited by gotivac, 19 July 2005 - 00:41.