Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told Kosovo society experienced human rights violations during the conflict. Findings include: ● ● ● ● ● There was a specific focus - for killings, arbitrary detention and torture - on young Kosovo Albanian men of fighting age, every one of them apparently perceived as a potential "terrorist". Women were placed in positions of great vulnerability, and were specific objects of violence targeting their gender. There is chilling evidence of the murderous targeting of children, with the aim of terrorizing and punishing adults and communities. The Kosovo Serb community were victims of humanitarian law violations committed by the UCK, especially in the matter of the many Serbs missing following abduction. However, many Serb civilians were active participants in human rights violations, alongside the military and security forces, against the Kosovo Albanians. Other national communities and minorities also had specific experiences of the conflict. Prominent, educated, wealthy or politically or socially active Kosovo Albanians were a prime target to be killed. Local staff of the OSCE-KVM, and other people associated with the mission were harassed or forcibly expelled, and some were killed, after 20 March. The third perspective is a geographical human rights "map" of Kosovo. Proceeding municipality by municipality, the report presents descriptions of events in hundreds of communities across Kosovo. In some cases the descriptions are of events on a single day or within a short time period, and reveal how the most characteristic human rights violations of the entire reporting period - forced expulsion, inevitably accompanied by deliberate property destruction, and often by killings or other violence, or extortion - could be visited on a community with little or no advance indication, with great speed, and with great thoroughness. Such experiences were replicated in rural areas all across Kosovo, and would be repeated if villagers attempted to return to their homes. In other locations, particularly the towns, communities of Kosovo Albanian civilians experienced an onslaught over many days or weeks combining arbitrary violence and abuse with an overall approach that appeared highly organized and systematic. Everywhere, the attacks on communities appear to have been dictated by strategy, not by breakdown in command and control. Indicators of a strategy well rehearsed, and brutally implemented Most tellingly, the analysis of some of the most prevalent human rights and humanitarian law violations, as well as the analysis of their geographical organization and their impact on communities, demonstrate how the violations inflicted on the Kosovo Albanian population after 20 March were a continuation of actions by Yugoslav and Serbian military and security forces that were well rehearsed, insofar as they were already taking place in many locations in Kosovo well before 20 March. The mass killing at Racak on 15 January 1999 most graphically illustrates the descent into violence amounting to war crimes and http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/p0exesum.htm (3 of 5)12/5/2003 11:48:00 AM