Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told crimes against humanity, and was to become a precedent for numerous other atrocities recounted to the OSCE-KVM in the period after 20 March. Other key events in this regard in the period before 20 March were the killings of Kosovo Albanians by police at Rogovo and Rakovina later in January, the launch of Yugoslav army "winter exercises" involving the shelling of villages and the forced expulsion of villagers in Vucitrn/Vushtrri municipality in February and March, a military and police offensive in Kacanik in February, in which a tactic of burning and destroying civilian homes to clear the area of the UCK was employed, and a violent police crack-down in an Albanian quarter of Pristina/Prishtina in early March after the killing of two police officers. Alongside the killings in Racak, these events reveal patterns of grave abuses by Yugoslav and Serbian forces against the civilian population. Such patterns of abuse recur after 20 March in the descriptions given by refugees. The scale on which human rights violations recur is staggering. It has been estimated that over 90 per cent of the Kosovo Albanian population - over 1.45 million people - were displaced by the conflict by 9 June 1999. The death toll as yet can only be guessed at, but the prevalence of confirmed reports and witness statements about individual and group killings in this report is indicative. The violence meted out to people, as recounted vividly, particularly in the statements of refugees, was extreme and appalling. The accounts of refugees also give compelling examples of the organized and systematic nature of what was being perpetrated by Yugoslav and Serbian forces, and their tolerance for and collusion in acts of extreme lawlessness by paramilitaries and armed civilians. The commission of human rights and humanitarian law violations during the internal armed conflict in Kosovo during the time it was being monitored by the OSCE-KVM was not one-sided. All parts of this report look at violations committed by both parties to the internal conflict. It must be stressed, however, that an obvious conclusion of the analysis is that there was certainly nothing resembling balance or equivalence in the nature or the scale of the human rights violations committed by each side. Suffering in Kosovo in the period monitored by the OSCE-KVM was overwhelmingly Kosovo Albanian suffering, at the hands of the Yugoslav and Serbian state military and security apparatus. A catastrophe rooted in the long-term disregard for human rights and fundamental freedoms A guiding principle of the OSCE is that respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, democracy and the rule of law is an essential component of security. A consistent pattern of human rights violations in Kosovo led eventually to a breakdown in security. The deterioration into a security crisis, armed conflict and a human rights and humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo might have been avoided if the Yugoslav and Serbian authorities, rather than engaging in the persistent violation of the human rights of the Kosovo Albanian population in the past decade, had sought to construct in Kosovo an open and inclusive society founded on the principles of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/p0exesum.htm (4 of 5)12/5/2003 11:48:00 AM