4 hours agoKosovo away from record war crimes
Periskopi(6 years ago)
(6 years ago)Two decades have passed since the end of the war in Kosovo, and the state still does not have an institute that would investigate and document war crimes in Kosovo. Experts in this area, the need to establish such an institute is considering urgent and are demanding that war crimes be documented. In [...]
Two decades have passed since the end of the war in Kosovo, and the state still does not have an institute that would investigate and document war crimes in Kosovo. Experts in this area, the need to establish such an institute is considering urgent and are demanding that war crimes be documented.
In September of this year, tests would have to be delivered for the establishment of the Institute for War Crimes Research by the task force formed by former Justice Minister Albulen Haxhiu.
This process has stalled since the Kurti government had collapsed with no confidence motion in the Kosovo Assembly, meanwhile, the current government has not yet given mandate to the new expert group for founding the Institute.
Justice Minister Selim Selim Selim Selimi has submitted the proposal for the establishment of the task force for preparing analysis for the establishment of the Institute for War Crimes Research.
I recently submitted the request to the government to establish the new group, to show how it will be done, or when the Institute for War Crimes will be done, I hope that this proposal will be presented at the next meeting of the government and this group can start doing the research necessary to establish the Institute. My political and hosting position of the institution is to have an institute for war crimes research that will serve our collective memory and future locks”, Selimi had declared at the 25 September session.
But former Justice Minister Albulen Haxhiu is not confident that the current government will push the issue forward.
According to her, if the current minister continued the work of the preliminary government, the first draft for forming the institute would be ready last month.
Instead of working with the same approach as the current government, whether it's based on war crimes issues, it's unforgivable that Kosovo still has no record of war crimes, all of what we can do is by organisations, whether local or international, that I have no faith in seeing their approach in the report, whether with the subject that we've addressed today the equalizing of the missing with the displaced, whether by the withdrawal of the bill addressing judgment in the absence of Leonx1>, it tells Kosovo.
A war crimes research institute was established in 2011, but with the decision of the Government of Kosovo, led by Ramush Haradinaj, the same had been closed in 2018, with the argument that it has not shown enough results.
The institute was headed by criminal law professor Ismet Salihu, who says the same should urgently be opened and not political staff recruited but field experts.
“The Institute for War Crimes Research urgently needs to reopen and establish to that institution the optimum conditions, announce a public competition and recruit a non-political staff, an expert staff, who also co-operated crimes committed during the war. There should at least be employed 12 to 15 persons of different profiles, jurists, economists, psychologists, sociologists”, Salihu says.
He says a plan must be made that envisions within a period of five years to investigate all war crimes in Kosovo.
“It has been 20 years since the end of the war, evidence fades, destructions, witnesses change part of their lives, urgently need to open up and urgently recruit staff and start with an operational plan to conduct these research”, he adds.
According to him, research should be published in particular as regards massacres committed, and the same facts published digitally.
In this regard, Ehat Miftaraj, director of the Kosovo Institute for Justice, says there has been a lack of political will in terms of war crimes investigation.
Kosovo's “Institute for Justice, in its latest report on war crimes in Kosovo, has demonstrated the lack of political will at the level of the Assembly, at the Government level, to investigate, prosecute, tried war crimes. A problem is also the record of war crimes in Kosovo... Kosovo should have a war crimes strategy that should be comprehensive, in addition to asking for political will to investigate, prosecute and try war crimes, it should also be documentation or summary, systematisation of all those informers, files that have been collected”, he says.
The Institute for War Crimes Research until its closure in 2018 had published eight books on murders, missing persons, Serbian genocide and the destruction of Albanian monuments and property.
In names sent by the Ministry of Justice for approval to the government, there will reportedly be a representative from the Ministry of Education, one from the Faculty of Jurydic or Economics, and one from the KLA Veterans' Association.
Members of the group are listed as members of Agim Gashi from the Red Cross, Ahmet Gajchev from the Council of Associations of Missing Familys, Edsim Gerjaliu from the Institute of Legal Medicine, Baki Sfirca representative from the Ministry of Justice, Behxhet Shala from KLMDNj, Light Hajdari from Special Prosecution, Fadil Gashi from Kosovo Police, Feride Rushiti from QKRMT, Hysen Azem from the Kosovo Archives Association, Jahja Luka member of the Coven Commission for Special Persons, including the ICHBG, the Brajmedezani Association of political prisoners, Hyzova Nxemova from the Kosovo Archives Association, Serbian Research Association, UNHYCHSCHOCHECHSCHECHECHECHECHECHECHECHECHER, UNCHECHECENTECHECENTECHECHECHECHECECENTECHECHE, TOCHECECECHECECE
