Pastasel massacre

Last updated
Pastasel massacre
Location Pastasellë, Kosovo (then AP Kosovo, Serbia, FR Yugoslavia)
Date31 March 1999
Target Kosovo Albanian male civilians
Attack type
Mass killing
Deaths106
PerpetratorsYugoslav security forces and Serbian police
Motivesuspected reprisal attack (HRW)

The Pastasel massacre was a mass execution of 106 Kosovo Albanian civilians during the Kosovo war, which took place on 31 March 1999. Serbian forces surrounded the village and upon entering they expelled the women to Albania whilst they gathered the males and summarily executed them. The victims were mostly above the age of 55 but also children aged 13 to 17. [1] [2] Fighting between the KLA and Serbian forces had occurred near the village prior to the massacre. The Human Rights Watch theorizes that a KLA base in the neighboring village of Drenoc could have triggered the massacre.

Contents

Background

The village of Pastasel (Albanian : Pastasellë) is a village near the city of Rahovec and lays in the municipality with his name. The village consists of around 100 homes and is exclusively inhabited by Albanians. [3] During the Kosovo war fighting between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Yugoslav forces took place in near the village. According to witnesses the KLA had a base in the neighboring village of Drenoc, but was not in Pastasel. [4] On March 28, 1999, a military offensive was launched against the KLA in the region south of Klina and north-east of Rahovec. The operation involved a joint-command effort of the Yugoslav Army, Special Police Units, and reserve unit members. Simultaneously, the Albanian population in the area were forced to leave their homes due to repeated threats and shelling of their villages. [5] Prior to the massacre the population of the village had doubled as many refugees fleeing the fighting from other parts of Kosovo had sought refuge there. [6]

Massacre

Serbian forces composed of police, military and paramilitary surrounded the village in the afternoon of 31 March 1999. They then attacked with artillery, tanks and mortars. Following an hour of grenade-throwing, the Serb forces assembled the local residents in the field, segregating the men from the women. [7] [8] Subsequently, women had their jewelry and money confiscated by the Serbian forces and were instructed to depart from the village. [9] After the women had left the Serb forced confiscated several thousands worth of German marks from the victims and ID cards. A survivor of the massacre recounted that when his papers were taken, he was told: "You won't need any ID where you're going." [10] The group of men were divided into 4. The first group consisting of around 8-7 young men or children aged 13–17 were first beaten and interrogated. They were then lined up on a Gully and executed by machine gun fire. the 3 other groups were also lined up and fired upon in the same manner. In total 4 groups consisting of 106 Albanian civilians were executed. [11] [12]

Aftermath and legacy

Media reports

the first reports of the Pastasel massacre surfaced in Kosovapress, a news agency associated with the KLA. On April 3, they issued a brief bulletin about the massacre and subsequently published a list of ninety-nine deceased individuals the following day. [13] Images taken by NATO reconnaissance planes on the 9 April which showed mass grave sin Pastasel were released to the press on the 11 April. The presence of mass graves garnered significant attention in the Western media. [14] Despite NATO imagery of the mass graves and survivors' first-hand descriptions of the massacre, some media stories disputing the accounts of the killings in Pastasel and the NATO imagery persisted. Human Rights Watch conducted its own interviews and inspected the scene, confirming that the massacre did indeed occur as initially reported. [15]

Removal of evidence

Approximately two weeks after the photographs' release, Serbian forces returned Pastasel to eliminate physical evidence of the crime. Human Rights Watch interviewed a witness, around April 24, he witnessed unidentified individuals exhuming the bodies using a small tractor at the burial site. These individuals, dressed in medical outfits and masks, transported the bodies towards Rahovec in two civilian trucks. The BBC news program, Panorama, sent reporters to Pastasel after NATO's entry into Kosovo. They obtained video footage reportedly taken by Kosovar Albanian villagers, who observed the exhumation from a hill overlooking the burial site. The footage depicted a large truck and individuals in protective clothing, including police officers, working near the mosque. The BBC's investigation suggested that some of the exhumed bodies were subsequently taken to the village of Zrze, southwest of Rahovec, where they were reburied in the village cemetery. [16]


Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kosovo War</span> 1998–1999 armed conflict in Kosovo

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian separatist militia known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kosovo Liberation Army</span> Ethnic-Albanian nationalist paramilitary organization (1992–1999)

The Kosovo Liberation Army was an ethnic Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo, the vast majority of which is inhabited by Albanians, from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Serbia during the 1990s. Albanian nationalism was a central tenet of the KLA and many in its ranks supported the creation of a Greater Albania, which would encompass all Albanians in the Balkans, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation.

The Račak massacre or Račak operation was the massacre of 45 Kosovo Albanians that took place in the village of Račak in central Kosovo in January 1999. The massacre was perpetrated by Serbian security forces in response to Albanian separatist activity in the region. The Serbian government refused to let a war crimes prosecutor visit the site, and maintained that the casualties were all members of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) killed in combat with state security forces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rahovec</span> Town and municipality in District of Gjakova, Kosovo

Rahovec or Orahovac, is a town and municipality located in the District of Gjakova in western Kosovo. According to the 2011 census, the town of Rahovec has 15,892 inhabitants, while the municipality has 56,208 inhabitants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suva Reka</span> Town and municipality in Prizren, Kosovo

Suva Reka or Suharekë or Therandë is a town and municipality located in the Prizren district of central-southern Kosovo. According to the 2011 census, the town has 10,422 inhabitants, while the municipality has 59,722 inhabitants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Krusha massacres</span>

The Krusha massacres were two massacres that took place during the Kosovo War on the afternoon of 25 March 1999, the day after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began, near Rahovec, Kosovo.

The Gornje Obrinje Massacre refers to the killing of 21 Kosovo Albanians, belonging to the same family, in a forest outside the village of Donje Obrinje on 26 September 1998 by Serbian Police Forces during the Kosovo War. Among the victims were women and children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ćuška massacre</span> 1999 mass massacre in Ćuška, near Peja, Kosovo, Yugoslavia

The Ćuška massacre was the killing of 41 Kosovo Albanian civilians, all men aged 19 to 69, by Serbian security forces, the Yugoslav Army and paramilitaries on 14 May 1999 during the Kosovo War. On 13 March 2010, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor announced that nine men had been arrested for their role in the massacre and stated that a total of 26 men were under investigation for murder and theft at Ćuška.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drenica massacres</span> Mass killings in Kosovo

The Drenica massacres were a series of killings of Kosovo Albanian civilians committed by Serbian special police forces[a] in the Drenica region of central Kosovo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War crimes in the Kosovo War</span> War crimes committed during the Kosovo War

Numerous war crimes were committed by all sides during the Kosovo War, which lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. According to Human Rights Watch, the vast majority of abuses were attributable to the government of Slobodan Milošević, mainly perpetrated by the Serbian police, the Yugoslav army, and Serb paramilitary units. During the war, regime forces killed between 7,000–9,000 Kosovar Albanians, engaged in countless acts of rape, destroyed entire villages, and displaced nearly one million people. The Kosovo Liberation Army has also been implicated in atrocities, such as kidnappings and summary executions of civilians. Moreover, the NATO bombing campaign has been harshly criticized by human rights organizations and the Serbian government for causing roughly 500 civilian casualties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vushtrri massacre</span> Killing of kosovars

The Vushtrri massacre was the mass killing of Kosovo Albanian refugees near Vushtrri, during the Kosovo War on 2–3 May 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lake Radonjić massacre</span> Massacre of Kosovo Serbs at Lake Radonjic

The Lake Radonjić massacre or the Massacre at Lake Radonjić refers to the mass murder of at least 34 Kosovo Serb, Kosovo Albanian and Roma civilians near Lake Radonjić, by KLA at the village of Glodjane, in Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 9 September 1998. The massacre took place during the Kosovo War. Batajnica mass graves

The Meja massacre was the mass execution of at least 377 Albanian civilians during the Kosovo War with the purpose of ethnic cleansing, which took place on 27 April 1999. The majority of the victims were Muslims from neighbouring areas around Meja and were temporarily in Meja as refugees who wanted to cross into Albania but were stopped there by the Serbian military. The remaining victims were Catholics, including locals from Meja. It was committed by Serbian police and army forces in the Reka Operation which began after the killing of six Serbian policemen by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The Dubrava Prison massacre was the war time killing of at least 99 Kosovo Albanian prisoners and the wounding of around 200 more in the Dubrava Prison, in north-western Kosovo between 22 and 24 May 1999.

The Batajnica mass graves are mass graves that were found in 2001 near Batajnica, a suburb of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The graves contained the bodies of 744 Kosovar Albanians civilians that were killed during the Kosovo War. The mass graves were found on the training grounds of the Yugoslav Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ). Dead bodies were brought to the site by trucks from Kosovo; most were incinerated before burial. After the war, SAJ restricted investigators' access to the firing range, and continued live-firing exercises whilst forensic teams tried to investigate the massacre.

Timeline of the Kosovo War. Abbreviations:

The attack on Orahovac was a 3-day long clash Between 17 and 20 July 1998 and was fought between the forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the FR Yugoslavia. The KLA surrounded Serb villages intending to assert authority for the Kosovo Albanian provisional government through taking over a town and creating a corridor between KLA hotbed in Drenica and the Albanian border region. 8 KLA fighters and two Yugoslav police officers were killed, as well as five Serb civilians during the attack, while 85 Serb civilians were abducted by the KLA, 40 of whom are presumed to have been murdered. During the takeover of the town by Serbian special police, 79 Albanians civilians were executed.

The Attacks on Likoshan and Qirez were large-scale police attacks that took place at the onset of the Kosovo War in the villages of Likoshan and Qirez.

The Ugljare mass grave is a burial site in the village of Ugljare in the Kosovo municipality of Gjilan. Those buried include Kosovo Serbs and possibly Kosovo Albanians sometime around July 1999. At the time, it was the only case which involved in the Kosovo war crimes tribunal the investigation of a crime against civilians which was possibly committed by Albanians against Serbs. No perpetrators have been found. Kosovo leaders during the war, including former Prime Minister and the "George Washington of Kosovo", Hashim Thaci, are currently on trial for crimes against humanity, murder, forced deportation, kidnapping, and persecution of Serbs and other minorities in a specially commissioned court, The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, established to prosecute Albanian leaders for crimes during and after the Kosovo War.

References

  1. ↑ Haxhiaj, Serbeze (1 April 2019). "Kosovo Massacre Memories Torment Survivors, 20 Years On".
  2. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. The men were mostly older than fifty-five, as almost all of the younger men had fled into the hills.
  3. ↑ "Ethnic Composition of Kosovo 2011".
  4. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. A survivor of the massacre told Human Rights Watch that the KLA had a base in Drenoc, but not in Pusto Selo.
  5. ↑ "So we know: Jović/Joviq i Pusto Selo/Pastase, 31st March 1999". www.hlc-rdc.org. An offensive against the KLA began on March 28, 1999 on the territory south of Klina/Klinë and north-east of Orahovac/Rrahovec in a joint-command operation of the Yugoslav Army, Special Police Units (PJP), and reserve unit members. At the same time, the Albanian population in the area had to leave their homes because of repeated threats and shelling of their villages.
  6. ↑ Haxhiaj, Serbeze (1 April 2019). "Kosovo Massacre Memories Torment Survivors, 20 Years On". this village of around 100 homes in the municipality of Rahovec/Orahovac, which in previous weeks had doubled its population as many people who had been displaced from other villages by the war had arrived to take refuge there.
  7. ↑ Haxhiaj, Serbeze (1 April 2019). "Kosovo Massacre Memories Torment Survivors, 20 Years On". After throwing grenades for an hour, the Serb forces gathered the locals in the field and separated men from women.
  8. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. The Serbian forces separated the men from the women
  9. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. searched the women, and confiscated their money and jewelry.
  10. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. After the women left, the Serbian forces ordered the men to empty their pockets, stealing the several thousand German marks that they found. "We begged them to spare our lives," said T.K., age fifty-four, another survivor. "We gave them all of our money so that they wouldn't kill us."7 The Serbs also confiscated the villagers' identity documents. B.K. said that when they took his papers they told him: "You won't need any ID where you're going."
  11. ↑ Haxhiaj, Serbeze (1 April 2019). "Kosovo Massacre Memories Torment Survivors, 20 Years On". Serbian forces killed 106 Kosovo Albanians in the village of Pastasel/Pusto Selo (..:) A total of 119 men were separated into four groups.
  12. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. In all, four groups, each consisting of between twenty-five and thirty men, were taken to the edge of the gully and executed using automatic weapons.
  13. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. the first reports of the Pusto Selo killings appeared in Kosovapress, the KLA's news agency. It released a short bulletin on the massacre on April 3, publishing a list of ninety-nine of the dead the following day.
  14. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. On April 11, 1999, NATO released imagery taken by an aerial reconnaissance flight on April 9 that appeared to reveal a large burial site in Pusto Selo. The photograph showed two long parallel lines, each made up of several dozen mounds of dirt; it was paired with what NATO spokesmen said was an earlier photograph, one in which the freshly turned earth does not appear.12 The evidence of mass graves was widely noted in the Western media.13
  15. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. Also on April 24, according to Agence France Presse, the Dutch daily newspaper Algemen Dagblad ran a story casting doubt on the veracity of NATO claims of a grave site in Pusto Selo.16 A Dutch map expert quoted in the newspaper claimed that the aerial photographs of Pusto Selo displayed suspicious inconsistencies. Indeed, stories disputing accounts of the killings in Pusto Selo continued to circulate well after survivors' first-hand descriptions of the massacre became known.17 Human Rights Watch's own interviews and inspection of the scene confirmed that the massacre had, in fact, occurred such as initially reported, and that the government had acted first to bury and then to remove the bodies. When Human Rights Watch visited Pusto Selo in June 1999, villagers pointed out the burial site next to the village mosque. Part of the fence surrounding the site was broken down; within it was a long stretch of rough and uneven ground. Villagers, who spoke of close relatives whose bodies were missing, looked at the spot with anguish. "Not to know where the bodies are hidden is, for us, as if they've been killed again," T.K. stated, voicing a sentiment shared by others.18
  16. ↑ "UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo - 9. Orahovac Municipality". www.hrw.org. Roughly two weeks after the photographs were released, Serbian forces returned to Pusto Selo to remove the physical evidence of the crime. T.K. told Human Rights Watch that on approximately April 24 he saw unidentified individuals exhume the bodies, using a small tractor to dig up the burial site. "There were men wearing medical outfits and masks," he said. "They took the bodies away toward Orahovac in two civilian trucks."14 Panorama, a BBC news program whose reporters visited Pusto Selo after NATO's entry into Kosovo, obtained video footage that was said to have been taken by Kosovar Albanian villagers monitoring the exhumation from a hill above the burial site. The footage shows a large truck, with police and workers in protective clothing at work near the mosque. The BBC claimed that its investigations established that some of the exhumed bodies were brought to the village of Zrze, southwest of Orahovac, where they were reburied in the village cemetery.15

Sources

Abrahams, Fred; Ward, Benjamin N. (2001). Under orders: war crimes in Kosovo. Human Rights Watch. New York London: Human Rights Watch. ISBN   978-1-56432-264-7.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.