In this context Amnesty also reports "that the remains of around 97 individuals, the majority of them Bosnian Muslims, had been recovered from the banks of Lake Peru?ac. The remains of six ethnic Albanians abducted in Gjakova (Kosovo) by Serb forces in 1999 were reportedly suspected to be among them."
Positively the report remarks, that a Serbian court in September 2010 sentenced "nine members of the Jackals paramilitary unit" on "war crimes for killing at least 43 ethnic Albanian civilians on 14th. May 1999" near the Kosovar municipality of Peja.
The Republic of Kosovo declared its independence on 17th. February 2008. After a NATO military intervention, Kosovo was already administratively separated from Serbia since 1999. With the NATO intervention ended a (at least) decades long ruling of a racist apartheid regime of Serbia in Kosovo. Particularly under the Milosevic presidency of Serbia respectively Yugoslavia, Kosovo Albanians faced a strong suppression, starting from the annulment of Kosovo's autonomy status within Serbia and Yugoslavia in 1989:
Almost all workers of public enterprises (the mayor economic sector) were fired from their workplaces and the connected social and health care systems. Teachers and professors of Albanian ethnicity were pushed out of Schools and Universities (and all cultural institutions), and - against the Yugoslav constitution - Albanian curricula were deleted and teaching in Albanian language was forbidden. Comprising about 90 percent of the Kosovar population Kosovo Albanians were forced to live in a parallel world and feel like foreigners in their own country.
At ongoing EU mediated talks in Brussels the two countries now try to come closer at least in terms of solving technical questions of their neighborhood existence. Recent clashes in Prishtina nevertheless show, that there is still a long way ahead.
Article comments
1 - Betty
Actually they are right. Kosovo is a province in Serbia.
2 - Korrik Sofalia
Well, good luck already 75 UN member states recognize Kosovo as an independent state, for good reason taking into account the Serbian regime before - and the reality says this anyway since 12 years - Amnesty should consider this ... I recommend to have a look at Marincovic's statement “Serbia lost Kosovo deservedly” and at Vladimir Arsenijevic's 2007 essay: "Our negroes, our enemies".