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May 9, 1999
IMPORTANT INTERNAL DOCUMENTS FROM GERMANY'S FOREIGN OFFICE
REGARDING PRE-BOMBARDMENT GENOCIDE IN KOSOVO
Collected by
International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms
1: Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Mnster, March 11, 1999
(Az: 13A 3894/94.A):
"Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have neither been nor are now exposed to
regional or countrywide group persecution in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
(Thesis 1)
2: Opinion of the Bavarian Administrative Court, October 29,
1998 (Az: 22 BA 94.34252):
"The Foreign Office's status reports of May 6, June 8 and July 13, 1998,
given to the plaintiffs in the summons to a verbal deliberation, do not
allow the conclusion that there is group persecution of ethnic Albanians
from Kosovo. Not even regional group persecution, applied to all ethnic
Albanians from a specific part of Kosovo, can be observed with sufficient
certainty. The violent actions of the Yugoslav military and police since
February 1998 were aimed at separatist activities and are no proof of
a persecution of the whole Albanian ethnic group in Kosovo or in a part
of it. What was involved in the Yugoslav violent actions and excesses
since February 1998 was a selective forcible action against the military
underground movement (especially the KLA) and people in immediate contact
with it in its areas of operation. ...A state program or persecution aimed
at the whole ethnic group of Albanians exists neither now nor earlier."
3: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office, January 12, 1999
to the Administrative Court of Trier (Az: 514-516.80/32 426):
"Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian
ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of Kosovo is still not involved
in armed conflict. Public life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan,
etc. has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a relatively normal
basis." The "actions of the security forces (were) not directed against
the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military
opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."
4: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office January 6, 1999
to the Bavarian Administrative Court, Ansbach:
"At this time, an increasing tendency is observable inside the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia of refugees returning to their dwellings. ... Regardless
of the desolate economic situation in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(according to official information of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
700,000 refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzogovina have found lodging
since 1991), no cases of chronic malnutrition or insufficient medical
treatment among the refugees are known and significant homelessness has
not been observed. ... According to the Foreign Office's assessment, individual
Kosovo-Albanians (and their immediate families) still have limited possibilities
of settling in those parts of Yugoslavia in which their countrymen or
friends already live and who are ready to take them in and support them."
5. Report of the Foreign Office March 15, 1999 (Az: 514-516,80/33841)
to the Administrative Court, Mainz:
"As laid out in the status report of November 18, 1998, the KLA has
resumed its positions after the partial withdrawal of the (Serbian) security
forces in October 1998, so it once again controls broad areas in the zone
of conflict. Before the beginning of spring 1999 there were still clashes
between the KLA and security forces, although these have not until now
reached the intensity of the battles of spring and summer 1998."
6. Opinion of the Administrative Court of Baden-Wrttemberg, February
4, 1999 (Az: A 14 S 22276/98):
"The various reports presented to the senate all agree that the often
feared humanitarian catastrophe threatening the Albanian civil population
has been averted. ... This appears to be the case since the winding down
of combat in connection with an agreement made with the Serbian leadership
at the end of 1998 (Status Report of the Foreign Office, November 18,
1998). Since that time both the security situation and the conditions
of life of the Albanian-derived population have noticeably improved. ...
Specifically in the larger cities public life has since returned to relative
normality (cf. on this Foreign Office, January 12, 1999 to the Administrative
Court of Trier; December 28, 1998 to the Upper Administrative Court of
Lneberg and December 23, 1998 to the Administrative Court at Kassel),
even though tensions between the population groups have meanwhile increased
due to individual acts of violence... Single instances of excessive acts
of violence against the civil population, e.g. in Racak, have, in world
opinion, been laid at the feet of the Serbian side and have aroused great
indignation. But the number and frequency of such excesses do not warrant
the conclusion that every Albanian living in Kosovo is exposed to extreme
danger to life and limb nor is everyone who returns there threatened with
death and severe injury."
7: Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Mnster, February
24, 1999 (Az: 14 A 3840/94,A):
"There is no sufficient actual proof of a secret program, or an unspoken
consensus on the Serbian side, to liquidate the Albanian people, to drive
it out or otherwise to persecute it in the extreme manner presently described.
... If Serbian state power carries out its laws and in so doing necessarily
puts pressure on an Albanian ethnic group which turns its back on the
state and is for supporting a boycott, then the objective direction of
these measures is not that of a programmatic persecution of this population
group ...Even if the Serbian state were benevolently to accept or even
to intend that a part of the citizenry which sees itself in a hopeless
situation or opposes compulsory measures, should emigrate, this still
does not represent a program of persecution aimed at the whole of the
Albanian majority (in Kosovo)."
"If moreover the (Yugoslav) state reacts to separatist strivings with
consistent and harsh execution of its laws and with anti-separatist measures,
and if some of those involved decide to go abroad as a result, this is
still not a deliberate policy of the (Yugoslav) state aiming at ostracizing
and expelling the minority; on the contrary it is directed toward keeping
this people within the state federation."
"Events since February and March 1998 do not evidence a persecution
program based on Albanian ethnicity. The measures taken by the armed Serbian
forces are in the first instance directed toward combatting the KLA and
its supposed adherents and supporters."
------ Translators Notes ------
As in the case of the Clinton Administration, the present regime in Germany,
specifically Joschka Fischer's Foreign Office, has justified its intervention
in Kosovo by pointing to a "humanitarian catastrophe," "genocide" and
"ethnic cleansing" occurring there, especially in the months immediately
preceding the NATO attack. The following internal documents from Fischer's
ministry and from various regional Administrative Courts in Germany spanning
the year before the start of NATO's air attacks, attest that criteria
of ethnic cleansing and genocide were not met. The Foreign Office documents
were responses to the courts' needs in deciding the status of Kosovo-Albanian
refugees in Germany. Although one might in these cases suppose a bias
in favor of downplaying a humanitarian catastrophe in order to limit refugees,
it nevertheless remains highly significant that the Foreign Office, in
contrast to its public assertion of ethnic cleansing and genocide in justifying
NATO intervention, privately continued to deny their existence as Yugoslav
policy in this crucial period. And this continued to be their assessment
even in March of this year. Thus these documents tend to show that stopping
genocide was not the reason the German government, and by implication
NATO, intervened in Kosovo, and that genocide (as understood in German
and international law) in Kosovo did not precede NATO bombardment, at
least not from early 1998 through March, 1999, but is a product of it.
Excerpts from the these official documents were obtained by IALANA (International
Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms) which sent them to various
media. The texts used here were published in the German daily junge welt
on April 24, 1999. (See http://www.jungewelt.de/1999/04-24/011.shtml
as well as the commentary at
http://www.jungewelt.de/1999/04-24/001.shtml). According to my sources,
this is as complete a reproduction of the documents as exists in the German
media at the time of this writing.
What follows is my translation of these published excerpts.
- Eric Canepa Brecht Forum, New York April 28, 1999
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last updated: December 29, 2005
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