The United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances told Serbia that it was still failing to meet its international commitment to resolve the fate of missing persons from the 1990s wars.
The UN committee admonished Belgrade for not doing enough to uphold the rights of people who disappeared and their relatives, who it said “are still waiting for justice and reparations for the war crimes and crimes against humanity during the wars of the 1990s”.
The committee had reviewed Serbia’s progress in implementing the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which Serbia signed in 2007 and ratified in 2011.
According to the UN, Serbia has failed to bring all those responsible for enforced disappearances to justice, and violated its duty to respect and protect the rights of their relatives.
It said that Serbia should ensure that all cases of enforced disappearances during past armed conflicts are immediately investigated and that all those found responsible, including commanding officers and civilian leaders, are punished in accordance with the gravity of their crimes.
The UN recommended that the rights of missing persons’ relatives should be included in Serbia’s current draft legislation on war veterans and civilian victims of conflict.
It also urged Serbia to ensure “sufficient personnel, and technical and financial resources” for the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor. It called for the investigation of all alleged threats against and intimidation of witnesses and the strengthening of the Witness Protection Unit, which has been accused of failing to offer proper security.
Human rights group Amnesty International, which in January filed a report to the United Nations that arguing Serbia has failed to implement the international convention it signed to protect people from state-sponsored abduction, welcomed the UN recommendations.
“The organisation particularly welcomes the emphasis placed by the committee on the need to bring to justice all those responsible for the transfer of bodies of Kosovo Albanians murdered in 1999 to Ministry of Interior sites in Serbia, including Batajnica, Petrovo Selo, and Rudnica, as well as Lake Perucac,” Amnesty International said in a statement on Tuesday.
Since 2000, the remains of some 900 Kosovo Albanians have been found in mass graves at police training centres in Batajnica and Petrovo Selo, and in Lake Perucac. Most recently, 45 bodies were found in a quarry near the southern Serbian town of Raska.
Senior Serbian army and police officials have been convicted of the covering up the crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, but no one has been convicted in Serbia.
