Bomb tossed at Serb government vehicle in northern Mitrovica

27/12/2009
PRISTINA, Kosovo -- A bomb was hurled at a car belonging to the Serbian Education Ministry early Friday (December 25th) in Mitrovica. No one was injured. According to local deputy police chief Ergin Medic, the target of the attack was a Zastava 128 with Serbian registration plates that was parked in a family's yard. Friday's attack was the second in the Serb-dominated northern part of divided Mitrovica in 24 hours. (Netpress, Tanjug, B92 - 25/12/09)

Нафта за манастире на Космету!!!!!

недеља, 27. дец 2009, 07:35 -> 07:40


Нафта за манастире на Космету
Министарство енергетике и Нафтна индустрија Србије помогли манастирима и црквама на Косову и Метохији, допремивши 40 тона нафте.

За више од 30 манастира и цркава на Космету, којима је Косовска електроенергетска корпорација почетком септембра искључила струју, стигло је 40 тона нафте.

Извештај новинара Зорана Бабовића

Министарство енергетике и Нафтна индустрија Србије и убудуће помагаће манастирима и црквама на Косову и Метохији. Манастриру Грачаници допремили су 40 тона нафте.

"Ситуација је била тешка, залихе при крају, а финансијска ситуација лоша. Сада ћемо имати залихе за следећих шест месеци", рекла је Светлана Стевић, председник удружења "Мајка девет Југовића" из Рашко-призренске епархије.

Министарство енергетике на овај начин наставиће да помаже манастире на Космету.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Calls For Halt Of Forced Returns To Kosovo

By Carsten Koall/Getty Images

http://thegovmonitor.com/world_news/europe/un-human-rights-commissioner-calls-for-halt-of-forced-returns-to-kosovo-19235.html

UN Human Rights Commissioner Calls For Halt Of Forced Returns To Kosovo


Posted By admin On December 20, 2009 @ 2:39 pm In Europe, Governance, Public Administration, Security, Society & Democratic Renewal


“The forced return to Kosovo of people who have found shelter in European states should be halted”, said the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights publishing today a letter to the Chancellor of Germany, Dr. Angela Merkel.

He notes that Kosovo lacks infrastructures allowing refugees’ sustainable reintegration.

The Commissioner is particularly worried by the fact that Roma expelled from European states had to return to the lead-contaminated camps of Česmin Lug and Osterode in northern Mitrovica, where the exposure to lead has already caused serious illnesses to members of Roma families living there, including children. “These camps must be urgently closed, adequate housing provided to the families and complete lead-decontamination treatments ensured to all those affected.”

The Commissioner further stresses that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees confirmed in November that those who fled Kosovo and are still at particular risk of persecution include Serbs and Albanians in minority situations as well as Roma, persons in ethnically mixed-marriages or of mixed ethnicity, persons perceived to have been associated with the Serbian authorities after 1990, victims of trafficking or of domestic violence and persons whose asylum claims were based on sexual orientation.

“Return is not purely a technical administrative act”, added the Commissioner. “It means to receive and re-integrate returning people, including families, in dignity and security. I urge the German authorities to prevent any further forced returns to Kosovo, particularly of Roma people, as long as the situation there does not guarantee a safe and sustainable life for returnees.”

АПЕЛ ЗА ПОМОЋ Епархији рашко-призренској

АПЕЛ ЗА ПОМОЋ
Епархији рашко-призренској

Епархија рашко-призренска и косовско-метохијска принуђена је да се обрати српском народу у Србији и Дијаспори за помоћ.
Вишегодишња исцрпљеност, изазвана ситуацијом и условима у којима живи и ради, доводи до све тежег функционисања Епархије и остваривања њених основних циљева.
Помоћ која је у протеклим годинама упућивана Епархији рашко-призренској задовољавала је многобројне насушне потребе српског народа на Косову и Метохији, поспешивала и охрабривала деловање и Мисију Епархије у условима ропства, прогона и затирања Српства.
Околности су, међутим, постајале све теже, економска моћ све слабија, способност да се одговори растућим потребама у све сложенијем окружењу све мања.
Проблеми са којима се, у свакодневном раду, сусреће Епархија рашко-призренска по много чему су специфични и јединствени. Захтевају особено деловање, ангажовање стручњака разних профила, оснивање тела која ће моћи адекватно да одговоре растућим и неочекиваним изазовима у све тежим условима.
Не заборављамо помоћ коју је у протеклим годинама Епархији упућивала Влада Републике Србије.
Све то данас, међутим, постаје крајње недовољно и без капацитета да покрије основне потребе деловања Епархије рашко-призренске.
Стога је Епархија принуђена да се овим путем обрати српском народу у Србији и Дијаспори за помоћ, да они према својим могућностима у временима данашње кризе, учине додатни напор и упуте помоћ, која ће омогућити потпуније и свестраније деловање Епархије.
Помоћ се може упутити преко рачуна у Комерцијалној банци. Интернет-адреса овог Апела са детаљним упутствима је:

http://www.eparhija-prizren.com/pomoc


Епископ рашко-призренски Артемије

Kosovo organ traffic proof

2009-12-13 19:30

http://www.news24.com/Content/World/News/1073/2b8a1028e94e4b04882a3b2e1c2b67ae/13-12-2009-07-30/Kosovo_organ_traffic_proof#


Belgrade - Serbia has fresh evidence of the alleged trafficking of organs taken from Kosovo Serb prisoners in northern Albania during and after the 1998-1999 conflict, its war crimes prosecutor said on Sunday.

"We have new proof that will first be presented to the Council of Europe's envoy, Dick Marty, before being made public," Vladimir Vukcevic told Beta news agency.

Vukcevic said his office had four new witnesses, but provided no further details.

"In this phase we are just proving that such a monstrous crime was committed, that there was human organ trafficking, but we are still far away from the perpetrators," the prosecutor said.

Marty, rapporteur of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, visited Serbia, Kosovo and Albania in August to investigate allegations that ethnic Albanian rebels killed up to 500 Kosovo Serbs in Albania in order to sell their organs abroad.

The claims first arose in the memoirs published last year of former UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, which prompted the Council of Europe to reopen the case briefly investigated by her office five years ago.

In her book, Del Ponte said organs were removed at a "yellow house" since identified as belonging to a family called Katuci.

Earlier this year Albania rejected a Serb request for a probe into the case on the basis of evidence and testimonies from more than 130 witnesses collected by Vukcevic.

The conflict between Kosovo guerrillas and forces loyal to late Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic left around 10 000 people dead, the majority ethnic Albanians from the breakaway southern Serbian province of Kosovo.

More than 1 900 missing are still unaccounted for in connection with the Kosovo conflict, including up to 500 Serbs and other non-Albanians.

- AFP

Swiss cut disability payments to Kosovo

Switzerland’s disability insurance programme will stop sending money to Kosovo over concerns of fraud and abuse, authorities said on Tuesday.
Accords with countries in the former Yugoslavia and with Turkey that govern payments to disabled workers once employed in Switzerland would also be renegotiated, Interior Minister Didier Burkhalter said.



Switzerland pays pensions to roughly 59,000 people living abroad. About 43,000 of those are European Union nationals.

A few hundred of payments go to people in Kosovo. But abuse of the system there prompted an inquiry last year. It failed after investigators received death threats.

The government also decided that no disability payments would be sent abroad for unverifiable claims.

Monitoring safeguards should also be extended to Brazil and the Dominican Republic, Burkhalter said.

Originally created to help people injured while employed in Switzerland, the programme, which has debts of SFr13 billion ($12.7 billion), has been hit hard over the past years by the effects of changes in society and the economy.

swissinfo.ch and agencies

Kosovo-Albanians try to claim residence in South Serbia for Serb passports

http://www.examiner.com/x-27426-Volusia-County-Foreign-Policy-Examiner~y2009m12d5-KosovoAlbanians-try-to-claim-residence-in-South-Serbia-for-Serb-passports



Matt Becker
With the European Union decision to lift visa requirements for citizens of Serbia (http://www.examiner.com/x-27426-Volusia-County-Foreign-Policy-Examiner~y2009m11d12-Three-Balkan-states-to-recieve-visafree-travel-to-EU) starting on 19 December 2009, many Kosovo-Albanians are now attempting to claim residence in South Serbia -- mainly in the Albaninan-majority towns of Bujanovac and Presevo. The new visa regime does not apply to residents of Kosovo who hold Serbian passports. Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008.
Eshref Duraku is one of the disappointed applicants from Kosovo. "Coming from Gnjilan, in southeast Kosovo, he had no prior connection to Southern Serbia but says a man from Bujanovac agreed to register him at his own address as a subtenant. 'My only goal was to get a Serbian passport to use the right to travel without a visa regime,' he admits. 'I wanted to visit relatives in Austria and find a job there.' He did not succeed. Police in the nearest big town in Southern Serbia, Vranje, denied his request for permanent resident status in Bujanovac" (http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/analysis/24161/). The Speaker of the Bujanovac Assembly, Jonuz Musliu, says he is not concerned about the plight of born Kosovars who want to apply for residence in Serbia simply to have a Serb passport.
The majority of applications have been turned down by the police, who cite "...Article 4 of the Act on Residence and Dwelling. This defines residence as a place where a citizen is accommodated with an intention of staying for good. 'Article 5 of the same act says that when changing residence, citizens are obliged to submit correct data.... Having in mind that a lot of requests for a change of residence have been submitted lately - not with the intention of permanent residence - in order to prevent registering fictitious addresses… the competent authorities are entitled to decide whether a person has filed a request in order to get a job, get married or something similar, and if the conditions have not been met, the request will be denied....'" (http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/analysis/24161/).

New details in Kosovo organ trade case

1 December 2009 | 10:03 | Source: Večernje novosti
BELGRADE -- Some EU member-states will very soon join the investigation into the fate of the kidnapped Kosovo Serbs, a Belgrade daily writes.

The case, known also in the media as the Yellow House, after a house in northern Albania where the victims were allegedly held before being murdered, was picked up last year by the Serbian War Crimes Prosecution.

The prosecution believes that hundreds of Kosovo Serb civilians were kidnapped by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999, to be taken to neighboring Albania and murdered for their vital organs, which were later sold in the black market.

Now, the newspaper says, it has emerged that after the 1999 NATO attacks on Serbia, four Czech citizens also went missing in Kosovo. According to this, it is suspected that they too became the victims of the human organ trade in northern Albania.

Serbian investigators will soon visit some of the countries in the region where the potential witnesses are, according to the report.

“Recently, the border police discovered several men transporting drugs,” the daily’s source close to the investigation said.

One of them had 30 kilograms of heroin in his possession, while the other carried five. The third, it turned out, was a human trafficker. Police immediately placed them all in custody.

"As time went by," said the unnamed source, "they started talking, and said that the drugs were being trafficked from Kosovo to the EU market. During the interview, some names popped up that were mentioned before in the human organ trafficking case. To us, that meant that a connection had been established, and that we got ourselves new witnesses – two, it appears, immediate witnesses."

But the source could not say where the witnesses were or when they might be interviewed regarding the case, and explained that the reason for the secrecy was also their safety.

“We found out that their bosses and accomplices in Kosovo left them high and dry and that they were on their own now,” the source said.

According to unofficial information, however, one of the witnesses has confirmed the location of a mass grave where about 20 bodies of the victims had been buried.

The investigation about these crimes has expanded beyond Serbia's borders.

The Foreign Ministry is currently working to establish connections with European institutions that would help the domestic investigators interview potential witnesses by means of bilateral cooperation.

Meanwhile, War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukčević would not comment on the daily's report, saying only, "It's true that we have new findings. But, the investigation is ongoing. We expect to have a much clearer picture by the end of the year."
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/crimes-article.php?yyyy=2009&mm=12&dd=1&nav_id=63422&version=print

UN court hears Serbian challenge to Kosovo

Tue Dec 1, 2009 6:20am EST

* Serbia disputes legality of Kosovo independence

* Non-binding, advisory opinion due in several months

(

By Aaron Gray-Block and Reed Stevenson

THE HAGUE, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Serbia told a U.N. court at the start of hearings on Tuesday that Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence was a "flagrant violation" of Serbia's territorial integrity and undermined international law and order.

Serbia, Kosovo's former ruler, rejected the declaration and called on the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on its legality.

A decade after NATO bombing ended a two-year war between Serbia and ethnic Kosovo Albanians, Serbian ambassador to France Dusan Batakovic told the court "Kosovo is the historic cradle of Serbia and ... one of the essential pillars of its identity."

The envoy told the 15-judge panel in The Hague on the first day of oral hearings he hoped the court's ruling would provide scope for talks with Kosovo about its future status and contribute to "peace and stability".

"This opportunity on no account should be wasted," he said.

The United States and most other Western nations have recognised Kosovo's independence, but Serbia rejected it, as did its ally Russia, which fears it could set a dangerous precedent for separatist movements.

Observers say a ruling in Kosovo's favour would lead more countries to recognise its independence, while an adverse opinion could push it into negotiating a settlement with Serbia.

Kosovo's independence has been recognised by 63 countries, 22 of them European Union member states, but it will need many more before it can become a full U.N. member state.

The court is due to hold nine days of hearings and to give its non-binding but influential opinion in several months. (Editing by Tim Pearce) ((aaron.gray-block@thomsonreuters.com; +31 20 504 5001; Reuters Messaging: aaron.gray-block.reuters.com@reuters.net))

http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSGEE5B002W._CH_.2400