BELGIUM: THE UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO THE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL ON YUGOSLAVIA DAVID SCHAEFFER DESCRIBES "MULTIPLE VIOLATIONS" OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS SAYING THEY HAVE BEEN GOVERNMENT-PLANNED

Record ID: 989939

  • Title: BELGIUM: THE UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO THE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL ON YUGOSLAVIA DAVID SCHAEFFER DESCRIBES "MULTIPLE VIOLATIONS" OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS SAYING THEY HAVE BEEN GOVERNMENT-PLANNED
  • Date: 18th May 1999
  • Summary: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (MAY 18, 1999) (NATO TV - ACCESS ALL) 1. SV NEWS CONFERENCE, NATO SPOKESMAN JAMIE SHEA AND U.S. AMBASSADOR FOR WAR CRIMES DAVID SCHAEFFER AT PODIUM 0.07 2. MCU (English) SCHAEFFER SAYING "With the exception of Rwanda in 1994 and Cambodia in 1975, you would be hard pressed to find a crime scene anywhere in the world since World War II where a defenceless civilian population has been assaulted with such ferocity and criminal intent and suffered so many multiple vilolations of international humanitarian law in such a short period of time as in Kosovo since mid-March 1999. There are hideous crime scenes elsewhere recently, such as Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan come to mind, but Kosovo represents a government-planned campaign to eliminate either through forced deportation or killling most of an ethnic population from its homes. The criminal character of such an enterprise -- divorced in large part from any semblance of military neccessity can not be ignored" 1.03 3. SV SHEA AND SCHAEFFER 1.11 4. MCU (English) SCHAEFFER SAYING "The numbers of towns and villages where we have reports of mass executions have now risen to 75. We have new reports of mass graves at Urosevac, Drenica, Lipljan, Kaniku, Rizala, Malisevo, Paklac, Pusto Selo, and in the Pagarusa valley. We have reports that Serb forces have burned bodies exhumed from mass graves in an attempt to destroy forensic evidence. The number of individuals that we have a fairly firm count on as having been killed in mass executions has now risen to 5,000. I must emphasise that is a totally minimalist figure, we're simply trying to give you the most conservative confirmed figure that we can from good refugee reporting. We can only assume the worst and that the figure is actually much higher than that 2.07 5. SV SHEA AND SCHAEFFER 2.14 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 1st June 1999 13:00
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  • Location: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
  • Country: Belgium
  • Reuters ID: LVAEJ8TCP4QBJ2EN6QLBL4PLY2QH
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