As Kosovar President Hashim Thaci yesterday rushed home to face accusations of war crimes from the 1990s conflict with Serbia, Kosovars defended the “just war” that paved their path to independence.
Thaci was the political leader of an ethnic Albanian guerilla group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which launched a rebellion against Belgrade more than 20 years ago when Kosovo was a southern province of Serbia.
On Wednesday, he and others were accused of crimes linked to the war in 1998 and 1999 in an indictment filed by special prosecutors at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague, Netherlands.
Photo: AFP
Their victims included “hundreds of known victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma and other ethnicities, and include political opponents,” said the prosecutors, who still need a pre-trial judge to approve the charges.
The prosecutors said they published the charges early because Thaci and others have been trying to “obstruct the work” of the tribunal, which operates under Kosovar law, but has international judges.
Thaci, who was on his way home after cutting short a planned trip to the US to discuss lingering tensions with Serbia, has not yet responded to the charges.
The Washington meeting is not going to happen, independent analyst Agron Bajrami said, adding that the future of the entire Kosovo-Serbia dialogue is in doubt.
“It will be very difficult for him [Thaci] to continue acting acting as a president, if not for anything else but for the fact that he cannot be part of the dialogue now that this has occurred,” Bajrami said.
Kosovars have come to the defense of the former rebels who rose up against Belgrade in a war that cost about 13,000 lives, overwhelmingly Kosovar Albanians.
“This court is unfair because it only judges KLA soldiers... We know that Serbia is the one that has committed crimes in Kosovo,” said Qazim Fazlia, a pensioner in the capital, Pristina.
Skender Musa, a lawyer, said he hoped the court would “clean” the KLA’s record.
“It is extremely certain that no KLA soldier who has worn the uniform has committed crimes against Serb civilians,” he told reporters.
Additional reporting by AP
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique