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crisis. The Human Rights Watch Report of 2001, entitled Under Orders:
War Crimes in Kosovo documents “a coordinated and systematic campaign
to terrorize, kill, and expel the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo that was
organized by the highest levels of the Serbian and Yugoslav governments in
power at that time” that began days prior to NATO’s engagement. It
represented an intensification of a program of ruthless, ethnic-focused
attacks that had been in evidence for years (HRW,2001,p.3ff). Amnesty
International in a Report issued in April of ’99 noted that since it had been
documenting for “well over a decade …systematic abuses visited upon the
province’s ethnic Albanian population by the Yugoslav authorities” it felt
compelled “to affirm emphatically” that the ethnic cleansing going on while
NATO jet fighters and bombers were conducting their sorties “is the
outcome of sustained human rights abuse directed against Kosovo’s ethnic
Albanian population by Yugoslav and Serbian authorities” that had been
taking place for many years. (AI Report April 1999).
In organized, civilized societies people who find themselves in calamitous
situations can expect that they will be afforded aid from emergency
services, from the fire department and police. The world is upside down
when ambulatory care specialists don’t respond, when the fire fighters set
homes ablaze rather than put them out and when police officers line people
up against a wall and shoot them rather than protect them. People trying to
live normal lives who are subjected to atrocious, systematic, dehumanizing
assaults are morally entitled to protection from the perpetrators of such acts.
If it is within the capacity of agencies - national, regional, international or
even non-governmental - to provide that protection then they have an
obligation to do so. Albanian Kosovars found themselves under attack and
Convention