A Village Destroyed, May 14, 1999, War Crimes in Kosovo, Jointly developed by Fred Abrahams 80’s?, Gilles Peress, and Eric Stover under the aegis of Human Rights Watch. I am grateful to Ron Singer for telling me about this book.
On the morning of this day, Cuska, a village in Kosovo, populated by ethnic Albanians, was taken over by Serbian police. Its male population was divided into three groups and massacred. The book looks like an upscale photo book until you realize that the images depict the harrowing story of exile, death and destruction, all part of ethnic cleansing. Fred wrote the major part of the text. His section is called The Case, as this is not merely a journalistic report, but a documentation of war crimes which could play a part in trials at the World Court in the Hague or in other more local tribunals. Against all odds, one man in each of the groups taken to be slaughtered miraculously got away, so there are three eye witnesses to the crimes. In a page out of a spy thriller, film (of suspect provenance), which potentially contains images of the killers, comes to light. Fred scans the photos into his laptop for villagers to view and identify. Indeed there are individuals they recognize. (I have not succeeded in finding out what happened to the criminals. I gather that they were tried, but I haven’t been able to find the verdict.) This is a narrow slice of a much larger war; through the efforts and courage of this NGO, we see it in its raw brutality.
