Macedonia Accused on Human Rights

Macedonian forces committed widespread abuses during a village siege last month that killed 10 ethnic Albanian civilians, Human Rights Watch charged Wednesday, and it called for a war crimes investigation.

Macedonian authorities rejected the New York-based group’s findings as inaccurate and biased, saying the forces acted in self-defense while under rebel fire.

Human Rights Watch accused security forces of shooting and killing six ethnic Albanian civilians and burning at least 22 structures from Aug. 10 to 12 in the village of Ljuboten, just north of Skopje, the Macedonian capital.

The group said its evidence indicated that “the attack on Ljuboten had no military justification and was carried out for purposes of revenge and reprisal.”

The government said it launched the offensive in response to a land mine explosion that killed eight soldiers.

Indiscriminate shelling killed an additional three civilians, and one more was fatally shot by government forces as he tried to flee, the group said in its report.

As hundreds of villagers fled the fighting, police separated more than 100 men and boys from their families and took them to police stations in Skopje, where some were beaten, the report says.

The group also implicated Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski, saying local television reported that he was there during the operation.

His presence “on the day that some of the worst abuses in Macedonia’s six-month-old conflict were committed--abuses including the execution-style killing of civilians, house-by-house arson, looting, beatings, and torture--demands an investigation,” the report said.

But Boskovski vehemently rejected the allegations, saying he arrived only after the end of the operation.

He also said it was unclear whether those killed were truly civilians and whether they were killed by the rebels instead of Macedonian forces.