Written priority question to the Council

deposited by Olivier Dupuis (ERA)

Mr. Ukshin HOTI, professor of Political Sciences in University of Pristina (Kosovo) is imprisoned since 1994 following a process which has been held in rather doubtfull conditions and which has concluded by his condemnation for "having threatened the constitutional order" and for "having attacked the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia". Mr. Hoti has already been arrested in 1981 for "counter-revolutionary crimes", and in 1993 for the second time. He has already spent 8 years of his life in prison for offences of opinion related to his militancy in favour of a nonviolent and negotiated solution of the Kosovo question.

Which actions has the Council already undertaken and which are the initiatives that it intends to undetake for obtaining from the Serbian authorities the liberation of Mr. Hoti, and which initiatives it intends to undertake to obtain - finally - the support of Kosovar authorities for this liberation?

Answer of the Council to the question of Olivier Dupuis on the health situation of Ukshin Hoti

P-0373/99

Answer

(26 April 1999)

The Council fully shares the preoccupations of the honorable parliamentarian concerning the health situation of Ukshin Hoti.

The Presidency has therefore charged its Ambassador in Belgrade to enter in contact with the local representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in order to verify the health, treatment and detention conditions of Mr. Hoti. The representatives of the ICRC could meet Mr. Hoti on 1 March 1999. The Presidency makes and effort to keep the Parliament informed on every element of information that will be communicated to its Ambassador in Belgrade from the representatives of the ICRC.

The Council however warns the honorary parliamentarian from an excessive optimism, the relations between Belgrade and European Union are being very tense due to the crisis in Kosovo and to the requests that the Council has posed to the Belgrade authorities in this regard.

The Council is not able to indicate precisely the number of persons actually imprisoned for their opinion, arrested without indictment or considered as missing. According to the figures dispatched by the ICRC in August 1998, this organisation has been investigating the destiny of 138 Serbs and Montenegrins who have been presumably kidnapped by the Kosovo Liberation Army, and of over 400 Albanians who could have been arrested by the Serbian forces. The High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR) has estimated the total number of 400 established in the occasion of a census of persons indicated as missing. The HCR estimates that about 200 of them are actually detained by the police.