This report looks at some of the human rights abuses which occured in the Tetovo region, which was one of the main centres of fighting, when an ethnic Albanian armed group, the National Liberation Army (NLA), clashed with Macedonian government security forces. The evidence from the Tetovo region indicates that the police subjected ethnic Albanians to arbitrary arrest as well as to torture and ill-treatment, both as a means of interrogation and, as many victims believed, of reprisal for actions by the NLA. The NLA, which initially targeted the police and army, committed human rights abuses by abducting and ill-treating civilians and by driving ethnic Macedonians out of their homes in an apparent attempt at “ethnic cleansing”.
