This is nearly half the total of 34,700 people reported missing between 1991 and 2001 when a series of conflicts tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
The group said Wednesday the missing are a daily source of pain for relatives wanting to learn the fate of their loved ones.
"The lack of investigations and prosecutions of enforced disappearances and abductions remains a serious concern throughout the Balkans," Amnesty official Jezerca Tigani said on the International Day of the Disappeared on Thursday.
"The major obstacle to tackling impunity and bringing the perpetrators to justice is a persistent lack of political will" in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo, she stressed.
While some of the main war crimes perpetrators have been tried by the UN war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, that tribunal is nearing the end of its mandate, Amnesty warned.
"Domestic courts are slow to abide by their responsibility to seek out, identify, and prosecute the remaining perpetrators," it said.
Amnesty stressed that the families of the victims, who come from all ethnic groups and walks of life, must get access to justice and reparations for their loss.
"Their families have the right to know the truth about the circumstances of the forced disappearance, the process and the result of the investigation and the fate of the disappeared person," Tigani said.
The families of the victims, "do not know if they will ever return, so they cannot mourn and adjust to the loss," according to an Amnesty report issued on Thursday.
It quotes the mother of Albion Kumnova, a Kosovo Albanian who disappeared during the 1998-99 conflict between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian security forces. His body is believed to have been transported to Serbia and buried there.
"If I could know where my son Albion is, and if I could bury him and put a flower on his grave I would be in a better place," Nesrete Kumnova told Amnesty.
Besides calling on the Balkan governments to "demonstrate a clear commitment ... to end impunity for enforced disappearances and abductions" Amnesty also urged the European Commission to pressure them on the subject during the accession process of countries that want to join the European Union.
Croatia is set to enter the EU in 2013, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro are all candidate members, while Bosnia and Kosovo also want to join the 27-member bloc sometime in the future.
In July 2011 some 500,000 people in the region signed a joint petition of more than 1,500 NGOs from all over the former Yugoslavia asking for an independent regional commission to draw up a list of all the victims of the wars and try to clarify the fate of the people still listed as missing.
It is estimated that at least 130,000 people were killed in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo. Most of them -- some 100,000 -- died during Bosnia's 1992-1995 conflict.
Thursday 30 August 2012
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Amnesty-warns-14000-are-still-missing-after-Balkans-wars/articleshow/15977830.cms
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