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BELGRADE, Oct 8 (AFP) - A top UN human rights official urged the international community Friday to send humanitarian aid to the displaced Serbs and non-Albanians from Kosovo who have found shelter in Serbia.
"We have to do everything to prevent that one ethnic cleansing is changed with another ethnic cleansing," said Jiri Dienstbier, the UN special rapporteur tasked with monitoring human rights in the former Yugoslavia.
He also urged a lifting of all economic sanctions imposed on Belgrade, saying such measures "always punish ordinary people and not the government."
Dienstbier, who during his week-long tour to Yugoslavia visited several towns in Kosovo, said the human rights violations of Serbs and other minorities in the province was "extremely worrying."
An estimated 200,000 Serbs and non-Albanians have fled or were expelled from Kosovo since mid-June, after the withdrawal of Belgrade's security forces from the province and the deployment of the NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR).
"If the international community is not able to guarantee security of every citizen and respect of their human rights, then it would be a failure of this operation," Dienstbier said.
Noting that between "750,000 and one million" refugees and internally displaced people from Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo have found shelter in Serbia, Dienstbier said that "it is necessary that the international community starts very quickly sending humanitarian aid to Yugoslavia."
The international embargo and economic sanctions implemented to isolate Serbia could "provoke a humanitarian disaster" for the population, Dienstbier said.
He also condemned Serbian authorities for resorting to violence to break up anti-government protests held throughout Serbia by the opposition coalition Alliance for Change.
"I strongly criticize the brutality of the police during the demonstrations," he said, referring to the beatings that anti-riot police meted out to demonstrators during recent protests.
Dienstbier is due to submit a report on the human rights situation in the former Yugoslavia to the UN General Assembly in November.
It will cite evidence of "terrible events in spring, incredible violations of human rights in Kosovo, violation of human rights by bombing innocent people in Yugoslavia and present violation and ethnic cleansing of people in Kosovo now," he said.