Albanians and Serbs demand the depoliticization of the issue of missing persons

2023-12-12 17:38:47, Kosova & Bota CNA

Albanians and Serbs demand the depoliticization of the issue of missing persons

Photo of a man missing during the war in Kosovo, at a ceremony marking the International Day of Missing Persons, at the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia, Merdar, August 30, 2016.

The families of the missing from Kosovo have asked the authorities in Belgrade and Pristina to depoliticize the search for more than 1,600 people missing from the last war in Kosovo in 1998-99.

"We have the right to a decent burial of our loved ones. We have the right to prosecute war crimes. We have the right to compensation and the construction of a memorial to the missing at the scene of the crime," said Natasha Shqepanovi? , president of the Association of Families of Kosovo Victims.

From the joint press conferences on December 12 in Belgrade and finally in Pristina, the families of the missing persons, on the occasion of the International Human Rights Day on December 10, called on the competent institutions to resolve this issue.

Bajram Qerkinaj from the Resource Center for Missing Persons based in Pristina, estimated in Belgrade that the results would not be lacking if the authorities treated the search for missing persons as a humanitarian issue.

"Politicians do not allow this process to move forward. We are not sufficiently familiar with the results because no one informs us, therefore together we are trying to explain how the situation is" , said Qerkinaj.

According to the data of the European Union Mission for the Rule of Law in Kosovo (EULEX) from September of this year, 1,616 people are missing from the last war in Kosovo. The Government Commission for Missing Persons of Serbia announced that about two-thirds of them are Albanians, 568 are Serbs and other non-Albanians.

Their families have appealed together for the working groups of Pristina and Belgrade to find the missing, to start working again, because they have not met since 2021.

The last formal move by both sides was on May 2, when in Brussels, in talks on the normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, and the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vu?i?, signed a statement on the missing in the period 1998-2001.

In that document, they committed to cooperation in the identification and research of graves, the exchange of information and documentation, as well as the realization of the rights of the families of the disappeared.

Natasha Shqepanovic said that finding missing persons is a prerequisite for reconciliation in Kosovo.

"Our right to the truth is being violated by the representatives of the Government throwing dust in our eyes. Their position is that they do not have the political will to work together to shed light on the fate of the missing persons," Shcepanovic said.

EULEX reported that the perpetrators often hide evidence of kidnappings and murders of people, burying the bodies in small secret graves, even in cemeteries.

The representative of the European Union, Miroslav Lajcak, and the head of EULEX, Giovanni Pietro Barbano, recently asked the authorities in Pristina and Belgrade to make progress in determining the fate of the disappeared and to recognize their families' right to the truth.

EULEX announced on August 30 that, since the beginning of its mandate 15 years ago, it has carried out 746 field operations to find the missing, including 200 exhumations. He announced that he identified the remains of 492 people, including 339 missing people./ REL