Using the Dead

The Kosovo Information Centre (KIC) said on September 8 that Serb troops have attacked ethnic Albanian forces in Glodjane, Rznic, Belege, Pozare, Gramocel and other villages near Djakovica. Serb sources did not confirm the news, but told a group of reporters trapped between the villages of Glodjane and Jablanica an hour or two after the fighting that Serb police have found several dismembered bodies in a canal near Lake Radonjic.

"We have discovered 12 bodies, but we have reason to fear that the death toll could be as high as 40 Serb civilians", said colonel Dragutin Adamovic. Serb police quoted unidentified KLA prisoners as saying that these people were probably killed between last May and the first week of September. Colonel Adamovic said the victims were Serbs and "other nationals loyal to the Serbian state", adding that they had been kidnapped and executed by the KLA. Nearby walls were riddled with bullet marks, and shells found on the ground indicate that the executioners used Chinese-made weapons. Reporters as well as observers from Russia, the United States and the European Union visited the scene of the crime the first day.

The Judge of the Pec Municipal Court said the investigation would go on for a few days, after a team of forensic experts from Belgrade gave their verdict. Apart from all that, bad weather too conditioned a quick investigation as heavy rainfall took the remainders of three bodies toward the lake.

THE CHOIR AND THE ORCHESTRA: The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) was the first political organization to condemn "yet another crime committed by ethnic Albanian terrorists". The SPO said that those who commit such crimes are destined for "total defeat" and that "crimes such as this one must force the major powers to change their position on the Kosovo conflict and deplore terrorists in the name of civilization and basic moral standards". A spokesman of the Socialist Party (SPS) said only minutes later that this terrible crime committed by ethnic Albanian separatists wouldn't deter Serbia from defending Kosovo. The SPS added that the crime was another "heavy blot on the conscience of countries calling themselves civilized while supporting ethnic Albanian terrorists". Jagodina's Pama Plus television station asked its viewers what else should happen for the major powers to realize that "the KLA are not freedom fighters but beasts whose crimes must awaken even the most sleepy human conscience". The station's reporter expressed his conviction that international observers would "look the other way just as they did in Klecka".

The communists deplored the crime and qualified it as "genocide committed in Glodjane by ethnic Albanian terrorists with the intention of forming an independent Albanian state on Serbia's territory". The communists highlighted the perpetrators' spiritual, ideological and political kinship with German Nazis, as well as NATO's support for the terrorists and readiness to intervene in Kosovo. Nova Demokratija (ND) sharply condemned the "uncivilized tactics based on ethnic cleansing" committed by ethnic Albanian extremists, and asked the state authorities to bring the situation under control in Kosovo. Unlike the communists, the ND expects international observers in Kosovo to restore confidence among the sides to the conflict, put an end to clashes and the suffering of the civilians and eventually create the conditions for political dialogue.

The Civic Alliance of Serbia (GSS) was the only party that stood out from the choir with its statement. The GSS said the crime showed that the level of security for Kosovo's Serbs was disastrous in spite of the general opinion that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is "successful in protecting them". Vesna Pesic, the GSS chairwoman, said that the federal authorities must employ foreign as well as Yugoslav experts to investigate the crime.

PASSING ON THE GUILT: Kosovo's ethnic Albanian newspapers accused the Belgrade authorities of "speculating with nameless bodies". They said that there were no witnesses to the alleged crime, as the video tape showed "only two or three bodies".  Ethnic Albanian media invited foreign forensic experts to come to Kosovo and said that foreign reporters were reluctant to write about mass graves until their arrival.

Meanwhile, the death toll of another such crime committed in Glodjane rose to 24. The local judge said all evidence pointed to "an atrocious crime committed by ethnic Albanian extremists". On September 10, monitoring missions from Russia and the United States visited the scene of the crime along with their hosts Milomir Minic, Nikola Sainovic, Dusan Matkovic and Zoran Andjelkovic. The same day, the KIC reported that the bodies of nine ethnic Albanians were found near Orahovac and Prizren. The Pristina-based Serb media center said that around 10,000 ethnic Albanian refugees have returned to the villages of Istnic, Donji Ratis, Krusevac and Rznic.

Several Serbian ministers and the Belgrade daily Politika said it was time to stop the suffering of innocent civilians and start the peace talks, "which was always the goal of the Serbian government". Politika said that the major powers were punishing Serbia and Yugoslavia while ethnic Albanian terrorists "executed, slaughtered and cremated their Serb victims". The Yugoslav embassy in London lodged a strong protest with the London Times and accused one of the daily 's reporters, Anthony Lloyd, of one-sided and biased writing. According to the Yugoslav embassy, Lloyd  "dared predict that Serb troops were about to commit a crime" and "turned a blind eye on mass graves found in Glodjane".
The league of former ethnic Albanian political prisoners said that news on mass graves full of Serb civilians was a story constructed by the Belgrade regime with the intention of "accusing others before being accused itself for terrorizing civilians". Charred remains of human bodies found in Klecka and the bodies found in Glodjabe were explained by the league as the Belgrade regime's "obvious attempt" to cover up the death of thousands of ethnic Albanians, as well as the disappearance of just as many being held prisoners by the Serbs. The president of Kosovo's SPS branch, Vojsilav Zivkovic, said ethnic Albanian terrorists in Kosovo had kidnapped more than 170 civilians and killed more than 60 policemen, not to mention that they left thousands of people homeless. The leaders of the ethnic Albanian terrorists have fled in panic while the "so-called KLA" has inflicted a lot of suffering on Kosovo's Serbs, Montenegrins and ethnic Albanians too, said the SPS.

The KLA headquarters denied the organization's responsibility for crimes in Klecka and Glodjane on September 12, saying that "Serb authorities were now unveiling mass graves and crimes committed by Milosevic's own executioners". The KLA asked the major powers to form a team of forensic experts to investigate the crimes committed in Kosovo and invited ethnic Albanians to carry on with the armed struggle, having threatened those who gave up their weapons with "historic shame and a swift trial".

THE INVESTIGATION: A game of words and accusations overshadowed the facts surrounding the event. At one stage, it looked like the attempt to persuade the world to condemn ethnic Albanian terrorism would have a disastrous ending, much like after the Klecka bodies were found. However, the way the Glodjane investigation was conducted effectively eliminated that danger.

A team of Belgrade experts was given all they required to do their work properly. Apart from human bones and bullet shells, they found other traces indicating the nature of the crime. They found an agricultural cable and pieces of barbed wire apparently used to torture and strangle the victims. The skulls of most of the victims had exit wounds, meaning that they were executed by being shot in the head.

THE IDENTIFICATION: The identification process took a week. During that time, the Italian RAI UNO television reporters were the only foreign media to show interest in the event. International observers wanted to know whether there were any signs of torture more than they wanted to know who the victims were.
The remains found were well decomposed and most of them were reduced to bones. That made positive identification very difficult, so final results will be made public in two or three weeks, when the entire process will be repeated. At this time, it is certain that 34 bodies have been recovered. "One of the victims, an old woman, was identified by a head injury she sustained in a car accident more than 20 years ago. Another victim was identified on the basis of a rib fracture he had had many years ago. I will do everything in my power to find out the identity of all the victims. I am completely sick as we have a case of nameless victims and unidentified murderers. At one point, it somehow seemed to me that finding out who they were meant saving them from such a senseless death", said Marija Djuric-Srejic, one of the Belgrade experts taking part in the identification process.
The facts were given or confirmed by the relatives of the victims. The last stage of the identification process was bringing in the relatives to identify clothes, footwear and personal belongings found next to what was left of the victims. "That was a nightmare for all of us", Marija Djuric-Srejic said. Of the 34 victims, 12 have been identified so far.

The age of these three men and nine women ranges from 32 to 66. If it bears any significance, four of the victims were ethnic Albanian, one was Gypsy while seven were Serb.
THE HARD REALITY: Marija Djuric-Srejic said she was convinced that another five or six victims could be identified. The problem is that their relatives did not come to identify their clothes and other personal belongings. That brings us back to the sickening reality in which all people, including the dead, are qualified as desirable and undesirable. One can only guess why families would refuse to identify dead relatives, but the safest bet is that they would be qualified as "traitors" and accused of collaborating with the enemy, Stories told by the local population only reassure us in this belief. One of the four ethnic Albanian victims was reportedly Moslem, two were Catholics while one was married to a Serb woman. These rumors easily fit into the apparent fact that the KLA is full of Marxist and Leninist factions quite happy to get rid of "enemies within its own ranks" and those they call "traitors and collaborators".

The fact that some Serbs who came to identify their relatives were the former inhabitants of Knin, more precisely the survivors of other former Yugoslav wars, makes it easy to reconstruct devastating human tragedies and the sickening times we live in. The trouble is that what is happening around us seems to be a never-ending nightmare, in spite of all the declared victories and defeats.

The Belgrade experts deserve every credit for their valiant efforts to remain professional and ethical in their arduous task. Sadly, we must stress once again that the lists of missing persons are not here to count friends and enemies, but to save human lives if possible. If not, at least to identify the victims. When the dead are given back their names, it will be easier to recognize the killers.