“Time is running out. There are fewer and fewer witnesses. Even now they are giving statements to Eulex about Serbian sufferings, but there really is no one to listen to them. The crimes are being hushed up because of politics,” said Bozanic, from whose home 14 brothers and relatives were kidnapped in July, 1998. 

The president of the Association of Families of Killed and Missing Persons in Kossovo, Natasa Scepanovic, asked at a public forum on Serbs killed in Kossovo in 1998 how someone can hope to build an European future while these crimes go unpunished, concluding that “there can be no future without a reconciliation with the past.” 

“No one has the right to tread on 3,500 of our killed, nor the right to build a future for himself on the bones of our dearest ones,” says Scepanovic. 

The chairman of the Serbian Cabinet’s Missing Persons Commission, Veljko Odalovic, concluded that a great stain mars the conscience of the international community and the institutions of self-proclaimed Kossovo because of failure to prosecute anyone for the crimes committed against Serbian civilians, stressing that Belgrade will do everything to open the archives of the so-called Kossovo Liberation Army and determine the truth about the missing Serbian citizens. 

“All roads lead to those in the top of government, and this process will not be easy. We will ask for the archives in order to determine the fate of the missing persons, as well as to bring to justice those who committed the crimes,” Odalovic said. 

A commemorative service for the Serbs killed or missing in Kossovo will be held tomorrow at 10:00 at Belgrade’s Orlovaca Cemetery. 

From July, 1998 to present, 3,500 Serbs, mostly men, were kidnapped in Kossovo. Families and Serbian state bodies are still trying to determine the fate of 525 of the victims.

(Srna/Frotnal)