Protest organisers of March 17th Even 14 Years After

This sparked sharp reactions on citizens, who on 17 March launched protests almost all over Kosovo, who later fled into violence.

Even 14 years later, it is still not known who organized them or if they were deliberately orchestrated. Until, when no one was tried and punished for what they used to do.

Of these protests that turned into violence, there were Albanians and Serbs killed, hundreds injured, and hundreds of destroyed historic houses and monuments.

Even 14 years later, the mission was then of tremendous power. UNMIK, does not speak of those events, except for requests to refer to reports of this mission that were made shortly after those events.

spokeswoman and head of the Office of Strategic Communications and Public Affairs (OSCPA) at the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Sanam Dolatshah, through an electronic response to Kosovo Preress, says they cannot give any statements, except for reference to reports released after the events.

“And for specific cases you can refer to the Kosovo judicial authorities, as the trial archives are in them”, she has said.

While, in the report by Secretary General of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) published on April 30th 2004, 19 people lost their lives in those protests, of which 11 were Kosovo Albanians and 8 were Kosovo Serbs, until another 954 people were injured during the clashes.

In addition, 65 international police officers, 58 Kosovo Police Service officers (SHPK) and 61 Kosovo Force employees (KFOR) have suffered injuries. Approximately 730 houses belonging to minorities, mainly Kosovo Serbs, were damaged or destroyed. In attacks on Kosovo's cultural and religious heritage, 36 Orthodox churches, monasteries and other religious and cultural sites had been damaged or destroyed. The places of worship that were attacked date back to the 14th century. Two of them are listed by the U NESTO is the main countries of universal importance, and the third is ranked as a country of regional importance. In addition, UNMIK and KFOR property had been damaged or destroyed”, the report said.

In this report, it was stressed that UNMIK police are actively investigating all incidents involving violent events, when investigations by that time had resulted in more than 260 violent arrests.

There have been 400 arrests for violations of the ban, which have been placed in some areas by KFOR and UNMIK police to prevent violence. International prosecutors are currently working on more than 45 cases, and about 120 other cases are being handled by the local judiciary. Given the extent of violence, however, it is clear that additional investigative capacity is still needed to allow law enforcement authorities to effectively prosecute and complete investigations at the right time”, the report said.

Even in another UNMIK report published on July 30th 2004, considerable progress has been made to bring to justice those responsible for the violence in March.

“Exactly, international prosecutors are handling 52 cases involving serious crimes. These include court investigations in 20 violent deaths in March. Several cases have been opened against organisers of violence, including cases of interethnic violence. Investigations into fire and violence exercised against police and KFOR are under way. Of these investigations, 17 cases are in the phase of court investigations, which include 34 defendants, 18 of whom are in custody. In addition, five charges have been issued. The domestic judiciary is addressing more than 260 cases related to violence, including theft, arson, attacks on officials and perpetrators. In addition, 80 persons have already been convicted of counter-insulting by sentences ranging from court remarks and fines of up to 200 euros for sentences for a period of two to six months in prison, said the July 2004 report.

Still, it is not yet known exactly whether these protests, which had been overcome in violence, were orchestrated by someone for deliberate motives or not. No one was convicted or tried to organize them.

14 years later, Vetevendosje Movement MP Rexhep Selimi says that when it comes to March 17th of 2004, he was deliberately using it as a threat to the future and referring to it as a risk that can be repeated again. According to him, after all that happened -- unjustly all these events -- are placed on the burden of Albanians in Kosovo, which is not so.

The “is coming out and it seems to be a plan to do so, and Serbia to take advantage of all that happened in favour of the extra-territorial areas of other churches and monasteries, so the last one knows or will ever know that they don't know yet, is the citizen who has suffered them, but not forget that there are lives in those events that have been lost, there have been protests and protesters who have been killed in the protests. Protesters both around the world and any situation deserve much respect and no judgment, because protesters at that time have come out to protect Kosovo, protect themselves, or at least express disappointment. To protesters, it has been fired on many sides, not only by one side, whether by Serbs, but also by international security forces, so who has suffered from these, Kosovo has suffered the consequences of which we are suffering even today”, Selimi said.

Selimi adds that since they do not know how and why those events occurred, they cannot know where they came from and who did them. According to him, the only thing known is that those events occurred in a situation to be oriented towards Kosovo's walking rather than to solve something.

MP Selimi misconstrued the use of those events as a threat that such a thing could be re-assembled, until, according to him, they should be taught.

These events are not used as a lesson but used as a threat. We have not learned from those events, but often from political circles they used as a threat, and not rarely do we use that we must achieve some peace, even at the expense of majority interests to avoid 2004. The first and second are wrong, and peace at the expense of one side is wrong, but the threat of such events is also wrong. So every time they're referring to political institutions, whether they're local or not, they're referring to them as a threat, not as a lesson. It should actually be a lesson that Kosovo doesn't happen again like this”, he says.

On the security level, Selimi says that, in those days, Kosovo failed to be protected from its own factors and mechanisms, though then fragile, but also from the international presence, KFOR, which was caught unprepared, port and UNMIK.

For these events, even though the Kosovo Police Service, now the Kosovo Police have declined to speak, with the reason that at the time other mechanisms were responsible for security.