Esat Shala preserves over 2,000 war crimes videos in Kosovo

The locker where he keeps more than 2000 video recordings collected for 16 years is found in one of his home rooms.

The spaces of this Shala room are used for nothing but the preservation of these materials.

Although these videos contain heavy, painful images, Shala often finds herself looking at them through equipment provided by her fellow countrymen.

This serves them to recall Kosovo's painful past, which sometimes seems to have begun to be forgotten.

In an interview for Kalxo.com, the 35-year-old tells what prompted him to start collecting tapes and video recordings.

My family was part of the Kosovo Liberation Army. My father was a political prisoner in the '90s. On April 10, 1998, my uncle, Hafir Shala, my first physician The KLA disappears, and its fate is unknown to this day. My sister was a witness who was killed in December 98 with her boyfriend. These events motivated me the most, and after the end of the war, we saw that the state is doing nothing about the past”, Shala said.

The incidents Shala has collected contain images of the largest massacres committed in Kosovo by members of the Serbian army and police.

“are the massacre of Recak, the massacre of Kyress and Likoshan, the Rugova of Hasi massacre, the Kolic massacre, the Massacre, Krusha massacre, and many other massacres. There's a lot of people killed. They're on camera. He has children two years, five years, ten years. There are people burned”, Shala relates.

All this work, collecting material has not been easy. Shala shows that she has made all this commitment voluntaryly and without support.

We've been having trouble collecting them because people who made the recordings in some way have threatened us why they asked us to record them. They're always trying to sell us those recordings, but we don't have to because blood doesn't sell”, Shala said.

In May of this year, Justice Minister Albulen Haxhiu had appealed to Kosovo citizens and organisations that have materials to send to the address that is specifically opened for war crimes evidence.
Because of the large amount of videos and their format, Shala has said it is impossible to send them to email. The only way is to send them physically.

Shala has indicated that Minister Haxhiu has invited her to be part of the Institute for War Crimes, whose funskionisation has not yet been done.

Now look at the co-operation with the Institute for War Crimes and see what the possibilities are. First, they need to be digitized. I have some equipment that I have provided for my fellow countrymen. I guess some people don't have the capacity until the end with the digitalization of these recordings because it's a large number of videos”, Shala said.

He says local institutions have had to establish the War Crimes Museum shortly after its completion.

Now it's been a long time. Even if this museum is formed, I do believe that people do not volunteer the record without something, because this has now become the business of these recordings because many people have benefited from these” recordings, says Shala.

The Ministry of Justice has shown that citizens have only begun sending evidence, video, photos and documents to the address created for documenting crimes committed during the war period.