Undiscovered family calls on internationals to condition Serbia

Last year, the digging priority of the mass cemetery in Kizevac in Serbia has already been dealt with in Kosovo in nine different locations where only two bodies have been exhumed. In October of last year, the nine martyrs of Rezalla's massacre, executed in April 1999.

Now more than two decades I don't know anything about the fate of his son, Bajram Cerkini. Association leader “Parents' voice” is disappointed with the work of institutions in whitewashing the fate of the found. In Brussels, he says, it is not going without strategy and a programme of how to handle this issue.

Kosovo's “government speaks a word we don't like when it says the address of the missing persons is in Belgrade. Not us family members, but also the one who carried out the third grade knows that crimes have been committed to Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic and the criminals. And as a majority, 1,620 people are on Serbia's territory. Why are you telling me Belgrade has them? Belgrade did, but you didn't do things inside, things, locations inside you didn't do. I found them assembled, you found them, but they need to assemble. There must be a program, there must be a strategy. We can't have a strategy, but as an association, I've made three-year strategy, and you as a country should have a strategy. You have to tell the prosecutor this location of”, Cerkini told Kosova Preress.

The Garage of the Government Commission for the real estate says that during the past year, the process of excavations in Kizhevac was a priority, where in November 2020 the existence of mass cemetery and morto remains was confirmed.

“As a result of the work and excavations conducted at the site of the mass cemetery in Kizevac during 2020 and specifically, in November, December 2020, after confirming the existence of the mass cemetery, but even during the first part of the year (2021), especially during May 2021, the remains of nine victims of war have been found and exhumed. Of which there were seven new identifications and two reunification cases. These cases belong to bones buried in the mass cemetery in Rudnica, Raska, during 2014”, he says.

For the digging process that has been carried out since the post-war, the former director of the Institute of Legal Medicine, Education Gerjaliu, points out. He talks about the difficulty of digging at Kizevac in Raska.

There's been a major change in location, there's been a place where waste has been dumped from a mine in the vicinity, where there's a place that Serbs usually used to hide the evidence of crime. Like Rudnica, the reception is expected to open. So, just in the sixth year thanks to satellite photographs of the United States, which is actually covering satellite images, the exact location of that” location was found, Gerjaliu says.

Nine bodies of Albanian victims have been found by Kizevac. In addition to excavations in this country, several other locations have been dug.

“during the year (2021) has at least nine locations we have been engaged in. I'm using the word at least nine locations because it means not just a few days of work but weeks of work. Of these nine locations, only two have resulted in the discovery and exhumation of two people's mortories. Because some of the cases continue to be in the identification procedure after DNA tests. The largest number of locations has been negative. This once again confirms that this year (2021) a challenge in the process of lighting up the fate of undiscovered persons continues to be a lack of reliable information. And lack of reliable information is certainly linked to the lack of insufficient co-operation of the Serbian side”, he declares.

Nor this year did Bajram Cerkin's son, who is unhappy with the number of mass graves unearthed so far, enter the list.

You have said 16 locations, how many locations you have opened. I am reminded of Dren, but Bajram Cerkini was held in Dren when he was Adam's office alive, in Calunder, and in all mass graves that are massive in Kosovo, but there is no job, no results. You know what they say, 15 back. But you turned it into that Kizevac nine. And the one with satellite images, not eagerly, of Velko Dalloviq who has shown that they are here. Although he knew, he said there were nine more people at first. Where are the others, they know they went two trucks, we said 420, they said 250. Imagine they're happy, Kizevac, Chizevac. Don't get”, criticize Cherkin the executive.

Even forensics expert Edsim Gerjaliu says work and greater capacity are needed in the process of whitewashing the undiscovered.

“needs a much larger job on the ground and reactivating cases, especially from 1999 to 2003. Because in this period we have over six thousand cases, of which 4019 of which The Hague Tributal worked without DNA tests and over 2,000 cases that have been personally buried, without analysis and without autopsy. We have to go back to retrograd. It is a great deal of work, and knowledge, experience, planning, and a cost that must be prepared for many to appear on the ground”, Gerjaliu says.

The head of the Burival Centre for Missing Persons, Bajram Cerkini, calls on internationals to pressure and condition Serbia to show where the remains of over 1600 missing persons are.

We have to pressure the internationals and the one in Brussels to say, "Sir, we can't talk like that anymore, we're about family interests for their return that I found. It is the 21st century is small Kosovo. You took them. We have pictures that you took. We have live people who know criminals. I speak for myself, we know, we know who took them. I know who took my son, gave him my names, my surnames. Eight people, two girls and six men have taken them. As soon as their research was done with my address I have to say openly, a criminal was found in Novisad's territory buried a month ago. Why don't you get these”s work out of Cherkini.

The Commission for Unemployed Persons aims to start work this year in five countries where there are orders and suspected mass graves in Kosovo, as well as two others in Serbia.

About 6500 people were missing after the war ended. Several exhumations have been conducted since then in mass cemeterys in Kosovo and Serbia, and so far around 70 per cent of the missing have been found. Yet, more than 1600 people are still unknown.