25 years after Pollok massacre in Kosovo, pain and appeal for missing justice

The murder tracks remain untainted in Sinan Muqoll's home rooms and the memory of survivors. One of them, Elhame Muqolli, was only 14. She lost her mother, three sisters, and two brothers. Her father was a KLA fighter.

24 children have been killed, from 4 months old, 10 months until the age of 14 to the age of 14. We've all been civilians, we've all been mostly women and children”, she says about the Voice of America from Ohio where she lives with her family.

A very, very serious experience, between the noises and those demands to save all those children and not have any opportunity, anyone with a bet”, she says.

Hysen CLU, another survivor. On one of the days before this difficult anniversary, he speaks of the Voice of America from the house where the event happened.

There were a lot of screams, horrors, then went inside and kicked us with the cars, I was wounded in the left hand”

This is the Ymer of Sinan. They took us out and killed them. The youngest child was 7-8 months”.

Sinan Muqolli, the householder and uncle of Elhame and Ymer Elshani, a children's book author who was there as a family friend, were pulled out of the house one by one and shot before others were killed in the house.

Elham, injured in the leg, managed to get out of the house and thus escaped.

I don't know how that idea came to me, opened the window and left that window. Even though I knew there were cops in the yard. The first time I got up and down, the second time I grabbed the lock and crossed that window. ”

Teuta Elshani, daughter of Ymer Elshan, lost his entire family that day - his parents and four brothers. 23-year-old she had been to Pristina and had later gone to northern Macedonia, where a good portion of Kosovo's fugitives were being sheltered because of the war. After a while in a refugee camp, she was dwelling with an Albanian family in Skopje.

On April 17 as every day, I heard news about what was happening in Kosovo because I had the entire family there and on evening news I heard firsthand news of the massacre that had taken place in the Old Pole of the Drenas municipality”, she says about the Voice of America from Atlanta and Georgia where she lives with her family.

She had long hoped for the news to be untrue.

This may have kept me from believing the news I heard. Of course it was tough days the next few days and I slowly began to realize it's real news. In June, even when Kosovo was liberated, the movements of people from Kosovo were also launched, and the truth was slowly understood”.

Activists consider the Pollec event too serious, where, according to the survivors and others who have returned found evidence of crime after they were killed, victims have been burned.

The “actually one of the most macabre massacres caused here and 25 years ago is that of Poklek”, says to Voice of America, Bekim Blakaj, director of the International Humanitarian Fund in Kosovo, which has dealt with the record of victims and missing.

“So far this crime has not received a judicial epilogue”, he says.

Elhama says she has mixed feelings now after 25 years, because, on the one hand, after many sacrifices, Kosovo is free.

15:51: “But what we have is: 25 years has been done, and I say to myself, it has become a suicide for them. Our state, government after government has not yet managed to document all these massacres, even to indict Serbia, to place responsibility for those crimes that have committed”, she says.

Teuta Elshani says that, despite Serbia's stance, due to the lack of a war crimes sentiment, Kosovo authorities must do their part.

I expect my state from Kosovo to do a record of facts, of what happened not only for the Pockle massacre, but for all massacres in Kosovo indiscriminately, and for me this is what bothers me and which I think because without a file, without an official document of the state of Kosovo nothing can be done in this direction”, she says.

During the Kosovo war, 10,000 people have lost their lives and more than 5,000 result in extinction. 25 years after that, nothing is known about the fate of over 1,000 and 600 people.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti, speaking on this topic on the day of his independence anniversary on February 17th, said his government is committed to establishing justice.

“are working on our professionals and experts, the government well and specifically the Ministry of Justice for everything we have pledged. There has been genocide in Kosovo in the spring of 1999. This genocide is neither forgotten nor forgiven nor paid off, so it is important that we have justice for the magistrates, for the executionists in order to have rehabilitation for the victims, and at the same time it is important not to deny genocide”.

Mr. Blakaj, whose organisation has monitored war crimes judgments, says the “data stemming from this monitoring is depressing”.

“Of all courts so far, including the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague Tribunal, courts in Kosovo, so far have been sentenced less than 80 people ... for crimes committed during the war in Kosovo”.

For Hysen Cline, who shows the physical marks that are the memory of that day, there is an even more urgent reason to act, citing as an example that one of the witnesses, Ramadan Mujolli, has already died.

Those witnesses who were old are dying, I now 83 years, Ramadan has been a year behind me, that seven members have been left here, and he went away before me. I too, but now a little more mind maybe a few years later, and I forget about it, but I have it written”, he says.

Mr. Blakaj says one of the major obstacles to bringing justice to the country has been the lack of co-operation from Serbia.

Serbia does not co-operate with Kosovo institutions, and by doing so it is offering a great space to those who committed crimes, to be left unpunished, so they are offering room for impunity”.

Paul Williams, professor of international law at American University in Washington, says that establishing justice for war victims is essential to healing wounds. It is positive, according to him, that there have been prosecutions and sentences of Serb individuals who committed crimes in Kosovo.

The disappointing “Dimension is that the process was not comprehensive and did not go as long as it was needed to prosecute all those responsible for”, he says of the Voice of America.

Prof. Williams explains that in the legal practice of justice for war crimes, when an international court ends, domestic prosecutions begin.

We have not seen this in Kosovo and Serbia. The Serbian regime has not taken seriously responsibility for cruel crimes. And so nothing meaningful has been done about local prosecution. And Kosovo has not been able to have jurisdiction or maintain such processes”.

Given that Serb forces were responsible for over 80 per cent of the crimes, Prof. Williams expresses himself against the tendency to make all parties equally responsible by establishing a moral equality between the victim and the author.

Unfortunately, governments are often told to forgive and forget. But we've always seen that forgiving and forgetting is not the way to reconciliation. He needs responsibility, he needs the truth. It takes accurate historical record. And this is not in the past for victims of atrocities and their families. Their pain today feels”

This pain is vulnerable to Elhame Muqolli.

The “will never be well when it is not punished for what it has done. And when you don't apologize. And I don't know if that's enough. My family will never rise, but at least I will be relieved of my pain”.

But in the memories and heritage of loved ones who no longer have, survivors have found a mission and some relief.

When these tragedies occur, man has two solutions, surrenders from pain or is strengthened and moves on. I chose this second, not perhaps because I am the strongest person in the world, but because in those moments when I've admitted that no one is alive anymore from my immediate family, I've put myself on a mission that I've been left alive, I have a debt to become their voice, to continue the family trunk, and these things have helped me to keep going and not to give up”

Part of this mission is the publication of her father's children's literature works. Both Teuta and Elhamen are a testament to the continuation of life. These and memories of loved ones left frozen in time.

How was your family?

A very joyous family. When I remember that part, I could even smile back. We've been very close together. Every organization we've been together. We did everything together. She keeps me alive today, good memories” / VOA