| Documenting Evil, Two Decades On - When Will Justice Be Served? |
| Publikuar më 06 prill, 2021 në orën 20:56 ( ) |
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By Robert Leonard Rope and Jetlir Krasniqi
Early in the pandemic, when Zoom was something of a novelty, I had the opportunity to interview a still bereaved family member about a long forgotten massacre. He is a sensitive young man with a big heart, a member of the Kosovar Albanian diaspora named Jetlir. The setting for this tragic narrative is the early days of Serbia’s genocidal attack against the Albanians of Kosovo. This was during the Spring of 1999, several weeks after NATO had begun to bomb the forces of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic and other key related targets inside Serbia. By that point, Jetlir and his immediate family members were safely ensconced some 1300 miles away in welcoming, peaceful Norway.
Tragically, Jetlir’s extended family was trapped in Kosovo, with no viable defense from rampaging Serb forces. Jetlir grew up learning the painful details of the ensuing massacre and feels an ongoing obligation to commemorate his murdered uncle and other family members. “Never again” may have become our feel-good cliche, but Jetlir is single-mindedly determined that his beloved Uncle Muharrem, and the brutal mass killing that took his life and that of so many others, will not be easily forgotten. And he is quietly intent on some semblance of justice ultimately prevailing for his family, for the victims. As am I. Our edited interview follows:
Robert Leonard Rope: Tell us about what happened to your family members who remained in Kosovo back in 1999.
Jetlir Krasniqi The place where I was born and was basically raised, before I came to Norway, is a small village called Rosuje. It’s located next to a river, near the village of Jabllanica, and east of Pec/Peja. Anyway, when the war started, and NATO began bombing, my family found it difficult to live there. There were grenades (artillery) falling in the backyard and bullets flying everywhere. They didn’t think it was safe there anymore. So they decided to flee. None of them were combatants. None of them had anything to do with the war. These guys were all civilians.
We were a big family back then. So they decided to grab their tractors and cars, all their belongings, at least the most essential belongings, like blankets. Necessities. They were going to drive to Albania to seek refuge there until the war was over.
This was the Spring of 1999.
R.R: So they abandoned their homes?
Jetlir: Things were becoming unbearable. And my family fled. When they came to a small place called Zahac/Zahaq, they were first stopped by the Serb military, which just searched them. They let them pass.
During the night, while staying in Muharrem’s home in Zahac, the Serb military forces, together with paramilitaries, came and rounded up all of the Albanians of that neighborhood. These guys were called the Jackals.
he first thing they did was to force everyone to line up. They went to the women and took their jewelry. They searched for cash, and took anything of value they could find, like earrings, wedding rings.
The Jackals ordered, “Give us your cash or we’ll kill you.” They gave them everything they had. And they thought they’d let them go. But no. So they let them alone until they came to this complex which the Jackals were using as a base.
The base complex was occupied and shared by the regular military together with the Jackals. They were not operating separately but worked in tandem.
R.R: Can you describe what transpired next?
Jetlir: I don’t know all of the details. But I do know some of the details. And they are the stuff of absolute nightmares.The things you think nobody could do to another human being.
The first thing they did, when they came into the building, was to separate the men from the women. Men on one side, women on the other side. Right away they started to torture the men. My grandfather was one of them. He was 84 years old. He had to walk with a walking stick. And one of the first things they did to him concerned a special watch, given to him for his birthday.
One of the Jackal guys was really drunk. He demanded, “Where did you get that watch?” My grandfather answered, “My son bought it for me for my birthday.”
Then they took his hand, and they smashed his watch, and his fingers, with a hammer.
This is an 84-year-old guy with a walking stick. And they laughed while doing it, they thought it was fun. You could call such people animals. But animals don’t do those things.
And my uncle, my father’s eldest brother (we refer to him here as SK) is the kindest man I know, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He has always helped people since he was a kid.
They tortured SK so badly. He had so many operations after the war. They had a gun, they made him open his mouth, one of them shoved it into his mouth. He shoved his gun so hard they damaged my uncle’s throat.
My uncle couldn’t eat for a really long time. They had ripped open his mouth and throat.
R.R: Unspeakable. What about the women in the group?
Jetlir: The women could hear their men being tortured, just imagine what was going through their minds. Also, there were other people, families being held hostage, being tortured, not only mine.
On the other side were the rapes. Like every time one of the Jackals got drunk, or horny or whatever, they could pick a girl, they had their rooms. Our men could hear it all, they couldn’t do anything. It is really insane that any human can do this.
I’m not even going to go into too much detail. The women, I feel so bad for them.
After the whole ordeal was over - one thing is that many of them never saw their men again.
They, the rape survivors, had this shame for so long, they couldn’t talk about it, they didn’t talk with anybody. Only now, twenty years after the war, some of them have begun speaking out on how much that has ruined their lives.
Just imagine being one of those girls. I have no words. I’d rather be one of those men who was tortured and killed to be honest, it is easier, if that makes any sense.
 The Jackals during their military campaign in Kosovo (BalkanInsight 5/17/2013)
R.R: We really need to listen to these women. Can you tell us more about the perpetrators?
Jetlir: The Jackals... a couple of them got caught after the war. But not the main perpetrators. The worst ones are still alive and free and hailed as heroes by many Serbs. They’re protected. You can’t touch them.
Some of them are still living in Nis, or rural areas of Serbia, among the ultranationalists. Some of those guys had been serving prison time. But when the war started, they were told: “You can go with us and fight in the war. You can do whatever you want, like plunder cars, women, you name it.”
R.R: How did the Yugoslav army interact with the paramilitaries?
Jetlir: Look, the strategy was simple. The Yugoslav army had the planes and the tanks, they were fighting the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas fighters ). The KLA was only lightly armed, they couldn’t do much about tanks and planes.
 KLA - Kosovo Liberation Army fighters
So the KLA had to retreat to the forests and the mountains. The Serb military didn’t want to get their hands dirty. So when they took over an area, they’d make sure the KLA guerillas weren’t there, then they’d let the paramilitaries go in and clean, plunder, torture. Rape the women and kill the men.
The hostage situation in Zahac, and the executions that were going on there, happened at the same time as the massacre in Qyshk. There was a big massacre in that nearby village, perpetrated by the Jackals as well. This is the stuff of nightmares, not something you’d see in a movie. It actually happened in our time, and not so very long ago.
And the survivors are still alive, a lot of them, and still have nightmares about it.
R.R: Tell us about how your uncle, SK, managed to survive.
Jetlir: He was just one of two survivors of eight men that they took out to kill. But they thought they killed him because they had beaten him so badly. After his throat was ripped open, he fainted there and then. He had six other men with him - five of them have never been found till this day, we don’t know where they are. We only know their names.
Two of them he didn’t know. They were killed. We found out their names later. We’ve never found them.
The women, children and elderly were finally let go. The Jackals held onto the men. They dumped SK’s body thinking he was already dead.
One of those killed was my Uncle Muharrem, who was last seen by SK. SK witnessed all of this. They’ve never found Muharrem’s body.
Muharrem’s little brother was also there, and how he managed to survive is quite a strange story: The KLA had killed one of the Serb military soldiers, not that far away, and the Serbs didn’t dare to retrieve his body. So what they did is to force Muharrem’s little brother to pass over a battlefield in order to pick up their fallen comrade.
But he didn’t return because he got captured by the KLA and interrogated. And they were asking, “Are you a Serbian spy?” and “What are you doing here?” He told them, “I’m held hostage. If I don’t bring this body back, they’re gonna kill my brother and the other men.”
They told him, “Those men are already dead. You can’t return. If you return, they will kill you too.” He said, “It’s my big brother, I have to return.”
They didn’t allow him to return. They were right, the Jackals had already killed them. The KLA had told him the truth.
And he’s always lived with the guilt that he didn’t return. It wouldn’t have mattered, they’d already killed them. But we never found their bodies. That’s what’s sad. Like waiting a whole lifetime, and never finding your husband.
R.R: Where do you think the bodies are?
Jetlir: Serbia...inside Serbia. You remember refrigerator trucks? (that secretly carried bodies to mass graves and industrial centers for cremation.) This was during the same time.
R.R: How did your uncle, SK, manage to survive?
Jetlir: So my uncle survived by waking up in the middle of the night, almost choking on his own blood. He couldn’t breathe cuz they had ripped open his throat. He didn’t know where he was, he was blind-folded, they put him into a car, in the trunk, he was bound. They thought they had killed him, and somehow he managed to roll into an ice cold creek.
Early spring, in an ice cold creek, all night he was floating along the creek. He couldn’t stand up or walk. People eventually found him.
Meanwhile, the Jackals, the evil ones, told my grandfather, “We killed your son.” “Now you can kill me too,” he responded. “No,” they retorted. “We killed your son, that’s enough.” And they let him go.
And here’s the reason I was telling you about this. My uncle, SK, has never been interviewed about what happened to the family, nor been part of any court proceedings.
We later asked him, “Do you know who these guys were?” He said, “Yeah, I know their names, they lived close by. They were Kosovo Serbs. Like from the same city, from the same place. I knew them before the war.” Yes, they’d been friendly. That’s the insane part.
And my uncle, he’s never been in court, trying to get these guys punished. They’re always being protected, there’s nothing you can do. He just has no faith in Serbia’s justice system.
R.R: It seems to me that there’s so little attention paid to the issue of the Missing, inside Kosovo. Is that true?
Jetlir: Robert, I see mothers, in their 50s and 60s, carrying signs and billboards with pictures of their kids. There’s this line of mothers - they don’t have anyone except for themselves. They have these demonstrations. Nobody’s listening to them. They’re standing out in the cold, with their signs: ‘WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?’ ‘WHERE IS MY SON?’ It’s so sad that they have so little power, and someone took away the thing that was most dear to them in their life.
 Kosovo Albanians hold pictures of wartime missing persons in Pristina in March 2016.
Photo: EPA/VALDRIN XHEMAJ |
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