A rchive Date
[ 03-09-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Yugoslavia ]
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[New mass graves discovered in Kosovo
By MERITA DHIMGJOKA-- The Associated Press
Saturday, September 2, 2000
MAKOVC, Yugoslavia (AP) - The heat, the stench of dead bodies and the wailing of women mingled Saturday in a scene that has become disturbingly commonplace in postwar Kosovo: the reburial of victims found in mass graves.
This time hundreds of ethnic Albanians gathered in the town of Makovc, six miles northeast of Pristina, to see the reburials of 67 men, women and children killed last year during a Yugoslav army offensive.
The bodies were discovered last year in six mass graves in the area, but it has taken time for forensics experts to identify those killed. And with new mass graves continuing to be discovered, investigators with the United Nations' war crimes tribunal say it's impossible to know how many people were killed during the crackdown - or when the reburials will end.
Some relatives fought to control their emotions Saturday as the remains of their loved ones were lowered into graves.
"Open up the coffin," said Kadire Demoli, 68, leaning down and trying to remove the top of the wooden coffin of her 32-year-old son, Heset. "I don't believe my son's body is inside."
Forensic workers authorized the opening of the coffin, and with trembling hands Demoli lifted the top, to see an almost flat plastic bag with some remains inside. She pulled her white scarf over her face and continued weeping.
What she didn't realize - nor did Heset's widow, nor his three daughters - was that the remains she saw were only the bottom half of her son's body. A relative who had been invited by investigators to identify the body said he had recognized the trousers, and his passport in the back pocket.
"They didn't know where the other half was," said Gazmend Rahimi.
Residents said they had seen Yugoslav army soldiers and members of Serb paramilitary groups handpick young men and women from the miles-long convoy of people fleeing their villages between April 19-23 of 1999.
They were never seen alive again.
Thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed by Serb forces during Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's 18-month crackdown against separatists in Kosovo.
The war crimes tribunal continues to collect evidence against five Yugoslav and Serb leaders who have already been indicted, including Milosevic. Local Serbs accused of war crimes are to be prosecuted locally by criminal courts in the province set up under U.N. supervision.
Governments and international organizations routinely speak of an estimated 10,000 people who died during the crackdown, which ended last summer with the pullout of Milosevic's forces after NATO bombing and the entry of NATO and the United Nations.
But with new mass graves being found, "it is still early" to cite a death toll, said Stephen Leach, a tribunal investigator at the reburial site.
With reburials held every few weeks, such events are becoming routine. Organizers of Saturday's ceremony had expected thousands of people to come, but only a few hundred turned up.
"People have gotten tired of death," said Gani Krasniqi, a village teacher.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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