by Zivojin RAKOCEVIC
Gorazdevac, a quiet and wealthy village near Pec, can only be reached with armed escort. A visitor leaves the new road, a detour around the village constructed after the arrival of the UN mission, while landscape turns into the Metohijan valley that at first sight lives as before. After a few kilometers we pass a large number of parked cars sticking out of the bushes and a big swimming pool. It's summertime, the weather is hot and the pool crowded. Mostly men and boys, very few females. Stephan Feller [UNMiK Police Commissioner] wrote about this pool last year at the time boys were murdered on the Bistrica river.
At the entrance to the village a Romanian KFOR soldier manages to use three languages in one short sentence: Italian, English and Romanian. In the end, he says "zdravo" [hallo].
Streets in the center of the village are covered with ground stone. Most important institutions cluster in this area. The Health Center, Police station, Radio Gorazdevac, Culture Center, representatives of some international organizations are all there. The results of recent investments can be seen, but it is obvious that the work has been done badly and piecemeal. One scan from the porch of the Baltazar café reveals new doors that are about to burst out from their doorframe, and a badly built roof covered by low quality, cracked roof tiles. The same applies to donations, whose misuse locals denounce openly and without hesitation.
In Radio Gorazdevac they are waiting for a visit from the Kosovo Ombudsman Marek Nowicki, and in the meantime they talk about general poverty, and enthusiasm of young people working at the station. Darko Dimitrijevic, station's editor-in-chief recalls August 13 a year ago.
"Around noon I heard shooting from machine guns. I was among the first people who arrived to the swimming spot on the Bistrica River. People were running around, trying to escape. They told me that the largest bloodstain marked the spot where my school friend Ivan Jovovic had been killed. Panto was gravely wounded. It was horrible, but at that moment I did not think about fear. Since August 13 everything has changed," says Darko. He hasn't been paid for his work at the radio station for a year. He still believes that he will stay in Gorazdevac, his birthplace, and is convinced that the situation can be changed for the better. He says that he usually does not say anything when he meets parents of his slain friends.
Dejan Jovanovic, president of the village, is unhappy with the security situation in the village. He says that village residents are unable to till fifty percent of their farmland. Media have stopped reporting almost daily provocations and the international community is giving loans to villagers buying houses in Serbia proper.
"We need new jobs. People need an opportunity to work. If we find them jobs, we shall keep them here," Dejan says. He claims that the international community has the responsibility to find the criminals who murdered children on the Bistrica river.
"They are simply wasting time. If they wanted to, they would have found murderers by now. We just want to know who did that. If they want to, they can reward them for their murder, but we just want to know who did that," this middle-aged man responds slowly and reluctantly. He has almost no contact with the municipal authorities [in Pec], and during the few meetings held so far everything boiled down to big politics and discussions about the status of the province.
"I buy books and everything else in Serbia proper because it cannot be bought here. I am afraid every time I have to travel," says Stefan Manojlovic.
In the joint Italian-Romanian base at the edge of the village we wait to meet the commander and to hear his opinion regarding the situation in the region after March. In the meantime we talk with Astrit, a young ethnic Albanian who works as a translator. In the nineties Astrit lived in Switzerland, in the Italian canton Ticino. He learned the language and now earns "easy" money.
"There we worked together, an Albanian, a Serb and a Croat. We worked for a boss and had good relations, and here we need to work for Kosovo and everything will be fine," says Astrit.
He says that he is a Montenegrin because his grandfather came from Fundina, "near Podgorica". He has never been to visit the "old country", and to his village of Pocesce he brought a Finnish wife from Switzerland.
Sladjana Todorovic is one of few locals in Gorazdevac with a permanent job. She works at the UNMiK information center on the publication "Danas i sutra" [today and tomorrow]. She believes that everything was changed a year ago and says that everything resembled a horror movie.
"At first I saw Dragana, a girl from my neighborhood. She was covered with blood; I can't talk about that... We are definitely more fearful since that day... Only fear grows here. In hospital in Pec they did not treat wounded properly. They put casts over their bleeding bullet wounds. Doctors said bleeding would stop eventually and sent them home," Sladjana says.
"There was a whirlpool here, deeper water. Kids were swimming here and machine gun fire came from a nearby grove. My nine-year-old son Stefan was here. I heard machine gun fire and immediately guessed what could be happening. The scene was horrendous. I was looking for my son. He was near Panto and dived in the water when he heard the shooting. He said, dad I almost drowned, I could not resist the current. Then I got in my car and tried to take Bogdan Bukumiric to the hospital in Pec. I was bloody from his wounds. They recognized me in the street in Pec, stopped the car, beat me up, climbed the car, banged on it, pulled my hair..."
Today, a year after the murder of his friends, Djordje Ugrinovic is calm and his speech does not betray emotion. he talks about the fateful day as if it happened to someone else, very reluctantly and with very few words. "We heard three shots. I thought someone was pulling a practical joke, throwing firecrackers. Then a burst of fire from a machine gun came and mowed us down. A friend died on the spot, I was wounded. I immediately realized that something horrible had happened. Ivan fell on the ground next to me, he started rolling around, I called for help. They wanted to take me first. I told them to take Ivan, but it was already too late."
The dash to the hospital in Pec left quite an impression on everyone involved. Later it turned out that the treatment provided by physicians there was inadequate, since they put casts over bleeding bullet wounds and sent the wounded home. Djordje says that they only pulled his broken arm. A[n ethnic Albanian] doctor checked X-rays and said that it was "nothing serious" and that he could home. However, he was still bleeding, blood started coming out of the cast, so they drove Djordje and Dragana to the [Serb] hospital in Kosovska Mitrovica.
"I was here, in front of the house and ran towards the river as soon as I heard the shots. I guess my motherly instinct pulled me... I got to the river in no time. They told me he had been wounded in his arm. Later they took us to the Albanian hospital."
Senka Jovovic is Ivan's mother. While we sit and talk she stands stiffly, looks in the distance, somewhere above us and seems to be talking to herself.
"That is always in the background of my consciousness. My Ivan went to the store. When I went to see why he was taking so long, I heard the machine gun fire. First one long burst of fire, then a shorter one. We knew that someone was shooting. My relative screamed that someone was shooting at our children. I ran towards the river. Don't know why. I guess my motherly instinct told me that Ivan had been hurt, although I knew that he wasn't supposed to be there, as he had promised me a day earlier that he would not go to the river anymore. It's as if someone took a knife and stuck it in my heart."
Darija Safranic, UN mission official from Pristina took mothers of murdered children to the hospital. Senka Jovovic recalls that they said that Ivan had been sent to Belgrade. She waited for news at the hospital entrance, listened to a conversation between a guard and a patient in Albanian. The latter was complaining that his "heart hurt". The guard said - just wait till we send these away and we'll fix your heart. Immediately before the return Senka was told that Ivan had died and that she had to go home.
Mirjana Srbljak, mother of wounded girl Dragana says that sometime last August she finally managed to suppress fear that had hounded her before, when the tragedy struck. Mirjana was born in Zahac and lived her whole life in a[n ethnically] mixed village. Her uncle was abducted after the end of hostilities. Mirjana openly says that she has been living "on tranquilizers" since 1999.
Certain media, obsessed with omnipresent Serbian Secret Services, blamed Serbs for this crime. Apparently the motivation was to destroy Albanian reputation with the international community. Everybody had excuses. Politicians "waited" for police reports, the police "did all it could" and that was all. The investigation in the murders hasn't made any progress since August 13, 2003.
Prime Minister Rexhepi, police spokesperson Refki Morina and representatives of the international community are unanimous in concluding that the problem is the lack of cooperation of the local population with the police. However, one cannot but wonder why free citizens of Kosovo do not trust police, an overwhelming number of whose officers are ethnic Albanians, as well as why indifferent shrugging of shoulders is the only reaction to such a silence conspiracy.
Zoran Zivkovic, Prime Minister of Serbia at the time, said at the funeral of the murdered boys that UNMiK and KFOR were responsible for security in Kosovo and Metohija and demanded that these murders be the last.
"They haven't done even the basic parts of their task," Zivkovic said. Bishop Amfilohije warned that the murder was a warning to everyone, including the Albanians as "future cannot be built on crime".
While the crime, culprits and the investigation quickly fell on the back burner as far as the local [Albanian language] media were concerned, Zivkovic's arrival in Kosovo became a media spectacle. The media were incensed and wanted to know who had allowed Zivkovic to come to the province.
"I think they do not give a damn whether murderers are found," concludes Milisav.
"Culprits haven't been found, there are no suspects... It is as if someone dropped from a spacecraft and went back after the murders," says Sasa Krstic, Gorazdevac parish priest.
"Not a single crime has been resolved so far. Thus, I believe that murderers will not be found in this case as well. They would not do what they do if they did not have tacit support of the international community," Ivan's mother Senka Jovovic says.
"I cannot accept that someone has decided to simply forget about the crime. We are slowly losing hope in the judiciary. Our only hope is that God will help us," Mirjana Srbljak concludes.
There are different visions of the future of this small community. Djordje Ugrenovic does not plan to leave "for Ivan's sake". Milovan Pavlovic claims he is not a "fatalist" and that he won't stay at any price, as his children's lives are most important after all. Milisav Dakic is aware that he has another two kids who need him. He's given up on himself a while ago as "this is not life".
On March 17, 2004, Gordana Dakic forgot the death of her son.
"I forgot about my late son on March 17, as then I got scared for these kids and all kids in Kosovo..."
Fear has gripped this cut off community. The hope that something may change for the better is slowly waning, while it is difficult to imagine the return of displaced persons given the current situation. The August 13 swimming hole in the Bistrica was washed away by the current over the winter. On the exit from the village the same checkpoint, same armored troop carrier and swimming pool where only men swim.
by P.R.
GLAS JUGA: Mr. Covic, what do you think today about the crime in Gorazdevac?
COVIC: The investigation hasn't made any progress since the murder of two boys and wounding of another four kids. That failure is yet another confirmation that someone has been given license to exterminate Serbs for years, to murder children, all of that with impunity. I suppose you agree that that is a horrendous message for the twentieth century and a territory that is an international community protectorate.
Has there been cooperation between UNMiK and our judiciary and police?
All the information that we have obtained, regardless of its source, was immediately forwarded to UNMiK in hope that culprits would be found. However, UNMiK's special unit did absolutely nothing. They did not take steps necessary to find culprits. The most recent murder in Gracanica shows how little has been done to stop new crimes. Our side is totally open in the sense of exchanging all the data and information, but as in all previous cases UNMiK was not interested in cooperation.
In that case, who knows who culprits are?
Trust me, Kosovo and Metohija is a small place. I am convinced that there are no secrets there and anything could be found out given the necessary will. Someone in UNMiK is undermining these investigations and it's high time some people there were replaced. We had been saying that for years, and after March 17 the international community itself has realized that UNMiK was badly organized.
You have been passing your information to UNMiK. Have you received any info back, from them?
No information at all. The whole case has been forgotten. We also share blame for that, because of our artistic predilection to be concerned with our own stuff, instead of dealing with problems that endanger our national interests.
It is clear that we face horrible inertia and desire not to poke too deep searching for the truth. On the other hand, we act very badly in similar situations. We suddenly raise a lot of noise and then shut up.
There is no cooperation with the police and it is clear that there will be none because here not only a witness but also all the members of his family fear for their life. Their [ethnic Albanian] military leaders who have committed crimes or are responsible for them are now politicians who meet with representatives of the international community. What can an ordinary ethnic Albanian think given that - if this criminal has good relations with foreigners, what should I do? - to report what he knows to one of them, that would make sense.
by Zivojin RAKOCEVIC
GLAS JUGA: Mr. Nowicki, could you describe the functioning of the judiciary in Kosovo in several sentences?
NOWICKI: There are still many grave problems in the functioning of the judiciary in Kosovo as far as criminal cases are concerned. The same is true for other cases, civil and employment related cases, which are also important from the point of view of ordinary citizens. Among criminal cases, there are many in which suspects are kept in custody for long periods of time, then the cases are closed, suspects released but they have no chance to continue to seek justice. I am talking about cases in which people were kept in prison for several years. There is no need to dig deeper than the two recent cases that involved Serbs - Mr. Kolasinac and Mr. Vuckovic. They spent more than five years in prison and were released by the Supreme Court. I hope that at least in these cases they will be adequately compensated for the time spent in prison. However, the compensation is not the biggest problem in such cases - the whole judiciary is not functioning properly. And since we are talking about the judiciary, it does not consist only of judges and courts, but above all institutions in charge of protecting laws, specifically police and the public prosecutor's office, which are in charge of criminal law. If culprits haven't been found, if there are problems with facts, if the evidence is not sufficient to send a case to the court, ultimately there will be no justice, even in case of very serious crimes. Of course, it can happen everywhere that some criminals escape justice. But in Kosovo that phenomenon is so widespread and we have seen culprits in court in far too few cases.
One of the reasons that prompted us to contact you is the first anniversary of the crime in Gorazdevac. According to the information at your disposal, what has been done in that case?
I don't know details in connection with the investigation of that crime, but that is one of more serious cases I've just mentioned and one of the cases in which we haven't seen any meaningful results of the investigation. It remains to be seen whether this particular case will end up like many other cases in which it is clear that culprits will not face justice and that justice will not be done. When I visited Gorazdevac a year ago I said that I was convinced that, unlike in other cases, that crime would give police a chance to demonstrate its effectiveness and that culprits would end up in court. But after one year there is no indication that that will happen.
Parents of murdered children, like many others, are dissatisfied with the results of the investigation. As a representative of an important institution, whose work is appreciated in the province, what can you tell them?
I personally, even after a whole year has passed, believe that justice will sooner or later be satisfied, because justice must be satisfied. Sometimes, and in this case I am not talking only in the context of Kosovo, victims or families of victims must wait for justice a long time, for years... In some cases, unfortunately not in all, after a long period of time justice is finally satisfied. I hope that the same will happen in this case, at the cost of waiting a bit longer.
For a while after the crime Albanian newspapers speculated that the Serbian secret service was responsible for the crime in Gorazdevac. Would you care to comment?
Representatives of the media that made such claims should respond to this question. From the point of view of investigative authorities in this and other similar cases it is important to find the truth and make sure that culprits face justice. But, in absence of concrete results an atmosphere is created in which all sorts or speculation and rumors circulate, precisely because there is no evidence that would indicate the identity of culprits. As I've already said, I hope that one day myself or the person who replaces me as the ombudsman in Kosovo will know who committed the crime in Gorazdevac.
"The incident took place on the day when Harri Holkieri visited Kosovo, on the day when incidents would not be in the interest of people who love Kosovo, but would work only for those who work against it. We know very well that our neighbors to the north never missed a chance to turn an incident around in the basest possible way. For those who know the history of the Balkans, it is enough to mention the bombardment of the Markale market in Sarajevo, where tens of Muslims were killed, while Serb authorities still claim that the attack was carried out by Muslims who tried to benefit from it politically," Kelmendi concludes.
Another Kosovo Albanian language daily newspaper, Bota Sot is adamant in its commentary published a day after the murder in Gorazdevac on its front page: "In postwar Kosovo many murders took place. It is obvious that the secret police from Belgrade organized and carried out those murders in its attempt to sully the reputation of Kosovo. There is no doubt that Serb secret services are also responsible for the latest murder in Gorazdevac".