By: Blerim Shala (published in 2000, in the Albanian Political Weekly "Zëri")
For ten whole years, the Albanian patriots in Kosovo have been buried in silence, in the presence of the close family, who did not have the opportunity to open the door for a view and did not have the right to express their grief for the murder of their loved ones who were killed because of patriotism. Those families, even, were anathema by the government and the comings and goings even for ordinary parties were done only between these families.
Immediately after the war, when Albanian patriots were executed, the families did not even have the right to know about their graves. Later, at least they could take the corpse, but always all the ceremonies that were done even for the ordinary dead were forbidden.
The turn of the winter of 1990
More or less, this dire situation has lasted in Kosovo for 45 years in a row, that is, until January, February of 1990. Even those killed in the demonstrations of 1981 and 1989 had to be buried quietly, next to their relatives, often even without religious rites.
The country's authorities, in these cases, with communiqués that always numbered several lines, indicated that the law enforcement forces were forced to respond to armed attacks. That's it.
The names of those killed have never been mentioned in these communiques.
Even when the victims came from the APJ (People's Army of Yugoslavia), in addition to the sentence for "suicide", their families had to face a hermetically sealed coffin, which did not even dare to be opened. The parents of the killed soldiers were deprived of the opportunity to see their son for the last time.
In the winter of 1990, things changed fundamentally in Kosovo. The violent removal of political autonomy in March 1989 left Kosovo Albanians without any power, but also completely stripped them of their illusions. The Albanians no longer had anything in their hands, but they were more powerful than ever, because they understood that there can no longer be any compromise with Serbia. For this reason, in Pristina and Kosovo, if you remember, in the fall of 1989 there were protests every day. But their peak will arrive in January, February of 1990, when hundreds of thousands of Albanians occupied the roads of Kosovo with a clear message: "Enough!" The reactions of the Serbian forces and those of the federation (of the RSFJ) took the form of killing nearly 40 Albanians across the country. A state television (RTV of Sarajevo) even filmed a scene that was amazing for the time, which showed better than hundreds of testimonies what the Serbian forces were doing in Kosovo. The camera, thus, captured two Serbian policemen, who with their automatic weapons, without any reason, without hiding at all, fired in the direction of the protesters, who had gathered in the village of Lupç, at the end of the Podujevë-Prishtina road. In this case, Ylfete Humolli's daughter was killed and several others were injured.
How did you overcome fear?
The funerals of Ylfete and all the martyrs of these demonstrations gathered then hundreds of thousands of Albanians. Fear was defeated, there was no one to stop the Albanians. In those first mass burials, apart from the usual rituals and words, initially short, there was also applause! Even in this way, respect was expressed to the one who was killed because he was Albanian and because he wanted freedom for Kosovo.
In the years that followed, in the nineties, cemeteries had become the only place where Albanians were allowed to hold gatherings. For this reason, funerals were transformed into political manifestations, into literary classes, into places where historical lectures were held. What was not heard at those funerals then! But times had changed. If in 1990, 1991 mass funerals were also expressions of anger and unity of Albanians, now they were increasingly becoming places of revealing our powerlessness and political frustrations of all kinds. This is how things went on for seven years in a row: Serbia killed us, we gathered in cemeteries and wrote letters of fierce protest. This situation ended, and again in cemeteries - this time in those of the village of Llaushë, when three representatives of the KLA appeared at the funeral of Halit Geci.
The Albanians started to fight. Now the Serbian forces also had victims. The war could not be stopped without an international agreement and without NATO uniforms as a guarantee of peace.
During the war, burials were made faster. The living had to either fight or run to escape the Serbian police and army. The latter, when they carried out massacres, hid the corpses in common graves, burned them in ovens, threw them into Serbian lakes or buried them in the soil, somewhere in Serbia.
Graves and victims, like never before, began to speak. They testified to what is being done in Kosovo, who is killing the innocent, why Serbia should leave Kosovo, why the West should settle in Kosovo. For this reason, the Serbian regime did not allow the burial of the victims of the Recak Massacre for weeks.
The killed began to calm down only after the end of the war in Kosovo, in June 1999. It is assumed that over 13 thousand Albanians were killed during the war. Over four thousand are still counted as kidnapped (missing or missing).
Cemeteries of heroes and martyrs have been arranged in all parts of Kosovo.
On the anniversaries of their murders, the graves are visited with fresh flowers and old speeches. We all talk a lot in these ceremonies, but we say less and less the right things.
We will prove that we know how to remember the victims and respect the cemeteries when we make the state of Kosovo, the most valuable "memorial" for which all the heroes and martyrs fell. /Telegraph/
