The President of the Republic of Kosovo Vjosa Osmani together with Prime Minister Albin Kurti and the families of the forcibly disappeared persons, on the International Day of Forcibly Disappeared Persons, laid a wreath at the memorial of the missing persons.
President Osmani said that they will be missed not only by the soul of each of us but also by the soul of an entire state, by the soul of an entire nation.
“Their fate becomes even more tragic as it is known that they are in the hands of the Serbian state, a state that has committed genocide against the people of Kosovo and that unfortunately is still not distancing itself from its terrible past and the crimes it has committed against our people. But, knowing that enforced disappearances are our deepest wound, are among the greatest wounds of post-war Kosovo, this makes our efforts many times greater to unravel their fate, to demand responsibility from Serbia, and to make sure that no issue is more priority in the process of dialogue with Serbia than the return of our loved ones “, said President Osmani.
She further stressed that no pain is greater and consequently, no issue can ever be of the highest priority.
“The pain is not only felt by the family members, as I have always said, they are also our family members, our people, they are also our sisters and brothers, they are our sons and daughters. Therefore, we share the pain and only together can we face it and only together we can demand responsibility from the state which has eliminated them by force “, pointed out the President.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Albin Kurti said that in our relations with Serbia, the issue of forcibly disappeared persons is a key issue and we cannot claim to have a stable and secure future, if we do not address the issues of the past, if we do not, we treat and do not clarify the past.
“Serbia refuses to face the past and I call on Serbia to open the archives in all the various roundtables organized in the international arena. Since the killing of Albanians in the spring of '99 but also earlier in '98 and so on, then their burial, their exhumation in Kosovo, the transfer of corpses to mass graves in Serbia and the exhumation from there, and everything was carried out not by ordinary citizens, but by the state apparatus. Therefore, the opening of state archives in Serbia is the answer to clarifying the fate of the missing. We, as leaders of institutions, will be close to family members and we will always prioritize this issue,” said Prime Minister Kurti.