Virtual Museum Preserves Kosovo War Refugees’ Memories

"It took us a long time to get used to the life there. We stayed there because we had no other choice," she said.

She only managed to go back to Kosovo 18 years later.

"I wanted to return earlier, but we didn't have anything. I wish we could have built a house here. They [the Kosovo authorities], promised to build some houses for us, but changed their minds," she explained.

Kameri's recollections were recorded for the newly-established Virtual Museum of Refugees, an online repository of interviews with people who have been uprooted by violent turmoil in Kosovo. It was created by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights and launched to coincide with World Refugee Day on June 20.

Marigona Shabiu, the executive director of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, told BIRN that the museum tells a small part of the story of the mass exodus of refugees from Kosovo.

Around a million Kosovo Albanians were expelled from their homes in spring 1999 after NATO began air strikes against Yugoslavia, aimed at making Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's troops and police forces end their military campaign in Kosovo. An estimated 100,000 Serbs and Roma civilians then fled after the war in fear of violent retribution.

"During the Kosovo war more than half of the population were forced to leave their homes and some of them never returned. But the memorialisation and documentation of refugee experiences is still absent," said Shabiu.

She said she wanted the virtual museum to contribute to the "symbolic recognition of the suffering of people from all ethnic groups".

"We aim to promote an inclusive public debate about the past and to increase social empathy by publishing various stories," she explained.

'We all cried' ...