Kosovo, Serbia Urged to Not Politicise Missing Persons Issue

Yellow flowers were laid out to form the number 1620 in Pristina's main square on Wednesday in memory of those who are still missing from the 1998-99 war, as Kosovo marked its National Missing Persons Day.

"We still have 1,620 people missing from wartime… 23 years afterwards, families are still waiting to know about the fate of their loved ones," said Marigona Shabiu, the executive director of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights NGO.

"We consider that this issue has been dragged out for a while, it is being politicised by both the Kosovo and Serbia governments and we urge that this issue be addressed as a human issue," Shabiu added.

Photo: BIRN.

At a separate event around 90 kilometres west of Pristina to mark National Missing Persons Day, people gathered at a memorial in the village of Meje to commemorate more than 377 Albanian civilians who were killed by Serbian forces on April 27, 1999.

"Today, on the day of forcibly disappeared persons from the last war in Kosovo, we do not know where their bodies are. But one thing is clear, they were taken by Serbia's genocidal state," the head of the Kosovo parliament, Glauk Konjufca, said after he laid flowers at the Meje memorial near the western Kosovo town of Gjakove/Djakovica.

"Kosovo institutions are doing everything they can so Serbia is held accountable for its crimes and genocide committed in Kosovo," Konjufca added.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti said in a message on Facebook to mark National Missing Persons Day that the issue should be tackled in future talks with Serbia on the normalisation of relations.

"We are fully aware that the return of the remaining missing people will be an ever more difficult act. Therefore this issue has become a priority in the frame of...