Biserko on Excavations: Serbia Must Face Responsibility, Many Graves Remain Undiscovered

Sonja Biserko, chair of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, has said that many mass graves remain undiscovered in Kosovo, which, according to her, demonstrate the scale of the crimes committed during the war.

Speaking in an interview with “Info Magazine,” she emphasized that the discovery of each new grave once again draws attention to the responsibility of the Serbian state, which, according to her, has never fully confronted its past.

Biserko said that the graves that have yet to be found attest to the scale of the crimes Serbia committed in Kosovo, as well as in Bosnia and Croatia. She said that each new discovery reopens the issue of Serbia’s responsibility, despite the fact that the Hague Tribunal for Yugoslavia convicted Serbia’s military and political leaders specifically for crimes committed in Kosovo.

According to her, Serbia’s war crimes court, which was established to prosecute lower-ranking individuals, did not continue this work. Biserko said that the institution effectively ceased functioning and failed to deal efficiently with the various individuals who had committed crimes.

As an example, she cited the 37th Motorized Brigade, which was commanded by Lubisha Dikoviq. As Biserko recalled, he was later promoted to the position of Chief of the General Staff.

She added that the Humanitarian Law Center had filed a criminal complaint against Dikoviq, supported by extensive data and references that, according to her, prove his responsibility for a number of war crimes committed in Kosovo.

Biserko said that Serbia’s official interpretation of the events in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia, as well as the entire process of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, is based on the claim that “Serbia and the Serbs are the greatest victims.” According to her, this thesis has been widely accepted and promoted not only by political elites, but also by cultural, religious and other elites.

In this context, she also spoke about a man from Istog who had revealed the location of a grave in Zubin Potok and was subsequently arrested by the BIA. According to Biserko, rather than addressing the Serbian state’s responsibility for the events in Kosovo, most citizens have adopted a different stance, while anyone who testifies to Serbia’s responsibility faces major difficulties.

According to her, the case of the man from Istog resembles an incident in Bosnia, where a Serb revealed the location of a mass grave in Tomashicë containing around 1,000, or 1000, victims.

Biserko said that people who provide such information subsequently face mistreatment, harassment and other forms of pressure. She described the man’s disclosure of the grave as a very courageous act, adding that, over time, people who know about these events can no longer bear the burden and, sooner or later, decide to speak about that history.

She also said that Serbia’s current government was part of the structures that committed crimes in Kosovo and, consequently, part of that project. Biserko recalled that a minister in the government in Belgrade, a member of the SPS party, had recently said that, had she been in Millosheviq’s position, she would have cleansed Kosovo of Albanians.

According to her, Millosheviq had attempted to carry out this ethnic cleansing by expelling more than 800,000, or over 800.000, Albanians from Kosovo, who fled to Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia. Biserko said that most of them had their personal documents destroyed so that they would have no proof of identity when they returned to Kosovo. She added that, without NATO’s intervention, it would have been very difficult for these people to return.

Speaking about the military archives, Biserko said it is difficult to expect Serbia to accept Pristina’s request to open them. According to her, the documents could shed light on responsibility for the crimes committed in Kosovo and other parts of the former Yugoslavia.

She stressed that war crimes in Kosovo were not committed solely by paramilitary formations, as the army also participated in them directly. For this reason, according to Biserko, opening the military archives would expose the responsibility of the Yugoslav Army and make it easier to identify those involved in the crimes in Kosovo, as well as in a large proportion of the crimes committed in Croatia.