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14/03/2014 Tenth anniversary of the Pogrom, "Crime Without Punishment"

Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Brussels to mark this sad anniversary on March 19th at 19 am in the premises of the Embassy at 53 Boulevard du Regent, 1000 Brussels, with the documentary film "Crime without punishment" being shown. We invite you to join us.

Ten years ago, March 17 and 18 2004 the violence broke out tremendously in Kosovo and Metohija. Nineteen people were killed; eight of them Serbs and 11 Albanians lost their lives in the fight against the international security forces. Two citizens of Serbian nationality are still accounted missing. More than 954 people were injured, more than 900 Serbian, Roma and Ashkali homes were torched, 4,000 people were expelled from their homes, nearly a 100 Serbian churches and monasteries were destroyed and desecrated.

Six towns and nine villages were ethnically cleansed 935 Serbian houses and ten public buildings were destroyed, burned or severely damaged. 72 UN vehicles were equally destroyed. During the violence 39 temples of the Serbian Orthodox Church were destroyed and burned to the ground, including 18 cultural monuments, such as the temple Bogorodica Ljeviška in Prizren (UNESCO listed).

Priceless cultural heritage, thousands of icons, frescoes and other religious relics, old and rare books, documents of the Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo and Metohija were lost, accounted missing, damaged or destroyed. International prosecutors and judges in Kosovo prosecuted seven cases of destruction of churches and the 67 people were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 21 months to 16 years.

Motive or pretext for the Pogrom was the local media campaign in which the Serbs were accused of forcing with dogs the boys of Albanian origin from the village of Zubin Potok one of whom was drowned in the river. UNMIK police investigation found that the allegations were false, and international police spokesman said at the time that the “surviving boys were under the strong pressure from Albanian journalists and politicians to accuse the Serbs from the neighboring villages”. First protests of Kosovo Albanians began in the southern part of Mitrovica in an armed attack on Serbs who live in the northern part of the city.

Ten years after the March violence in the province, Serbia continues alerting the international community to the ever-present threat to the local Serbian population and continuous campaign of intimidation carried out by the Kosovo ethnic majority. The incidents in Kosovo, which are listed in the report of the UN Secretary-general were a part of an orchestrated campaign of intimidation directed towards Kosovo Serbs, in order to perceive with the ethnic cleansing and total annihilation of the Serbian cultural and religious heritage. More than 200,000 non-Albanians were expelled from Kosovo and Metohija since June 1999, and that in the past year only around 50 internally displaced Serbs returned to their place of origin. The international community then rated the "ethnic violence" against the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija "planned and well orchestrated".

After the Pogrom against Serbs, 270 Albanians were arrested, 143 of them convicted, most of the fines, and 67 of them were sentenced to prison, but not the main actors of the political structures of the former KLA. Albanian extremists’ terror was later condemned by the UN Security Council and the EU; the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on April 29 2004 passed a relevant resolution. Even ten years after the expulsion, most victims of the March pogrom against the Serbs have not returned to their homes, many are still in collective centers, container settlements or other people's houses in the status of internally displaced persons.

It is expected that, within the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, the issues of protection of cultural and historical heritage and enabling the permanent return of internally displaced persons to Kosovo and Metohija will be one of the most important chapters of dialogue that is already for a year successfully carried out with the active support of the EU High Representative for Foreign affairs Mrs. Catherine Ashton.


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