In Kosovo, survivors preserve non-public museums to protect proof of battle | EUROtoday

Earlier this 12 months, almost 25 years after battle ended, the Ministry of Culture introduced plans to develop one. For now, the historical past is preserved in privately-owned websites, just like the ruins of the house the place Muqolli’s first household as soon as lived. As reminiscences fade, proof of the battle has survived solely as a result of Muqolli and different Kosovars safeguard it.

The night time of April 16, 1999, performs again and again in Muqolli’s head.

At the time, Kosovo was a province of Serbia, with an ethnic Albanian majority and Serbian minority. When Albanian Kosovars launched a insurrection in 1998, the Serbian army and ethnic Serbian law enforcement officials carried out massacres that left some 13,500 individuals useless or lacking.

That night time, Muqolli’s mother and father, siblings, spouse and 4 kids had gathered for security in the home that his father constructed within the village of Poklek. Muqolli left the forest the place his unit of guerrilla troopers was combating to go to. They ate and talked till 2 a.m., when he stealthily returned to his place.

The subsequent day, 53 individuals staying in the home had been killed by grenades and bullets fired by uniformed policemen, witnesses later recounted. The construction was set on hearth, and a lot of the our bodies had been lowered to bone.

Today, Muqolli, a soft-spoken man with cropped grey hair and broad arms, goes to work putting in cellphone and web traces, and returns every night time to his new spouse and sons, a couple of blocks from the shell of his outdated home.

He by no means thought-about tearing it down. For almost 25 years, he has preserved it as a public memorial to his household and to the battle. Walking up a stone path from the roadside, he travels again in time. At the top of the lane, bushes sagging with plums almost disguise the tall home. “When I come here,” he stated. “I see my family again.”

In the room the place his household was killed, his voice drops to a whisper. “To visit this home is terrible,” he stated. “It’s so painful even for a common visitor, let alone me: A father, brother, and son.” A belt buckle, a toddler’s shoe, and bullet casings nonetheless lie within the rubble.

The accountability of tour information and caretaker makes him ailing, he stated. He has hassle sleeping. His ideas are darkish and depressed. But if he doesn’t do it, nobody else will. “My children’s bones are here,” he stated.

Just as Muqolli has reconstructed his life, Kosovo, too, has rebuilt. In 2008, 9 years after a NATO bombing marketing campaign ended the battle, Kosovo declared its independence. A flood of worldwide help helped lay its basis, and development is in all places.

Yet reminders of the battle are unavoidable: War veterans march within the capital each few weeks, guaranteeing their sacrifices usually are not forgotten. Granite monuments to fallen troopers dot cities and the countryside.

Even so, proof is slipping away. “Why is there no museum to the war?” stated Bekim Blakaj, the chief director of the Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, which collects documentation of wartime crimes. “We will lose the narrative and the memory of what happened.”

In the dimly lit National Museum in Pristina, the capital, there isn’t a account of the bloodshed, the destroyed cities, or the refugee disaster that displaced half the nation. A insurgent leaders’ burned-out compound is preserved by the federal government, together with a small museum and a cemetery. But to study in regards to the civilian toll, a customer should search out Muqolli and the few others who’ve saved their very own small items of the battle.

Proof, proof, testimony

In the small metropolis of Gjakova, recognized for its dervishes of Islam’s mystical Sufi order, sits Kosovo’s most well-known non-public museum: the Qerkezi home, a neat, two-story residence adorned with a red-and-black Albanian flag.

Ferdonije Qerkezi lives alone now, however she as soon as shared this residence together with her husband, their 4 sons, and two daughters-in-law. She slowly climbs the steps to her sons’ bedrooms, the place their beds, garments, toys, and pictures are wrapped in plastic. Matching tuxedos dangle within the wardrobe; her husband, a tailor, made them for his or her sons’ joint marriage ceremony.

Qerkezi sits closely on a beige sofa and launches right into a historical past she has spent greater than twenty years reciting to guests. It by no means will get simpler.

“It’s beyond words to describe the pain and deep sadness of telling the story of how your family was taken away and murdered,” she stated, her respiration labored. “I don’t know if there are words.”

On April 27, 1999, a Serb police officer got here to Qerkezi’s home and took her husband and sons — the youngest was 14 — for questioning. Qerkezi waited for her household’s return and didn’t change a factor in the home. Every night time, for the primary two years after the battle ended, she set a dinner desk for six.

Word of her vigil unfold and guests started to return. Aid staff, dignitaries, even presidents.

In 2005, the our bodies of her youngest and oldest sons had been present in a mass grave in Serbia; her husband and different sons are nonetheless lacking.

In 2008, the home was declared a museum by the municipality, however apart from free utilities and donated glass cupboards, Qerkezi will get no help. Asked why there isn’t a battle museum in Kosovo, she grew indignant. “Why didn’t I do it on my own? It’s just because I can’t fit all war crimes in one house,” she stated. “Why didn’t the state do it?”

At family-run museums throughout the nation, proprietors repeat the identical phrases to explain what they’ve preserved: “proof,” “evidence,” “testimony.”

Serbia has lengthy denied wrongdoing and most households nonetheless have no idea who was answerable for killing their family members. Some nonetheless hope to realize justice in court docket.

Anne Gilliland, a professor at UCLA who has studied non-public museums throughout the Balkans, calls them archives. “The family members there are living documents themselves,” Gilliland stated.

For a decade after the battle, Kosovo was ruled by a United Nations-appointed worldwide coalition. “They were not interested in collective memory,” stated Baki Svirca, a historian who helps the federal government create an official narrative of the battle. “They were much more interested in keeping the status quo and peace.”

Svirca has been finding out battle museums from North Carolina to Israel. He significantly admires how the Jewish neighborhood has memorialized the Holocaust, whereas utilizing it as a instrument for schooling. He hopes at some point Kosovars can replicate that mannequin.

Kosovo’s minister of tradition, Hajrulla Çeku, stated plans for a number of official museums shall be drafted subsequent 12 months “to present a comprehensive history of crimes” however stated he couldn’t clarify why earlier governments didn’t begin the duty.

Disentangling reality from hatred

For now, these tales are being preserved by no matter means attainable.

In the small metropolis of Suhareka, a storefront pockmarked with bullet holes and scorch marks sits in a strip mall. The door is locked however there’s a cellphone quantity posted exterior, and shortly a lanky, white-haired man seems jangling a key ring.

The man, Hysni Berisha, stated this was a pizzeria, the place 44 members of his prolonged household had been shot and burned by Serbian forces. Their our bodies had been later unearthed from a mass grave in Serbia. The proprietor gave Berisha the store and he left it because it was. Last 12 months, with a donation from a neighborhood power drink firm, he encased the bullet-scarred partitions in glass and constructed an elevated walkway over the rubble-strewn ground.

“I’ve never been interested in keeping this for the state, or the city, or myself,” he stated. “My idea is to keep it for the next generations. Reconciliation might come but this should never be forgotten.”

In one other nation, he stated, the location might need develop into a museum with a memorial park for reflection. Instead, it’s squeezed subsequent to a gaming parlor that echoes with clacks from a foosball desk.

The our bodies of some kids killed right here had been by no means discovered, he stated. Sometimes they seem in his desires, asking if anybody is in search of them. “I have a lot of voices in my head,” he stated.

When there’s an official battle museum in Kosovo, it would battle to disentangle reality from hatred. Most of the battle’s victims had been ethnic Albanians, however Serbs, Roma, and others additionally suffered. Just as Serbia largely denies Kosovo’s accounts of the battle, Kosovo typically ignores these different victims.

In the basement of a pupil library in Pristina, a wall is roofed with the names of all 1,133 kids killed or lacking in wartime. Their clothes, toys, and books are displayed in glass circumstances by the Humanitarian Law Center, which has compiled a file for every sufferer.

Those tales led to an exhibit known as “Once Upon a Time and Never Again,” which opened in 2019. It was meant to run for a 12 months, however victims’ households saved visiting, bringing family members and buddies. The workers felt they might not shut.

In one glass case are notebooks crammed with the neat penmanship of Fadil Muqolli’s murdered kids. Muqolli’s eldest “new” son is now 19, a part of the primary era to develop up in an unbiased Kosovo. At instances, Muqolli stated he feels responsible that he began one other household and burdened it together with his previous.

Recently, the federal government pledged to renovate his home and rent a docent. His son has begun serving to on the museum. He hopes they each can step out from the battle’s shadow however not overlook it.

“This house,” he stated, “is a piece of the new history of our country.”

Nina Strochlic’s reporting from Kosovo was funded by the Alicia Patterson Foundation.