[homeagain balkansvet]

Okay, djeorgie, let's expand your English vocabulary! - Let's go to www.dictionary.com. Look up the definitions of the following words: "Civilian" and "Military."

[homeagain balkansvet]

Also, while you're at it, the words "genocide" and "combat."

Not all battle deaths are equal. Some are worse than others.

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"...hands of the Serb paramilitaries."

Do you know the article "The Cruelest Cleansings" (<- click)

Ooooh, be careful, it's again a Serbian site...ooohh...

Karadjordje

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Okay, djeorgie, let's expand your English vocabulary! - Let's go to www.dictionary.com. Look up the definitions of the following words: "Civilian" and "Military.""

145 are identified, hm.
You would say, that they all were civilians?
Hm, all Albanien?

Karadjordje

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Look up the definitions of the following words: "Civilian" and "Military.""

So let us loot to Rudare, Kosovo:

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Look up the definitions of the following words: "Civilian" and "Military.""

So Let us loot to Rudare, Kosovo:

AP, April 15, 2002

"Serbs look for evidence about relatives believed killed in Kosovo

By DRAGAN ILIC, Associated Press Writer

RUDARE, Yugoslavia - Hundreds of relatives of Serbs missing since the end of Kosovo´s war examined clothes, wedding rings and cigarette cases Sunday, hoping to determine the fate of loved ones believed slain in the province.

Families streamed into a pair of tents erected near a motel in southern Serbia to view items U.N. forensics investigators uncovered after the fighting ended in 1999. The relatives donned surgical masks to guard against infection while looking at items found with 360 corpses unearthed at sites throughout the southern Yugoslav province.

Some 1,300 Serbs have been reported missing since former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ´s 1998-1999 crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Most of those people are presumed to be dead.

U.N. officials in recent months have promised to do more to determine the fate of the missing, both Serbs and ethnic Albanians. An estimated 3,000 ethnic Albanians are also still unaccounted for nearly three years after NATO bombing halted Milosevic´s crackdown and drove out Yugoslav government forces.[...]"

"Wiping away tears, Sasa Ristanovic recognized a blue shirt his father, Momcilo, wore June 17, 1999, the day he disappeared in the Kosovo city of Prizren.
'Now I know what I felt for years,' he said. 'My father was killed and dumped in a grave.'"(AP)

Karadjordje

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Look up the definitions of the following words: 'Civilian' and 'Military.'"

So let's look to another place: Dragodan, Kosovo:

From 'Blic,' Belgrade, Yugoslavia (Serbian Newspaper)

August 22, 2000

"UNMIK sends invitations to families of disappeared Serbs 160 bodies found in Pristina

PRISTINA - In the Pristina suburb of Dragodan 160 bodies have been found which are suspected to be victims of Albanian terrorists during the past year, since the deployment of UNMIK and KFOR, Blic has learned from members of families of kidnapped and missing Serbs and Romanies who received invitations to identify the discovered bodies. Vesna Mulici identified the body of her husband, Ramo Mulici, whose body was among those exhumed at Dragodan.

'I saw many identity cards with the names of Serbs and photographs while I was attempting to identify the belongings of my husband,' she told Blic. At UNMIK headquarters no one wished to either confirm or deny this information but a invitation was repeated for relatives and friends of the missing and kidnapped to come to Pristina and help the Committee for Missing and Disappeared Persons to identify 159 more bodies found at Dragodan.Strong KFOR forces until recently secured this gravesite and prevented uncontrolled entry to the Dragodan cemetery."

Karadjordje

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Look up the definitions of the following words: 'Civilian' and 'Military.'"

So let's again look to another place: Suva Reka, Kosovo:

Serb delegation from Belgrade visits Suva Reka/Suharekë

On Wednesday, 25 July, members of the Belgrade-based Contact Group on Missing Persons, accompanied by Serbian journalists, visited one of UNMIK's burial grounds for unidentified persons located in Suva Reka/Suharekë. The visit was organized by the UNMIK Office of Human Rights and Community Affairs (OHRCA) in an effort to dispel a rumour circulating in the Serbian press that a new mass grave containing up to 800 bodies of Kosovo Serbs had been found at Suva Reka/Suharekë.

The fact is that the 188 graves at the UNMIK gravesite in Suva Reka/Suharekë contain unidentified bodies exhumed and reburied in 2000 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The Suva Reka/Suharekë gravesite contains no new bodies and no new mass grave has been uncovered in Kosovo.

Of the 3,900 bodies exhumed by ICTY, 1,256 remain unidentified. These bodies have been reburied in the municipalities where they were found, either in UNMIK graveyards like the one at Suva Reka/Suharekë or in municipal graveyards. The visit to Suva Reka/Suharekë allowed the Serbian delegation to see the situation for themselves.

Susan Manuel, UNMIK Spokesperson, who accompanied the delegation, assured them that the bodies were at no risk. 'Each community knows that these bodies could belong to them so they are very respectful of the graves,' she said.

Gradimir Nalic, Advisor to the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on the issue of missing persons, was part of the delegation that came from Belgrade. 'I'm glad that UNMIK allowed us to come see the site and we see that it has a fence and the graves are marked and mapped,' he said. 'The new government of Yugoslavia is trying to raise the level of cooperation with UNMIK on the issue of missing persons. Whether these unidentified people are Albanian, Roma or Serbian, is not the point. What's important is finding out who they are and letting their families know,' he continued.

Finding Kosovo's missing is one of UNMIK's top priorities. On Tuesday, 24 July, SRSG Hans Haekkerup signed an agreement with the Sarajevo-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), an organization funded by the US State Department, to begin working together and using DNA testing to further efforts to match unidentified bodies with their families.

The collaboration with ICMP will give UNMIK access to DNA testing and sophisticated computer software to match post-mortem and ante-mortem data. The matching of post- mortem data (items collected from the body) with ante- mortem data (information taken from families) is how bodies are identified.

From now on all work on identifying missing persons will be handled by UNMIK Police's Missing Persons Unit (MPU), who will work in tandem with the ICMP. In addition to the 1,256 ICTY bodies, the MPU and ICMP will work on identifying bodies from 33 soon-to-be-excavated gravesites in Kosovo and bodies from recently discovered mass graves in Serbia.

'Although we will have sophisticated new methods at our disposal for identifying bodies, this is still not a guarantee,' says Monique Fienberg, Officer-in-Charge at OHRCA. 'The most important step remains for each family missing someone to come forward to the police and give as much information as possible about their loved one. This information, called ante-mortem data, is the key to identifying bodies. Without this, even the most sophisticated methods in the world won't work.'

In an appeal to those in Gracanica to stop their hunger strike over missing persons, Susan Manuel said: 'We have heard your message and we are doing all we can. It is slow-going, but there is no conspiracy.'"

UNMIK news No. 103 (<- click)

July 21, 2001

"Suva Reka mass grave exists, Committee for Kosovo confirms

Belgrade, July 21 - The Federal Committee for Kosovo-Metohija Subcommittee for missing persons Vladimir Bozovic confirmed on Friday that he had received from the UNMIK data on the existence of a mass grave in Suva Reka, containing 850-900 bodies.

At the meeting of the joint commission of the UNMIK and the Federal Committee in Pristina, the representatives of the Interim Administration Mission in Kazoo showed us an official document containing information on the mass grave in Suva Reka, Bozovic told the Radio B92.

[...]

Some UNMIK officials denied on Friday the report on the mass grave in Suva Reka, claming there was no mass grave and that the statement of the head of the Missing and Detained Persons , Monique Feinberg, had been misinterpreted.

The Radio B92, repeats, however, Feinberg's statement that there was 'a much larger and enclosed mass grave in Suva Reka.'

'Some 850-900 bodies have been buried there. The corpses are unidentified, which means that we have no way of knowing the identities of the buried. They could belong to any ethnicity; however, we suspect those are the bodies of the Serbs and members of minority communities,' Feinberg said. [...]"

www.serbia-info.com/news (<- click)

Karadjordje

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Look up the definitions of the following words: 'Civilian' and 'Military.'"

So let's again look to another place: Gnilanje, Kosovo:

"[...] A UN war crimes tribunal team was investigating Wednesday a grave in eastern Kosovo containing 11 corpses, some of which were identified as Serbian, a spokesman for the Kosovo peacekeeping force said. The US-led Multinational Brigade of the Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR) discovered the grave Tuesday in Ugljare, five kilometers (three miles) south of Gnilane, KFOR spokesman Roland Lavoie said. [...]"

AFP, August 02, 1999

As far as I know - please correct me - they closed this very first (08/1999) mass grave after further investiagtion.

Karadjordje