Milica Stojanovic and Perparim IsufiBelgrade, PristinaBIRNMarch 24, 202316:27Serbian officials honoured the civilian victims killed during NATO’s bombing campaign in 1999, while Kosovo’s president hailed the air strikes as an intervention against ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic’s regime.

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Serbia, Kosovo Mark Anniversary of NATO Air Strikes

Serbian minister Nikola Selakovic lays a wreath in Belgrade. Photo: Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs.

Serbian officials held commemorations on Friday in memory of the civilians who were killed during NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, a military intervention that ended the Kosovo war.

Serbia’s minister of labour, employment, veterans and social affairs, Nikola Selakovic, together with officials from the Interior Ministry and the City of Belgrade, laid a wreath in Tasmajdan Park in Belgrade at a memorial to three-year-old Milica Rakic and other children who were killed during the bombing. The Russian ambassador to Belgrade, Alexander Bocan Harchenko, also attended the event.

Belgrade Assembly president Nikola Nikodijevic laid a wreath at a memorial on Strazevica hill in Belgrade. Nikodijevic said that “it is our duty to preserve and cultivate a culture of remembrance, first of all for all those heroes who gave their lives so that we could live in peace, but also for all innocent civilians who died”

The main official commemoration in Serbia will be held in the northern city of Sombor on Friday evening and will be broadcast live by the Serbian public broadcaster, RTS.

The Western military alliance launched 78 days of air strikes in March 1999 to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept the terms of an agreement to end his military campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army, which involved widespread ethnic cleansing.

The Serbian government estimates that at least 2,500 people died and 12,500 were injured during the NATO campaign, although the exact death toll remains unclear. Humanitarian Law Centre data says 756 people died during the bombing campaign.

The air strikes, were launched without the backing of a UN Security Council resolution and justified by NATO as a humanitarian intervention, ended on June 10, 1999 after Milosevic agreed to withdraw his forces from Kosovo.

On Thursday evening, a film entitled ‘Kosovo Dossier – The Yellow House’, made by RTS with the Interior Ministry, premiered in Belgrade as part of the anniversary commemorations. The ‘Yellow House’ was a farmhouse in Albania, where Serb prisoners were allegedly taken by Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to have their organs harvested for sale.

Meanwhile in the Belgrade municipality of Vracar, the local branch of the Socialist Party of Serbia, which was Milosevic’s ruling party at the time of the Kosovo war, held a memorial event which was addressed by Nikola Sainovic, former Yugoslav deputy prime minister, who was convicted by the Hague Tribunal of the murders, deportations and inhumane treatment of Kosovo Albanians during the war in 1999.

Serbia, Kosovo Mark Anniversary of NATO Air Strikes

Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani lays a wreath at a monument to fallen NATO soldiers in Pristina. Photo: BIRN.

In Kosovo, President Vjosa Osmani laid a wreath at the memorial to fallen NATO soldiers in the capital Pristina and said that the Western military alliance chose “the right side of history” when it decided to launch air strikes against Yugoslavia 24 years ago.

In the presence of the UK, British, French, German and Italian ambassadors to Pristina, Osmani said that NATO’s intervention on March 24, 1999, “prevented a criminal regime from performing the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s people”.

“Therefore we are always grateful. March 24 is the day of turnaround, hope and freedom. We will always repeat that the people of Kosovo were victims in 1999 while Serbia was the aggressor,” Osmani added.

Glauk Konjufca, the speaker of Kosovo’s parliament, said on Facebook that he wanted to commemorate the day which he said “ended Serbia’s ethnic cleansing and genocide against Kosovo Albanians”.

Source link: balkaninsight.com