Vucevic: May remembrance of 2004 pogrom be foundation for building harmonious Serbia

BELGRADE - Serbia's caretaker PM Milos Vucevic said on Monday evening the March 17, 2004 pogrom of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija was another addition to the enormous book of suffering Serbs in the southern province had been facing for centuries.

That day should be a warning and a reminder to us of the Serb victims, and remembrance should be a foundation for building a harmonious Serbia, Vucevic said at a ceremony that commemorated the pogrom.

"May peace and common sense rule, may there be no divisions and fratricidal conflicts, may we all gather around Serbia and may we not disgrace it. May we safeguard it first and then do everything else, advance and raise it, while safeguarding and loving it, and may we not block Serbia and our children, because a blockade is just a prelude to chaos and lawlessness," Vucevic said at the ceremony, held at the National Theatre in Belgrade.

It is as if the crisis in the Autonomous Province of Kosovo-Metohija has never stopped, escalating in its most severe form at the end of the 1990s, especially in 1999, he said.

"At the time, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had to face more than one thousand leading-edge NATO planes, Albanian terrorists in our country and beyond, and even an open threat of a NATO ground attack on our territory. After the Kumanovo Agreement and the passage of UNSCR 1244, before the eyes of the entire international community, our people in Kosovo-Metohija again became a target of unprecedented violence," Vucevic said.

The arrival of KFOR was followed by a true exodus of Serbs, Roma, Gorani, Ashkali and others who did not fit into the policy of the criminal so-called "Kosovo Liberation Army," he said.

"The most powerful military alliance in the history of mankind failed to protect the honour, property and the lives of innocent citizens. The liberal media said nothing, free thinkers and human rights organisations fell silent. Everything was allowed if it was aimed against the Serbs. The objective was to take our province away, to settle who knows what scores between who knows which powers, and to break down the spirit of our people. And to steal, snatch, misappropriate what is priceless and what is not for sale," Vucevic said.

In 21st-century Europe, a pogrom of civilians was organised in which armed masses of extremists attacked Serb enclaves across Kosovo-Metohija, he said.

"In just 48 hours, six cities and 10 villages were ethnically cleansed. Pristina, Obilic, Kosovo Polje, Lipljan, Gnjilane, Prizren. Eight Serbs were brutally murdered, two others succumbed to injuries, 930 Serb houses were burned to the ground and 4,012 Serbs were expelled from their ancestral homes," Vucevic said.

UNMIK and KFOR completely failed to protect the non-Albanian population and private property, watching the crime in silence, Vucevic said.

"The response of the then authorities in Belgrade - the very same people who today lecture us on patriotism and talk about Kosovo - was even more shameful. Their inaction and silence... will be remembered as the culmination of cowardice and shamelessness," Vucevic said.

Twenty-one years after this crime, the position of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija remains difficult, he said.

"Our people live in ghettos, in economic isolation, as well as under constant pressure and amid violence. It is as if the Kurti's regime is doing and planning nothing else but an expulsion or physical destruction of the remaining Serb population. We are witnessing open, daily discrimination and a trampling of fundamental human rights. Numerous NGOs in Belgrade, some television stations as well as protest gatherings do not see the plight and the pain of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija. How is that possible?" Vucevic said.

In spite of all the troubles, Kosovo-Metohija Serbs are surviving, he added.

"They are true heroes whose struggle is a daily testimony to the truth that Kosovo-Metohija is and will forever be the heart and soul of Serbia," Vucevic said.

"Amid complex circumstances, we say loud and clear that we will be safeguarding and protecting the Serbs wherever they may be and also that we will be safeguarding the Serbian state from all those who, more than anything else, would like to obliterate it," he said.