Untitled

IN THE NAME OF THE VICTIMSWOMEN AND CHILDREN MURDERED IN PODUJEVOON 28 MARCH 1999Police and troops from Serbia began arriving in Podujevo on 20 March,shooting off their guns, shattering store windows and pillaging. When thebombing started on 24 March 1999, the ethnic Albanian population stayedindoors, communicating with each other only through their adjacent yards.Those who lived on the outskirts moved in with relatives and friends in thetown centre, believing they would be safer there. Almost every Albanianhome in the centre was giving shelter to people from the suburbs and surroundingvillages.Podujevo was ethnically cleansed on 28 March. More than 10,000 Albanianswere driven out of their homes, formed into columns, marched throughthe centre and told to continue along the only route left free by the Serbianforces. Entering Albanian houses in the centre, Serbian police led bylocal policemen and mobilised civilians killed at least 19 Albanian civiliansat three different locations. Their bodies lay where they were killed fortwo days before the local civil defence was able to arrange transfer to thePriština (Prishtina) morgue. None of the Albanians knows when the bodieswere returned and buried in a row of shallow graves in the Podujevo cemetery.Only three of the graves were marked. Investigators of the Hague tribunalwere present when the bodies were exhumed for reburial in June1999. A second exhumation took place in 2000 when the remains of 11 personswere taken to the Forensic Medicine Institute in Orahovac to be autopsied.To avoid yet more digging up of graves, Enver Duriqi, who lost fourchildren, his wife and parents, buried their bodies on a hill above his houseon the outskirts of Podujevo.I heard about the deaths of the Podujevo women and children in April 1999from an elderly Albanian taxi driver in Belgrade, who was regularly visitingtwo children at the Belgrade Paediatric Hospital: nine-year-old Lirrie Bogujevci,a survivor of the Podujevo killings, and a boy from Peć who was seriouslyinjured in a shell explosion.88