By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, May 28 2001 (IPS)

Mladen Miric (50), a Serb designer and painter, was last seen alive in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, on June 29, 1999.

Miric was trying to reach the Serb Orthodox monastery of Gracanica and joined a convoy leaving for Serbia. He never showed up there. He’s believed to have been abducted by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a rebel group. At the time of his disappearance, KLA was celebrating its victory.

Eleven weeks of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) air raids against Serbia had just ended and all Serb security forces and Yugoslav army had left the province, under an international accord.

NATO-led international peacekeeping troops, known as KFOR, were taking over the province. So were hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians expelled from Kosovo by the security forces the previous months, returning to the province.

The UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), the new administration in charge of the province, was about to start its job. Serbia’s rule in Kosovo was over.

NATO air strikes were the West’s response to the repressive regime of the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, against some two million Albanians.

“The whole world knew about their fate, but little is said on what happened to Serbs”, says Ranko Djinovic, head of the Association of Families of Kidnapped and Disappeared Serbs in Kosovo.

Thousands of Kosovo Serbs were fleeing into Serbia, fearing the revenge of returning Albanians.

Miric shares the destiny of some 1,300 Serbs who disappeared in Kosovo province since June 1999, when 11 weeks of NATO air strikes ended.

“He felt he was safe, as he never carried a gun”, says Slavica, his wife. “He was a painter and a designer. He took care of an 800- year-old monastery,” she adds, hoping that her husband is still alive.

But hopes are fading that any Serb who disappeared in Kosovo in 1999 is still alive.

“Experience shows that, after two years, the missing persons are alive only in the hopes of their families,” says Guido van Rillaer. A member of the international police force in Kosovo, he heads the UNMIK department that deals with missing persons.

So far, the department has established the fate of 20 abducted Serbs, whose bodies have been found, identified and handed over to their families.

“The UNMIK statistics on missing persons in Kosovo do not categorise people by their ethnicity,” UNMIK spokesperson Susan Manuel told journalists in Belgrade last Friday. “The overall statistics show that some 4,000 persons are missing in the province”.

“Often we got offers from some people, presenting themselves as attorneys at law, who said they could find my uncle in some private prison in Kosovo,” says Pavle Kostic, who is looking for 14 members of his family who disappeared without trace in central Kosovo village of Orahovac. The amount demanded for the release of a missing person run over 10,000 US dollars.

“The same problem exists on the other side,” van Rillaer explained. “Those people call themselves lawyers, but I would call them criminals. They feed the false hopes of families with the alleged information on the disappeared, but in fact try to make money on other people’s misfortune”.

Several rights organisations in Serbia have tried to establish the truth on the so-called “private prisons” in Kosovo, where the Serbs were allegedly being held.

The Serbs were supposed to be swapped for ethnic Albanians, arrested by Serb security forces in Kosovo in 1999 and transferred to Serbia at the time of their hasty withdrawal.

The new Serbian administration that took over after Milosevic fell from power last year has released more than 1,300 ethnic Albanians from Serbian prison following an amnesty. No Serb was released from Kosovo.

“We have checked some 120 locations indicated as possible ‘private prisons’,” van Rillaer said. “We found nothing”.

Analysts doubt that the fate of the missing persons in Kosovo will ever be known.

“It’s a vow of silence,” analysts Bratislav Grubacic told IPS. “Those who witnessed abductions and possible killings of the abducted could incriminate themselves or their brethren in arms – both on Serbian or Albanian side. They might fear revenge, but also fear the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. That is why the whole matter must remain secret”.

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