UNMIK/PR/616
PRESS RELEASE - 20 July, 2001

UNMIK Clarifies Statement: No New Graves at Suva Reka

Contrary to reports today and last night in the Belgrade media, there are no new mass graves in Suva Reka or anywhere in Kosovo.
 
Remarks by Ms. Monique Fienberg, head of UNMIK's missing persons bureau, were distorted in the Belgrade media yesterday. Ms. Fienberg had been reviewing the situation of missing persons in Kosovo with a Belgrade media.

She said that of the approximately 1,256 unidentified bodies in Kosovo known to UNMIK, 800-900 are buried in the Suva Reka area.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia conducted exhumations in Kosovo during the summers of 1999 and 2,000.

Of the approximately 4,000 bodies which the ICTY exhumed, 1256 were unable to be identified. These unidentified bodies, which had been found all over Kosovo,  were reburied.

Some were returned to the municipalities in which they were found. Others, which municipalities did not wish returned, were buried in the area of Suva Reka.

UNMIK is in the process of negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Commission on Missing Persons in order to begin DNA testing on the unidentified bodies, and with the families.

UNMIK has no way of determining the ethnicity of the unidentified bodies.
Such distortions in the media have increased the anxiety and grief of all families of the missing in Kosovo.

Since the ICTY finished its exhumation work in Kosovo in October 2000, no further exhumations have been conducted in Kosovo.

UNMIK Police is about to begin work on individual gravesites which were not exhumed by the ICTY.