UNMIK on Air

September 3rd

Belo Polje shaken by violence

(Andrea Saula)

 

Miljanko Panajotovic: Here! We are staying as long as we can. We want others to come. We are just a bit more cautious now.

 

Miljanko Panajotovic, one of 24 Serbs who came back to their native village of Belo Polje, the first Serbian returnee spot in the Pec/Peja region.  And judging from his reaction, the Gorazdevac killer seems to have failed if his aim was to put a brake on the returns process.

 

Hello and welcome to UNMIK on Air with Sputnik Kilambi and Martin Redi.

 

Almost everything looks as it was a month ago when we visited Beljo Polje.  The difference is the big Italian tank stationed at the entry of the village and the sense of uncertainty in the air. But these people haven’t given up their aim of rebuilding their houses and bringing back their families. All they want is to come back and to live with their neighbors again. However, as Milos Vasic, one of their representatives says, the killing of the children in Gorazdevac has shaken the community.    

 

Milos Vasic: Our big wish is to come back home. This case in Gorazdevac upset us. It brought everything back to square one. Left us asking whether it was worth it? Our return was accepted because of the way it was organized. We came back to rebuild our houses, to survive somehow. The communication between the Albanians and us is very strange, because we haven’t related to each other like this before. It means that we started to buy materials for the Church house directly from the Albanians. But everything stopped after Gorazdevac. The question is how the things will develop in the future. 

Evidently emotions are running high these days - Belo Polje is in the Peja/Pec municipality in western Kosovo – a region devastated during the 1999 war, the place where Serb forces committed some of the worst atrocities against Kosovan Albanians. It is also the first return of Serbs to Pec/Peja since the conflict ended and was carefully planned by the Coordination Centre for Kosovo and UNMIK and KFOR.  The village of Belo Polje once had around 1500 inhabitants but is totally devastated today. 24 houses are to be rebuilt in the first phase and 26 houses in the second. That’s why rebuilding in itself is the most important precondition.   The manner in which this whole process has been conducted makes Belo Polje unique. And Milos Vasic hopes that unique cooperation will continue. 

 

Milos Vasic: I didn’t say that cooperation is not possible anymore. We came with the idea to live with the Albanians again and I’m 90% sure that it is possible and feasible. But the question is how to find the same spirit again and to cope with the grim reality that touched Albanians too.

 

Vasic expects that cooperation with the Albanians will resume but also believes that some Albanians are afraid to continue working with them.

 

Milos Vasic: The problem is these good Albanians are afraid to show their anger and express their condolences after what happened to our kids. They are afraid of fellow-Albanians. It was hard for me when Albanians kids got killed in the city. In the conflict between criminals innocent kids got killed. And that upset me. I gave a statement to the Albanian press saying that it is horrible that such things are happening again.   

 

When asked what binds him so much to Belo Polje and the region, Milos points to the mountains behind him with a smile - “If you would spend only a month here with me, he says and go to the mountains with the local Serbs and Albanians, I don’t think that you would ask me that again.

 

Milos Vasic: I had my cattle farm, a meatpacking company. I had the most beautiful restaurant across the Bistrica River, many butchers’ shops. I have lost over 3 millions euros. I don’t have anything now and had to start everything all over. It is not hard for me to begin again, but the thing I want the most is for that 90% to become 100%. A lot of good people lived here and life was good, the best in the world.

If we do not manage to have it again, I will be forced to look for that in Australia or Canada.

 

He says that the next year is crucial. If Serbs do not have access to Pec/Peja by then, he adds, they will be forced to leave. There is fear on the other side as well, because nobody wants new enclaves in Kosovo and some are afraid that these Serb returnees will not integrate.  Another aspect to be kept in mind is the fact that most of these people lived under miserable conditions in Serbia. One’s status depended on one’s financial resources, stresses Milos.

 

Milos Vasic: The treatment one received in Serbia depended on how much one could pay for rent. I don’t have a house and I was forced to live in a collective settlement. Because I have a wife and three sons, I had to find private accommodation.     

It’s hard when you suddenly lose everything and you leave in your slippers and underpants. And then you move from one house to another, from one settlement to another. If I had money in the future, but I won’t, I would never live in Serbia. I would come back here.

 

But the sounds of hammers and drilling machines continue to resound in Belo Polje.  But this too depends on the cash flow and they are still waiting for new funds from the Coordination Centre. Milija Grunic remains hopeful all the same.

 

Milija Grunic: We hope that we’ll get the money and that we will have enough to rebuild our houses. We hope that everything is going to be fine. We live in hope and that’s why we came here. We left and came back and now we hope that we’ll stay here forever.

 

And on that hope we end this UNMIK on Air program. Thanks for listening.