Six students from Priština visited the Humanitarian Law Center as part of their three day long visit to Belgrade.
The Initiative for RECOM Regional Coordinator, Jelena Krstić, presented the Initiative for Establishing the Regional Commission for Establishing Facts About War Crimes and Other Serious Human Rights Violations on the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia in Period 1991-2001.
“RECOM will be the first inter-governmental commission of this kind, and it is essential that all successor countries of the former Yugoslavia establish it since no national commission on the territory of the entire region where armed conflicts had occurred can have such legitimacy”, Jelena Krstić said.
She explained that the Initiative for RECOM plans to collect a million support signatures in the region by June 1 of this year, which will represent a sort of support to the request for the establishment of the commission that will be handed to the successor countries of the former Yugoslavia.
“Political support will also be necessary, and we have gained it from presidents of Croatia and Serbia and the Parliament of Montenegro so far, but also from international institutions, the Council of Europe and the CoE Parliamentary Assembly”, Krstić added.
Predrag Miletić, an analyst in the Humanitarian Law Center, presented the project of individual record of victims in Kosovo in the period 1998-2000, entitled “Kosovo Memory Book”.
He explained that researchers in Kosovo and Serbia collect statements from witnesses, victims’ family members and other individuals who possess knowledge about suffering and disappearances of victims, and other relevant documents and photos.
Miletić highlighted that a total of 5,898 accounts describing the fate of a total of 10,002 victims of killings, kidnappings, and disappearances, have been created, which represents 75,52% of the total number of victims registered in the data base (13,243) and the list of victims can be found at:
https://www.hlc-rdc.org/stranice/Linkovi-modula/Kosovo-Memory-Book.en.html
The first part of the Kosovo Memory Book will be published in March this year and it will cover the year of 1998.
Students from Priština visited Belgrade as part of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights Visiting Programme, which has gathered more than 2,000 young people in the past seven years, who have met with Belgrade/Priština for the first time thanks to this programme. The objective of the exchange programme is to tear down the “wall” between Kosovo and Serbian societies and to offer these young people an opportunity to see the real situation and social changes in Serbia and Kosovo by this direct life experience.
