Taking in consideration the facts that genocide is the gravest crime known to mankind and that it is punishable under international criminal law, the Serbian state has set up a whole system of activities in order to destroy the truth about the genocide committed during the war in Kosovo. The attempt to conceal and destroy the traces of crimes has been and remains Serbia’s ongoing strategy, aimed at denying genocide.

During the war in Kosovo, this function was orchestrated by the Ministry of Information of the Government of Serbia, headed by Aleksandar Vucic, and after it ended, several ministries and special sectors of the Serbian state were engaged for this purpose and which are also managed by the very same person: Aleksandar Vucic.

The propaganda of the Serbian state aiming the denial of the genocide in Kosovo has intensified, especially after the Assembly of Kosovo adopted the “Resolution on the genocide committed by Serbs in Kosovo” on May 8, 2019.
From the previously mentioned resolution, it is worth singling out the fact that the Assembly of Kosovo required January 15 to be declared the “Commemoration Day of the Genocide against Albanians in Kosovo”, as, on this day, in the village of Recak in the municipality of Shtime, the Serbian forces committed one of the most heinous genocidal crimes to date, the one which revolted the international community and mobilized it to end the policy of genocide in Kosovo.

Precisely for this reason, the crime of genocide, known to the public opinion as the “Recak Massacre”, has been and remains the object of constant attacks of the strategy which aims to deny its factuality.

The latest statement of the current President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, who describes the crime of genocide in the village of Recak as a “fabrication made up by William Walker” should also be considered in the framework of this strategy. This statement of Aleksandar Vucic is nothing new. On the contrary, it is literally the repetition of what he has declared several times during the war in Kosovo, especially after January 17, 1999, when the Government of Serbia declared William Walker “persona non grata” and allowed him 48 hours to leave Kosovo.

Now that 21 years have passed since the crime of the genocide took place in Recak, the Serbian state and its president are willing to conceal the truth about Recak with propaganda, believing that the dust of time might have covered the truth about this crime, planned and undertaken by the Serbian state.
The propaganda arsenal of the Serbian state, while striving to destroy the truth, has fabricated the lie that allegedly victims were members of the KLA and that after the battle was over, the bodies were stripped off of their uniforms and that civilian clothes were put on them. That this is a lie and a serious insult to these victims is also proved by the Finnish forensic experts, who were assigned by the European Union with the task to conduct an independent expertise. As an illustration for those who have not had the opportunity to be informed in detail about the results of this expertise’s analyses, the statement of the leader of this forensic team, Helena Ranta will be quoted. “The autopsy of the bodies, the bullets found in the site of crime, with research in the stream, every inch of whose bed has been pierced with shovels, spoons and metal detectors, the Recak case is the best sifted-issue in the history of The Hague Tribunal (…). The victims were in civilian clothes, seven to eight layers on top of each other, because it was winter. The autopsy confirmed that they had been killed in these clothes. During the search, bullets were found in the stream bed, below the ground surface, just where the victims were found. The claim that the 23 people found in the stream were killed elsewhere is categorically ruled out. They were not placed in this stream later and this is not the case of a staging. Albanian civilians were killed from a close distance, and it does not matter in the slightest if they were killed from the distance of one or two meters. In any case, they were not killed in combat.”

The Center “Genocide in Kosovo – An Open Wound” supports the numerous reactions to the statement of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, who aims to deny the genocide in Kosovo.

In order to keep a coherent attitude, the Center “Genocide in Kosovo – An Open Wound” requires us to mobilize as a state and as a society and, on January 15, to honor in the best possible way the Commemoration Day of the Genocide of Albanians in Kosovo
Geneva, December 8, 2019

The Center “Genocide in Kosovo – An Open Wound”

Chairperson
Bardhyl Mahmuti