(ANSAmed) - BELGRADE, AUGUST 30 - 30 years after the outbreak of armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, 9,969 people are still reported missing and investigations continue in the countries of the region about their fate.
As the International Committee of the Red Cross said today on the occasion of the International Day of Disappeared Persons, there were about 35 thousand in total dispersed in the Balkan wars. In 2019, according to the Committee, the remains of 218 people were found and identified, in 2020 only 46, while since the beginning of this year there have been 43 missing persons.
It is necessary to accelerate and intensify research activities, which must be treated exclusively as a humanitarian issue, without any politicization, the Committee observed, as reported by the Serbian media. Unfortunately, however, it is precisely the politicization and the persistent rivalry and conflict between the countries concerned that characterize the whole issue, with reciprocal accusations that do not slow down or completely paralyze the processes of searching and identifying the remains.
In a meeting held today in Belgrade with the participation of family members of missing Serbs, the head of the appropriate state commission dealing with the problem, Veljko Odalovic, openly accused Croatia and Kosovo of poor collaboration in the search and identification of the remains of the disappeared.
The head of the Serbian government office for Kosovo, PetarPetkovic, denounced the attitude of the authorities of Kristina who, in his opinion, deny the existence of archival of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), from which it could be shed light on the fate of many Serbian victims of the 1998-1999 war. For his part, Kosovar Prime Minister AlbinKurti, speaking today in Pristina in a ceremony in memory of the missing dead, urged the opening of the State archivists of Serbia.
The issue of the missing and the search and identification of their remains is among those on the agenda in the dialogue process between Belgrade and Pristina with the EU mediation, a new session of which at expert level is scheduled in Brussels in the first days of September. (ANSAmed).
