29.10.2008.
Saranda Bogujevci
“Saranda and Fatos Bogujevci from Podujevo are with us today. On March 28, 1999, she was two months short of her fourteenth birthday. Fatos was 12 at the time. He turned 13 in July, after everything had happened. They had their own families, their brothers and sisters. They emerged out of that event without a mother. It would be only natural to wish that what they had been through, what happened to them never happens to any other child. This is a wish worth fighting for. I’m going to ask Saranda and Fatos to tell us, together, what happened to them. They came to Belgrade, for the first time, in 2003, to testify. Can you imagine, in 2003—that’s less than four years after the event, the two of them, their fathers and their brothers and sisters decided to give evidence before the court in Belgrade because they realized that this was the only thing they could do for those who were killed on March 28. This couldn’t have been easy for the children saw the killings with their own eyes to come to Belgrade and see the same uniforms on the street. But Saranda and Fatos had already realized that this was the only thing they could do—to try to establish the facts, to publicly testify. Saranda was the only one who testified before the open courtroom, before an audience, Fatos was underage, he testified in a closed session, but there was no one who could remain calm before what Saranda said. If that’s any proof of justice, I felt then that what had happened would change something. One member of the Scorpions contacted me and said he was there at the time, and saw what happened. And he went to court and spoke before the court of what had happened. But I’m not going to talk about this, because right now in Belgrade, there is a trial going on of four new members of the Scorpions who were also involved in these events. So let me ask Saranda and Fatos again to tell us, if they can, what happened. Enver Duriqi is also with us today, and I asked him to hang in there, he lost all four of his children and his wife. All he has left from them are their marbles he used to carry in his pocket after that. He had nothing else left. After that day, March 28.”
Natasa Kandic’s introduction at the public testimony of victims, at the Fourth Regional Forum for Transitional Justice, held in Pristina, Kosovo, on October 28-29, 2008.
