New Technology World

Albanian refugee children in a makeshift tent in Brac, North Macedonia, April 1999. Photo: EPA/FEHIM DEMIR.

A new book titled ‘Hijacked Childhood’ was published on Tuesday and includes interviews with 12 parents who lost children in the aftermath of and during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo. It offers a powerful chronicle of trauma.

In the book, published by Kosovo’s ForumZFD, an NGO focused on the past of the western Balkans, the stories are presented in an oral history format, using photographs of children, school bags, clothes, notebooks, pencils, crayons, rulers, toys, diaries.

ForumZFD’s Kolav Krasniki, who led the project, said the book helps them better understand the lives and experiences of parents and gives them the opportunity to address wartime violence and trauma “as a way to engage in peacebuilding.” He said he would.

“They are expressing frustration because they have not had the opportunity to do more to help those who have been killed or missing from their families. I’m just asking for justice, rehabilitation and recognition,” Krasniki said.

In the book, Ajete Ahmeti recalls how her 10-year-old son Jeton was shot dead in May 1999 when Serbian forces attacked her village Kutllovc/Kutlovac.

Her relatives and neighbors fled into the forest and sought safety in the nearby village of Rashan, but she refused to accept that her son was dead and left his body behind.

“To reach the village of Larshan, my brother-in-law said, ‘Ajete let go of Jeton! He’s dead. I’m afraid they’ll capture us all alive,'” Ahmeti said in the book. I’m here.

“But I couldn’t let him go. I said, ‘I can’t, he’s still alive.’ I thought he was still breathing,” she added.

Most of the children told in the book were killed within three months by Yugoslav forces and Serb security forces in the spring of 1999 after NATO launched airstrikes against the Slobodan Milosevic regime. The war he officially ended in June 1999.

The book explains that parents continue to be haunted by the feeling that there was never real justice for the crimes committed against their children.

In August 1999, Dragika Maistrowic, who, like many other Serbs, lost her son Ivan while trying to flee Kosovo, said: “I want to find the truth, to find peace. ’ says.

A 16-year-old boy was kidnapped on his way to Leskovac, Serbia, where he was due to enroll in high school. He was taken to a strange place and never saw him again.

In the book, she describes what her son still looks like in her dreams.

“He tells me, ‘I ran away, but I don’t know where to go.’ How long will it take you to look for me in, we have to move on, let’s move on, ”says Majstorovic.

Most of the parents interviewed named their post-war children and grandchildren after their deceased children.

They also explain that holidays are the most difficult time of the year.

“We always have one empty chair when they come,” says Majstorovic.