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Olgica Božanić walks forward with her hands full of flowers and candles. They have been crying in silence since we disconnected from the Ibar highway. In the Orlovača cemetery lie his two brothers and thirteen other uncles: Kostići and Božanići from Retimlje and Opteruša, a town near Orahovac. Their neighbors, Shiptars in KLA uniforms, kidnapped and killed them for fraud. His bones were found in the Volujak pit in 2005 and buried in Belgrade in 2006.
We will go to the cemetery the day it became known that someone allegedly presented lists of Serbs to KLA veterans, witnesses to the upcoming trials in The Hague. But that is not the reason.
“It doesn’t matter,” Olgica said as we left the newsroom. – We know who kidnapped them. We have a list …
We go to Orlovača after Ranko returned from Retimlje, where he painted the 14 destroyed houses in Kostić. No one has visited the houses since 2006. Olgica wanted to tell the brothers what was “new in Metohija.”
– The last time we were near the houses was in 2006, together with the writer Peter Handke, and we were guided by Ranko. I remember how Handke lit candles at Andjelko Kostić’s grave, gently hugging his wife Lazarka. Later he wrote “The Universe of Pain” as a travel journal of a joint pilgrimage around Metohija. Every part of him. He is one of the few Westerners who showed himself to us Serbs as people – said Olgica as we drove through Belgrade.
ORGAN EXTRACTION
– WHEN Finc Ahtisaari’s report was published in 2010, newspapers reported that Kostić was allegedly seen on July 23, 1999 in a Kuks truck, where organs were removed. Imagine that pain. Who do we bury? We call EULEX and ours, and they say:
“Drop the newspaper.” But really, when we read that report later, it says so. How it is for us, you can’t even understand: the woman is crying and hiding her head.
Photo by D. Dozet
GOD OVER THE HOUSES
– I went to RETIMLJE because sadness attracted me. As soon as I arrived, the Albanians gathered to provoke and threaten. They don’t go near the houses … It’s as if God is protecting them. Trees and bushes sprouted everywhere and surrounded the houses of Kostić and Nikolić, says Ranko Đinović, who shows images of foundations almost fused with the forest, where Serbian houses used to be.
In plot 1, he went from the “stone tears” of Todor (16) and Lazar (34) to the identical “tears” that are on the heads of the other 13 Kostić, four Božanić, one Đinović – Duško, but also Stamen Genev, an officer. There are also two mounds where the remains of those who could not be identified are buried. Olgica loomed over each grave.
Photo of Ž. Knezevic
– We are no longer afraid, we have nothing. They have already taken everything from us – she told us quietly afterwards, crying in the Orlovača spring of September. – The crime of Rethymno and Opterusa is a disobedience of July 1998, of which the world knew a lot when it began to bomb our country for the alleged crime against Albanians. These their crimes accuse before God and all the courts both those who committed them and those who made them possible. Graves testifies!
The story of Retimlje and the suffering of Kostić and Nikolić, as well as Božanić from nearby Opteruša near Orahovac, begins when neighboring Shiptars, classified into military formations, attack Orahovac and the surrounding villages on July 18. Olgica was then in an apartment in a city defended by the Serbian police, and four kilometers away, Kostić’s 14 houses were defended by Kostić themselves, armed with hunting rifles, pistols and what they already had. They fired all night and in the morning they ran out of ammunition.
– My mother told me that the battle lasted all night, and only Andjelko Lazarkin died. They surrendered when Srećko Simić from Opteruša, previously captured, arrived to offer them “freedom in anger” on behalf of the Shiptar if they pack up and go to Zočište. Apparently they made a territory free of Serbian terror, says Olgica, I will remember that 17 men and 35 women surrendered.
REPORT IN “NOVOSTI”
Milena Markovic wrote the most poignant thing about Kostic, Bozanic and Nikolic’s DRAMA, in “Novosti”, in 2003. Her report was read by Radmila Mićić from Canada and the monodrama “My children, where are you?” They say the drama was also played in Herceg Novi this summer. Just not to be forgotten, and the guilty to be punished – Olgica almost begs.
Photo of Ž. Knezevic
The epilogue was that the “furious” Shiptar only allowed Andjelko to be buried. They then harassed both men and women throughout the day in the July heat in the middle of town. Then a truck arrived and 16 men were forced never to see them again. The memory of mother Dragica Božanić is left begging to be taken away and the children returned. While a woman offers bread to her children who have wires in their arms, and those in the truck are beaten and bloodied, they beg their mother to give them back the bread, they will need it. Then the truck leaves.
– Those 35 women, together with Stanoje Kostić, who was seriously ill and was not taken away, arrived in nearby Zočište. They got installed somehow. Early in the morning, an attack was launched on Zočište, and the escaped women rushed to the Monastery of the Holy Healers. They say that the monks have already chanted prayers – Olgica continues. – When the grenades began to fall on the monastery, Abbot Jovan threw a white sheet over the wall of Saints Cosmas and Damien. Then the KLA fighters ran to look. They found nothing but a female stork. The monastery, they say, was not desecrated at the time, but it was because the women and monks were brought up Shala Mountain to the KLA headquarters.
PAIN Olgica Božanić on the graves of her loved ones, Photo by Ž. Knezevic
Later, the women and monks were released. Olgica says that the International Red Cross and the OSCE carried out negotiations and that the OSCE recorded the act of handing over the martyrs.
– Well, I guess they know who abused the women. How come none of them have been convicted so far? Finnish Mati Ratikene was then and is now at EULEX – Olgica was baptized thinking about the stories of abuse she heard from those closest to her …
– In the autumn of 2005, the Baljošević family and I went to Niš – he continues. – José Pablo Barjabar, researcher, forensic scientist, called us and told us that they had found a grave in the Volujak cave. He said, “They are probably yours,” and we were so confused that we could only ask him to light candles near the place of execution. He took them and, he says, lit them. Then he called us the next day to attend the exhumation.
Others told Olgica Božanić that on Lazar’s Saturday in 2005, she “ran” over the yellow police lanes in search of the brothers’ bones. That she called her brother Lazar from the well, and asked the strange mute of Volujka “what bone is her brother Lazar to kiss on her birthday” …
– We buried them together here in Belgrade. Their bones were smashed with explosives, so we didn’t want to separate them dead. Orlovača was just “getting up” at that time, I remember that the manager of the cemetery told us that the chapel would be finished soon and that there would always be sunshine on plot 1. Every 18 we all come …
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