A memorial commemorating a massacre in Mitrovica in 1999 does not include the name of a Roma child who allegedly was one of the victims.
On March 13, 1999, a grenade was thrown at the Green Market in Mitrovica, killing seven people and injuring dozens. The massacre is thought to have been carried out by Serbian forces.
In March 2020, the municipality erected a memorial to commemorate the massacre, but only the names of six Albanians are found in it. The name of five-year-old Roma girl Elizabeta Hasani is missing.
On Sunday, on the Day of the Holocaust against the Roma by the Nazis, Kosovo activist Shkëlzen Gashi denounced this fact.
Gashi was an adviser to former Prime Minister Albin Kurti, until he was fired following public pressure as a result of Gashi’s comments on the need for former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters who are suspected of war crimes to be tried and sentenced.
Today, Gashi posted photos of the massacre aftermath by Tylor Hicks, which show a child lying on the ground. He claimed the child is five-year-old Roma girl Elizabeta Hasani, who according to Kosovo’s Humanitarian Law Center was killed in the massacre.
Another photo shows the six names on the memorial, where Elizabeta’s name is missing.
Gashi wrote that her name is also missing in the article about the massacre in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo.
He paid tribute to the victims of the Kosovo war, “regardless of their ethnic, racial, linguistic, gender, religious, regional, political affiliation”.
Replying to Kallxo.com regarding this, Deputy Mayor of Mitrovica Faruk Mujka said that another memorial at the same spot had the names of only six Albanians for 20 years. He explained that the municipality consulted with the Human Rights Committee, Social Welfare Office on the names of the victims before building the new memorial. He added that the municipality had also made a public invitation for people to submit the names of the victims.
Mujka assured the public that the name of the Roma child was not left out intentionally but possibly due to lack of information. He stated that Elizabeta’s name will be added to the memorial as soon as it is verified.
