"Dad, a bomb!" – Twenty-six years later

"Dad, a bomb!" - I think I will forever remember those words spoken by my then four-year-old son, Lazar, exactly twenty-six years ago, on the early morning of March 28, 1999.

After a sleepless night in which one of the most horrifying bombings of central Pristina took place during NATO’s aggression against our homeland—accompanied by relentless detonations and Lazar’s restless tossing and turning as he struggled in vain to fall asleep beside us—that morning, it took only a draft slamming the living room door shut to trigger a child's fear and a parent's lifelong concern. 

It seems to me that his cry, the innocent expression of fear and helplessness that only a child’s eyes and face can convey, his desperate run into his parents’ protective embrace, will haunt me for as long as I live. No amount of previous days-long persuasion to send my wife, who was seven months pregnant, and little Lazar away from Kosovo and Metohija while it was still possible was as convincing as Lazar’s cry: "Dad-a bomb!"

The Last Day in Pristina

That was the last day my family lived in our hometown of Pristina. We never imagined that our departure from home would last all these years, that our journey into exile would lead us to the small town of Petrovac na Mlavi in eastern Serbia—a one-way trip. What followed were refugee days "as long as years." Though surrounded by the warmth and kindness of our benefactors, the Mitic and Janjic families, the wounds on our souls remained unhealed—both then and now.

Though the NATO bombs fell silent in June 1999, they continued to destroy Serbia’s national and state fabric in another form—not just in Kosovo and Metohija. They created a "peace" in which more than 1,000 Serbs were kidnapped and killed, including my older brother, Ivan, simply because he believed he owed nothing to anyone and had done no wrong.

Four years later, they returned his remains to us: his hands were tied with wire, two gunshot wounds were found in his chest, and his second cervical vertebra had been shattered by a close-range shot. About 250,000 Kosovo-Metohija Serbs and other citizens were ethnically cleansed from their homes, hundreds of historical and cultural monuments of Serbian spirituality and civilization were wiped off the face of the earth, tens of thousands of homes were burned, and countless fields were seized and left overgrown with weeds.

In that false peace, filled with unspeakable turmoil, I too was expelled from my hometown on June 16, 1999. While searching for news about Ivan from the departing Serbian authorities, I was warned that I could share his fate.

The "Peacetime" Bombs

Under those so-called peacetime NATO bombs and their guardians and advocates, the March Pogrom of 2004 was orchestrated, during which nearly everything Serbian that remained was set ablaze. Many medieval Serbian shrines were completely destroyed, but for me, the hardest blow was the destruction of the Church of St. Nicholas in Pristina—the place where my ancestors drew spiritual strength and where both my son Lazar and I received the Holy Sacrament of Baptism. 

The fate of the only Orthodox church in Pristina to have survived the Ottoman occupation is a reflection of the overall suffering of the Serbian people and their cultural and civilizational heritage in Kosovo and Metohija. What our ancestors built through sacrifice and ingenuity over centuries of occupation was destroyed under the "peacetime bombs" of the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission!?!

Even today, under the so-called "peace" protected by the "democratic world," the Albanian separatist authorities continue to carry out systematic and large-scale violence—apartheid—against the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. The mass violations of our people's human rights have reached biblical proportions, especially in recent years. 

From arbitrary arrests of Serbs and absurd trials, to near-daily police repression, restrictions, and denial of freedom of speech and association; from the seizure of Serbian-owned and state-owned property, the closure of Serbia’s remaining institutions and the criminal prosecution of their employees, to the ban on the Serbian dinar, the "arrest" of social benefits, censorship of Serbian cultural performances, books printed in Serbian, and the appropriation of Serbian cultural and religious heritage...

Lazar’s words feel as if they were spoken today—not twenty-six years ago on this very day.

Written by: Dr. Dusko Celic, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, North Mitrovica