Kosovo asks EU to pressure Serbia to implement the Declaration on Missing Persons

After two mass graves were discovered in Zubin-Potok within a week, while suspicions about a third were made public on Tuesday, Kosovo authorities have asked the EU to pressure Serbia to implement the Declaration on Missing Persons. They have demanded that the Serbian state provide unrestricted access to the army archives.

Kosovo's chief negotiator for the dialogue with Serbia, Agron Bajrami, has requested from the European Union that Serbia fully implement the commitments of the Declaration on Missing Persons.

Through the declaration, in 2023, the acting Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, and the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, had agreed in dialogue to clarify the fate of those who disappeared forcibly during the war. 

And in a post on the X platform, Bajrami said that he had requested that Serbia provide unlimited access to the archives.

"I have officially conveyed to the Special Envoy for Dialogue, Peter Sorensen, our deep concerns about recent developments regarding persons missing from the 1998-1999 war. I have called on the EU to ensure that Serbia fully implements its commitments under the Declaration on Missing Persons, including unrestricted access to archives and the protection of those who come forward with information. Families have waited too long for the truth," Bajrami wrote on Tuesday.

The Declaration on Missing Persons provides for full access to reliable and accurate information that assists in the search and identification of missing persons. 

And the chairman of the Coordinating Council of Associations of Families of Missing Persons in Kosovo, Ahmet Grajqevci, said that Serbia has hidden the mass graves according to an organized plan.

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"He hid them in churchyards, he hid mass graves in Serbia and inside military barracks, near Serbian cemeteries. It means not only for the Albanians of Kosovo, but where I visited in Croatia and Bosnia it was like this. It means with a plan. He did everything with a plan. Everything was, not only was the state in the know, but the Orthodox Church was also in the know. That the creator of all these evils is the Orthodox Church itself," Grajqevci declared.

The demand for Serbia to open its archives, in order to shed light on the fate of around 1600 missing persons, has been reactivated after two mass graves were discovered in Zubin-Potok within a week, while suspicions about a third were published on Tuesday.