Whose song is this (of the killers)?

The song of the special units of the State Security Service of Serbia, a kind of dedication to die in Kosovo, has already become almost the official semi-anthem of Serbia. This is Serbia which, according to the EU, continues to give "support and public space to convicted war criminals"

1.

It is a Bulgarian documentary by the author Adela Peeva that has caused a stir all over the Balkans, started with a simple idea from a party in Istanbul with some Turkish and Greek friends. While a folk song is heard in the background of a restaurant, all the participants of the dinner at the table declare that the song comes from their country.

Inspired by this general acquisition at the table, the author sets out to film the sense of belonging of the same song in different cultures and languages ​​- Turkish and Macedonian, Bulgarian and Greek, Serbian, Bosnian and Albanian - everywhere an expression that that song it belongs to that culture and the fact that it exists in other cultures and languages ​​only shows that others appropriate (or steal, as some expressed in the documentary) "our" song.

The Bulgarian documentary is called "Whose song is this" and the epilogue of the narrative leads to the simple conclusion that this song belongs to all peoples who sing it in their own way and in their own language.

2.

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I remembered this documentary with the initial intention of finding the source of a song, when I heard how the Serbian gendarmerie in Kralevë sang their anthem to President Vucic, on the day that the anti-smuggling operation in North Mitrovica (and Peja and beyond) was handled by side of the Serbian List and official Serbia as an attack against the left-handed Serbian people. President Vučić that day in the Raska barracks heard the calls of the representatives of the Serbian List and their sympathizers for Serbia's military intervention in Kosovo or at least in arming the Kosovo Serbs and promised them that he would support them and that "we will win ".

This sentence, "we will win", President Vučić said again in Kralevë, after listening to the hymn "Hriste Bozhe" sung by members of the gendarmerie. The song goes like this:

Christ our Lord, crucified and holy,

Serbian land is flying through the clouds.

She is flying above the heavenly heights,

Its branches are Morava and Drina

Farewell my first unborn son,

Goodbye roses, goodbye rosemary

Goodbye summer, autumn and winter,

We are leaving to never return.

In three holy and three united,

we are going to the field of Kosovo.

we are going to our destination

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goodbye my mother, sister and daughter-in-law.

3.

The unit that sang this hymn, with which it warned of the readiness to give its life in the field of Kosovo, i.e. the "destined country", is called the Serbian gendarmerie and was founded after the dissolution of the PJP unit (Special Police Unit), after the war in Kosovo. The then commander of the PJP, Goran "Guri" Radosavlević, became the founder of the Serbian Gendarmerie. He was one of the prominent superiors in Kosovo, commander of the operation in Recak that left behind the massacre of 45 Albanians. After the war in Kosovo, he was the responsible commander of the barracks in which the Bytyçi brothers were killed, three Albanian-American soldiers of the KLA, who, after being released from prison, were executed with bullets to the head and hands tied with wire.

Special police units were part of the operation in Meja, the biggest massacre in Kosovo. Among others, members of the JSO (Special Operations Unit) of the Serbian State Security were involved in that massacre. This unit, formed in the war in Croatia, was responsible for massacres in that war, in BiH and finally in Kosovo. Since 1991, the JSO adopted as its anthem "Hriste Bozhe" and the red berets with which it will become famous all over the former Yugoslavia. The commander of this unit, also responsible for the massacres in Dubrava, Istog and Qyshk i Peja, was Mihajlo Ulemek Legija, the first convicted for the murder of Prime Minister Djindjiq.

After this assassination, the JSO was abolished and the gendarmerie was formed. The hymn "Hriste Bozhe" passed from one person to another and, as seen, on October 13 of this year it is also sung for the president of Serbia.

But, the song has not remained only in the gendarmerie.

In 2020, the guards of the army of Serbia, in their parade in the Red Square in Moscow, sang this song. And, in the same year, after the SNS election victory, a group of musicians chose this song to celebrate in the offices of this party with its chairman Aleksandar Vučić and other officials, who today constitute the Government and Assembly of Serbia.

4.

Wherever this song was sung in the nineties of the last century, it was followed by the lamentations of mothers for the loss of relatives - husbands and fathers, children and brothers and sisters. Croatian, Bosnian and Albanian mothers mourned; but still, the Serbian mothers, those of Croatia and BiH, those of Kosovo and Serbia, have mourned just as much. Well, the answer to the question of whose is this song is simple: it belongs to the killers, to the units that killed in Croatia, BiH, Kosovo and that finally killed the prime minister of Serbia, Mr. Gjingjik.

The birth of this song is synonymous with the journey of Serbian fascism. Academician Lubomir Saviq, one of the authors of the SANU Memorandum (ASSHA), wrote a play for the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. This drama was made into a movie and the song got the popular dimension that the big screen offers. Just as the forced and repeated mythologizing of Kosovo inspired the fascism promoted by S. Milosevic, so this song became the anthem of the most bloodthirsty units of this fascism.

The continuity of the song - the transition from the JSO to the gendarmerie, the SNS army - should come as no great surprise. Among a mountain of bureaucratic descriptions that the European Commission makes to Serbia in the 2021 Report, there are also two short sentences that describe this country more than anything else:

- "Serbia continues to publicly dispute, even at the highest levels, the verdicts of the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia"

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and

- "Serbian authorities continue to give support and public space to convicted war criminals".