MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR KILLED 17 VILLAGERS FROM DOJNICE NEAR PRIZREN HELD

PRIZREN, June 27 /SRNA/ – A memorial service was held today at the Church of St. George in Prizren for 16 Serbs and one Bosniak from the village of Dojnice near Prizren, who were abducted and killed by members of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army /KLA/ in 1999.

Prizren parish priest Jovan Radić said that the villagers of Dojnice were killed because they refused to leave their birthplace and their church, sacrificing their lives on the doorstep of their own homes.

"In addition to the Serbs, one Bosniak villager also perished. But God does not divide people by faith or nationality. As the late Patriarch Pavle used to say, it is only important to be human and to remain humane," Radić said in his sermon.

He stressed that their sacrifice should become the foundation for rebuilding the church in Dojnice and for the return of people to the village, which today no longer has a Serb population.

Assistant Director of the Serbia’s parliamentary Office for Kosovo and Metohija Milena Parlić called on the international community to finally make every effort to find and punish those responsible for crimes committed against Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija.

She recalled that among those killed in Dojnice were nine elderly women who, according to their closest family members, had been subjected to the most severe forms of humiliation and abuse before being murdered. She added that no one has been held accountable for that crime or for many other individual and mass crimes committed against the Serb people.

"There is no justice for the victims' families, but unfortunately there are daily arrests that we continue to witness. There are daily convictions without trials being carried out against Serbs," Parlić said.

Director of the Kosovo and Metohija Archive Marko Marković said that members of the international community had failed in their mission because, after the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army from Serbia's southern province, they had been responsible for maintaining peace, yet many crimes occurred precisely after that.