NGOs call on Serbian government to disclose mass graves dating from the Milošević regime

We support the foundation of a State Commission tasked with finding and marking all secret graves created after 1944, and we demand that the government of the Republic of Serbia establish another commission tasked with disclosing the remaining mass graves in Serbia, created during the time of the armed conflicts waged on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and also tasked with investigating allegations that bodies of Kosovo Albanian victims were incinerated in the Mačkatica factory, in the Obilić thermal-electric power plant, in Niš and Smederevo during the NATO bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ).

In addition to this, we remind the public that the Republic of Serbia has a moral obligation to secure financing for the exhumation of mass graves in Košare and in Belaćevac, thus demonstrating its compassion for and solidarity with the families of missing Serbs who have been searching for their loved ones for 10 years.

Following the fall of Slobodan Milošević, several mass graves have been discovered in Serbia: in the police training camps in Batajnica and Petrovo Selo, and in a location near Lake Perućac, in which approximately 850 bodies of Kosovo Albanians were transferred from Kosovo during the NATO bombardment. It is a known fact, confirmed by the retired MUP Serbia inspector Dragan Karleuša in his testimony in the trial of members of the Special Police Units (SAJ) who were tried for war crimes committed against Kosovo Albanians in the Suva Reka Case, that the bodies of Kosovo Albanians were drowned in Lake Perućac in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Humanitarian Law Center

Youth Initiative for Human Rights

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights

Belgrade Center for Human Rights

Civic Initiative

Women in Black

YUCOM – Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights

Impunity Watch

Civic Action Pančevo

Center for the development of civil resources

Vojvođanka – Regional Women’s Initiative

The Center for Regionalism

Center for Democracy and Development of South Serbia

Human Rights Committee Leskovac

Local Democracy Center Niš – LDA