BELGRADE – With a series of Remembrance Day events, Serbia is commemorating on Tuesday the March Pogrom in which Kosovo-Metohija’s ethnic Albanians killed eight and wounded 170 Serbs 11 years ago, expelling 4,000 others.
The association of Kosovo-Metohija Serbs organised a memorial service for the pogrom victims in St. Mark’s Church in Belgrade, and the first class in schools across the country, including in Serb communities in the southern province, was dedicated to the tragedy as part of the first-ever state-organised programme to commemorate it.
A documentary on the pogrom was screened for seventh grade pupils of Belgrade’s Drinka Pavlovic primary school, who later took part in a discussion with the head of the Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija Marko Djuric and Minister of Labour Aleksandar Vulin.
Djuric told the pupils that the crime was preceded by the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, after which the Serbian forces and the authorities withdrew and an UN interim administration was set up.
The lie that local Serbs were to blame for the death of an ethnic Albanian boy was the pretext for the March pogrom, Vulin reminded.
Serbia will fight to make the truth known to the world and it will insist on punishment for those responsible, Vulin said.
The crimes against the Kosovo-Metohija Serbs must never be forgotten so that they may never happen again, Djuric and Vulin said.
