Kosovo mosaic wall honours wartime refugees

A small group of people gathered Saturday to inaugurate a memorial wall dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians who were expelled from Kosovo during the 1999 war.

Due to coronavirus restrictions, only about 50 people could attend the ceremony at the former Bllaca refugee camp, near the North Macedonian border, which once hosted 440,000 people fleeing Serb repression.

"This is the wall of our memory, representing the pain of 440,000 people crossing here in 1999 after the humanitarian crisis, and the intervention of the progressive forces to stop the extinction of a whole population," said Jahja Luka, a representative of an Albanian refugee association.

A large mosaic was unveiled, depicting Sherife Ljuta, a refugee breastfeeding her baby with thousands walking behind her.

The now 43-year-old woman attended the ceremony, recalling the day with "refugees walking tired, without eating or drinking, and me with (my) daugher in my arms, breastfeeding her, in a non-stop trip."

Many of the refugees were transported by trains from Kosovo into what's now known as North Macedonia, and three carriages have been stationed at Bllaca for two years.

The 1998-99 war in Kosovo, then a province of Serbia, ended following a 78-day NATO bombing campaign against a bloody Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian nationalists.

More than 10,000 people died during the conflict, and 1,650 are still unaccounted-for.