Meja massacre
 
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Location of Meja in Kosovo |
The Meja massacre was a war crime committed by members of the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and members of various Serbian militant groups that took place in the village of Meja on April 27, 1999 during the Kosovo war . It is the greatest massacre of the Kosovo war. The Humanitarian Law Center has documented a total of 294 victims of the crime.
course
Meja is a small village a few kilometers northwest of Gjakova . On April 21, 1999, the KLA murdered five Serbian police officers there. One of them was Milutin Prašević, who, according to witnesses, was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the place by Albanians .
Early on the morning of April 27, the Serbian army attacked the village without warning. She collected around 150 Albanian men from the village, removed them, divided them into small groups and then shot them in the wild.
At the same time, thousands of Albanian refugees fled to Meja in order to get to safety in Albania . The Serbian police and army set up checkpoints in Meja to pick up refugees and loot their money or valuables. About 100 men were also removed from the column of refugees and then shot somewhere in the wilderness.
One woman said she saw a pile of corpses as she passed Meja on her way to Albania. The heap was 12 by 6 meters long and about 1.5 meters high.
After the war, Human Rights Watch members went to Meja. They found several bodies in a field and a number of cartridges, but most of the bodies were now gone. Some bodies from Meja have been found in a mass grave in Batajnica .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Under orders: War crimes in Kosovo ( Human Rights Watch ; PDF; 5.0 MB)
- ↑ Presentation of the Meja / Mejë register of killed or missing people. ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Humanitarian Law Center , 25-07-2009
- ↑ Poimenični popis ubijenih i nestalih April 27, 1999. u općini Đakovica ( Memento from September 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.4 MB); Humanitarian Law Center , 25-07-2009
- ↑ icty: pavkovic case
- ↑ Kosovo: As seen, as told ( Memento of November 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) ( Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe )
- ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Akcija - zločini na Kosovu
Web links
- Massacre in Meja ( Human Rights Watch ) ( page no longer available )
- Refugees speak of slaughter at Meja ( BBC )
- Massacre at Meja (Tim Judah)