Written by: Bardhyl Mahmuti
At a time when the Christian world celebrates Christmas, our collective memory did not fail to mention Buzmi Bujar, the pagan holiday associated with the moment when people thought that the sun began to approach the earth and heralded the seasons of “rebirth” of nature. Such thoughts were based on the belief that the earth was at the center of the universe and that supposedly everything revolved around it. Aware that the sun brings prosperity to humanity, the peoples who celebrated this event had chosen different forms to express their prayers that the coming year would bring as much prosperity as possible. For example, the “Nordic peoples” decorated a deciduous tree, usually a pine, with ears of corn, apples, pears, pumpkins, etc., in the hope that the yields would be abundant.
Albanians who inherited this rite from their Illyrian ancestors, for the holiday known by various names (Buzmit Bujar, Nata e Buzmit, Mjedisi i ditir, Ditëkëndellja, Kshnellat, etc.), lit a large log of wood in their fireplaces and performed various ceremonies of prayer and joy.
This rite in Serbian is called Badnji dan (Oak Day) and is celebrated on January 6, which precedes the Serbian Orthodox Christmas, which is celebrated on January 7, due to the implementation of the Julian calendar. According to tradition, on the eve of this day, people go to the forest and before dawn cut down a straight oak tree, which is left in front of the house until evening. In the evening, the oak tree is lit and songs and prayers are sung, so that there will be prosperity, as much as the oak's sparks.
In recent days, the risk that Serbs will take violent actions against Kosovo precisely during these holidays has become more acute. In this context, I am bringing to readers an excerpt from my documentary novel “Death Squads”, which is based on Serbian testimonies, in the hope that it will increase the vigilance of the permanent danger that is threatened by the remnants of the Slobodan Milosevic regime, who are at the head of the state institutions of Serbia.
“… At the exit of the police station, we were handed a statement from the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, which stated:
Last night, on December 14, 1998, at around 20:15 p.m., in the "Panda" cafe in Peja, in the action taken by members of the terrorist organization called the Kosovo Liberation Army, Ivan Obradović (14 years old), Vukota Gvozdenović (16 years old), Svetislav Ristić (17 years old), Zoran Stanojević (17 years old), Dragan Trifović (17 years old) and Ivan Radević (25 years old) were killed, while three others were seriously injured.
The murder of six young men of Serbian and Montenegrin ethnicity in the town at the foot of the Bjeshkët e Nemuna Mountains is evidence of the blindness of Albanian nationalists, who use any means to achieve their hostile goals.
Those who have dared to kill our children will face the wrath of our people. We are determined to eradicate them once and for all! Curse will fall upon them!
– Mifi, let's talk without gloves. After the press release regarding the murder of our company's doctor, I viewed every official statement with suspicion. The last one was a mile away, but go ahead and open your mouth: shut it up once and for all!
The tragedy at the “Panda” cafe shocked all the members of our company. We could not understand why we were ordered to leave the sports field of the gymnasium, which was only separated from the “Panda” cafe by the road, and to take up a position about 200 m away! What was hidden behind this castling of soldiers and what was the role of about 25 members of the “Red Berets”, who were placed in our previous positions? All sorts of thoughts were swirling in my head and I could not find the thread of the course of events. Even more strange to me was the order to set off in the opposite direction from where the shots were heard! I could not understand how the earth swallowed the perpetrators of this monstrous act, when we knew that in a 500 m radius around the crime scene there were over 100 police officers and members of the "Red Berets" and a dozen armored vehicles. Even if they had been birds, we would have scattered their feathers in the air... Oh, my dear Mifi L., you don't know what they are capable of... It is not for nothing that people say: they kill you at night and cry during the day!
Whatever the truth, the murder in the "Panda" cafe created an anger, hitherto unseen, against Albanians. All the media published photographs from the crime scene, where six young men were seen folded, like sheaves behind the harvest, in a large pool of blood. The horrific scenes that were repeated every half hour on state television and the reading of the letter full of sadness, which the mothers of the victims had addressed to Slobodan Milosevic, asking him, at least, not to allow the desecration of the graves of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands, who had been killed during anti-terrorist actions in defense of the integrity of the country, led to the interruption of classes at all levels of education and the organization of protests in almost all cities of Serbia and Montenegro. In all the protests, the readiness to mobilize in the war against the terrorists who were killing children was manifested...
However, children were being killed every day in Kosovo...
– Slander! – the colonel shouted. – Filthy slander!
While I was concentrating on what I was writing, the colonel's sudden scream made me jump out of my chair. He turned the letter partially towards me and read it aloud: "Oh, my dear Mifi L., you don't know what they are capable of... It's not for nothing that people say: they kill you at night and make you cry during the day!"
He got up from his chair and started screaming again:
– This is what they call taking Albanian terrorists under their protection! How shameless was that bastard when she fabricated these stories, which slander that supposedly the young men in the “Panda” cafe wanted to kill our “Red Berets”! Shame on you too, for spreading such lies, fabricated by our enemies!
I wanted to tell him that those who told me about these crimes were not the offspring of whores, but I remained silent, because I saw that he had no ears to hear such things. However, I tried to justify my position:
– It is your right to think so! But I, by openly expressing my disagreements with what happened in Kosovo and demanding that those who committed crimes be brought to justice, believed that we would save the country from shame. Otherwise, there is a risk that the crimes will be blamed on all of us.
– You haven't saved anyone with these slanders! You've stabbed your country in the back! – said the colonel in a tone that didn't hide his great anger at all. – Go on! – he ordered me in a voice that conveyed hatred.
Concentrating on writing made me forget where I was.
I picked up the pen I had left on the paper and continued writing where I had left off.
The protests of Serbs and Montenegrins continued for three weeks and had a huge impact on our population, which was expressed not only in the large number of participants, but also in the registration of volunteers to go to the Kosovo war. In fact, on the evening of Ash Wednesday we lit a big fire in the yard of the battery factory and most of the policemen in our squad prayed that this year there would be as many Albanians killed as the sparks of fire that were scattered everywhere above our heads…
And their prayers came true… During the operations to destroy the Albanian terrorist forces, in the villages of Lubeniq, Kralan, Staradran, Qyshk, Pavlan and Zahaq, we killed about 400 Albanians. In the village of Qyshk, Lieutenant Colonel Jordan Denkic, who commanded the operations of the 125th Brigade, divided the men who were to be killed into three groups. The first group was taken to Azem Gashi’s house, the second group to Deme Gashi’s house, and the third group to the yard of Kadri Çeku’s house. After identifying Hasan Çeku, the father of Colonel Agim Çeku, who had also fought against us in Croatia alongside the Croatian army and was now leading the terrorist forces in Kosovo, the death squads called “The Jackal”, which were made up of volunteers, took the man, who was in his seventies, by the arm, put him in the cowshed, cut off his head from the back of his head and set fire to the stable. After we took all the valuables, the people who were selected for that world, we killed them inside their homes, set fire to their villages, while we put the women and children in front like cattle and ordered them to be driven into Albania... It was hard to hear the screams of the women as they were taken out of the rows of columns and, along the road, raped by those who had just moments before killed their fathers, brothers, husbands... - Stojko let out a loud sigh.
edition
t7 live
