Kosovo’s Thaci reacts to US Embassy Statement: Recak was a massacre not an “event”

Gazeta Express

10/12/2019 18:25

Kosovo president Hashim Thaci marking International Day of Human Rights, has on Tuesday visited Recak, remembering 45 Albanian civilians who were killed by Serbian police and military forces in January 1999, Gazeta Express reports.  

In a statement posted in his Twitter account, president Thaci has reacted to a statement issued by the US Embassy in Pristina, which refers as “events” all the massacres which happened in 1999 in Kosovo.

“On international day commemorating genocide, my message from Reçak to bureaucrats of relativization was clear: Reçak was a massacre not an ‘event’. Kosovo and Bosnia endured genocide, not a ‘civil conflict.’ Justice will prevail, not lies, denials and fake Nobel prizes,” Thaci wrote in Twitter.

A ruling of the Basic Court in Pristina against a former Kosovo Serb minister, Ivan Todosijevic, sentencing him to two years’ imprisonment for denying the Recak massacre, has triggered a debate in Kosovo and Serbia, with Belgrade authorities, including president Denying the massacre took place on 15 January 1999 against Albanian unarmed civilians in the village of Recak in Kosovo. Following the reaction of Serbian president, it was also the EU which issued a statement saying that there is no place for negating or relativizing the events which took place in Recak in Kosovo in January 1999. Also the US Embassy in Pristina has issued a short statement, qualifying as unacceptable the statements of Serbian president on Recak. /GazetaExpress/