Kosovo is calling for justice for Albanian soldiers murdered while serving in the former Yugoslav army. Family members recall horrors of the 80’s and early 90’s and an Albanian photographer, who did his mandatory military service under Ratko Mladić, has documented the events and is offering evidence to the Kosovo Institute for War Crimes.
For the first time in more than three decades, Kosovo has initiated public discussion on a forgotten chapter in its history, Albanian soldiers who were killed or disappeared during their mandatory military service in the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, during the 1980’s and early 1990’s.
The Kosovo War Crimes Institute, established in 2023, started a series of public forums called “Zá n’Kujtesë” (In Remembrance) on May 12, 2025, with an exhibition, the first of its kind, featuring dozens of photographs, documents, and witness statements. It honors the deaths of 135 young men—soldiers in their early 20’s—who lost their lives under suspicious circumstances, which were never investigated, during their mandatory military service between 1951 and 1993.
Atdhe Hetemi, the director of the Institute for War Crimes in Kosovo, called the exhibition an attempt to build deep, honest, and lasting memory by courageously confronting the past.
“The killing of Albanian soldiers in the Yugoslav army is only one of many dark chapters that have remained unaddressed and unacknowledged by institutions for decades,” Hetemi said.
“These young men, called to serve in a military that promised brotherhood and equality, instead found themselves in a system that led to their deaths—often in orchestrated and deliberately concealed circumstances,” he added.
Kosovo’s acting Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, called the killings a “distinct chapter [in the history] of crimes committed by Serbia against Albanians”. He recalled one of the first documented cases, that of 20 year old Ramadan Xhelil Gashi, from the village of Verbovc in Drenas municipality. Gashi was killed in July 1951 in the military barracks in Višegrad in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to Kurti, Gashi was executed after refusing to join the military secret service and his family has not received his body or an official explanation for his death to this day.
“There are over 135 such cases involving similar stories, some of which we will hear about today in this forum. But beyond that, each and every one of these cases will be investigated, will be documented, and will have its own file in the Institute for War Crimes in Kosovo. This is one of the reasons why we established this Institute,” Kurti said.
Testimonials of the horrors of the late 80’s and early 90’s
The Kosovo War Crimes Institute’s public forum “Zá n’Kujtesë” (In Remembrance), May 12, 2025. Photo: BIRN
Personal stories shared during the forum added emotional depth to the historical narrative.
Former political prisoner Rizah Xhakli, spoke of his close friend Aziz Kelmendi—a young Albanian whose tragic death on military service in the JNA has become emblematic of the systemic discrimination and violence suffered by Albanians in the military during the 1980’s.
Kelmendi was a key figure in the Paracin case—a mass shooting that targeted JNA soldiers at a military barracks in the Serbian town of that name on September 3, 1987. The public version was that Kelmendi, a 20-year-old recruit from Kosovo, opened fire with an automatic rifle in the sleeping quarters, killing four soldiers and wounding five more. The incident was labeled “A shot against Yugoslavia” in the Serbian press at the time.
However, the belief in Kosovo is that Kelmendi was hunted down and killed by the military police because of his nationalist sympathies and resistance to the oppressive regime.
Xhakli described his friend as a “quiet and intelligent young man, deeply committed to justice and national identity” who was targeted and killed because of his ethnicity.
“I am here not just to remember but also to bear witness,” Xhakli said, referring to his own punishment in a politically-fabricated case brought against him because of his association with Kelmendi. Xhakli was imprisoned from 1987-2001, after the Paracin incident.
Tale of a soldier turned photographer
Ridvan Slivova during his mandatory military service in the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA,. Photo: Courtesy of Ridvan Slivova
Fifteen days after the Paracin case, Kosovo’s later-to-be well-known photographer Ridvan Slivova, only 20 years old at the time, was sent to the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia for his military service.
“I wanted to continue my studies at University, so I had to go”, Slivova told Prishtina Insight, explaining that finishing his mandatory military service was the only way for him to have a professional life afterwards.
“They [the regime] would send us off with music,” he said, explaining one of the many ways the former Serbian regime ‘lured’ young Albanian men into military service.
Before joining the army, he had already started collaborating with newspapers and magazines, including, as a high school student, for the youth magazine ‘Zëri i Rinisë’ (Voice of Youth).
“I asked my family to send me the paper every week so I could stay informed while in the army. They did and I read it regularly.”
At the beginning of his service, he learned from a fellow Slovenian soldier back from a short family visit that the Slovenian media were reporting on what had happened to Kelmendi and the other imprisoned Albanians.
“After the news came out in the Slovenian press, our officers issued a new order from our Commander: Albanian soldiers were no longer allowed to speak Albanian amongst ourselves—we were only allowed to speak Serbian,” Slivova, now 58, recalls.
“My unit commander at the time was Ratko Mladić. I only found out much later who he really was,” Slivova told Prishtina Insight.
Little did he know, during his 12-month stint, that his commander, Mladić, would go on to become infamous as the “butcher of Bosnia”, the Bosnian Serb military commander who led the Army of the Republika Srpska, VRS, during the Yugoslav Wars. In 2017, Mladić was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, and is serving a life sentence for them in The Hague.
Around the same time—but after Paracin—another incident occurred at the barracks in Macedonia where Slivova was stationed. Two Albanian soldiers—one from Gjakova, the other from Gjilan—were imprisoned.
“I don’t recall their names. One was sentenced to 11 years, the other to 9, for so-called hostile activities. They claimed one was caught reading ‘Zëri i Popullit’, and the other had allegedly taken a weapon and hidden it. I had my doubts about the truth of those accusations. From that moment on, I asked my family to stop sending me any newspapers.”
“Zëri i Popullit” (The Voice of the People) was an Albanian newspaper, known for being the official organ of the Party of Labor of Albania, and later of the Socialist Party of Albania. It was, therefore, considered “forbidden” for ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, whom the Yugoslav Serbian regime often labeled separatists.
The funeral of Fatmir Krasniqi in Prishtina, killed in May 1991 during his mandatory military service in the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA. Photo: Courtesy of Ridvan Slivova
Shortly after completing his military service, Slivova learned that two friends and neighbors had been killed while serving theirs at the same time. Their names were Xhavit Berisha and Fatmir Krasniqi.
“Xhavit was my age, Fatmir was a bit younger. They claimed Xhavit had been found crushed between trucks, but they repeated the same story for others too. It became clear that something wasn’t right,” he explains.
“One of the first corpses of soldiers that was killed, and that I had photographed, was that of Fatmir Krasniqi. It was a deeply painful experience for me,” he adds.
After that, Ridvan Slivova began documenting the crimes of the Serbian regime in Kosovo. He would later become a renowned photographer, whose archive supports not only the Institute for War Crimes—a contribution he’s proud of—but also the Reporting House, the first museum dedicated to the resistance from 1989 to the end of 1999.
“When people talk about the war, I see it as just the culmination of a series of tragic events that had been happening over a long time—especially in prisons and among the general population. The military service requirement for university enrollment—it was deliberate. It was legally imposed and functioned as a form of repression. Eventually, people began avoiding conscription altogether by migrating abroad. That’s how Kosovo started to empty out, just like the regime wanted,” Slivova says.
The photographer Slivova, believes that this system of violence—both physical and psychological—left deep scars on Kosovo’s society.
Ridvan Slivova holding his camera. Photo: Courtesy of Ridvan Slivova
He says the Institute for War Crimes has addressed painful but vital topics from the 1980’s and 1990’s, shedding light on how Kosovo was gradually emptied. “I didn’t hesitate to contribute. I’ve shared over 20 photos, mostly of Fatmir Krasniqi, and plan to digitize my archive and keep working with the Institute. I believe I covered three other cases between 1990–1992,” he explains.
“We lived side-by-side with the enemy—we shared rooms with them, and we knew we could be killed at any moment. That was life, not just in the army, but throughout Kosovo,” Slivova concludes.
The exhibition commemorating the death of the 135 young Albanian soldiers killed during their mandatory service in the former Yugoslav People’s Army will be open for one week at the National Library of Kosovo, in Prishtina.