Twenty-three members of Liridona Deliu’s family were killed in a massacre in September 1998 – but she’s facing an uphill battle to be recognised by the Kosovo government as a war victim.
Survivors of the Abri e Eperme/Gornje Obrinje massacre in the Drenas area of Kosovo, in which 23 members of the Deliu family were killed on September 26, 1998, are still being denied the right to be recognised as war victims.
Liridona Deliu, one of four survivors of the 1998 massacre, told BIRN that she has even been asked for money to gain wartime victim status. She did not name names but was probably referring to people linked to the department of social welfare and the war victims’ claims evaluation commission.
“While we were gathering documents, someone demanded 20,000 euros, which was later reduced to 6,000, but we refused to buy a status that rightfully belongs to us,” Deliu said in an interview with BIRN’s ‘Kallxo Pernime’ television programme in Kosovo last month.
War victim status brings welfare benefits in Kosovo, where the government pays 120 euros a month to those it officially recognises as victims.
The members of the Deliu family who died in the massacre ranged in age from six months to 94 years old.
Deliu’s mother, then in the final month of pregnancy, was among the victims. Deliu, then three-and-a-half years old, was wounded by shrapnel from grenades thrown by Serbian forces.
She remembers little of that time. “Growing up, I started remembering some scenes. I recall being taken to another neighbourhood and feeling happy when someone spoke to us in Albanian,” she said.
Besides Liridona Deliu, other survivors include her siblings Besnik and Arlinda, and their cousin Albert Deliu.
“The state has done nothing for us. Only my younger sister Arlinda has obtained the status of a war victim. They say we have no evidence. But all four of us were wounded. I had injuries on my face, body, arms and legs,” Deliu said.
She recalled that one of the doctors on the evaluation commission of her case told her: “Since you’ve had children, you’re fine.
“They told me: ‘As long as you can walk and eat with your hand, you don’t qualify for the status,’” adding that they refused to look at her wounds when she wanted to show them.
“I was shocked because I felt like they were saying I should either be dead or come in a wheelchair,” Deliu added. “I want to get the status I deserve, [it’s] not for the money,” she insisted.
She has applied for victim status three times since 2017 but has been rejected each time by the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare.
“The first time I applied was in 2017, when I was refused for not meeting the conditions. In 2018, my appeal was rejected. I applied again in 2020 and was rejected again,” she explained.
According to Deliu, the officials who have rejected her are from the same region as her, and are well aware of the massacre.
Deliu added that in informal conversations after one interview with the doctors, her brother was told that “because your sister spoke out, the papers [granting her recognition] were not approved”.
“They claim I insulted them, but I was just asking for my rights,” she added.
Deliu said that, besides her own case, she wanted to see how others in Kosovo had obtained victim status.
“I have found out that many people who were neither wounded nor involved in the war have received this status,” she claimed.
Julius Strauss, an English journalist who first wrote about this massacre, returned in 2020 to make a 90-minute documentary film called Return to Kosovo that was shown in Kosovo in April.
The film talks about his meeting with Deliu’s family.
“For us, it’s an honour when a foreigner who doesn’t even know you does something for you, while the state that is supposed to do such things does nothing,” Deliu commented.
Sight of husband in uniform triggered trauma
Deliu has been treated multiple times for trauma from the wartime period, although she has very few memories of the war itself.
“The trauma reappeared when I saw my husband in military uniform,” Deliu said, adding that, “when he comes home, I get anxious if he wears uniform because I have trauma from the war time”.
She said her husband now removes his uniform before coming home so as not to cause her further distress.
She recalled that Strauss brought a psychotherapist from England to work with her and other survivors.
“She worked a lot with us. In 2012, when my father died, it was devastating for us, since we grew up without a mother,” she said.
According to her, all her psychological treatments are listed in the documents seeking recognition of her war victim status.
A BIRN journalist visited the Department for Martyrs’ Families, Civilian Victims, at the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare with Deliu, who was seeking to retrieve other documents that had not been issued to her.
They included documents issued by medical experts since her first treatment after being injured in 1998, including evidence of suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and expert opinions from the top health authority in the Hospital Service.
Law differentiates between civilians and soldiers
Kosovo’s legal framework for obtaining the status of a victim of war and determining the degree of disability differs when it comes to civilian victims and soldiers.
Fitim Selimi, a surgeon, told ‘Kallxo Pernime’ that he has frequently spoken out about the specific conditions that civilians must meet, compared to soldiers.
“There is a defect in the legislation, which I have raised my voice against, saying it is not right, because a civilian must … reach a 40-per-cent disability level to obtain this status, whereas a soldier must reach a 20-per-cent disability level,” Selimi explained.
According to Selimi, the commission that does the evaluation usually consists of an orthopedist, a surgeon and a paediatrician.
He also emphasised that “it is not true that the commission refuses [to allow] victims to show their wounds”.