The twenty-year-old woman was interviewed by Human Rights Watch on April
25 in a refugee camp in northern Albania. While she, her mother, and her severely disabled
brother were allowed to leave the scene of the massacre, she describes how her father,
uncle and cousin were executed. She has agreed to give her testimony to the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
On May 16 and 17, CNN aired video footage that a Kosovar Albanian doctor claims to have
taken at the scene of the Izbice massacre. It shows a large number of bloody corpses in
civilian clothes — ethnic Albanians who the doctor explains were killed in the
massacre — and includes interviews with alleged survivors. The footage was smuggled
out of Kosovo, the doctor said, with the help of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Apparently corroborating this footage are satellite photos released by NATO on April 17
that show three rows of freshly dug graves in the Izbice area.
Although the authenticity of the video footage cannot be guaranteed, it matches the
witness testimony provided below. The apparent massacre in Izbice is also consistent with
a pattern of mass killings throughout Kosovo, in villages such as Meja, Velika Krusa and
Bela Crkva, documented by Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations. In
addition, the region around Izbice was known as an area of KLA activity, especially the
village of Lausa. As in other areas of Kosovo, the rebels’ presence may have served
as a reason for retaliation.
The following is a transcript of the woman’s testimony to Human Rights Watch (her
name is being withheld to protect her identity). In addition to describing the
circumstances of the massacre, it includes a harrowing account of her family’s escape
from Kosovo:
"The Serbs arrived late in the evening during the Muslim celebration of Bajram, on
March 26 or 27. There were about fifty of them. Some of the Serbs were giving loud orders.
Their voices were so loud that they scared the children. By this point, Izbice had become
like a base for Albanians from all the villages in the area. These refugees began arriving
after the NATO bombing began, because the Serbs started shelling neighboring villages when
the bombing started.
Late in the evening, when the Serbs arrived, almost all of the young men left the
village. They went into the mountains to hide or to fight.
When we saw the Serbs coming we didn’t dare stay in our houses. We went by tractor
to a nearby field — me, my mother and father, my brother, my sister, her family, and
her mother-in-law — a total of ten people. We joined the rest of the people from the
village in the field, all of the other families. Families had started leaving their houses
at about 4 a.m. By 10 a.m. everyone was in the field. There were thousands of people,
almost all women, children, and old people. Only about 150 men were among us.
An accident happened on the way to the field in which a child was killed. It was
raining and a tractor tumbled; a woman tried to jump off to save her six-year-old
daughter. The woman survived, the daughter was killed.
At the field, everyone got off their tractors and huddled together. We had chosen the
field because we wanted to be together. We were too scared to stay alone in our houses; it
would be too easy for the Serbs to kill us there. From the field, we could see the Serbs
setting our houses on fire. They were shooting in the air and yelling loudly: insulting us
and scaring the children.
They told us: "Give us money if you want to survive." They said it cost 1,000
German Marks (DM) to save your family and 100 DM to save your tractor. Everyone paid, each
man paying for his own family. My father paid 1,100 DM.
After the Serbs got the money, they shot out the tires of everyone’s tractors, and
then burned all our belongings, which were bundled up on the tractors. They also set fire
to the school.
At about 11 a.m. they separated the women from the men. We asked them why they were
doing this and they told us, in a very scary voice: "Shut up, don’t ask,
otherwise we’ll kill you." The children were terrified. The Serbs yelled:
"We’ll kill you and where is the United States to save you?" All the
women had covered their heads with handkerchiefs out of fear of the Serbs, hiding their
hair and foreheads. The Serbs called us obscene things, saying "Funk all Albanian
mothers," and "All Albanian women are bitches."
They took the men away and lined them up about twenty meters away from us. Then they
ordered us to go to Albania. They said: "You’ve been looking for a greater
Albania, now you can go there." They were shooting in the air above our heads. We
followed their orders and moved in the direction we were told, walking away from the men.
About 100 meters from the place we started walking, the Serbs decided to separate out
the younger boys from our group. Boys of fourteen and up had already been placed with the
men; now they separated out boys of about ten and up. Only very small boys were left with
us, one old man who had lost his legs, and my handicapped brother, who can’t walk
because of spinal meningitis.
So they took the ten to fourteen-year-olds to join the men. The boys’ mothers were
crying. Some even tried to speak to the Serbs, but the Serbs pushed them. We were walking
away very slowly because we were so worried about what would happen to our men.
We stopped moving when we heard automatic weapon fire. We turned our heads to see what
was happening but it was impossible to see the men. We saw the ten to fourteen-year-Olds
running in our direction; when they got to us we asked them what was happening. They were
very upset; no one could talk. One of them finally told us: "They released us but the
others are finished."
We stayed in the same place for some twenty minutes. Everyone was crying. The automatic
weapon fire went on non-stop for a few minutes; after that we heard short, irregular
bursts of fire for some ten minutes or so. My father, my uncle and my cousin were among
the men killed. Kajtaz Rexha and Qazim Rexhepi were also killed, as were many other
members of the Bajraj, Bajrami, Rexhepi, and Aliu families.
Then ten Serbs caught up with us. They said lots of obscenities and again told us:
"Now you must leave for Albania—don’t stop, just go." We had to leave.
Many hours later, when we had gone about forty kilometers and it was dark out, another
group of Serb soldiers forced us into a huge hole that was along the side of the road. It
seems that these soldiers had communicated with the others by walkie-talkie. The hole was
giant, higher than our heads; we could only see the soldiers’ heads and guns. The
soldiers made us sit down in the hole and said: "Now the tanks will run you
over." Looking out one of the ramps that led into the hole, we could see tanks
coming; the noise was deafening. When the tanks arrived near the edge of the hole, about
five meters away, we all started to scream: we saw death in front of us. You could see
women trying to hide their children with their bodies. I was with my mother and crippled
brother. My brother was in a wheelbarrow. Everyone was terrified, crying and screaming.
When the tanks got close, we stopped hoping.
Suddenly the tanks jolted to a halt. A Serb told us, "you’ll survive only if
you give us 5,000 DM." A woman teacher from the village went through the women
collecting money;
I gave her 100 DM. When she had 5,000 DM a Serb entered the hole and she gave it to
him. He said, "you can go now."
My father had given me his jacket because I had been wearing another jacket that said
"American Sport" on it and he was afraid; he wanted to cover that up. Because I
was pushing the wheelbarrow and wearing a man’s jacket, they thought I was a man.
They told me to stop and then to come over to them, but I was too afraid. It was the
scariest moment of my life. Then they shined a flashlight in my face and saw that I was a
woman. One of them said, "let her go."
We were tired and hungry but they took the bread from our hands, telling us, Ayou
don’t need the bread of Kosovo." We walked three days and nights without food
and without rest. Finally when we reached Djakove (Djakovica) the Serbs forced us to enter
a destroyed house full of broken windows. They let us drink some water from a nearby
stream. We stayed there a few hours, sitting down and napping.
Then we continued walking to the border. The children were very hungry. We stopped in a
village near Prizren. There was a line of tractors and someone pulled my crippled brother
into one of the tractors. My mother and I kept walking. We walked all the way to Dushanove
where, because of the traffic, we stopped for a day and a night. It rained a lot at night
and someone made a fire. My brother slept but I couldn’t.
The next morning the Serbs told us to go back to our home villages. I don’t know
what day this was. All I know is that I can never forget the day they killed my father.
The women said: "How can we go back? We have no food; we’re exhausted."
The Serbs said: "You’re going back."
The people who had carried my brother took him out of the tractor. Everyone turned back
except me, my mother and my brother. We stayed in the middle of the road. A police car
drove up and I signaled for it to stop because I thought to myself I have nothing to lose;
I must handle this situation.
The policeman yelled "how do you dare stop me?" and I responded "I have
no way out; I have this brother and he can’t walk." The policeman told me
he’d find us a place on a tractor. He found one and told the people in it: "Why
aren’t you people helping each other out; you’re all Albanians; you should help
each other." So we got on the tractor even though it was very crowded.
When we arrived back in Xerxe (Zrze) the people helped us a lot, giving us food and a
place to rest. We stayed there a week. We saw the army and police robbing people. We were
scared because we were from Drenica, known as a UCK (KLA) stronghold, and we felt we were
putting the other people in a difficult position.
When we left we saw a line of tractors at the main road but nobody gave us a lift. Then
a bus stopped; it was full of gypsies and we were scared of them. A few Albanians were
also on the bus and we spoke to them. When we arrived in Djakove (Djakovica) the gypsies
got out. Then we arrived in Prizren and the driver, who was a Serb, told us, "may God
help you; I can’t help you any longer."
We spent two hours in the bus station. Some old men who couldn’t walk were also
waiting there. Finally we begged the driver to give us a lift to the border. We said
we’d pay him whatever he wanted. The driver said "I’ll think about
it," and then he said okay. We paid him 50 dinars per person.
Serb soldiers stopped the bus to ask for money. They wanted every last cent from us;
they didn’t want to allow anything out to Albania. But the Serb driver was very kind
to us. When the Serbs asked him why he was transporting us, he told them, "they are
good people."
When we arrived at the border the driver wished us good luck, telling us that we were
lucky to have made it. Then the bus left. The border guards took all of our documents and
threw them in the trash. They asked for money and jewelry.
I entered Albania on April 17 at about 1 p.m. Some people at the border helped my
brother and gave us food and water."
Document compiled by Dr S D Stein